Solomons Seal

Chapter One

It all began so quietly, so very ordinarily — a routine job, something any junior in an estate agent’s office could have handled. The only difference that morning was that my mood did not match the brightness of the day. I was, in fact, in an odd frame of mind when I arrived at the house, the girl I had been living with married to a farmer, myself turned forty, and now the very real prospect of being out of a job.

The instructions to sell the contents of The Passage, River Road, Aldeburgh, had come from Rose, Walker amp; Chandler, a London firm of solicitors based in Chelmsford. They also wanted an indication of the market value of the house itself. I had glanced at their letter briefly, lying on the beach after a swim. The contents of the house were the property of a Mr Timothy Holland, whose family they had acted for over many years. He was now seriously ill and had been moved into a nursing home. During his illness he had apparently been looked after by an unmarried sister, so that I was expecting to be greeted by a faded spinster as I stood there on the doorstep in the blazing sun.

It was four years since I had started working for Browne, Baker amp; Browne, always with a partnership in mind, and now that one of them had died suddenly the vacancy had gone to Sam Baker’s nephew. Maybe he did have a better education and London auction room experience, but it was still plain bloody nepotism, and that’s what I had told the senior partner when I had stormed in to see him the night before. It hadn’t exactly helped, my temper getting the better of me and the old man sitting there like a half-poisoned owl, peering at me over his glasses and informing me, very coldly, that a partnership was out of the question, I hadn’t the right temperament.

Half my life gone and nothing to show for it — just an old car, an older boat, a few nice pieces of furniture and some stamps. No education, no qualifications, no bloody future, and now this piddling little contents sale thrust on me because Packer was in hospital, a listing and valuation job any junior clerk in the office could have done. I jabbed my finger on the bell, feeling hot and sticky with salt after my bathe. There was no passage anywhere to explain the name on the brick porch, and the house itself was little more than a glorified bungalow, much like its neighbours except that the paint was peeling from the window frames and there was a general air of neglect. This did not extend to the front garden, however, which was full of roses and carefully tended.

The door opened, and a woman’s voice said, ‘Mr Packer?’

‘No, my name’s Roy Slingsby.’ And when I explained that Packer was in hospital and I had come in his place, she thanked me for keeping the appointment. ‘Come in, please.’ I couldn’t see her very clearly, the hallway dark after the glare of the sun. In any case, it was the contents I had come to catalogue, and my eyes went immediately to a wooden carving on a rather ornate mahogany side table. I couldn’t place the design of it, which annoyed me, for I was certain I had seen something like it quite recently on a commemorative issue.

‘Where would you like to begin?’

‘Oh, here will do,’ I said, putting my briefcase down on the table. ‘This figure-’ I bent forward to examine it. ‘African?’

‘No. South West Pacific’ She had one of those gentle, implacable voices, a slight huskiness in it, and I thought I detected a certain hostility, as though she hadn’t yet come to terms with her brother’s absence, the protective instinct still strong. ‘I think it’s from the Mortlocks, or maybe New Britain — I can’t remember. Does it say on the bottom?’

I picked it up and turned it over. A small square of paper had been gummed to the base, and in tiny, spidery writing, the ink faded and slightly smudged, I could just make out the words: Gift from Rev. G. Robinson, Rabaul 1908. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said as I read it out to her. ‘New Britain — Rabaul is in New Britain.’ She sounded ill at ease, as though conscious that her resentment of my intrusion was uncalled for. ‘They belonged to my grandfather. I’m afraid they’re — well, a little crude, if you see what I mean. But exciting.’ She gave a quick, nervous laugh. ‘I wouldn’t like to have to sell them. They’re all I’ve got left … ’ Her voice trailed away on a note of sadness, or was it something else? The atmosphere of the house was strangely oppressive.

The carving was in some black heavy wood not unlike ebony, but rougher, perhaps ironwood, and it was certainly crude, the frightening features elongated to what was almost a beak and an exaggerated phallus equally long. ‘This isn’t the only one you have, then?’

‘No.’

I hesitated, looking down at it and wondering at the primitive mind that had carved this travesty of the human figure. I both repelled and fascinated, so that I guessed it was good of its kind, and now that I knew where it had come from, I could remember seeing similar carvings in the junk shops of Singapore.

She must have sensed my reaction, for she said hesitantly, ‘You think it’s valuable, do you?’

