“Mr. Tozer?” Harding ventured.
“I’m Tozer, yeah.” The voice was low and gruff and hesitant.
“Barney sent me.”
“Barney?”
“Your brother.”
Tozer’s lip curled into a sneer. “I didn’t ask him to send someone.”
“He couldn’t come himself.”
“Why not?”
“Tax problems.”
The sneer became a strange, twisted little smile. “That’s a good one.”
“Can I come in?”
“What for?”
“To talk. About the auction.”
Tozer contemplated the idea for ten or twelve slow seconds. Then he said, “All right. Since you’re here.”
Tozer led the way down a short hallway and into the lounge. It was a small room and would have been cramped if it had contained even a reasonable quantity of furniture. As it was, Humphrey Tozer’s domestic comforts amounted to one armchair, a pouffe, a television, a table with two hard chairs and a bookcase of largely empty shelves. A clock stood on the mantelpiece above the unlit gas fire, but there were no ornaments and just one picture on the wall, over the clock: a framed Constable print. A rumpled copy of The Cornishman lay on the table, next to a jumbled stack of what looked like several months’ worth of the paper’s back copies. It felt colder to Harding inside the flat than it had out. He doubted if refreshment, or even a seat, was likely to be offered him.
“Who are you, then?” Tozer asked, frowning at him from the middle of the room as Harding lingered in the doorway.
“A friend of Barney’s. Tim Harding.”
“A friend? Not an employee? Not a… dogsbody?”
“As it happens, I’m here to help.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Barney’s told me all about the auction and why you want to buy one of the lots.”
“All about it? I doubt that.”
“Enough, then. He’s been in touch with the auctioneers and opened a credit account. We can bid whatever we need to.”
“We?”
“Like I said, I’m here to help.”
Tozer took a step towards Harding. His gaze narrowed. “I might have known Barney would find some way of wriggling out of his responsibilities.”
“He’s hardly doing that. He’s effectively giving you a blank cheque.”
“Giving his old school chum Clive Isbister one, you mean. I asked Barney for more than money. I asked for his presence, here, in his home town. And even he’d have to admit I’ve never asked him for-” Tozer broke off and gave a contemptuous snort. “I’m like the dog at the banquet, aren’t I? I’m supposed to be grateful for whatever scrap gets tossed my way.”
“Look, Mr. Tozer, I-”
“Don’t want to be here? I’ll bet you don’t. Doing Barney a favour, are you? Or just doing what he tells you to do? He’s always been good at controlling people. But that’s you and me both, I suppose.”
Harding let the silence that followed grow until it had drawn some sort of line under Tozer’s resentful rant. Then he said quietly, “Do you want my help or not? Whether you succeed in buying this… whatever it is… doesn’t really matter to me, you know.”
“Huh.” The grunt was accompanied by a faint softening of Tozer’s stance. “All right,” he murmured, his gaze shifting evasively. “You’ve made your point.”
“Why don’t you tell me what we’ll be bidding for?”
“Barney held that morsel back, did he? Typical.”
“If you say so. But what is it?”
“It’s in the catalogue. Under the paper.” Tozer pointed to the table. “Lot six four one.”
Harding slid The Cornishman to one side, revealing Isbister’s catalogue for the auction, folded open at a late page. He picked it up. Lot 641 was at the top of the page, circled in red ink.
A Georgian 18kt gold ring, set with an emerald and eleven cushion-shaped diamonds, London 1704, presented in a starburst-patterned ebony and ivory-inlaid box, c. 1870, 2½in (6.5cm) wide, £2,000-3,000. (May be bid for as separate lots if desired.)
It was the description of the box rather than the ring that seized Harding’s attention. “Good God,” he said before he could stop himself. “Starburst-patterned.”
“That’s where he got the name for his company from,” said Tozer, sidling closer. “He remembers it as clearly as I do. All of it.”
“All of what?” Harding asked, looking up at him.
“All of the things… I don’t discuss with a stranger.”
“Fair enough.” Harding dropped the catalogue back on the table. “But you do believe this… heirloom… was stolen by your uncle.”
