Love for the Baron

by John Creasey

  Copyright & Information

  Love for the Baron

  First published in 1979

  © John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1979-2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2014 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755135962 9780755135967 Print

  0755139305 9780755139309 Kindle

  0755137639 9780755137633 Epub

  075514581X 9780755145812 Epdf

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

  Creasey wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the ‘C’ section in stores. They included:

  Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

  Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

  He also founded the British Crime Writers’ Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey’s stories are as compelling today as ever.

  1

  The Shadow

  Wherever Mannering went, she followed him.

  Whether he was by himself or with others, even when he was with Lorna his wife, she was liable to be just behind him; or alongside; or ahead, but never so far that there was much risk that she would lose him. She was conspicuous, if only because she always wore dark-lensed glasses. Because of these he had never really seen her face; and yet he did not think he would ever be able to forget her.

  He could recognise her legs; her ankles; her hands; her arms; the shape of her neck and the way she wore her hair, clustered like auburn-coloured feathers. He knew the shape of her small nose, her full lips, her chin which was square and with a tiny cleft. He could recognise her ears. There were tiny blemishes, freckles and scars which would have betrayed her had she been one of a hundred women all dressed the same, with more or less the same figure.

  She had a slender figure; unexaggerated; a slim waist; and whatever she wore her legs were always lovely, and the curves at her hips gentle.

  She walked well.

  He did not know whether her voice matched the rest of her, because he had never heard her speak.

  Her shadowing had started over four weeks ago; or perhaps it would be more precise to say that he had first noticed her then, for there was no way of being sure that she had not been following him for a long time, without his noticing.

  When he did notice her she was in Green Street, Chelsea, where he lived; he had forgotten some papers which he needed at the shop – Quinn’s – where he was due in less than half-anhour. So he stopped abruptly and swung round, and she cannoned into him. The only way to stop her from falling was to fling his arms round her in support; and for a moment he held her tightly. Then he let her go, and managed to say: “I am sorry.”

  She backed away, and with a murmured response hurried past him. He turned and watched her for a moment, noting her trim figure. She had on a suit of pale brown suede; he remembered the softness of it as his hands had brushed against it. Before she reached the corner he was on the move again. Stepping out of the elevator onto the landing at his top floor flat he was startled to see Lorna, his wife, with the missing file in her hand.

  “Hello, darling,” she said. “Don’t bump into me!”

  “Then you noticed that little incident?” Mannering said, smiling.

  “Indeed I did. Every morning when you leave I stand at the window and watch you until you’re out of sight.”

  “My!” he exclaimed. “What a lucky man I am!”

  “Lucky?”

  “Lucky that you don’t follow me to the end of the street!”

  Laughing, she stepped back and he pressed the ground floor button of the lift. He had a final glimpse of her, still laughing, as the lift started its descent. She was the most beautiful woman he knew, and even the few strands of grey in her nearly black hair did not affect that. Yet, he knew, that in repose she could look aloof, austere – some actually said ‘sullen’. He had not known that she watched him, and felt an added tenderness and lightheartedness as he reached the street again and hurried to his car, parked halfway between the tall Regency house and King’s Road, Chelsea, one of London’s busiest thoroughfares.

  He saw no sign of the girl into whom he had bumped; and there was no longer any thought of her in his mind.

  He was driving an Allard, a sleek car in metallic grey which undoubtedly suited him. There was room for his long legs, room for him to sit back in comfort, a tall lean man at whom women instinctively glanced; women in shops, in cars, walking, or standing in bus queues. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about John Mannering was his complete lack of self-consciousness. He was a perfect match for his wife, as handsome a man as she was a beautiful woman; and it did not occur to him that this attracted attention.

  He had a little time, at traffic lights and traffic holdups, to ponder the papers in the briefcase on the seat by his side. They concerned an offer of a rare collection of antique jewellery, objets d’art, ancient coins and even some small items of early Egyptian, Roman and Etruscan pottery. The Collection had been gathered over sixty years or more by a man who had just died, and whose executors had asked him first to value and then to make an offer for the Collection. It said a great deal for his reputation that the executors, a bank and a lawyer of high repute, should ask him to do both.

  So far as the valuation was concerned there was no problem. It would take him a week or more, fitted in with his everyday work. Any new major affair, during that time, would have to be handled by his manager and assistants. Moreover he had a standby assistant whose knowledge of antique jewellery was unrivalled and who would be overjoyed at the chance to come temporarily out of retirement in order to help. Buying the Collection was another matter: he guessed his valuation would be over a million pounds, which was more free capital than he had; and borrowing to buy always had its drawbacks; one had to sell quickly or the interest made deep inroads into profits.