I looked at her then, seeing her eyes staring at me, dark-ringed and very large in the gloom of the hallway, her face framed in a frizzy cap of golden-red hair that was almost orange and matched the freckles on her clear skin. She wore no make-up, her mouth a tight defensive line and her nose oddly flattened as though it had been broken at some time. ‘Look, Miss Holland,’ I said, feeling the need to reassure her, ‘it’s entirely up to you what you sell and what you keep. You say it’s not to go on the list and it won’t.’ And then, out of curiosity, I asked her how many of them she had.

She shook her head a little awkwardly. ‘I — can’t remember. I stored some of them away in a trunk in the loft. If you want to see them … it’s very dusty, I’m afraid. I haven’t had time to go up there for so long. But I suppose, if they’re valuable …’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they’re valuable, just interesting. If it was a case of insurance, or you did decide to include them in the sale, then I think I would advise an expert opinion. Primitive art of this sort is a specialised field, and I haven’t the faintest idea what they’re worth.’ I put the carved figure back in its place. ‘I’ll exclude them, shall I?’ I was certain that was what she wanted, though she was very hesitant, thinking it over a few moments before she finally gave a quick, decisive nod.

‘Yes. I wouldn’t want them to go for next to nothing at a local sale. It will be a local sale, won’t it?’

‘Yes, Ipswich probably. Or we may feel we could get a better price by putting the furniture into our Chelmsford auction room.’ I had already glanced through into the sitting room, my eyes, accustomed now to the gloom, taking in the worn chintz covers, the threadbare carpet, the rather sparse furniture and the absence of antiques. It was all down-market stuff, and I hoped she wasn’t relying on the sale to support her brother in the nursing home for long.

‘And those carvings, they would go to London?’

‘I would think so.’

‘Good, then I can always change my mind, if I have to.’

‘So long as you can find somebody to house them in the meantime.’ I said it jokingly, but her eyes remained large and serious, and she didn’t smile. I opened my briefcase and got out my clipboard. ‘Now, if you care to leave me to work steadily through the house from room to room, I’ll make the inventory.’

‘And you’re valuing everything, aren’t you?’ When I told her it was only a rough valuation, she said, ‘So long as I have some idea what we can expect to get out of the sale.’ She stood there for a moment longer, staring past me into the sitting room, a withdrawn look on her face, so that I didn’t know whether she was regretting the need to part with treasured possessions, which is something one gets used to in this business, people feeling the accumulation of inanimate objects as somehow personal to themselves, or whether she was thinking of her brother and mentally trying to equate the sale proceeds to the nursing home charges. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to get on with it,’ she added, suddenly making an effort at brightness.

‘It won’t take me very long,’ I said. ‘Two hours, maybe.’

She left me then, a slim figure in jeans, her movements quick and decisive. She was younger than I had expected and somehow disturbing, an impression that stayed with me as I got down to the job of listing the contents. Normally I dealt with the agricultural side, and it was some time since I had handled this sort of a sale. I had never liked it. Almost always there is some female member of the family hanging possessively around as you prepare the catalogue, and either they are emotionally upset at the loss of familiar things that have become dear to them over the years or else they are there as predators, trying to figure out just how much it is going to cost them to get their hands on old Aunt So-and-So’s cherished table, desk, commode, whatever it is. Here it was somewhat different in that, except for the carvings and some of the pictures, the contents were mostly functional and not items anyone could become greatly attached to. But all the time I was working on the inventory I was conscious of the presence of that young woman in the house, and it was a strangely disconcerting presence.

She made hardly a sound, and yet all the time I was working steadily round the downstair rooms, I was aware of her being there in the house with me. And the house itself, it had an unpleasantly sombre atmosphere, so that I found myself thinking about the man who was the cause of the sale, the man who had been ill here and was now in a home. It was as though something of his personality still lingered, or else the pain of his suffering. This brooding presence, this sense of something hanging over the house — it was in such startling contrast to the happy brilliance of the day outside. And in every room there were those bizarre carvings.

I was in the dining room when I heard the clatter of the loft ladder. I had the cutlery out on the table, all of it EPNS and badly worn, and I stood there wondering what it was she had hidden up there. But there was no sound of movement, everything very still, and I got back to the inventory, anxious only to get out of the house, back into the sunshine.