“That proves it.” Tozer jabbed a forefinger at the red-circled entry. “I’m going to see the ring tomorrow. For the first time in nearly forty years.”
“As long as that?”
“Oh yes. Uncle Gabriel clung to it for as many years as he could eke out his life. And now he hopes to cheat me of it from beyond the grave.”
“Where did he steal it from?”
“Our house in Morrab Road. Grandfather’s old-” Tozer broke off, seeming suddenly to sense he had said too much. He peered suspiciously at Harding, who had not failed to notice his use of “me” rather than “us” but tried to give no sign of it. “You don’t need to know any more.”
“Do you want me to come with you… to Heartsease?”
“No.”
“I’d like to see the ring-and the box-for myself.”
“Then go. But later in the day. I’ll be there when they start. At ten.”
It was an explicit warning-off Harding had no choice but to accept it. “All right. I’ll wait till the afternoon.”
“You do that.”
“I’m staying at the Mount Prospect.”
“Barney’s seeing you all right, then.”
And you, you miserable sod, Harding thought but did not say. “You can contact me there or on my mobile,” he said emolliently. He picked up the red ballpoint lying by the catalogue and wrote his number at the foot of the page. “I ought to have your phone number as well.”
“I’m in the book.”
“OK.”
Tozer’s gaze drifted to the catalogue. “The ring and the box… mustn’t be parted.”
“Well, they’re not going to be, are they?”
Tozer looked up at Harding. “No,” he said quietly but firmly. “They’re not.”
Harding did not wait to be asked to leave. Fresh air was what he needed after the rancid chill of Humphrey Tozer’s flat. Fortunately, there was plenty of that billowing in from the bay as he made his way back to the Mount Prospect. He phoned Carol again after his solitary dinner in the hotel’s restaurant, but elicited little sympathy.
“I told you he was bad news.”
“You never mentioned his hygiene problem.”
“I’ve done my best to forget it.”
“Well, at least I won’t have to see much of him. He’s made it obvious he wants me to keep my distance.”
“Do as he asks, then.”
“I will, believe me.”
“The sooner you’re back here, the happier I’ll be.”
“Me too. By the way, did you know Barney got the name Starburst from the box that contains this ring Humphrey wants so badly?”
“No. What does it mean-starburst?”
“It’s a pattern of some kind. I’ll see it at Heartsease tomorrow. But it’s odd, don’t you think? Barney using the name, I mean.”
“Not really. It probably just popped into his head at the time.”
“Yeah. I suppose so.” But that was not what Humphrey thought. He thought it proved the box-and the ring-meant as much to his brother as to him. And though he did not say as much to Carol, Harding was beginning to think so as well.
FOUR
Harding had explored the historic heart of Penzance and was walking aimlessly along the promenade late the following morning, heading towa
rds the fishing harbour of Newlyn, when the call came he had been expecting since breakfast.
“Hi, Tim. How’s it going?”
“Fine, thanks, Barney. How was Abu Dhabi?”
“Dry What’s it like in the old home town?”
“Overcast. If you really want to know.”
“What I really want to know is how you got on with Humph.”
“As well as could be expected. I wouldn’t say there was an outburst of gratitude, but he seems… happy enough.”
“Good.”
“He’s going to Heartsease this morning. I plan to take a look this afternoon at the ring and the famous starburst box.”
“Carol said you’d spotted the connection.” Harding had agreed with Carol that she would mention his call-one of his calls, at any rate. “Dad was always going on about it when we were kids. The name just stuck in my memory, I suppose.”
“The ring’s three hundred years old, Barney. Has it been in your family all that time?”
“Doubt it, old son. Dad never actually said which ancestor first laid hands on it. Probably didn’t know. And it certainly doesn’t matter. Just keep an eye on Humph till the auction and wait to see if he cracks a smile for the first time in decades when you plonk the bloody thing in his paw straight afterwards.”
“OK, Barney. Leave it to me.”
