Keith dropped the Derringer back into his drawer and got to his feet. He laid aside the lid from one of his long packing cases, lifted out several wrapped and labelled guns to uncover another which he laid on his desk while he repacked the case. There was silence in the room, expectant and anxious, while he slit the tapes and carefully unwrapped the padded paper until the gun was laid bare.
It would have looked like a poor relation even among Sir Henry’s gallery of unimportant guns, a long musket with the wooden stock weatherbeaten, cracked and wormy, the metalwork eroded with rust. Yet even after its long eclipse it had a strong and purposeful look. The style, with its short, straight cock topped by the ring-headed screw, looked foreign even to unskilled eyes.
‘You were after this,’ Keith said. ‘So also were Lady Batemore and Creepy Jesus. As it stands, and in this condition, it’s worth comparatively little – old miquelets were common enough in Spanish and Mediterranean countries. Yet this is a very special gun.
‘You two will know at least part of the story. But I don’t think Molly knows it, so I’m going to run over the history of the gun which I think has now surfaced.’
Keith had placed a small stack of books on the corner of his desk, each holding a paper marker. He opened them in a line across the desk. ‘We go right back to the Spanish conquest of central America,’ he said. ‘After Cortés and Pizarro and de Quesada, when they were exploring northward. Francisco de Coronado records that one of his captains, one Miguel Zegarra, had brought out to him a gun in the new Spanish style by the great Simon Marquarte. The same gun is mentioned in the Compendio Historico de los arcabuceros de Madrid, and Solér mentions that it bore Marquarte’s trademark, a sickle, which,’ Keith said, ‘is about the only original marking you can still make out on this tatty object. It can be traced through several engagements up to and including the one in which Zegarra fell and the gun was taken by a famous Apache chief. After that it disappeared for more than a century.
‘In 1710 a famous massacre took place at Broken Flats, near Lake Charles in Louisiana.’ Keith switched books again. ‘According to contemporary accounts some Frenchmen had been trading with a party of Tonkawa Indians under a chief named Chondo. After they parted, Chondo discovered that his most treasured possession had been stolen. This was a miquelet musket, which he had won in personal combat from an Apache chief whose grandfather had himself captured it from the Spaniards. Chondo is said to have decorated the stock, after the manner of the plains Indians, with a design in copper nails representing his own emblem, the otter.’ Keith’s hand stroked the ancient wood. The pattern of copper nails included an outline which resembled an otter as much as it did any other creature.
‘The Indians set off in pursuit and came up with the Frenchmen at Broken Flats. Accounts of the fight differ –’ Keith changed books again – ‘but the general consensus is that it lasted for three days. The Indians outnumbered the French, but the French were better armed. At close of play, only one Indian and three of the French survived.
‘That story is one of the classics of early America and any American collector would give both his ears for Chondo’s gun. You think, and I think, that this is it. Now what have you got to say?’
Miss Duguidson raised her chin and glared at the ceiling.
‘Tell him,’ her brother said tiredly.
She switched her glare to him. ‘You keep out of this, you . . . you poltroon!’
‘I am sick to hell of all this,’ the boy answered. ‘We keep getting in deeper and deeper. It’s been costing us money that we haven’t got in the hope of something that we haven’t a hope of getting. God alone knows what Creepy’s been getting up to and I just don’t want to know any more, but if we go on like this we’re going to be in it with him. Mr Calder, you’re right all along the line.
‘Brian invited us over. His parents weren’t there and we thought that he had their permission. Val was going through a chest full of old papers in the corner of their library, looking for material for her thesis, when she came across a letter from Louisiana. It was signed, “Votre cousin, Jules Bonnier”.’
Keith looked down at one of his books. ‘One of the survivors at Broken Flats was called Bonner or Bonnier,’ he said.
‘That figures. He mentioned some gifts and curios which he was sending home or to friends. And he said that he was sending a Spanish gun in the miquelet style, but decorated with nails after the manner of the plains Indians, to his brother-in-law, Henri Detournville.’
