‘I spoke to her on the phone. I didn’t tell her anything or ask any questions, but I put the shits up her. She’ll do a lot of listening and damn-all talking until she gets back. What else?’
‘Start your staff looking round the grounds. Work outwards from Number Fifteen. Look for recently disturbed earth.’ As he finished speaking Keith fell silent, his eyes fixed on a corner of the ceiling.
Mrs Heller opened her mouth, but Wallace gestured for silence. Keith blinked and looked around. ‘He was thinking,’ Wallace said.
‘Is that what it was? I thought he just died.’
‘You can’t hide much in an estate-car,’ Keith said. ‘And I don’t just mean bodies. If you don’t take everything out of it every night it turns into a junk-pile and every thief can see what you’ve got. Especially, you don’t leave shooting gear on show, because you might lead a thief home to your guns.
‘Whoever it was, the shooter or the shootee, obviously didn’t have a pistol in the car or yours wouldn’t have been borrowed. Unless mucking up your pistol was a deliberate act intended to deceive, which doesn’t seem to have much point. But he did have some gunpowder, and at least one ball and a percussion cap. That suggests that he had his bag or box of gear with him.
‘If he was a pistol enthusiast, he’d have had a smaller cap than a military top hat with him. He could be a clay pigeon man, using a smoothbore musket as a shotgun and occasionally firing a ball at targets. We’ve no way of knowing whether he had a musket or a shotgun with him. If he wanted to sneak up on the other man, he couldn’t have hidden a five-foot musket down his trouser-leg; so he borrowed a pistol.
‘If he had the rest of his gear with him, the odds are that he had his long-arm with him as well, be it musket or shotgun, because if you take one out of the car you take both.
‘This is pretty much of a long shot, because he may have been on his way to shoot deer or something. But suppose he had the whole gubbins in his car because he was going to or coming back from some competition.’
‘Like where?’
‘That’s the question. And the reason the answer’s highly speculative is because there may be small, local competitions I don’t know about. But Bisley was a month ago, and there’s nothing on for the next fortnight that I can think of unless you count a branch meeting in west Wales.
‘Except for the Game Fair. It’s in Yorkshire this year, not so very far away. Every shooting man who can get away makes the pilgrimage. There’s always a lot of clay-shooting at a Game Fair, and this year the Shooting Times trophy for muzzle-loaders is being shot for as well. Any shooting man with an interest in antique guns will be there. Our man may have been intending to fetch up there.’
‘When is it?’ Mrs Heller asked.
‘Three days, starting the day after tomorrow.’
‘But Keith,’ Wallace said plaintively, ‘even if you were right, would he still go?’
‘He would if he’s been telling his pals he’d be there. It’d be more risky to stay away and make people think. Is there any more coffee?’
Mrs Heller poured coffee. ‘As you said, it’s one hell of a long shot. But unless the staff here come up with something, we just have no lead at all to the identities of the men. It’s worth a go.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Keith said. ‘I was hoping to sneak down for a day. But now I think we might make a three-day jaunt of it. Could we borrow Miss Hilary.’
‘No you could not,’ Mrs Heller snapped. ‘For one thing, she has appointments and we don’t break appointments lightly around here. For another, I’m not having her put in danger.’
‘Danger?’
‘Yes, danger. Do think about it. Suppose you’re right. Suppose some man did a killing here, with that pistol. There’s nothing to connect him at the moment except that he goes in for these old guns and that Hilary knows his face. He’s fool enough to go and shoot. He’s there with his gun in his hands and he sees the one person who could identify him. What would his reaction be?’
‘We could disguise her in a wig and dark glasses. And clothes.’
‘Could you disguise her voice? Or her walk?’
Keith thought about Miss Hilary’s walk. He thought that given a few hours alone with her he could have her walking bow-legged, but he kept silent.
‘Keith,’ said Wallace, ‘what would Molly’s reaction be if you took Hilary to the Game Fair with you?’
‘You could take her,’ Keith said.
Wallace curled his lip and did not bother to answer.