Heartsease was in a tree-shaded road lined with large family homes that looked to date from the inter-war years. It was a big, inelegant pile of a house, with timbered gables, squat chimneys, irregular dormers and uneven bays, dankly flanked by limp palms, overgrown evergreens and a spectacularly feral camellia.
The neighbourhood was probably quiet as a rule, but Isbister’s advertisement had brought double-parked cars and a steady stream of bargain-hunters to Polwithen Road. Harding trailed behind several of them up the drive to the side-door, taking the route prescribed by a sign out on the pavement. He reflected that Humphrey had been wise to come early. A chance to inspect the belongings of Gabriel Tozer (deceased) and to prowl round his house was evidently the high spot of quite a few people’s Saturday.
The auctioneer had put the conservatory adjoining the entrance into service as a cloakroom, where coats and bags had to be left. Catalogues were on sale at a fiver a throw, but Harding kept his money in his pocket. His interest, after all, was confined to one lot and one lot only.
As he was waiting for the ticket for his coat, he was suddenly jostled to one side by a burly, scruffily dressed figure, demanding the return of a bag he had deposited. The man was middle-aged, with grey-shot black hair cut in a rudimentary short-back-and-sides. His jowly face was flushed and pockmarked and sheened with sweat. And there was a smell of whisky on his breath.
“Leaving so soon, Mr. Trathen?” the cloakroom attendant enquired as he passed Harding his ticket and the other man a bulging Co-op carrier-bag.
“I’ve seen enough,” Trathen replied, jostling Harding still further as he took his leave.
“Doesn’t take long to see enough when you’re seeing double,” the attendant murmured. “Sorry about that,” he said, smiling at Harding. “Probably shouldn’t have let him in. I don’t think he was here as a serious buyer. As any kind of buyer, come to that.”
“No?”
“Bit of a sad case, Ray Trathen. But you don’t want to know about him, believe you me.”
Harding moved on into the house, having established that Lot 641 was to be found in bedroom 2. He paused in the large, square hallway at the foot of the stairs, up and down which his fellow punters were coming and going. Doors stood open to the drawing room, dining room and kitchen. Only one door, beneath the stairs, was marked PRIVATE. Everywhere else they were free to roam.
The interior of Heartsease was a stolid, spacious family abode, with a lot of handsomely burnished wood, well-proportioned rooms and stained-glass flourishes in several of the windows. Solitary occupant as he was, Gabriel Tozer had done a good job of filling it with possessions rather than people. Cabinets, bookcases, bureaux and tables groaned under the weight of his meticulously catalogued belongings, every chair, every lamp, every doorstop, every jug, every spoon, every neatly stacked run of Country Life and the Illustrated London News, every rug across which the punters moved, every humdrum object they picked up and put down again, bearing its telltale numbered tag.
It was the same upstairs as down. If anything, the concentration of material was even greater, with toys, models, train sets, coins, banknotes, stamps, postcards, cigarette cards, wrist-watches, pocket watches, musical boxes, snuffboxes, cameos, figurines, compasses, candlesticks and yet more accumulated back copies of magazines-Reader’s Digest, The Countryman, Punch and journals too obscure to be remembered-filling glass-fronted cabinets in all four bedrooms or standing in dusty stacks on the broad landing.
But only one cabinet, in only one bedroom, interested Harding. It contained tie-pins, cufflinks, signet rings, a couple of silver cigarette cases, a baffling number of hourglasses and… a small box decorated with radiating panels of black and white, the lid standing open to reveal its contents, nestling on a bed of satin: a gold ring with an emerald set within a circle of diamonds.
“Nice, isn’t it?”
Harding looked round to find, standing close beside him, a representative of the auctioneers, identified by a badge pinned prominently to his lapel. He was a big, bluff, tweed-suited fellow with thinning fair hair, beetling eyebrows and a broad, yellow-toothed grin. And according to the badge he was none other than Clive Isbister, auctioneer-in-chief.
“I can open the cabinet if you want to take a closer look.” “That’s all right. Don’t bother. I, er… see you’re Clive Isbister.”
“For my sins, yes.”
