Essex Poison

by Ian Sansom

  ‘Really? Oh. I assumed. Her engagement ring.’

  ‘Miriam is always getting engaged to someone.’

  ‘I see. So the two of you are not …’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘For better or for worse, I am entirely single, Miss Johnson.’

  She looked at me rather curiously at that point, I thought, with some kind of realisation. And then she started talking about some of the flights she was planning – big plans.

  ‘One must seize every opportunity that life presents one with,’ she said.

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I said.

  ‘When it comes to flying, I mean.’

  I couldn’t work out whether we were talking increasingly at cross-purposes or entirely along the same lines.

  I went to get us another drink, for clarification.

  The barman asked me if I’d heard the news.

  ‘What news?’ I asked, taking the opportunity to light a cigarette. ‘About the Oyster Feast? Yes.’

  ‘Len Starling.’

  ‘I don’t know Mr Starling, I’m afraid. I’m not from round here.’

  ‘The Town Sergeant.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. The Town Sergeant was the busybody fellow in the Moot Hall who had presented the mayor with his oysters. The man in the white tie and white gloves and the blue coat with brass buttons. The White Rabbit.

  ‘Yes, what about him?’

  ‘They’ve taken him in for questioning, apparently.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘On suspicion of poisoning the mayor at the feast.’

  ‘Goodness me.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said the barman, setting our drinks on the bar. ‘Everyone knows about Len.’

  ‘Knows what?’

  ‘Nod’s as good as a wink to a blind man,’ said the barman, nodding over towards where I’d been sitting with Amy Johnson, meaning either something to do with Len Starling, or Miss Johnson, I wasn’t entirely sure – though when I turned to take our drinks back to the table, I understood.

  Amy Johnson had gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE

  SHE HAD LEFT her rather handsome cigarette case. I pocketed it, finished both our drinks and returned to the hotel, where I then proceeded to drink French brandy by myself in the bar until late, in the full expectation of catching Amy Johnson and presenting her cigarette case to her on her return. I was sure we had more to talk about. When she hadn’t returned by one o’clock I retired to my room.

  I woke the next morning feeling about as rough as if I’d eaten a dozen bad oysters washed down with a gallon of Tizer, my sleep having been upset by dreams of a woman riding the wings of a biplane while I was the pilot and she was standing out on the wing and then suddenly she leapt off, and went sailing down towards the earth and there was absolutely nothing I could do to save her.

  After washing and dressing I went straight down to reception and asked if I could leave the cigarette case for Miss Johnson. But Miss Johnson had apparently checked out early that morning. And the hotel was not in a position to provide me with a forwarding address. Which meant that I was in possession of Miss Johnson’s handsome silver cigarette case until the next time we met. I examined the case: sterling silver, exquisitely and intricately engraved in an Art Deco style with what I assumed was Miss Johnson’s very own Gypsy Moth aeroplane. I guessed that it was probably worth at least—

  But I immediately put the thought from my mind. Under no circumstances would I even consider selling Amy Johnson’s cigarette case in order to pay off my debts to Delaney. That would be utterly monstrous.

  However, nonetheless, and coincidentally, Hopwood, Son & Payne, ‘Watch and Clock Makers, Goldsmiths, Silversmiths, Jewellers, Opticians, Souvenirs & Pawnbrokers’, at 47 High Street, Colchester, is just a few steps from the George Hotel. I had noticed it the night before. Since I was passing – and I was passing – and it was open I thought I might just make an enquiry.