‘And I bought the gun from a man named Detournville,’ Keith said. ‘That ties it up very nicely.’
‘They could use your mouth as a model for the Channel Tunnel,’ Valerie told her brother sourly. ‘Well, you know most of it, Mr Calder, so you may as well know the rest. I’d been reading up about the Louisiana French and I knew the story of Broken Flats. I guessed that the letter could transform a very ordinary antique into a collector’s dream. Then the old bitch arrived and kicked up stink about us being there at all. So I hung on to the letter and one of the servants told her about it. She told Brian to get it back from me or else. He tried to coax it out of me, but I wasn’t playing. Instead, I said I’d cut him in on what I could get if I could buy the gun. His parents pay his bills, but they keep him chronically short of ready cash; so my guess is that the bastard decided to go after the gun for himself and then either to hold me to ransom or try to pinch the letter off me.
‘Anyway, the letter told us where to go. Monsieur Detournville – the present one – still had the gun, hanging on the wall in a disused room among some old swords and bits of armour and animal heads. We tried to buy it but, just as you said, we must have seemed too eager and he set the price too high for us. We spent the year trying to raise the wind, and we were nearly there when that piece appeared in The Scotsman.
‘Brian was in a tizzy about those pistols – that’s another story – and he shot over to France. And he phoned to say that you’d also bought our miquelet.’
‘Whose?’ Keith asked gently.
The girl half-smiled. Her attitude had become almost friendly. ‘Well, we thought of it as ours. If Brian thought we were going to give up, he was wrong. We set off as soon as we could. Nobody’d say where you were, so we watched Riberac –’
‘Yes, we figured out the rest,’ Keith said. ‘So your motives were purely financial. And when you didn’t manage to steal the gun out of our car you decided to lure me up to Foleyhill for purposes of framing and blackmail.’
‘But,’ she said earnestly, ‘we didn’t intend any violence and we don’t know anything about it. Creepy denied everything, but you can’t believe a word he says. He had the crossbow, but we can’t think why he should use it like that. Can you?’
‘Let’s not concern ourselves with what I can or can’t think of.’
‘Well, I’d have a job believing that it was because you’d deflowered his sister,’ Valerie said, ‘because if he has one she wouldn’t be a virgin and he wouldn’t mind anyway.’
‘And if she was and he did,’ Keith said, ‘I didn’t.’
‘If he did and she was and you did,’ Molly said coldly, ‘you probably wouldn’t remember.’
Keith was nearly distracted into arguing that, whatever he might have been in the past, he was now a happily – and faithfully – married man. But he held to the more important point. ‘Where is the letter now?’ he asked.
Valerie hesitated but her brother chimed in. ‘She’s got it with her. You said to bring whatever-it-was, and I insisted.’
She gave him a look which, Keith thought, would have fired a matchlock. ‘So I’ve got it with me,’ she said. ‘So what?’
‘You’re probably thinking that you can make me pay for it,’ Keith said. ‘But, now that you’ve given me the connection, I’ve only got to go back through the parish records and prove that Bonnier had a brother-in-law named Detournville and I’ve got a provenance which would satisfy most collectors. No way are you getting the gun off me at a price which wou
ld make room for a profit. So leave the letter with me and I may not say anything to the police about stolen property, nor about you having set me up at Foleyhill. The letter’s worthless to you without the gun.’
She took out a cigarette-lighter. ‘And suppose I set fire to it?’
‘Then I call the police. Destroying stolen property is a serious charge on its own. Make your mind up quickly. The Batemores will be arriving soon, and if Lady B. hears that you’ve got her letter with you she’ll howl so loud for the cops that they’ll hear her in Newton Lauder without benefit of a telephone.’
His sister sat as if made of stone but Hugh Duguidson got to his feet. ‘I don’t know about you, Val,’ he said, ‘but I’m for off. If there’s anything I want less than to meet the old dragon again, I can’t think of it.’