By the time I started upstairs she was in the kitchen and the loft ladder was back in place. The larger of the two bedrooms had obviously been her brother’s. There was a swing table, and the bed had an invalid rest against the headboard. The hospital aroma of sickness and medicine still lingered. There were no wood carvings in that room, but the pictures on the wall attracted my attention. They were bright primitive paintings of palms and flat calm seas, also faded photographs of ships that looked like small trading schooners taken against towering jungle-covered mountains. The room seemed different then, my mood changing as I realised that the sick man belonged to a world I only knew in my imagination. The pictures, those carvings — the South West Pacific, she had said. Of course, the carvings were like the designs on some of the Papua New Guinea stamps. I no longer felt depressed, only curious that the family should have abandoned such a colourful world for England and this wretched little house, which now had an exotic feel to it, wild relics of a dead past cocooned in an almost suburban wrapping.

I had moved to the smaller bedroom and was staring at a large wooden mask hanging on the wall above the bed when her voice startled me: ‘I thought you might like some refreshment, Mr Slingsby.’ I turned to find her standing in the doorway, a tray of tea in her hands, some books under her arm, and for the first time I saw her clearly, illumined by the sunlight pouring through the window. The hair and the freckles really did match, and her eyes, which were large and brown and slightly prominent, were fixed on me in a most disturbing way. She was no longer dressed in jeans. She had changed into a cotton frock, green and quite plain, her small breasts thrusting at it in a very demanding way.

‘Thank you,’ I said quickly. ‘Some tea would be great.’ I was staring at her, conscious of her figure, everything about her. Conscious, too, of the effect she was having on me. It wasn’t just her youth, or even the protruding breasts, that extraordinary cap of brilliantly coloured hair now catching the sun. It was something much more powerful, a deep current passing between us, so that I just stood there watching her as she crossed to the dressing table, put down the tray and laid the books carefully beside it.

‘Milk?’ she asked, and I nodded, feeling overwhelmed and at the same time a little ridiculous at being dumbfounded by something I’d never experienced before.

In an effort to pull myself together, I said, ‘This is your bedroom, is it?’

‘Yes.’ She had turned and was smiling at me, the full lips turned up at the corners, a glint of laughter in her eyes. ‘You’re wondering how I can go to bed with that dreadful face hanging over me.’ The smile broadened, a flash of long, very white teeth. ‘You must think my taste very odd, but I’ve lived with them all my life. They remind me of the world I used to know.’ She turned her head, staring out of the window towards the sea. ‘It made life more bearable.’ Her voice, intense and tinged with nostalgia, was husky, barely above a whisper. Then she seemed to collect herself, bending quickly to pour the tea. ‘Do sit down. It’s very hot and you haven’t stopped-’ She stood for a moment, the cup in her hand, staring out of the window. ‘You can see the sea up here. It’s the only room in the house that looks out to the sea. Sugar?’

I shook my head, looking round for somewhere to sit other than the bed. There was nowhere except the dressing-table stool. She handed me my cup and, having poured her own, perched herself on the broad window ledge. Seeing her there against the light, she seemed like something caged in and on the verge of flight, her hair in the sunlight red-bronze, like a burnished helmet. There was a long silence as she sat there drinking her tea and staring out of the window.

‘I had a bathe before I came here,’ I said. ‘It must be nice living so close to the sea.’

She nodded abstractedly. ‘I used to swim, once. But my father was a sick man, and then Tim came back. I never had time after that.’ And she added almost harshly, ‘My brother was paralysed, you see.’ There was another silence. Then she said very quickly, ‘It’s been a long time and now he’s dying.’

I thought perhaps she wanted to talk about it, and almost without thinking I asked her what he was dying of.

‘Sorcery.’ She said it so quietly, so matter-of-factly, that I thought for a moment I must have misheard her. But then she added, still in the same tone of voice as though she were talking about something as common as cancer. ‘As a kiap — a patrol officer — he had a lot of experience of that sort of thing. Of course, the doctor says it’s the effect of the accident, some sort of stroke following the spinal injury. But I told him it wasn’t that.’ She gave a nervous little giggle. ‘It was really very funny, his face. Sorcery! Dammit, the silly little man thought I was out of my mind. He started prescribing sleeping pills, pain killers, all that rubbish. Not that it mattered, no doctor’s going to cure him of sorcery or enter that on a death certificate, is he? Not here in England. But that’s what it’ll be. Tim’s had a death wish put on him, and he knows it.’

I stared down at my inventory, feeling confused and wondering to what extent she was suffering from shock. ‘He was a patrol officer, you say,’ I heard myself murmur. ‘Was he in the Army then?’

‘No, not the Army. Civil Administration. In the Goroka District. He was very badly injured and invalided home.’ She hesitated, but before I could ask her where Goroka was, she said, ‘It’s been a long time, and now … ’ She shrugged. ‘With him gone, I feel a little lost.’ Again that effort to collect herself. ‘You’re just about through now, aren’t you? This is the last room.’