‘Now listen to me,’ Mrs Heller said. Both men listened. ‘You’ve no way of knowing that only those two men were involved. It could just as easily be that the man in Sixteen went for a walk, and some enemy of the man in Fifteen took the opportunity to blow him away. And there’s no one person around here that would know the face of every customer.’
‘That’s a problem. You could hardly declare a holiday and bring half-a-dozen of them along to the Game Fair.’
Mrs Heller smiled grimly. ‘We’re not that game,’ she said. ‘If you’re envisaging a caravan-bordello on Italian wartime lines, put it out of your pointed head.’
Wallace leaned forward suddenly. ‘How about a photographer? Or more than one? B-bring back a record of everybody who shoots a muzzle-loader, or even pauses to look on.’
‘Excellent,’ said Mrs Heller.
‘But,’ Keith said, ‘where do we pick up a photographer at short notice, available for three days?’
‘Molly,’ Wallace said. ‘She’s very good with a camera,’ he explained to Debbie Heller. ‘Illustrates books and things.’
‘We’re not involving my wife in this.’
‘We’re not involving her,’ Wallace pointed out, ‘and she doesn’t have to come out here. We tell her that somebody’s trying to track down a man who bought a flintlock on the never-never and defaulted, or something like that. She can stay back at a distance and use one of those wildlife lenses of hers. She could even earn herself something new and fancy in photographic gear. She wouldn’t be in any danger, people are always snapping away for magazines and so on.’
‘I suppose so,’ Keith said.
‘We could shut the shop and all go down. Take my Land Rover and borrow Hamish’s caravan.’
Keith thought about it, and the more he thought the more he liked the idea. Mid-summer was the slackest season in the shop. Even fishing-tackle was hardly paying the rates. And he enjoyed game fairs. ‘We could try and get a share of somebody’s stand. I’ll start some telephoning in a minute.
‘First, one more thing.’ He produced the lead ball. ‘Could you get a sample of this analysed?’
Mrs Heller nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But what for?’
‘I want to know the percentage contents of antimony, cadmium and silver.’
‘Silver?’ Wallace said. Witchcraft came into his mind.
‘Yes. We’ve been assuming a muzzle-loading enthusiast, probably with a replica gun and using a mould to make his own lead balls. But he might be an antiques man, either a dealer or a collector. He might have had a cased original with him, in which case the ball would probably be original too. Or Wallace could have made a mistake; maybe our man found a pistol still loaded with the original ball.’
‘I didn’t,’ Wallace said.
‘It’s worth checking. Early lead had a silver content, because they didn’t have any process for extracting it.
‘And now,’ Keith said, ‘lend me your telephone and I’ll see whether we can’t get a share of stand-space at the Game Fair.’ It was not in his nature to do one thing at a time if he could do ten, especially if he could show a profit on each of them.
Chapter Four
Keith had a loose working arrangement with several other importers and stockists of muzzle-loading guns and equipment, aimed at avoiding unnecessary duplication of items which might be sold only once in a blue moon. Among these was the Nottinghamshire firm of P. Holdbright, and by happy chance Paddy Holdbright
had a stand at the Game Fair. Even more happily, he had inadvertently taken more space than he needed, and was delighted to get rid of half the space in exchange of two-thirds of the cost.
Suddenly, Keith’s little world was in turmoil.
Molly incautiously agreed to undertake an unspecified photographic task in exchange for an enormous zoom lens which she had long coveted and which, she said happily, could bring up the hairs on a flea’s leg at fifty yards in the dark. (‘At that price,’ Wallace said sourly, ‘it would need to.’)
Stock, baby-gear and household necessities were crammed any-old-how into the caravan, and none too early on the Wednesday morning the two men, their wives and dogs and the baby were in the Land Rover and on the road south. By late that night they were installed in the caravan park at Upperleigh Abbey, the stock was in the tent where Paddy Holdbright would sleep on guard over his own stock at night, and some sort of order prevailed.
It would be untrue to suggest that the fair was uneventful until the Saturday morning.
The expected crowds duly arrived, thinly on the Thursday, building up through Friday and on the Saturday into a deluge. The weather, in Game Fair tradition, was scorching.