The girl got to her feet. She was shaking with anger. She took from her bag three small pages of stained paper, each covered with cramped writing and each now separately preserved between two sheets of plastic, and almost threw them at Keith. ‘You bastard!’ she said. ‘You utter bastard! Stay away from Foleyhill. And I hope I never see your revolting face again,’ she flung over her shoulder.
Keith watched her go, and he sighed. He hated to quarrel with anyone whose hips swung so bewitchingly. ‘My photograph of you came out very well,’ he said. ‘I shall treasure it always.’
Hugh started to follow his sister but paused at the study door. ‘Don’t think too badly of her,’ he said. ‘You’ve had your revenge. When she opened your parcel, I thought she was going to wet her other pants.’
Chapter Ten
Sir Henry and his lady demonstrated their unconcern by being a calculated twenty minutes late, which gave Molly time to check that Deborah was still peacefully asleep and Keith time to carry out the next stage of his uncrating. He also opened a can of beer. Talking was thirsty work and there was more of it to come.
Lady Batemore, in feminine frills, was serene in her ugliness. She looked askance at Keith’s half-empty beer-can. Sir Henry looked disdainfully around Keith’s usually dignified study, which now looked less than its best. Neither of them glanced at Chondo’s gun, which was laid along the mantelpiece, nor at the stained and warped mahogany case on the desk. They just sat, silent and imposing. Keith was seeing them together for the first time. He could well believe that they were cousins, pug-faced and highly-coloured.
Molly rejoined them. She took one quick look at the Batemores and then chose a chair outside the line of fire. Power and wealth, which only tended to raise Keith’s hackles, overawed her.
Sir Henry waited until Keith opened his mouth to speak and then got in first. ‘I take it,’ he said, ‘that this means you’ve decided to accept my offer?’
‘You can take it,’ Keith replied, ‘that I’ve decided not to. But we may still be able to do business once I’ve tied up some loose ends. Where is your son, by the way? I’d been hoping to see him here today.’
‘He’s abroad again,’ Lady Batemore said.
Keith had a suspicion that it might be a long time before Brian Batemore set foot again on British soil. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I think that I should return this to you. I don’t deal in stolen goods.’ And, with a queasy feeling that he was casting on the waters bread which might very well sink like a stone, he handed to Lady Batemore the three plastic folders. She looked down at the creased paper and the faded writing which was old-fashioned French, crossed and re-crossed. Without comment she laid the pages in her lap and looked at him.
‘Your families,’ Keith said, ‘have been closely connected by business interests and by occasional marriages for centuries. Between them they own many properties in the Médoc and the Dordogne, including one of the major châteaux. So it’s not altogether surprising that when I went on a buying trip through the area I made two separate purchases, each of which was of interest to one or the other of you.
‘In the summer of last year, Lady Batemore, you visited your family château to find that your son, Brian, had invited his friends, the Duguidsons, who are remote cousins of yours –’
‘Very remote.’
‘– very remote cousins, to stay there. You terminated that visit and then learned that the young woman, while looking through the family papers in the hope of furthering her studies, had removed a document, that letter which I’ve just returned to you. Her action drew your attention to the fact that a handsome profit was awaiting you if you could bring two items together.
‘The letter was gone, and if you had ever known of its existence you’d hardly be likely to remember its contents. So how did you learn its message without finding out who owned the gun? Because if you had known where to go you would surely have bought it.
‘The answer, of course, is through your son. He’s as thick as, well, thieves with his very remote cousins. The girl, Valerie, would certainly have boasted about what she was going to do when she got her hands on the money from Chondo’s miquelet, but she’d have been a fool to mention Monsieur Detournville’s name. Am I right?’
Lady Batemore smiled faintly but made no comment.