‘Unless there is anything of value in the loft that you want included in the sale?’

She hesitated, then shook her head. ‘No, nothing.’

‘Any jewellery you want disposed of?’

She laughed. ‘All that went long ago.’ She fell silent, as though recollecting; then she gave a little sigh. ‘Mother left me her things. They were beautiful, mostly native work. But they didn’t fetch much.’ Her eyes fell involuntarily to her hands, which were strongly formed and capable, the wrists slim and bare, no rings on the short, broad fingers. ‘I hated parting with them. But I kept the carvings.’ She said it almost defiantly. ‘My grandfather gave them to me, and I’ve nothing else to remember him by.’

She sat there for a moment as though thinking about him. Then she said, ‘Do you have a safe in your office?’

‘Yes.’ I concentrated on my tea, wondering what was coming, still thinking about her brother and his mysterious illness.

‘I was hoping perhaps you’d have room for these two albums.’ She nodded to the books on the dressing table. They were old leather-bound volumes with metal clasps.

‘Yours?’ I asked, not quite certain on whose authority the sale was being made.

There was a momentary hesitation; then she said, ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose they are now.’ She was staring towards the sea again. And then, as though conscious that she had been speaking as if her brother were already dead, she went on quickly, ‘They were among his things when he was sent home. He couldn’t speak at all then, but I knew they were important. We were very close, you see. And then Jona wrote — that’s my elder brother — he said if Tim ever recovered, he thought he’d want to make some enquiries about them. So I kept them here, hidden in the loft.’

‘What are they, diaries?’ I asked.

‘No. Stamps. It’s a collection of stamps.’

I didn’t say anything for a moment, the collector’s instinct suddenly taking hold, a feeling of excitement. Only once before in the years since I had switched from marine engine salesman to estate agent had the job given me the opportunity to acquire a collection direct from the owner. My eyes were fastened on the albums, wondering what was inside those battered leather covers. They looked Victorian, in which case there could be some early GBs. But this was a young woman I was dealing with, not a businessman. ‘You could put them in the bank,’ I said, ‘or it might be better to let the solicitors hold them.’

She shook her head, those large, prominent eyes of hers staring at me intensely. ‘I’d rather you kept them,’ she said.

It was an odd request. ‘Why? If they’re valuable …’

‘It isn’t that — though I wondered, of course, when things became really difficult. Anyway, I didn’t know how to go about selling them, and there was never any time …’ She hesitated, still staring at me, but her gaze had turned inward. ‘No. I just want to know they’re safe, that’s all. I don’t want them in the house any more.’ That husky voice of hers was low-pitched now, almost a whisper, her thoughts a little disconnected. ‘Something Jona wrote in a letter. I keep on remembering. He’s never been much of a letter writer, too wrapped up in his ship. He did write to me about Tim’s future. I’d cabled him about the nursing home charges, but even then his letter was all about the need for an engine overhaul, which meant Australia and no cargo earnings. It’s very expensive running a ship, I know, but-’

There was a long pause, and then she suddenly looked at me again and said, ‘But about those stamps, he did write that Tim had been very excited when he discovered them. I don’t know why. That was just after the accident, and I couldn’t get any sense out of Tim, of course.’ Her eyes went to the window again. Another, longer pause; then she said, ‘You’ve got to remember he wasn’t very coherent. There was brain damage as well. That’s why I put them in the loft. I thought he might suddenly want them. He had moments when he could communicate, after a fashion. But he was very strange, very unpredictable. About a fortnight ago, just before I finally persuaded the nursing home to take him — they’re some sort of charitable hangover from colonial days and very choosy, it seems, about whom they take — he suddenly seemed to want to see them again, and when I brought them down to him, he lay staring at them most of the day. Then he suddenly lost interest. He was like that.’ Her voice was very low, falling almost to a whisper. ‘If ever I catch up with the man who did that to him, I’ll kill him.’

It was said so quietly, without emotion, in the same matter-of-fact way she had mentioned sorcery. If she had said it wildly, I could have put it down to her being overwrought. But she wasn’t overwrought or in any way hysterical. She just sat there, making a flat statement, and that made it all the more frightening. I didn’t know what to say. ‘Can I have a look at the albums?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Her eyes were staring past me at the mask above the bed, her tone offhand.

