The Gimmel Flask

by Douglas Clark

  “Were there any marks in the glass?”

  “On the bottom, you mean? I didn’t notice. I don’t wash up, you know.” It was a rebuke.

  “I didn’t mean a maker’s name. I meant flaws or flecks. You said it was crude. What made it crude?”

  “Well . . . what I meant was we could have had a nice cut-glass cruet. One of those with five bottles on a silver stand. Much nicer, it would have been.”

  “Of course. But the double bottle your husband chose to use—he must have had a high opinion of it, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone against your wishes by having it on the table, would he?”

  “Oh, he thought it was something—I don’t quite know what.”

  “But you can’t remember any distinguishing marks.”

  “Oh, yes I can. It was such poor glass, there were flecks in it. White ones—dirty white, really. It made it look quite low class.”

  “Were they in any particular part of the glass.”

  “Mostly in the bulb part on the oil side. There was a sort of half-moon of them in one place. About half as big as an old sixpence.”

  “That seems very clear. Did you see the half-moon on Sunday?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “I see. What were the stoppers like?”

  “Corks, with dull old pewter tops.”

  “I see. Thank you. Are you alone in the house?”

  “My daily is sleeping here at the moment.”

  “No living-in maids?”

  “These days?”

  “My information is that you have had this house for about six years. Isn’t it a big place to have bought for just two people getting on in years?”

  “My husband called it his insurance policy.”

  “Meaning he proposed to sell it?”

  “When he got the right buyer, yes.”

  “Thank you.” Masters turned to Green and raised his eyebrows interrogatively.

  Green asked: “Was the back gate always kept locked and bolted, Mrs Hardy?”

  “Oh no, that was the tradesman’s entrance. How would they have got in if the gate was always bolted?

  “In that case,” said Green, “do you mind if we go out that way?”

  “If you like. Through the conservatory.”

  It was almost a dismissal, but Masters had one more question. “Is there somebody in Limpid who is very knowledgeable about antiques?”

  “Mrs Horbium.”

  “Really?”

  “But Mr Benson is the real clever one.”

  “Mr Benson? Could you, by any chance, tell me where he lives?”

  “Oh yes. Dicky Benson lives in a flat above the shops at the corner of the High Street. Over the greengrocer’s and the leather shop. The door’s in between.”

  “Thank you. We’ll take advantage of your offer now, and go out through the conservatory.”

  She showed them the way. They followed the flagged path, but, as Green pointed out, anybody could have reached the house unseen by sticking to the bushes and trees.

  Masters agreed. When they reached the car he said: “I’m going to try and find this Benson chap. Are you coming with me?”

  Chapter Four

  By now the little town was quiet. It was half past nine, and not yet time for the pubs to empty, so there were very few people on the streets. A few cars were parked on the market square and a cinema front glowed not far away. Probably the cars belonged to members of the sparse audience.

  “Not even any courting couples under the lamplights,” said Green.

  “That’s no longer the fashion.”

  “What isn’t? Courting or standing under lamps?”

  “Both, I suppose. The telly has put an end to both. Nobody goes courting nowadays. They have ninepennorth of hot hand watching Kojak these days. It’s no longer ‘walking out together’ like it used to be.”

  Masters parked the car just after turning into the High Street. The shops he was looking for were just behind them on the left. They walked back looking for the entrance to Benson’s flat. They found it easily enough: a narrow, white-painted door, separating the front of the greengrocer’s premises from those of the leather merchant. The bell was of the push-button type, set in a large, concave, brass finger plate. Masters put his thumb on it decisively.

  Almost immediately an outside light went on above his head, and another came on inside the building, as the fanlight above the door showed. There was, however, an appreciable pause before he heard bolts being drawn, a deadlock turned and a spring lock being unbuttoned. Even then, the door, when it opened, was held by a chain.

  The light on both sides of the door was good enough for mutual recognition. Masters was sufficiently taken aback to pause for a significant moment or so before he asked: “Mr Richard Benson?”

  “I am he. I believe we have met before. This afternoon. I guessed then you were a policeman.”

  “I am a policeman. Superintendent Masters and my colleague. Detective Chief Inspector Green, both of Scotland Yard.”

  “I presume you wish to speak to me, otherwise there could be no point in your calling at this time of night. You had better come in.” The chain was withdrawn and the door opened wide with unstinting welcome, but Masters noticed that Benson, still armed with his ashplant, gripped it firmly. Such preparedness for action, Masters decided charitably, was more a result of habit than peculiar to this single visit.

  “I will go first,” said Benson as he closed the door on the deadlock only. “And you will bear with me, I trust, if I am a little slow on the stairs. I have a stiff knee.”

  “War wound?” asked Green as Benson started up the close-carpeted flight.

  “You could almost call it that,” agreed Benson as he swung his right leg up a riser. “But not in the accepted sense that the wound was received during hostilities with a declared enemy. No, I came through the main struggle relatively unscathed.”