“I’m a friend of Barney Tozer. I gather-”
“You wouldn’t be Mr. Harding, would you?”
“Yes. Tim Harding.” They shook hands. “How did you-”
“I spoke to Barney on Wednesday when he set up an account for the auction. He mentioned a Tim Harding would be attending on his behalf. Then there was his brother Humphrey paying that particular ring a lot of attention earlier today. And now you, sporting a tan that clearly isn’t the product of a Cornish winter. Elementary, my dear Watson.”
Harding laughed. “Going well, is it-the viewing?”
“Bit of a nightmare in some ways, to be honest, but it’s much the best way to stimulate interest.”
“I think I might know what you mean about nightmares. I met a bloke called Trathen on my way in.”
“Ray Trathen?” Isbister winced. “Bad luck. I’m sorry for Ray of course. He and I were at school together. But he’s his own worst enemy.”
“You were at school with Barney as well, weren’t you?”
“Yes. That’s right. I expect that’s why Barney gave Ray a job a few years back. For old times’ sake. It didn’t work out, I’m afraid. Most things don’t in Ray’s life. Excuse me, will you? One of my colleagues is waving rather frantically at me. Probably another breakage. Just as well there’s so much here, hey? I don’t think you’ll have any serious trouble getting the ring, by the way. It’s a lovely piece, but sadly not fashionable. And fashion is all in this business, as in most others. See you on Tuesday, no doubt.”
Harding had been tempted to ask Isbister how much he knew about Gabriel Tozer’s alleged theft of the ring. Yet perhaps, he reasoned, it was best he had not had the chance to do so. It did not really matter, after all, given the apparent confidence of all concerned that it would not be leaving the Tozer family.
Looking at the ring, its emerald and surrounding diamonds glittering in the light of the overhead lamp, switched on so that the contents of the cabinet might be seen to their best advantage, Harding could not help but feel it was too small and trifling an object to justify a feud of several decades’ standing, however valuable it might be. But a ring could have a symbolic as well as a monetary value. So could a starburst box, come to that. There was something about this ring in this box
that mattered to Humphrey Tozer and had mattered to his Uncle Gabriel. As for Barney, Harding was unsure. The indifference could have been sham, the willingness to delegate responsibility a ploy of some kind.
Not that it really mattered. Harding had agreed to do Barney this favour and it would not take much to see it through. He had promised to keep an eye on Humphrey but proposed to do the bare minimum in that direction. He would bid as high as he needed to to secure Lot 641 at the auction, however. And then, he told himself, he would fly home and forget all about it.
After a mooch round the other bedrooms, Harding felt he had seen enough. Spectating at the avaricious mass scrutiny of a dead man’s belongings rapidly palled. He sensed that Gabriel Tozer had been an obsessively private man. It was strange, then, and faintly obscene, that his goods and chattels should be priced and tagged and fingered by dozens upon dozens of strangers. Harding headed downstairs.
He was most of the way down when he noticed a young woman crossing the hallway from the direction of the conservatory. She was conspicuous because she was wearing a short, belted mac, had a small rucksack slung over one shoulder and was also carrying a well-filled canvas bag. She was petite, almost elfin, with boyishly cropped dark hair, and still darker eyes set saucer-like in a delicate, heart-shaped face.
Harding stopped dead at the sight of her and she glanced up at him as he did so, then slipped a key out of the pocket of her mac, unlocked the door marked private and stepped through out of sight, closing it behind her.
Harding leant back against the newel post behind him as other people moved past. There had been no recognition in the young woman’s glance; not so much as a flicker. But he recognized her. There was no doubt of that in his mind. He recognized her, even though, for the moment, he could not place her, could not fix her in his memory, could not put a name to a face he felt disablingly certain he knew very well.
FIVE
Harding drifted from one ground-floor room to another, paying the sale lots no attention but probing his memory for the identity of the young woman he had just glimpsed. The answer was bound to come to him soon, he reasoned. But it refused to. It hovered tantalizingly at the very edge of his mental vision, out of focus and reach. It was there, but he could not grasp it.
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