I put down my cup and picked the albums up. They were identical, measuring about eight inches by five, the leather dark green, almost black, and very thick, the clasps gilt, two to each album, and the hinges damaged. The pages were loose-leaved, a heavy cartridge paper, the stamps carefully presented, sometimes only one to a page, sometimes complete sets. Many of them were unused, and in the case of the sets most of them were overprinted SPECIMEN. NO early GBs, no Queen’s heads, virtually the whole collection devoted to views, ships, a sprinkling of animals, and all about the turn of the century. Nothing very early and every stamp stuck down, which was a pity.

The first volume I looked through contained nothing but Canadian provincials and Australian states. There was a Specimen set of Tasmanian scenes which was particularly attractive, and the last two pages were taken up with what looked like proofs. But it was the second volume that interested me, an exclusively island collection: Malta, Papua, North Borneo, Samoa, Tonga, Bermuda, Cook Islands, Jamaica — ships, canoes, galleys, coats of arms, island scenes, and in the case of Samoa a page of the EXPRESS stamps. There was a nice Specimen set of Turks and Caicos to the full 3s. value, all with ships, and a very battered imperforate stamp, blue with a white sailing ship and the script letters LM^CL underneath, stuck to the centre of the page so that it caught my eye. It was pen-cancelled and rang some faint bell in my memory.

‘Well?’ she asked as I sat looking at it, trying to remember an island that had issued a stamp with no designation on it, only a monogram. ‘I read somewhere that old stamps had kept pace with inflation.’

I nodded. ‘Better than most things. But I couldn’t give you even a rough idea what these are worth, not till I’ve checked them through with the catalogue. Even then, I won’t be certain because of their condition.’

‘I think my brother realised we were short of money. That day when he lay there staring at them, I was helping him over his lunch-’ She stopped there, a muscle in her cheek twitching at the memory. ‘I don’t know whether I understood him right, but I thought he tried to tell me they would be worth a lot to somebody.’

I thought she meant a collector, or a dealer, and I said, ‘I think I should warn you they won’t fetch anything like the catalogue price. It’s an interesting little collection, well arranged, but I don’t think there’s anything very rare, and none of them are in mint condition. They’re stuck down, you see. Mint condition requires that the original gum on the back be intact.’

‘I see.’ She frowned. ‘You’re not a stamp dealer, are you?’

‘No, but I collect them.’ And I told her how as a kid I had used any money that came my way to buy pictorials. ‘They were quite cheap then, and it was a sort of displacement activity, I suppose, a world in which I could forget that my parents were at each other’s throats and only staying together on account of me. Lately I’ve been taking advantage of the rise in market values to switch into line-engraved issues, concentrating on Great Britain and the Caribbean, islands like Antigua, St Kitts, St Vincent, Turks and Caicos.’

‘So you know some of the dealers?’

‘Two or three, yes. When I get the chance, I buy at auctions. It’s usually cheaper at auction.’ I hesitated, not sure what she wanted. ‘Would you like me to get a valuation for you?’ And as I said it, I knew it had been prompted by a desire to see her again.

‘Could you?’ She was silent a moment, thinking about it. ‘Thank you, yes. I’d be very glad if you would.’

It was as easy as that, and feeling slightly pleased with myself, I finished my tea and picked up the clipboard. Knowing something of her circumstances now, I said, ‘Is there anything else — anything I’ve missed — that you want either included in the sale or else for me to value for you while I’m here?’

‘No, I don’t think there’s anything else. Just about everything that’s left belongs to Tim, I suppose. I don’t own very much now except my clothes.’ And she added, ‘There was a time when we were quite well off, but when my father finally died-’ She hesitated. ‘I knew he’d been financing Jona, but not the extent of it. There wasn’t much left for Tim except the house, and these last two years I’ve sold off what I could. There’s nothing of any real value here now. Can I give you some more tea?’

I thanked her, studying the inventory as she refilled my cup. The contents I had listed wouldn’t fetch enough to keep him very long, even if the nursing home was charity-run, and to get her mind off the subject of finance, I asked her about the carvings. ‘Was it your grandfather who collected them?’

‘My great-uncle.’

‘He was a missionary, was he?’ I was thinking of the label on the base of that wooden figure downstairs.

She seemed amused. ‘No, he was the black sheep of the family. An inveterate liar, that’s how my grandfather described him. But he wouldn’t talk about him, except once long ago I remember he said his brother had got into some sort of trouble. He shipped out on a wool ship to Australia and wasn’t heard of again for several years. Then he suddenly turned up in England boasting he owned an island and some schooners and had become king of a lot of cannibals in a world where they believed their ancestors were butterflies.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘My grandfather was always reminiscing about people with strange backgrounds, so I didn’t take much notice. I was a child at the time, but I liked the bit about the butterflies.’

