Bert Hayes slid open the glass screen as they entered the drive of Briesland House. ‘Will you be wanting me again before Monday, sir?’
Keith was tempted to commandeer car and chauffeur and to arrive resplendently at his various appointments. On the other hand, perhaps it would be wise not to give Molly a taste for such luxury. ‘I don’t suppose so,’ he said. ‘I can always phone.’
‘I thought I might go and stay with my sister in Pentland, and save some petrol.’
It occurred to Keith that a weekend which began on the Wednesday evening was generous to a fault. On the other hand, it was true that two or three days of gardening by Hayes was probably worth less than the fuel for the double journey. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘give me a phone number.’
‘My sister isn’t on the phone, sir. I’ll call you each morning for orders.’
‘Very well.’
From the huge boot Keith retrieved his light suitcase and the heavy box of guns which Miss Wyper had packed for him. The car slid silently on its way.
Molly was in the kitchen, working with compulsive energy. Her hands were full and floury. Keith hardly noticed that his kiss found her cheek instead of her mouth, but it did occur to him that she greeted the dog more warmly than she did himself.
‘So you did come back,’ she said.
‘Of course I came back,’ Keith said, surprised. ‘Why wouldn’t I? I’m free for the rest of the week, but I brought some guns back to appraise and work on. And it looks very much as if Ray Grass was murdered.’
Ordinarily Molly would have fizzed with curiosity over such news, but she seemed to have other things on her mind. ‘You’ve been busy, then?’
‘Very, but there’s still a lot to be done. And what-all’s been happening back at the ranch?’
‘Not a lot. The shop’s been very quiet. There’s a Joseph Lang sidelock in for repair. Ronnie’s borrowed Tanya for today and he’d like to have her all next week. Jack Waterhouse came by. He says that at that price you can keep the Baker rifle, but he’s available to do engraving for you. I can’t stand that man,’ she added. She reached across the kitchen table for the salt-jar and managed to keep her back to Keith while she spoke again in a small voice. ‘I’ve been sleeping better while you were away. Two of me’s enough in one bed, and I’m scared you’ll bump my bump when you thrash around. So I’ve moved your things into the other room. Do you mind?’
‘I mind,’ Keith said. ‘But if it’s what you want . . .’
‘And you’re going back next week?’
‘That seems to be the general arrangement. Can you manage without me again?’
‘Janet and Wal can manage,’ Molly said. ‘I’ve polished off your dog-training thing. Can I come with you?’
‘Yes, of course you can. I asked you to come last time. Ralph Enterkin says he’s going to stay at the inn again, but I’ve an invitation to stay in Whinkirk House. Which do you want?’
‘The house.’
There was a small silence. ‘Well,’ Keith said, ‘I’d better be getting on.’ He went out to fetch the box from a sunshine which seemed to have turned grey.
In the kitchen, Molly bowed her head over the stove. Something seemed to have died. A tear fell into the soup, but, she decided, salt and protein never did soup any harm.
Brutus leaned against her leg. He offered a sympathetic paw.
*
Mr Enterkin reached his office at noon on the Saturday, and before the Old Kirk clock had chimed that hour – seven minutes late, as was its habit – he was on the telephone to Keith at the shop. ‘Why the hell is my office knee-deep in guns?’ he demanded.
Keith glanced round. Two customers were in the shop. ‘I’m on my own for a wee while,’ he said. ‘Can I come over in about half an hour?’
‘We could meet for lunch.’
‘I think you’ll find it’s confidential,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll come to your office. We can lunch after, if you like.’
‘Oh very well,’ the solicitor said irritably. His sojourn in the expense-account fleshpots of London had enhanced his enjoyment of the epicurean life, and he had been looking forward to a leisurely hour spent chatting over several gins-and-tonic.
‘Your dog’s out at Briesland House. He seems to have settled in well with Tanya, but I can go and fetch him if you like.’