  Hopwood’s – in case you don’t know it – is a curious establishment, part high-class jeweller’s and part emporium of tat. The shop’s window display seemed to have been designed as a miniature Oyster Feast-themed stage set, with red curtains as the backcloth and various shelves, brackets, pads, stands, boxes, platforms and indeed Plexiglass hands reaching up and out and across a pale blue sea of fabric resembling a turbulent ocean, arrayed with sprays of rings, brooches, vanity cases, watch straps, spoons, tankards, baby rattles and teething rings, in an arrangement that suggested not so much the promise of luxury as the possibility of beachcombing for the flotsam and jetsam thrown up by a fancy goods shipwreck. At the centre of this tidal wrack, beneath a sign hanging from delicate silver chains announcing ‘GENUINE PEARLS FROM GENUINE PERSIAN OYSTERS’, was a large crude ceramic oyster shell displaying a shiny pus-yellow oyster at least half an inch in diameter and which looked suspiciously as though it needed lancing. The whole scene had the curious but no doubt intended effect of arousing in the passer-by the strong desire to explore what on earth was on offer inside the shop. If this was the flotsam and jetsam what cargo from distant Ophir – as Morley might put it – awaited inside?

  Opening the door activated a loud tinkling chime and as I stepped across the threshold my entrance was mirrored by a sober-suited middle-aged man stepping through a curtain at the back of the shop. He wished me a cheery good morning, I wished him a cheery good morning in return: it was almost as if I had entered a stage set through the window display and was simultaneously viewing myself entering a stage set through the window display. This sense of strange symmetry and illusion was further emphasised by the illuminated and mirrored window recesses on either side of the shop, which displayed jewellery of all kinds and all kinds of everything – trophies, lighters, clocks, cutlery, charm bracelets and a wide assortment of ornaments – in an endless mirrored distance. Instead of the usual display cabinets there was a series of small glass-topped display tables set out as if in a restaurant, ready for intimate conversations à deux. I made my way towards the back of the shop, moving between tables of trinkets and snuff boxes, past the earrings and the chokers and the jewellery boxes, to the ring tables with their diamonds and emeralds, every item with a tiny tag attached, marked not with a price but with some cryptic stock figure, presumably so that if you were interested in an item you had to ask the price – and so the selling could begin.

  (Morley writes about the complex psychological mechanics involved in retailing in his popular How to Run a … series of books – How to Run a Sweet Shop, How to Run a Fruit and Vegetable Shop, How to Run a Surgical Supplies Shop, etcetera etcetera – a series that claims to reveal ‘the secrets of the successful retail experience from the perspective of both the shopkeeper and the customer’. The advice in the How to Run a … books, as in all his books, combines the utterly unobjectionable and common-sensical with the completely unexpected and bizarre. ‘You hook your customer,’ he writes, for example, in How to Run a Fishing Tackle Shop, ‘as Isaak Walton hooked his worm, as though you loved him.’ ‘The good salesperson is possessed of a dual personality,’ he suggests in How to Run a Drapery Shop. ‘You should be yourself and yet – simultaneously – your customer.’ And ‘The basis of all transactions,’ he writes in How to Run a Household Hardware Shop, ‘is the exchange of knowledge. You must be generous. It will often be the case that you must give away entirely for free much of what you know about screws and nuts and washers and hinges before it is possible to sell even a single screw or a nut, a washer or a hinge. In retailing, you must trust that the universe will provide.’ Morley was often ahead of his time and occasionally beyond comprehension.)

  But perhaps the most unusual and impressive thing about the unusual and impressive retail experience that was Hopwood, Son & Payne was a big illuminated clock face on the back wall of the shop that had no hands and a sign above it reading ‘A Gift From Hopwood, Son & Payne’ and a sign below it reading ‘Timeless’. Like a low-hanging moon the illuminated clock bathed the
entire shop and all its contents in an atmosphere of glittering sadness, like an Ali Baba’s cave in Bluebeard’s Castle. I was aimlessly admiring a bracelet with a jewelled clasp and strung with half a dozen rows of pearls beneath the light of this strange moon when the sober-suited shop assistant – Hopwood? Son? Payne? – came sidling up to me. He looked deathly pale in the shop’s strange light and reflected in its many mirrors appeared almost like a ghost of himself. He spoke with that sinister, low, calm confiding voice beloved of ministers and salesmen.

  ‘Ah, yes. A good choice, sir, if I may say so. A very good choice. Sir knows his jewellery, I take it?’

  I most certainly did not know my jewellery.

  ‘In the style of René Boivin,’ he said.

  ‘Rather beyond my price range, I fear.’