  There was no need to ma
ke an immediate decision – but the decision was not the only thing about the Collection which preoccupied him. It had been made, or so he was told, by a Mr. Ezra Peek who had lived in a large house near Basingstoke in Hampshire. There appeared to be no doubt about Peek’s legal entitlement to the whole; none of their genuineness, but – how did one just ‘pick up’ such priceless treasures?

  “What I’m asking myself,” he said aloud as he turned into Hart Lane off Old Bond Street, “is whether he was a thief or a fence.”

  He glanced at the window of Quinn’s as he passed towards a narrow turning and a parking place which he had at a new office block just beyond this tiny section of fifteenth and sixteenth-century London. But it was not the empty window of the narrow-fronted shop which attracted him; it was a reflection in it from the shop opposite and the woman standing outside that shop.

  He felt quite sure that she was the woman with whom he had collided in Green Street.

  As he passed she continued to stare into the window of an exclusive milliner’s in which were five hats; tiny hats each on its own stand; as he reached the entrance to the parking places outside the towering office block of ferro-concrete the girl turned towards Bond Street and disappeared.

  How could she have got ahead of him, he marvelled?

  And why had she?

  There were several possible answers to the second question and these passed through his mind as he parked the car and walked back to Quinn’s. The most likely was that she wanted to talk to him but couldn’t summon up the nerve. Another possibility was that she was a newspaper or magazine feature writer doing her homework on him. A third, simply, that she wanted to know where he was going and what he was doing; he had met attractive young women private inquiry agents before.

  As he drew up outside the shop, Bill Bristow, manager of Quinn’s, was placing an emerald tiara on a piece of black velvet, and although no sun shone directly into Hart Row the light seemed to sparkle on the emeralds giving them such beauty that Mannering held his breath and, momentarily, was oblivious of everything but the green fire. Bristow looked up, but Mannering did not really notice him. His breath came in short, sharp gasps and he felt his heart thumping, the blood pulsing through his veins.

  It was like a seizure by some unknown, elemental force.

  Throughout his life Mannering had felt moments such as these, part of the near mania for precious stones which possessed him. He was lucky, in that he could discipline the mania and, these days, even indulge himself in brief possession. It was an age since jewels had struck at him like this, driving all other thoughts but desire – lust – for them away.

  Bristow withdrew and the drapes closed, his fingers disappeared and there was nothing to see but the velvet and the tiara, nothing of the shop beyond.

  Slowly, Mannering went to the door.

  This was as old as the beam across the fascia, the beams inside the shop across ceilings and walls. Some ‘new’ work had been put in after the first great fire of London, when a little group of houses here had been miraculously preserved, but most was truly old, hewn from the Forest of Epping when men felled trees with an axe and killed deer with arrows for their nightly meal.

  The door opened, and Bristow stood aside; a compact man in a grey suit with a white gardenia in his left lapel; an ageless man who had seemed about fifty, all the twenty years and more that Mannering had known him. He had regular features and would have been called good-looking, but something prevented that: an absence of animation, no doubt the result of nearly thirty years of Scotland Yard’s iron discipline. Once, he had regarded Mannering with deep suspicion; once, they had been virtually sworn enemies. Yet throughout those years there had been respect which had ripened into regard and become friendship. Bristow had been the Yard’s expert on precious stones and objets d’art; his knowledge and experience were invaluable to Quinn’s, with its worldwide reputation.

  Together they walked along a narrow central aisle between small pieces of antique furniture, glass-fronted showcases, pictures on the panelled walls; it was as much a showplace and a museum as a shop. They turned to Mannering’s office which was at the back, and never left unlocked. Opposite the door and on the other side of the aisle was a long Welsh dresser of beautifully carved dark oak, where small parcelling was done and some records were kept. In the panelled back were small holes, which appeared to be part of the carving. Through these could be seen every corner of the shop. Bristow’s desk was here. So was one of the controls to a microphone and loudspeaker system which could pick up anything said outside the shop and be broadcast at a whisper or loudly to everyone inside. Mannering had lost count of how many attempts to break in and rob Quinn’s had been foiled by that simple system.

  He opened the door of his office, where his correspondence was tidily laid on a bow-shaped Queen Anne desk; the office was plainly furnished but for that, and a Regency chair some distance away from the desk. Bristow glanced up at a portrait of a Cavalier – the image of Mannering, at his gayest; and, indeed, it was Mannering, painted by Lorna years before.