‘No hurry. Whenever’s convenient. I have,’ Mr Enterkin admitted, ‘rather been enjoying the luxury of not having to go walkies all the damn time.’
Keith crossed the square to the solicitor’s office well within the promised half-hour, and he found Mr Enterkin glowering in his inner sanctum. The desk was dominated by the box, once the container for a croquet set, in which Miss Wyper had packed the guns. Mr Enterkin, from his customary chair, had to crane his short neck to peer over the top.
‘How did the cats-and-pigeons go?’ Keith asked, dropping into the client’s chair.
The solicitor relaxed, thereby disappearing altogether for the moment. ‘Very satisfactorily,’ said his voice. ‘We started off with the solicitors for the personal estate – that’s me – and for the various industrial and commercial interests ranged against the tax authorities and the insurance companies, who had decided to gang up against us and to pick the carcase. I put copies of your precognition around the table. The executors were unanimous in deciding to drag their feet over probate until the question of death could be re-examined. The taxmen changed sides as soon as they realised how much to their advantage it would be if the policies paid off. And the insurance companies were left out on a limb, sticking pins in little wax effigies of you and hoping to hell that the police don’t agree with you. Now, tell me why my office is being used as a repository for firearms.’
‘Self protection,’ Keith said. ‘I dumped them in the care of your Miss Wilks as soon as I spotted that something was wrong, so that nobody could suggest that I’d had time to make any substitutions.’
‘Wrong?’ Enterkin’s head popped up again over the box. ‘You’d better tell me what you mean. And,’ he added hastily, ‘spare me your customary erudite lecture with diversions into the history of firearms and the biographies of every gun-maker whose name makes even the most fleeting appearance. Nor do I want my nose rubbed against miniscule traces visible to your eyes alone. Just tell me what you found wrong.’
Keith was piqued. ‘You do like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?’
Enterkin pursed his lips in judgment. ‘It’s not that I like the sound of it,’ he said at last, ‘it’s just that I like what I hear it say. And, even at that, I like it better than I like the sound of yours. So be brief but factual.’
Keith bit back a retort. He should have known better than to bandy words with the solicitor. ‘Miss Wyper packed up ten, with their papers. From the receipts and so on, the guns purport to be antiques in virtually mint condition. Three of them are good, and I’ve kept them for minor polishing. There’s a Napoleonic musket in the box that I’m not sure of – it’s been converted from flint to percussion and then back again, but I think that the reconversion may have been done in the mid-nineteenth century, for export to some remote jungle where percussion caps were not to be had. But it’s invoiced as an original flintlock. The other six –’
‘Fakes?’
‘One outright fake,’ Keith said. ‘The rest are a mixter-maxter of old and new, major repairs and replacements, a lot of very fancy engraving to dish up commonplace guns as if they were top-grade, plus adding the names of some makers who’d never have let that sort of rubbish out of the shop. Raymond Grass may have been a whizz as a businessman, and he knew a lot about the history of guns, but he was an amateur when it came to dealing.’
‘Or he trusted his buyer too much,’ Enterkin said.
‘True. I thought at first that I’d be able to tell something from the style of engraving, but when I came to look at it it’s all copied out of a rare book on engraving that was published around the time of the Golden Jubilee. I thought I had the only
copy in Scotland.’
‘If you can’t get a clue to his identity from the engraving, is there any clue in the receipts and other provenance?’
Keith shrugged, although it was unlikely that the solicitor, who had relaxed his strained posture, could see him. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to start any speculation by phoning around until I’d had a word with you. But the receipts are mostly in Mr Grass’s name, and they’re fakes, the whole boiling lot of them. In this day and age it’s all too easy to cut the heading off somebody’s bill-paper and photocopy it. There’s one receipt in there that purports to be mine, but the paper’s softer than mine and it doesn’t have the number in the top right-hand corner. I suppose he bought something out of the shop, got a genuine receipted bill, painted out the date and the number with that stuff that typists use, stuck the heading on a piece of plain paper and bunged it through a Xerox. The lack of a number’s a give-away, but if he’d left the number on it might have been possible to trace him through the original purchase. The writing seems to be in a number of different hands, but if he can engrave like that then he can alter his handwriting. The silver and gold inlay work’s damn good too. If he’d come to me, I could have put some honest work his way. Instead, I suppose he’ll end up in the slammer.’