‘It was his brother, then, who gave him the carvings?’

‘Yes, his younger brother Carlos.’

‘And he gave him the carvings to convince him of his improbable story, I suppose.’

She laughed. ‘No, I think he just left them with Grandpa so they’d be safe. I’ve often wondered about that, whether he had some sort of premonition. He was drowned, you see, on his way back to the Pacific. He had come to England to raise money for the purchase of a steamship and was drowned when it sank.’ And when I asked her where it had sunk, she said, ‘In the Pacific, somewhere east of Papua. But God knows where. There weren’t any survivors. He had named her the Holland Trader.’ And she added, ‘It happened a long time ago, in 1911. Sad, isn’t it?’

She turned her head from the window and smiled at me. ‘That’s all I ever got out of my grandfather. He wouldn’t talk about him. The subject was taboo. So maybe you’re right. Maybe Carlos Holland did bring those carvings home to prove he was telling the truth for once.’ And she added in that husky whisper, ‘I think of him sometimes. An odd name, Carlos — for an Englishman. And the man himself a complete mystery. If only he had kept a diary.’

‘Is that why you’ve hung on to the carvings?’

She nodded. ‘It’s teasing to know so little — no letters, nothing; just those carvings, and the stamps. You’ll find his name inside the albums.’ I thought her interest in the man was the natural reaction of somebody whose life had been very restricted, but then she said, ‘Strange I should still have relics of his world, and nothing left of my grandfather’s. He had marvellous things — native head-dresses and spears. But they were all left behind when my father sold Kuamegu. I can only dimly remember them now, and the brilliance of the poinsettias, the women with their bare pointed breasts and the men wearing nothing but a few broad grass fronds — arse grass, we called it — hanging from a waist cord.’ She gave that little shrug and got to her feet. ‘It was all very primitive, wonderfully colourful.’ She began gathering up the tea things. ‘You have finished, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’ I was thinking how wrong I had been, her background so very different from my own. ‘You were born out there?’

‘At Kuamegu, yes. It was a coffee plantation in the Highlands about five thousand feet up in the Chimbu country.’ She stood there for a moment, very still. ‘Buka wasn’t the same, hot and humid, always raining. And living at Madehas …’ She turned away. ‘After Mother was killed, we came here. That was something different again, and when you’ve no money-’ She stopped abruptly, gave a little self-derisory laugh and picked up the albums. ‘I don’t know why I’m talking to you like this. Stupid of me. I’ll get these wrapped up.’

She left me then, and I sat there for a moment, the clipboard on my knee, wondering where Buka was, what part of the Pacific she had been talking about. Doing my National Service in Singapore as a junior officer on landing craft, I had had just a glimpse of the Pacific, the only exciting bit of travel I had ever managed to achieve, and here was this strange young woman talking about it as though the Pacific islands were more home to her than England. What would she do now? If I ever catch up with the man … Those shocking words came suddenly back to me. But with her brother to support, the sale of the contents wouldn’t get her out to the Pacific, and from what she had said I guessed the house itself was mortgaged. I wasn’t certain what age she was — late twenties, early thirties, it was difficult to tell. And the way she had looked, sitting there, staring out at the sea. If she intended going back, then the stamps were her only hope, and as I got to my feet, I was wondering whether I could find the money to buy them from her. Stuck down like that, they couldn’t be worth more than £200 or £300.

I put the clipboard in my briefcase and stood staring out of the window at the sea. It was milky calm, the horizon lost in haze. I thought of all the times she must have stood here in her bedroom looking out at it, and at night in moonlight, longing to be away. If it had been anybody else, if she hadn’t talked like that, then I could have made her an offer for those stamps and she would probably have taken it. I don’t know why I wanted them so badly. It wasn’t the stamps themselves. I had some of them already, and the others I could have bought from Josh Keegan or one of the other dealers in the Strand. No, it was something in the careful way they had been stuck into those albums, the planned choice of subjects, almost as though there had been some purpose in collecting just those items and presenting them in that particular way.

I knew it was foolish of me. Even that second album didn’t contain a single stamp of the islands on which I was now concentrating. But collecting is like that. You see something, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, you want it. Would she take £400 for them? I could probably raise that much on a quick sale of some Penny Blacks. But as I started down the stairs, I knew I couldn’t do it. Without a valuation it would be taking advantage of her, and I had promised to get them valued.