  “Close the door,” Mannering said as he sat in his chair behind the desk. He was more himself, but still shaken as he went on: “That tiara hit me like a poleaxe.”

  “So that was it,” Bristow said grimly. “You looked – well, you know how you looked. Do you know, John, I don’t think I shall ever realise how much jewels mean to you.”

  “I don’t suppose you will,” Mannering said, “yet when I saw the tiara the other day it didn’t affect me so much.”

  “Probably because then it was one of a Collection,” remarked Bristow.

  “Yes. Bill, I think we’ll sell that tiara as soon as we can find a customer who will buy it. It’s a crack to my dignity to let anything have so much power over me.”

  “There are alternatives,” Bristow observed.

  “You mean, I could buy it?”

  “Yes, or else just keep it in the strong-room until it’s lost its magnetism for you.”

  “Magnets never lose their effect,” declared Mannering, and forced a laugh. “Let me think about it, Bill.” He hitched his chair forward and placed a hand on the pile of twenty or thirty letters.

  “Is there much here?”

  “Another letter from Harcourt, Pace and Pace,” answered Bristow.

  He did not have to say any more to convey his meaning. Harcourt, Pace and Pace were the solicitors of Lincoln’s Inn who were executors of the will of the late Ezra Peek, and who were so anxious to see the Peek Collection. Mannering singled the letter out and saw that it was brief and to the point.

  Dear Mr. Mannering,

  While reluctant to harass you we would be most grateful if you could inform us when we may expect the valuation of the Collection of jewellery and objets d’art now in the estate of the late Ezra Peek, Esquire. Further, we would be appreciative whether you think it practical to make an offer for the Collection as a whole or whether you would advise putting each item – or perhaps groups of similar items – up for auction.

  Yours very truly,

  There followed some squiggles which might have represented H. Pace and beneath these was typed the name of the firm.

  Mannering put the letter aside and, looking up at Bristow inquiringly, said: “Why can they possibly be under pressure?”

  “One of the legatees may have eager fingers.”

  “Yes,” remarked Mannering, and after a pause he went on: “Do you have any friends in the Hampshire Police Force?”

  “I’ll try a call or two,” promised Bristow.

  His call elicited only the assurance that nothing was known about the dead man except a reputation for eccentricity, and the fact that he had travelled the world for years and his Collection was said to have been bought item by item, often in the lands of their origin. By that time Mannering had sent for Josh Larraby, once the manager of Quinn’s, now a healthy octogenarian who lived in a small flat above the shop and was proud to be called the ‘nightwatchman’. Larraby, who had
shrivelled in recent years but still boasted a crop of curly, silver-grey hair and the most alert and intelligent blue eyes Mannering had ever seen, listened intently.

  “I will be delighted to help with the valuation and classification, sir. I can imagine nothing I would like better.”

  “Then we’ll get started,” Mannering promised, and called from his office to Bristow: “I’ll be locked in, Bill.”

  Then he crossed to the Regency chair and pressed a button beneath one of its arms. Immediately the chair began to move back of its own accord, and a wide hole appeared in the oak floor, revealing a flight of shallow steps. This was the only entrance to the strong-room, with its five different sections, in the first of which was the Peek Collection, its unique treasures already unpacked and set out on wide shelves.

  Mannering and Larraby began to work, assessing, checking references in a Dealers’ Handbook which was said to have a million entries, finding prices where prices were known on comparable pieces; and except for an hour’s break at lunch-time they kept at it until after five o’clock. Larraby was still eager, though visibly tiring, while Mannering needed to spend an hour in the office on other business. It was nearly seven o’clock before he left Quinn’s and walked through the gathering October dusk towards the car park.

  As he opened the door of his car he saw a girl with dark glasses sitting at the wheel of an M.G. a few parking spaces away. He could not be positive, but felt almost sure she was the girl he had seen twice that morning.

  2

  To Tell Or Not To Tell

  It was the same girl.

  She followed him to Green Street, and drove past as he parked; the lift of her head, the small nose and the square chin, profile clear against the light from a street lamp, left Mannering in no doubt. She did not glance towards him. He found a parking place, preferring to leave the car on the street whenever there was any chance that he might want it again soon. He stood by it, peering towards the corner round which the M.G. had passed. He could see it vividly in his mind’s eye, a shining red, as immaculate as the girl. He realised that this time she had not been wearing the pale, biscuit-coloured suit but something darker.