Money was burning a hole in many a pocket. People had come to watch the dog-trials and the fly-casting contests, to study game-rearing, to shop for guns, gear or books, to see the falconry, to swap ferrets on the pugs-and-drummers stand, to ask questions along Gunmaker’s Row, to enjoy, to participate, to learn. The bars did boom business.
The route between the car parks and the fair led past the clay pigeon layout, and for once the muzzle-loaders were conspicuously placed. Interest caught, and the few stands covering the subject were in a state of siege. Keith had been told that he was mad to bring so much stock, but he began to worry about running out. He began booking orders instead of making cash sales.
Keith took an hour off on the Friday, and ran the dogs in a gundog test. The spaniel was feeling her age and ran badly. But the young Labrador was placed.
At about eleven on the Saturday morning Molly, complete with baby and pram, appeared outside the stand. She began making anguished faces at Keith. Recognising the symptoms, Keith concluded his sales-talk to a customer with unaccustomed haste, slapping some brochures into the man’s hand and almost gabbling, ‘For this you need a firearms certificate, you can have this on a shotgun certificate, that one’s only a wall-hanger, and this kit doesn’t need any certificates until you drill out the vent. Let me know what you decide.’ He was gone before the man had finished nodding.
He joined Molly beyond the small throng that was pricing his rack of powder-horns. Wallace darted out from behind the counter. ‘Is Janet all right?’ Wallace asked.
Molly nodded breathlessly.
‘What’s up, then?’
‘Somebody pinched my bag of films . . . now don’t get het up,’ she said quickly. She paused for a few deep breaths. Her pretty face was flushed and her dark hair tousled. Keith thought that she must have brought the pram up from the shooting-ground like a dragster. ‘He only got the unused films,’ she went on. ‘I was dropping the exposed ones into my pocket, but from a distance it could have looked as if I was putting them into the bag. I was using one of your old fishing-bags, Keith. It was at my feet, but when I looked down it was gone.’
‘It could have been a casual thief,’ Keith said. ‘Is Janet still covering the place?’
‘Yes. The film in the camera will last an hour or so, because I told Janet just to take each group.’
Wallace showed sign of imminent panic. ‘Janet should have a bodyguard,’ he said. ‘If he realises that he only got unused film . . .’
‘Want to go?’
‘Yes. No. I want to get this film away for processing. But I want Janet under guard.’
‘Right,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll go and stand guard. No point looking for an old fishing-bag in this crowd. Molly can stay here and mind the shop and the baby, you do the doings and then come back here and relieve Molly. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can buy film at the end of the next row,’ Molly said. ‘Janet knows how to reload.’
Keith disappeared. Molly emptied the cassettes of exposed film out of her pockets into a carrier-bag and Wallace grabbed it. Molly hung on. ‘There were two lenses and a meter in that bag,’ she said.
‘We’ll replace them.’
Molly let go. Wallace plunged way. Molly sighed. She manoeuvred the pram into the back of the tent and turned to face the counter. A prosperous-looking customer buttonholed her on the subject of a reproduction percussion shotgun.
‘You can have it against a shotgun certificate,’ Molly said. It was an oft-repeated refrain. ‘But if you want black powder for it you’ll need a Form F from the police. Including V.A.T., the price –’
Keith reappeared beside her. He had a powder-horn and a shot-pouch slung over his shoulder. He took the gun firmly out of her hands. ‘It’s out of stock for the next hour,’ he said. ‘If I’ve got to hang around down at the clay pigeons, I may as well get some shooting in.’
‘I was going to buy it,’ the man said plaintively.
‘Buy it later,’ Molly said. ‘He’s the boss.’
The man turned to Keith. ‘Double or quits you can’t beat fourteen out of twenty.’
‘You’re on,’ Keith said.
They went away together. Molly started showing cleaning kits to the next in line.
*
Monday morning saw all four at work in the shop, back in Newton Lauder. While Molly attended to the sporadic trickle of customers and Janet, grumbling, restored order to the stock which had come back from the Game Fair, Keith and Wallace sat in the cluttered back-shop, balancing up the books.
The trip had been profitable. ‘But,’ Wallace said, ‘there’s a hundred and sixty quid here that I can’t account for.’
