Keith and Deborah exchanged a glance. The purring sound was explained. ‘How did you come into all this?’ Keith asked.
‘From what Smith said when he was briefing me, there really was an employee of Bruce Ailmer who found out what was happening, got scared and walked out. He talked to a pal before vanishing and the story came to the ears of somebody who connected it with J and D Pharmaceuticals.
‘They couldn’t trace the man and the takeover was at such a delicate stage that publicity could have upset the cart and let the Americans or the Germans in. Rather than go to the police and risk a story in the media, they decided to replace the original, now vanished, man with another gunsmith. I was unemployed, so they got onto me.’
‘How?’ Deborah asked keenly.
‘Through the Job Centre. I was told to apply for a job and let my prospective employer prise the story out of me. That would make sure it got to the police by a back door and the right amount of information would pass. Not too little, not too much, as the advertisements used to say. The police would be chasing the assassin. Meantime, I suppose that they were taking their own steps to keep their chairman out of harm’s way.
‘After I’d seen you, Mr Calder, I met Smith in Edinburgh and told him that you were going to pass the story on to the police. That’s when he told me to lie low. I didn’t like it. I wanted that job with you. But, as he said, if I went to the police they could soon prove that I was a ringer. And I needed my fee. This morning, I was paid in cash and told that I needn’t hide out any more.’
Keith looked him in the eye. ‘The rest of your references were your own?’
‘Absolutely.’ Bob Hall hesitated and nerved himself. ‘Do I still get the job?’
Keith looked at Molly for advice.
Molly Calder had only one formula for such occasions. ‘You’d better stay to lunch,’ she said. ‘And I’d better go and put it on.’
‘Can I come and help you?’
‘I’d like that,’ she said.
Alone again, father and daughter looked at one another. ‘That seems to explain the loose ends,’ Deborah said at last. She picked up a lock-plate and began polishing rust off the inner surface.
‘All but one,’ Keith said. ‘Paul Cardinal seems to have been exactly what he made himself out to be. So why did he bugger off suddenly, taking the pistol with him? Did I tell you that I had an apologetic note from him, telling me where he’d left Ian’s car?’
‘I know that,’ Deborah said. ‘Ian told me before he went off to fetch the car. I think Mr Cardinal was desperate to have that pistol. Perhaps he was afraid you’d change your mind or he’d lose the toss.’
Keith scratched his head. ‘Get out those sword-hilts,’ he said. Deborah put down the lock-plate and went to a cupboard below a rack of pistols. She unwrapped the two hilts and laid them carefully on the bench. Keith looked at them with affection. ‘Top quality basket hilts by Walter Allan of Stirling,’ he said. ‘Complete with the Russian imperial crest. And in damn nearly mint condition. With that story attached to them, what sort of price would you expect them to make at auction?’
Deborah studied the hilts with her eyes half closed. Keith encouraged her to read and digest the reports of prices fetched at arms auctions. ‘To a museum or a keen collector, not less than ten grand apiece. Maybe twenty.’
Keith nodded. ‘You’re not far off. If anything, a little on the light side. Why, in God’s name, would Paul Cardinal prefer a crummy old horse-pistol with the trigger guard missing? And the butt broken, probably over somebody’s head, and patched with side-plates of some sort of horn. The sort of thing we’d put in the catalogue at a hundred quid and be glad to accept thirty.’
Deborah blushed scarlet. ‘I’m afraid that was my fault,’ she said. ‘He got me aside and asked me how you’d recognise a Doune pistol.’
Keith began to understand. He spluttered with laughter. ‘And you said that it would have a ramshorn butt and no trigger-guard?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he didn’t realise that ramshorn was a shape, not a material.’ Keith wiped his eyes. ‘Oh well! All he was really after was to have a pistol on the wall and be able to say that it had belonged to one of his ancestors. I dare say he’ll be just as happy with what he’s got. But, you silly juggins, the period was too early for the ramshorn shape. The Czar’s pistols would have had fishtail butts.’
Father and daughter worked on while arguing amicably over when the first ramshorn butts had appeared on Scottish pistols.
‘Dad,’ Deborah said suddenly, ‘would there be anything in one of your books to tell us who was the Big Bug at Carlisle Castle when Laird’s Tam was taken there?’
‘Now there’s a thought,’ Keith said.
*
Sheila Blayne returned to Dundee. Somehow her work never again quite attained the miracle of that drawing of the Tay, but the confidence it had given her stood her in good stead and she is building a useful career illustrating children’s books.
Her studio flat now doubles as a salon for the younger students. As a single parent she could be seen to be as free a spirit as themselves and the barriers came down.
Even when she found that she was pregnant, Sheila’s new confidence was unshaken. She considered carefully and decided that she could get by without dropping a bombshell into the life of one whom she still considered godlike. After all, he had certainly saved her life as well as presenting her with another life to cherish.
The possession of a sandy-haired son with blue eyes and a square jaw is enough. She is happy.
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Author’s Note
The historical element in this story is not to be taken too seriously. But in trying to avoid taking too many liberties with the facts, I was greatly aided by George MacDonald Fraser’s book The Steel Bonnets.
*
G.H.
In Camera Page 15