  Masters, coming last, was looking about him. The stairs rose out of a tiny hall which led nowhere, but merely provided a certain amount of base to the stairwell, preventing the flight from being forced to rise claustrophobically between two walls set no further apart than its own width. He could see the reason for the stair light, too. Without it, even in daytime, the flight would be dark, for apart from the fanlight at the front door there was no other direct light. Perhaps that was why Benson had had it decorated white. Everything dead white, even the close-piled carpet which ‘gave’ under every footstep, but yet remained firm to the tread to emphasise that it had been expensively made and well laid.

  “Some minor shindig?” asked Green.

  “I was in the government service,” admitted Benson. “There was trouble in the country to which I was accredited. The house was attacked one night.”

  “I see.”

  Benson had stopped at the top, where the stairs pierced the back wall of the hall. Here the opening was only as wide as the stairs and it was here—strategically placed—that a wrought iron gate faced them. It stretched from the top riser to the ceiling. The sort of installation one might find either in a garden or, alternatively, in a bank.

  “I never carry the key to this on my person,” explained Benson, putting his arm between two of the metal uprights. “I hang it out of sight, round the corner, just within reach. I trust that being out of sight, it will be out of mind should anybody attempt a break-in.”

  “Very wise,” murmured Green. “And a tea-leaf wouldn’t find the key on your person if he broke in down below and overpowered you.”

  “Quite.” The gate swung open. Benson led the way through, leaving Masters to close it. “But I feel that on this occasion I needn’t lock it—not with Scotland Yard on the premises.”

  Four small steps at right angles to the first flight and they were in the flat proper.

  The place was softly lit with reading lamps. Masters paused to appreciate it.

  “It is a quaint place,” said Benson, seeing Masters taking in his surroundings. “I call this my hal
l. Achieved by the simple expedient of removing the wall of one room and so leaving a goodly empty space at the head of the stairs. But the apartment spans two shops of slightly different interior heights. And so my bedrooms and bathroom which lie to your right stand almost two feet above the level of my day quarters and kitchen which are to your left. My sitting room is this way.”

  He led the way to a door halfway down the left side of the good-sized square hall. Here, too, the decor was dead white. But inside the sitting room, the effect was different. The dominating colours were browns and reds. Brown graded from buff to horse-chestnut, and reds from crimson to the pink of the wall lights. It was an unlikely combination, but an homogenous whole. It struck Masters that a man and a woman had each chosen to make it their room and by chance their choices had formed a happy marriage of effect. A good room, a big room, tastefully furnished. Masters liked it.

  So did Green. He said: “I’d never have believed I’d ever find anything like this over a greengrocer’s shop. You and your missus must have worked hard to turn it into this, sir.”

  “I am a widower, Mr Green. My wife was killed in the same incident in which I was wounded.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Mau-Mau job was it?”

  “Something like that. Be seated, please, gentlemen. And name your personal poisons. I believe I can cater for most tastes, except the modern nasties like rum and coke.”

  “Honest ale,” said Masters.

  “And for me,” added Green.

  Benson busied himself at a wine cabinet and then came across with two tankards.

  “Genuine leather?” asked Masters, taking his.

  Benson nodded and Green said: “I never knew they made them like this. Leather tankards, eh? Cheers!” He drank deep and sighed with satisfaction before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Benson smiled and turned to Masters. “I am pleased to welcome you to my home, but I hardly think this is a purely social call, is it?”

  “We were given your name and address by Mrs Hardy. I asked her if Limpid boasted an antiquarian of repute and she referred me to you.”

  “For what purpose?” Masters thought the eyes looked slightly worried at the mention of Mrs Hardy. At any other time, he might have paid no attention to this, but coupled with what he regarded as Benson’s peculiar behaviour in the afternoon, he felt it could be significant—of what, he couldn’t say. Just significant.

  “For some information on salad oil bottles.”

  “My dear sir!”

  “Double bottles, Mr Benson. Crude, greeny-grey, with white flecks in the glass. Doesn’t that suggest something to you?”

  “Of course it does, as it obviously does to you.”

  “I’m guessing. Hardy treasured his bottle. They’re collectors’ items, aren’t they?”

  “Collectors’ items, certainly. The early, genuine ones. But they’re not particularly valuable pieces. And, of course, you can get the modern equivalents which have probably depreciated the value of them all.”

  “You can get the modern equivalent of a Ming vase.”

  “Touché. But Ming is excellent work. Salad bottles, as you call them, were crudely made originally and they’re still crudely made. You can even buy them with rather unhygienic raffia stoppers on the continent.”

  “What should the stoppers be made of?”

  “Certainly not rubber. As you know, oils attack rubber.”

  “So what, then?”

  “Glass—if the necks were sufficiently carefully made to take a ground glass stopper. Otherwise, a silver or pewter cap made like a farthing-nail so that one could use cork and renew it when necessary simply by skewering a new one on the spindle.”

  “I understand that. Did you ever see Hardy’s bottle.”

  “Never. I heard he used one for French dressing, but Hardy and I were no more than the merest acquaintances. We were in no sense friends.” Benson put down his tankard. “May I ask why you are asking these questions? I am not averse to helping you, but like most people, I like to know to what end I am working.”

  “You were in the government service, sir.”