‘That’s mine,’ Keith said. ‘It’s the bet I won.’
‘So it is.’ Wallace looked at him sideways. ‘But your bet doubled the sale price of an item of stock. The profit belongs to the business. I hope that you’re not thinking of charging Debbie Heller your full rate for a trip that you made a bomb out of anyway.’
‘We made the bomb. You’re part of this business too, you know. You may be financial whizz-kid to a superior knocking-shop –’
Wallace drew himself up. ‘I am not –’ he began hotly.
‘Would they have underwritten us if we’d made a loss?’
‘Probably. But we’d have had to try bloody hard to make a loss with you charging your hourly rate.’
‘Whose side are you on?’ Keith demanded.
‘It’s not a question of sides. It’s a matter of common honesty.’
‘You keep telling me they’re loaded.’
Wallace lowered his voice. ‘This may come as a surprise to you, but they didn’t make it just to give it to you.’ The success of his argument over Keith’s winnings made him incautious. ‘Those girls work bloody hard. They don’t just lie around all day.’
Keith lit up in an enormous grin. ‘No? What alternative positions –’
The argument, though sotto voce, was in full flood when the telephone rang. Wallace lifted it and listened. ‘We’ll be right over,’ he said, and disconnected. ‘Debbie Heller wants to see us right away. It sounded urgent.’
‘Madam calls, so we go?’
‘When that kind of money calls, everybody goes,’ Wallace said.
They made feeble excuses to their disenchanted wives.
Chapter Five
Their return to Millmont House seemed to coincide with the departure of late stragglers from Sunday night’s business. At the gate they met a vast American car with darkened windows and a dusky chauffeur, and in the drive they passed a crimson Jaguar with a driver whose dark glasses and pulled-down hat failed to hide the symptoms of nervous exhaustion.
The house itself seemed a haven of calm respectability. Keith parked under the tree opposite the front door. ‘I
f they crap on it, they crap on it,’ he said. An unfamiliar porter showed them into Mrs Heller’s office.
The lady nodded them into chairs and then paused. Keith was struck afresh by the contrast she presented. In appearance she was a beautiful woman, sometimes slightly past her best, sometimes as now, with her thick-rimmed glasses sliding down her nose, a child. But always there lay behind her calm front a spectrum of personalities – calculating, sometimes ribald, stern, compassionate and ethical. Even moral, if the word were not so inapposite. Keith understood women, but he wondered whether he would ever understand this one.
‘First,’ she said, ‘I think I’d better tell you about our visitor. We may have had more than one. Anybody – any man – can ring us up, make an appointment, come, look us over and go. But there’s one that we’re sure of He phoned at about the time you left on Tuesday, asked for and got an appointment with Hilary, and came on Wednesday. He made sure that he got his money’s worth first. Then he started asking her questions about her Sunday evening visitor and his friend. Had they seemed on good terms? Did they leave together? Was anything unusual said? Was any hint given as to where they were going next? That sort of thing.
‘She told him nothing – or so she says – and when he left she called up Charlie who was on the desk. So we caught him when he came to pay the bill.’
Keith’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Even with a first-timer, you don’t take payment in advance?’
‘We prefer not to. He may order drinks or go over his time.’ Mrs Heller seemed amused. ‘We don’t get gypped more than once a year, if that. Nobody can get a car out of the gate if we don’t want them to. One man did come in in a stolen car once, and climbed the gate going out. Then he tried it again a year later. We made him wash up in the kitchen for a fortnight.
‘Charlie brought him in here.’ She pushed her hair back with a tired gesture. ‘I can’t say that either of us got much out of it. Each of us wanted to find out as much as possible without saying a damn thing. I couldn’t push it too hard without giving away that I was anxious. I made out the we’re always suspicious when somebody makes inquiries, and he cracked on that he was trying to find a missing friend. In the end we both gave up and he pissed off He was a big man, over six feet and about fifteen stone, a bit of a belly but muscular with it. Age about forty, maybe a little less. Brown hair going grey at the temples, and a very ordinary sort of face. He booked in as Jonathan Brown.
The Game Page 6