‘Probably,’ said Mr Enterkin’s voice. ‘Did he get away with very much?’
‘On those six guns, on an expenditure of about two hundred and fifty quid and two months work, he pulled in just under ten grand. And there’s about another hundred guns in the collection. I know it sounds a lot,’ Keith said hastily as Mr Enterkin’s eyebrows almost preceded the rest of his face into view, ‘but you’ve got to remember that a collector’s item in near-mint condition can fetch well into four figures, sometimes five, but you can buy the rubbish, not exactly for pennies but for a few fivers. Now,’ Keith dug a gun out of the box and unwrapped it with tender care, ‘take this shotgun.’ Mr Enterkin’s eyes widened in alarm but Keith went on before he could interrupt. ‘It’s a double-barrel flintlock. It’s been restocked recently, and the wood aged with permanganate and with leather dyes, carefully shaded to simulate years of wear. The unwritten rules require that when you do such drastic work on an old gun you record the fact where it can be seen, like inside the trigger-guard. Lesser repairs or new small components you record where it will show up when the gun’s dismantled. But there’s no such marking on this fellow. It’s been a plain gun in its day, a work-horse. The workmanship’s nothing special, but the engraving’s all recent and it’s been browned and polished afresh. One of the giveaways is the style of the hammers. If you’ll take a look?’
Enterkin averted his eyes from the gun which, by now, Keith was brandishing under his nose. ‘Under no circumstances,’ he said firmly.
Keith hardly heard him. ‘On the rib, it says William Maclauchlan, Edinburgh, but if Maclauchlan made that gun then Leonardo sculpted garden gnomes. The touch-holes don’t even –’
‘Shut up,’ Mr Enterkin said loudly, and Keith fell silent at last. ‘You’ve done a grand job,’ the solicitor said, ‘and the estate will cheerfully pay you the value of your time, less the value of as much of my time as you waste by forcing on me a lot of technical information which I neither care about nor even understand. If we ever manage to prosecute the perpetrator of the frauds you’ll no doubt be called to give evidence, and may God have mercy on the judge. Until then, bottle it up.’
‘All right,’ Keith said. He could find somebody else to tell it all to. ‘Do you want me to examine the rest of the collection?’
‘Better not,’ Mr Enterkin said after a moment’s thought. ‘For your own sake. We’ll get somebody up from London, somebody whose name doesn’t figure on any of the documents and who can’t possibly be suspected of complicity. If he confirms that fraud such as you’ve outlined runs through the whole collection, I may have to call in the police; but although it’s a large sum I don’t suppose we’ll ever see a penny of it again. Water under the bridge. I’m inclined to write it off as errors of judgment on the part of Mr Grass.’
‘You’re missing a very important point,’ Keith said. ‘If the late Mr Grass had realised that he’d been ripped off and was threatening to howl for the fuzz, somebody could have had a bloody good motive to knock him off before his voice could be heard.’
Mr Enterkin drew himself up to such a height that for the first time Keith could see the whole of his face. He looked aggrieved. ‘I do not miss points,’ he said severely. ‘I wish the police the best of luck in their endeavours, if they make any, to apprehend Mr Grass’s killer. But I have no personal lust for vengeance, and the interests of the executory will be satisfied if it is accepted that he did not die naturally.’
Keith, whose hunter’s instinct never let him abandon a trail, was shocked. ‘You mean you don’t give a fish’s tit who killed your client?’
‘If I do, it is only out of vulgar curiosity.’