‘I am, then,’ Keith said. ‘And you were waiting for him to recover the letter for you. You might have had a long wait, because it seems likely that he had decided to obtain the gun and the letter for himself. Valerie tells me that Brian feels a certain lack of pocket-money. Your interest was purely financial. I don’t suppose you’re short of this world’s goods, but your outgoings must be enormous and we can all use a few extra thousands when they drop into our laps.’
Lady Batemore was about to speak but her husband put his hand on her arm. ‘Just listen,’ he said, ‘for the moment.’
‘Thank you,’ Keith said. ‘And then I came barging into this delicately balanced game. I bought Chondo’s gun. You told me later that you had no difficulty having my movements traced. So my purchase of Chondo’s gun only came to your attention because you were following up the news of my other purchase. These.’ Keith leaned forward and lifted the lid of the wooden case. Two saw-handled pistols lay in their fitted places, rusted but deadlier-looking even than Chondo’s gun. The case had been superbly fitted and contained, each in its appointed place, a bullet-mould, sprue cutter, patch cutter, nipple-key, loading rods and all the small tools which might be needed to keep the pistols in tune for their deadly trade.
Molly found her voice. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said plaintively. ‘What did those pistols have to do with Chondo?’
‘Damn-all,’ Keith said. ‘Chondo’s miquelet was already in France and half-forgotten before these pistols were made. And yet you probably know more than you think you do. What do you remember about the Rath family scandal?’
Molly’s eyes widened. She could not have been married to Keith for six years without learning a great deal about gun history and even coming to share at least some of his enthusiasm. ‘One of the last duels in Scotland,’ she recited dutifully, ‘was fought in eighteen twenty-six. It was hushed up at the time, but it was written up later in several books.’ Molly paused. ‘Didn’t Lord Rath go on to become prime minister?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘“The evil genius of British politics”?’
‘The last one did,’ Keith said. ‘Go on.’
‘All right. He wasn’t Lord Rath at the time, he was something else. The elder brother was Lord Rath. The father, who must have ordered the pistols, had popped off a year or two before. Can I call them Big Brother and Little Brother, just to keep them straight?’
‘Please do.’
‘Well, it was Little Brother who went on to be prime minister. Anyway, there was a party at some castle, I forget which. Some of the men went to play cards, including Little Brother who couldn’t really have been old enough for that sort of company. Another man, a distant relative of the Raths from an impoverished branch of the family, accused Little Brother of cheating. Tempers flared, as one of your books puts it. Little Brother was too young to defend his honour so Big Brother, who was notoriously
hot-tempered, called the other man out. I forget the other man’s name but it began with a C, so I’ll call him Cousin.
‘They met at dawn, two days later, and Cousin shot Big Brother dead. According to the stories, Cousin climbed straight back into the coach, drove to the coast and took ship to France. But, Keith, are these the Rath pistols?’ Molly asked.
‘They should be,’ Keith said. ‘The Rath coat of arms is engraved on the scutcheons.’
‘Why would they be walled up in a coach in a barn, then?’
‘That’s just what I began to wonder as soon as I realized that they were exciting Sir Henry’s interest. The whole thing smells like a fix. Cousin ends up in one of the family’s French properties. He gets an allowance from Little Brother, who’s just copped the title and the family fortune. And, just in case Little Brother decides to do some more elimination of inconvenient relatives, he walls up the coach and the pistols where they’ll be safe until he or his successors retrieve them.’
‘This is the merest speculation,’ Sir Henry said. ‘But do continue if it amuses you.’
‘It is, it does and I shall,’ Keith said.
‘But, Keith, could a duel really be rigged?’ Molly demanded.
‘If the seconds were in it together. Little Brother acted as Big Brother’s second. I think it’s time we took a look at the evidence. In France I only had time to loosen the pistols – they were rusted to the lining of the case – and to give them a gentle oiling. I was more concerned about having them travel safely than about anything else. I thought that if they’d been sitting around harmlessly for more than a hundred and fifty years they’d do for a little longer. But now I think we’d better have a care.’
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