  ‘You’d be surprised, sir. I could check for you if you’d like? It’s for your wife? An anniversary present perhaps? Sir is looking to buy something special for a … special lady?’

  ‘Sir is not looking to buy anything at all, I’m afraid,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, doing his best to hide his obvious disappointment. ‘Then how can I help you?’

  ‘I was looking for a valuation.’

  ‘I see. For insurance purposes, might I ask?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Security for a loan for sir? Or probate perhaps?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘For sale?’

  ‘Well, perhaps for eventual sale,’ I agreed reluctantly. I was rather regretting my decision to cross the threshold. What had seemed like a good idea I now realised was a terrible act of betrayal that would weigh heavily and for ever on my conscience. Then again, a debt of a hundred pounds to the likes of Delaney perhaps weighs even more heavily.

  ‘These are not new goods, I take it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And they have been in the family for some time, or they’re a recent acquisition?’

  ‘It’s a … recent acquisition.’

  ‘Very good, sir. Very good. And you have the piece with you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Could I see it, perhaps?’ He held out his hands, as if in prayer or supplication.

  I produced the silver cigarette case from my pocket.

  ‘Might I?’ said the shop assistant, extending his hands; and I gave him Amy Johnson’s case, which was not mine to give.

  ‘Mmm,’ said the man. ‘Interesting. Mmm. Very interesting.’ He held it up close to his pale face for examination and ever so slightly licked his lips, I noted, with an intense curiosity that suggested that he was tempted to swallow the cigarette case whole and ingest it. He had a long poky nose and his hair was grey and receding at the temples. I almost snatched the thing back from him – I suddenly found him revolting. I resisted the temptation. ‘I might need to call upon our silver expert, if I may, sir?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  He disappeared then behind the curtain beneath the moon clock face and within moments another man appeared. It was none other than Billy ‘Bouncing’ Ball, my friend from the Oyster Feast. He was holding the cigarette case carefully between his two index fingers, as though literally measuring its worth. He was in characteristic good humour and as before had not a hair out of place. A leather apron hung around his waist and a jeweller’s spectacle loupe perched on his forehead gave him the appearance of a Dr Frankenstein mid-experiment.

  ‘Stephen Sefton?’ he said. ‘Well well! Good of you to pop in! If I’d known you were coming I’d have baked a cake! Recovered from last night? You weren’t taken ill, I take it?’

  ‘No. Thank goodness. And you?’

  ‘Between you, me and the gatepost, Mr Sefton’ – he glanced around, in case there was a gatepost there to overhear – ‘I wouldn’t touch an oyster if you paid me! Though I’ll happily serve them to others!’

  ‘Terrible business with the mayor,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Billy cheerfully. ‘Absolutely. Anyway, this! This, Mr Sefton, is quite something you have here.’

  ‘So you’re a silver expert as well?’

  ‘I dabble, I suppose you would say, Mr Sefton. I dabble. More of a humble lapidarist. Keeps me occupied.’

  ‘You are a man of many talents, Billy Ball.’

  ‘I do my best. Needs must and what have you. Now, tell me, is this yours, this little beauty?’

  ‘No, it belongs to a friend of mine, actually,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to get a valuation on her behalf.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ His face fell. ‘Well, I’m afraid we’re not able to offer valuations, Mr Sefton, without proof of ownership.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Mr Hopwood’s very strict on that. Very strict indeed. It’s to prevent the shop being used for the purposes of – well, you understand.’

  ‘Of handling stolen goods?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, exactly. Not that I’m suggesting for a moment that you’d be trying to pass off stolen goods, Mr Sefton!’ He laughed.

  ‘No, of course not.’ I attempted to laugh even louder.

  ‘It’s just, you can never be too careful these days, can you?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Mr Hopwood’s had problems in the past, that’s all. East End villains and all sorts coming up here and trying to fence their ill-gotten gains, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Of course. Yes. Terrible. Well, I’ll return it to my friend and see what she wants to do with it.’

  ‘That’s probably best, Mr Sefton. Or, as I say, proof of ownership, that’d be fine.’