‘And I stop investigating that matter?’
‘Investigate it all you want, but not at the expense of the estate.’
‘If you’re getting somebody else to look at the guns – which is fine by me, because you’ll be able to believe me when I make a low offer for them – and if I’m not to look into the death except in my own time, it hardly seems worth coming back with you.’
The solicitor compared his watch with the clock on the wall and split the difference. There was still time to save something out of the wreckage of his lunchtime. ‘Come and eat,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it.’
They skirted the Square in silence, and it was only when they were safely established on stools in the hotel bar with drinks before them and a menu in his hand that Mr Enterkin returned to the subject. ‘I want you to come back to Whinkirk House with me,’ he said. ‘Stay away from the guns until we’ve had an independent expert list them and record his opinion. And it’s not the business of the executor or his agents to detect the murderer. But there’s still plenty to do. There are answers required about the estate to which I don’t even understand the questions. And then there’s the trust. I told you about the trust, didn’t I?’
‘Several times.’
‘It’s a lot on my mind,’ Mr Enterkin said, without hint of apology. ‘You see, part of my task is to inaugurate it. The constitution and rules were already laid down by Mr Grass, but my job is to convince the interests which are to be involved, from sporting bodies through middle-ground conservationists to Societies for the Protection or Prevention of This and That, who inevitably include –’
‘Antis,’ Keith said.
‘– that they can form a useful partnership. I’ve got to get them to nominate suitable and open-minded persons to the board. And they’ve got to agree to Mr Grass’s final stipulation – that the first project to be run under the new banner is to be a comparison between the estate and another of similar size which has been unshot for most of this century. There is to be a count of bird species and populations, and it is obligatory that the results are published. Is the idea as provocative as I think it is?’
‘At first glance,’ Keith said, ‘yes. But it can be counted on to start the new body off without any misconceptions about the balance of nature taking over where shooting leaves off. All right, I’ll expect you to pick me up on Monday. And Molly.’
Chapter Thirteen
Over the weekend the sun decided that it had poured out enough unaccustomed warmth over Scotland. High cloud drew shadow over the land. People resumed the vests and cardigans which they thought they had put away until Autumn. ‘Back to normal,’ became a usual greeting.
Keith had crammed a fortnight’s work into a few days and he was glad to collapse into the luxurious grip of the Rolls. Somehow Molly had seemed to perpetually at his elbow and yet never quite available for a chat. Now, seated cosily between the two men, she chattered nonstop to the solicitor without seeming to ignore her husband. The two men sank into stunned silence.
There was drizzle o
ver the high centre of Scotland, but they descended at last into a calm, close, misty day that held the west in a moist cocoon.
Mr Enterkin, without any great enthusiasm, suggested that they might join him for lunch at the inn; but Molly stated flatly that she had telephoned Whinkirk House and committed herself and Keith to lunching there. The solicitor quitted the car, singing to himself, while they drove on to Whinkirk House. Keith discovered, without surprise, that Molly had also bespoken separate rooms.
They ate a good but silent lunch, under the eye of Mr Roach. The idea was dawning on Keith that he must have done something wrong, although he could not for the life of him think what it could be. He decided that she would probably tell him in her own good time. ‘I’ve got to go out,’ he said.
‘To the inn?’
‘No. Ralph Enterkin’s coming over here later. Do you fancy a dander in the country, or is the weight getting to be too much for you?’
Molly said that she thought she’s stay and find her way around the house and garden.
*
Mr Enterkin’s lunch, although plainer and served later, was also more cheerful than Keith’s. He had to wait until the bar closed before Penny Laing was free to join him in the dining room. They sat down together. Penny was in great form. Since the demise of her husband under a runaway tractor some six years before, she had rarely had the pleasure of eating a meal that she had not herself cooked. To have a paid-for meal, as slap-up as the inn could provide, in the company of her lover and served by her boss at his most paternal made the meal into a great occasion for her.
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