She was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, and as she saw me to the door, handing me the albums neatly wrapped, all I said was: ‘I’ll do what I can for you, Miss Holland. There’s a member of my sailing club, a retired naval commander, who deals in stamps. I’ll ask him to have a look at them. But please don’t bank on their being worth very much.’

She shook her head, and the light coming from the door showed a deep scar running back from behind her left ear into the orange-red cap of hair. ‘Of course not. I no longer expect anything to be made easy for me.’ And then with a quick lift of her chin: ‘I’ll find a way.’ It was said to herself, not to me. She held out her hand. ‘Thank you. I’m glad you came, you’ve been very kind.’

I was thinking about her, and about the way she had said, ‘I’ll find a way,’ for most of the drive back to Chelmsford. I just couldn’t get her out of my mind. I couldn’t think of any girl who had made such an instant and deep impression on me, and God knows I’ve never been short of girlfriends. But it had always been physical before. This wasn’t physical. I didn’t know what the hell it was. I’d read about people falling in love, but that was in books. The real-life relation ship was sex, the physical meeting of two bodies. It was what men and women were all about. But not this one. The impact had been entirely different, an emotional intensity, an emanation almost of something totally alien to me, as though she had the power to project herself into my mind. It wasn’t her face, or her figure, or even those extraordinarily prominent breasts that I was remembering now. It was the impression she had made, her strange background, those dreadful words of hers and her face so set, and that reference to the death certificate, talking of her brother as though he were already dead. ‘You think your brother will die then?’ I had asked her, and she had replied, ‘Unless I can do something about it, get that death wish lifted.’

It seemed such nonsense, in the hot sun driving down the A12. But in that house, in her presence, talking to her, it had all seemed real enough. And there were those two battered green albums lying on the seat beside me. It was almost as though she were there herself, so powerful had been the impact of her personality.

That evening, instead of going down to the boat, I drove straight home, taking the albums with me. Great Park Hall, at the end of almost a mile of dirt farm track, was a very lonely place, which was the reason the rent was within my means. To call it a hall made it sound grander than it was; almost any old farmhouse in East Anglia can be called a hall. It was, in fact, little more than a cottage full of centuries-old beams with the remains of a moat taking up most of the overgrown garden. I was fending for myself now, and with a tankard of beer and some chicken sandwiches I settled down to check the stamps against the catalogue.

My British Commonwealth catalogue was two years old, but at least it would give me a rough idea of what the collection was worth. And as I worked through the albums page by page my excitement grew. I was the only collector who had ever seen them, and whether she wanted to or not, I was certain she would sell them in the end. She knew she’d have to. Why else had she wanted them valued? The question was, what was the fair price?

It took me just over two hours to list them. There were 247 stamps ranging in value from almost nothing up to £65 for the Turks and Caicos Specimen set of nine sailing ship stamps. The total added up to £1,163, excluding the proofs and the ship stamp with the script lettering LM^CL.

By then the sun had set and the light was fading. I sat there for a long time, idly going through the thick pages of the albums again, wondering what sort of figure a dealer would put on them. I thought perhaps half, or even a third, of the catalogue value, for not only were the more valuable unused and Specimen stamps stuck down, but many of them showed signs of discoloration, caused probably by damp.

I suppose it was the island scenes that started me dreaming of the Pacific. Ever since my Singapore days I had wanted to see more of the Pacific. I didn’t switch on the light but sat there in the half-dark, thinking about my own future and what I should do if Rowlinson did offer me the job of looking after his Australian interests, something I had been angling for even before I knew the partners weren’t going to let me in. He had rung me up two days ago, saying his manager had finally promised him the figures for the Queensland station within a week. If that LCT I had served on hadn’t poked its nose into the Pacific north of Indonesia, maybe I wouldn’t have been so pleased at the prospect of Australia. But my appetite had been whetted, and since then I hadn’t been out of England except to sail my Folkboat across to Holland and spend a few days in the Dutch canals.

And that girl — she had spent most of her life out there. Very primitive, wonderfully colourful. I was remembering the way she had said that, the nostalgic whisper of her voice. And now she was free.

If I offered her £500, would that be enough to take her where she wanted to go?

I switched on the light then and spent an hour running through the catalogue, searching for that stamp I hadn’t been able to identify. I had an uneasy feeling that it might be valuable, even though it was spoilt by an ink cancellation; also, it was slightly creased and appeared to have been cut into at the top right-hand corner. I even tried an old Stanley Gibbons World Catalogue, concentrating all the time on the islands of the Pacific, but in the end I had to give it up. I just couldn’t find it. Nor could I identify the proofs, which were printed in black on thick paper and showed what looked like a seal in a rectangular frame and also the frame separately.