  He carefully handed the cigarette case back to me, and I equally carefully tucked it into my jacket pocket. It felt hot and dirty – damaged, dangerous goods.

  ‘Well, sorry we couldn’t be of more help there,’ said Billy.

  ‘Not to worry,’ I said.

  ‘Are you staying for long in Colchester?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We have a pretty hectic schedule.’

  ‘For this book of yours?’

  ‘That’s right. I think we’ll be heading off today.’

  ‘Well, it was very nice to meet you,’ said Billy, offering his hand – which I was of course unable to shake, due to the state of my own bandaged hand.

  ‘Forgot about that!’ he said, nodding at the bandage. ‘How’s it feel?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Thanks to you. Thank you again.’

  ‘Not at all. Until we meet again!’

  ‘Indeed.’ That seemed unlikely. I had no intention of ever again serving oysters, or indeed of attempting to sell Amy Johnson’s cigarette case.

  CHAPTER 13

  A KIND OF KNOCKING

  LEAVING HOPWOOD’S, disheartened but with my integrity more or less intact, I made my way back to the hotel and was about to enter when Morley came purposefully striding outside, looking disturbingly trim and kempt, as always.

  ‘Ah, Sefton! Excellent! Saw you through the window,’ he said. ‘We’ve set up HQ in the breakfast room.’ He nodded inside and sure enough I saw his typewriter and reference books piled up, incongruous on a white linen tablecloth on a table set with tea and toast. I’m sure the hotel staff were delighted; wherever we went throughout the country, Morley always liked to establish a centre of operations where he could set up his beloved Hermes Featherweight and his vast stationery supplies depot and start banging out his articles, essays, columns and of course The County Guides. Basically he ran a low-cost, high-profit portable writing factory, with Miriam and me the only full-time operatives, with hotel staff and resources deployed as necessary. During my years with Morley I very often felt like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, screwing endless nuts on an assembly line.

  ‘We were wondering where you’d got to. Out for your morning constitutional? A matutinal stroll? Everything all right? You look rather as if you’d lost a shilling and found a farthing.’

  Not quite. I’d found an expensive cigarette case but was still painfully short of a hundred pounds.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. What e
lse could one say?

  ‘You missed some excellent porridge.’ Morley rated hotels and guesthouses almost exclusively on the quality of their tea and porridge. I remember once he returned from staying at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris for some ceremony or other and all he could say afterwards was, ‘Terrible tea and porridge.’ There were guesthouses in the west of Ireland that he rated more highly. ‘Well, what do you make of Colchester, then? Take any photographs?’

  I didn’t actually have the Leica with me. I was supposed to carry a camera and notebook at all times, to collect material for The County Guides, but half the time I forgot and the rest of the time I couldn’t be bothered.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d get some photographs later. It’s a bit quiet at the moment.’

  ‘Quiet?’ said Morley. He looked perplexed. ‘As in somnolent?’

  ‘I suppose, yes.’

  ‘Colchester, Sefton?’ He threw out his arms, gesturing towards the busy sunlit morning High Street. ‘Somnolent, Colchester? The capital of Roman Britain? The town that gave birth to Helena, the mother of Constantine, and possibly to Constantine himself? The oldest town in Britain? Our greatest garrison town? The town that in 1884 was the epicentre of Britain’s most destructive earthquake? The town that indeed just last night witnessed perhaps the greatest outbreak of crowd hysteria since the dancing plague of the sixteenth century? And which saw its own mayor struck down before the assembled guests at a grand civic occasion? Somnolent, Sefton? I do sometimes wonder, sir, if you are sleepwalking through this life.’

  I sometimes wondered it myself – especially when Morley went off on one of his jags. I could have done with a little something to make my sleepwalk all the sweeter, frankly, but it was too early in the day to start drinking. The only thing to do in the circumstances was to try to steer Morley elsewhere.

  ‘You heard about Len Starling?’ I asked.

  ‘The Town Sergeant?’ said Morley. ‘Yes. Arrested. Nothing in it, Sefton. He’ll be released by this afternoon, mark my words.’

  ‘Do you think?’