  “Meaning I should know better than to ask inconvenient questions and I should be prepared to help unquestioningly.”

  “Something of the sort.”

  “I’ve been pensioned off a long time.” He grinned as Green looked round the room. “No, Mr Green, it is not all provided by a government pension. I have a little money of my own. So had my wife and—a couple of years ago—her mother died shortly after her father, and as my wife was their only child, they very kindly made me a beneficiary under the will. It allows me independence and a chance to indulge my hobby. Otherwise I might have become a dealer for a living.”

  “You never sell?”

  “I have done so. I stick, for the most part, to small objects. But occasionally I have discovered and bought a few large items because I could not resist them at the time. Later I have regretted my folly and have disposed of them—always at a profit. To have done otherwise would have been unrealistic.”

  Masters dragged the conversation back.

  “I understand experts like to talk on their subjects. Indulge your expertise now—on salad bottles.”

  “You’re harping on that bottle, Mr Masters.”

  “It contained the poison,” explained Green.

  “Did it? Thank you for telling me that. I surmised it had done so. And since you are asking about it, I also presume it has disappeared and you are hoping to trace it.”

  Masters strove to keep his patience. “That is roughly the way of it.”

  “A bottle such as that could be broken and disposed of quite easily.”

  “The point had occurred to us, sir.”

  “I’m sure it had. Ah, well, persistence has its own reward, or as my old mother used to say, impudence and fortitude will get you anywhere. So here goes, gentlemen. To begin with, we will refer to the item under discussion as a flask or a twin flask, whichever you prefer. These flasks, joined together like Siamese twins, were called gimmel flasks, and their original purpose was not for holding oil and vinegar, but to allow lovers to plight their troth by drinking simultaneously from the two necks. Quite how the necks were directed in those days, I cannot say, but I would guess that instead of curving in opposite directions, they were arc-ed together, opening out in a V, so that the two young people could drink cheek to cheek.

  “Interesting,” said Masters. “I felt sure these things had a more romantic origin than oil and vinegar containers. Gimmel flasks! Is gimmel a corruption of gemini, meaning twins?”

  “It could be. But I think that the term applies to the linking of the flasks rather than the fact that there were two of them. Perhaps that would be clearer if I were to say that I think even if there were three flasks joined together they would still be referred to as gimmel. Gemini would have no credence then.”

  “I see. So the origin of gimmel is . . .?”

  “I suspect from gimmal, which is an antique finger ring made so that it will divide into two or three rings. So gimmel becomes a link or a joint, a connecting part. I like to think that the name still lives on in the north of England, where a passage connecting two roads or two blocks of houses is referred to as a ginnel, I believe.”

  Masters nodded. He had asked Benson to indulge his hobby, and the man was obeying. There were no grounds for complaint, but he wished they could get round to the business for which he had brought them here.

  As if he could read the Superintendent’s thoughts, Benson asked: “Have you ever heard of Nailsea glass?”

  “I’ve heard of it. I know nothing about it.”

  “I’ll show you some.”

  Benson got to his feet and limped across to a glass-fronted display cabinet. When he returned he was holding a small glass bell and a little model of a warship that reminded Masters very much of HMS Victory.

  “Very nice indeed. Are these Nailsea glass?”

  “Nailsea friggers.�
�

  “Friggers?”

  “The glass workers used their spare time to make little things like this to give as gifts to their families and friends or for house decoration or simply for the amusement and satisfaction they derived from using their skill. Frigging—unlike its use today—meant producing ornamental and most unlikely objects like these in Nailsea glass. You’ll have seen the famous yard-of-ale glasses?”

  “Like a narrow trumpet with a ball at the bottom?” asked Green. “The ones you sometimes see in pubs?”

  “Yes.”

  Masters handed the two pieces across to Green, and Benson sat down. “Nailsea was a place near Bristol where glass-making went on for about a hundred years from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. From the factory there came glass walking sticks, pipes, trumpets, birds sitting on boughs and so on, including, I believe, the original glass rolling pins.

  “These things became very popular, and so it became a commercial proposition to produce them for the market. Even after the Nailsea factory closed, other glass-makers went on producing the pieces which are still—erroneously—called Nailsea and regarded as antique in some quarters.”

  “But an expert could tell the difference?”

  “Not all that easily. Modern pieces are still made of crude glass and to the original patterns, and that makes them hard to date unless they carry some symbol or motto—often of a romantic nature, because they were sometimes made as love tokens.

  “But the point about Nailsea glass is that it often has spots in the glass, streaks, stripes or even coloured loops.”

  “Ah! And do I take it that no two pieces would, therefore, be exactly alike?”

  “I think that is a safe assumption. The blemishes—or sometimes deliberate ornamentation—would identify a piece of Nailsea to those who were thoroughly familiar with it just as easily as a finger print would identify a man to an expert.”

  “Thank you, Mr Benson. That really was the chief fact I came to discover.”

  “But you went a roundabout way of asking.”

  “It is not always wise for people like us to be too direct. As you know, we’ve been in Limpid only a few hours. As far as we can tell, nobody in Limpid is above suspicion.”