It was not until Sunday evening that I was finally able to contact Tubby Sawyer. He had been north along the coast as far as the Deben estuary for a few days, and I called across, inviting him over for a drink, as he drifted up on the tide to his moorings. He was a short, stout man with blue seaman’s eyes in a round, babyish face, and coming alongside in his tiny plastic dinghy, he looked like a frog balanced precariously in the cup of a waterlily. ‘And to what do I owe the doubtful pleasure of being offered a gin on your old Folkboat?’ he asked, squeezing himself in through the hatch and lowering his heavy bottom into the space at the head of the only berth. He wore a tattered blue sweater, oily jeans, and his bare toes were poking out of his salt-stiff deck shoes. ‘First time this season.’ He grinned at me, leaning frayed woollen elbows on the makeshift table. ‘There must be a catch in it.’

‘There is,’ I said. ‘I want you to value some stamps for me.’

‘Free of charge, I suppose.’

‘Of course.’ And I explained about Miss Holland’s circumstances as I poured him his pink gin.

‘Any particular period?’

‘Victorian, most of them.’ I gave him his drink and put the albums down in front of him. ‘See what you think. There’s one I haven’t been able to identify, and where there’s just one stamp to the page like that, it makes them look important even if they aren’t.’

He sat there for a moment gazing at the worn leather covers with their gilt fastenings. These are the sort of albums Victorian ladies used for drawing miniatures, writing poems, pressing flower collections, that sort of thing.’

I poured myself a drink and watched him as he opened first one, then the other, leafing quickly through the loose pages. ‘You’re right about the period, anyway. The end of Queen Victoria’s reign, most of them stamps in issue in the late eighteen hundreds, and all of them stuck down tight.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Still, it’s probably better than if they were hinged with gummed strips from the sheet margin, a very common practice in those days.’ He turned to the island album and began going through it slowly, page by page, until he came to the blue stamp with LM^CL below the ship. He paused there and sipped his drink. ‘This the one you couldn’t identify?’ And when I nodded, he said, ‘Try Trinidad. The “Lady McLeod”. Its value may surprise you.’

I sat down on the berth opposite him, watching his face, which was lit by the evening sun slanting in through the open hatch. He was turning the pages again, and I couldn’t be sure from his expression whether the stamp would put the collection beyond my reach. He came to the end and lit a cigarette, leaning back, his eyes half closed. ‘Well?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be so impatient. I haven’t finished yet.’ He smiled. ‘But it’s interesting — very. I’ll tell you why in a minute.’ And he leaned forward again and began working his way through the second volume. It was so quiet on board I could hear the ticking of the ship’s clock and the gurgle of the tide making against the bows. And then, when he came to the proofs, he held the two loose leaves up to catch the light, peering at them closely. ‘Do you use a magnifying glass when you’re charting?’

‘Yes, do you want it?’

‘Please.’

I found it for him, and he went over those last two pages again, examining the proofs through the glass. ‘Know anything about the person who put this little collection together?’ He seemed quite excited.

‘A little,’ I said. ‘But I’d rather hear what you think first.’

He hesitated, the corners of those bright blue eyes crinkling. ‘Want me to stick my neck out, do you? All right, but tell me something first. This client of yours who’s had such a poor time of it, does she want to sell, or don’t you know yet?’

‘I think that would depend on the price,’ I said cautiously.

He laughed. ‘I never doubted you were a good agent, Roy, but don’t get too excited. We’re not dealing with the earlies here, no Mauritius or other rarities, except for the “Lady McLeod”. Put it this way, is she after a quick cash sale, or is she going to send them to auction? You can tell me that, surely.’ And he added, ‘At auction, as you very well know, it could take four months, even longer, before she got her money.’

‘Are you interested in them personally, then?’ I hadn’t expected that.

He hesitated, then said, ‘Yes. Yes, I think I might be. Not because of the value of the stamps, but because of the collection as a collection. It has a distinct curiosity value.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You’ve looked through it. Didn’t anything strike you?’

I nodded. ‘New Zealand and those Australian states, you’d expect a man living somewhere in the South Pacific to collect them. But there are Canadian provincials as well, a lot of Newfoundland. And most of them unused, so it looks as though he visited the eastern seaboard of Canada, maybe traded there.’

‘It’s possible.’ But he sounded doubtful. ‘My guess is he simply wrote for them so that he could see what they were like.’ He picked up the last two pages and turned them round so that I could see them. ‘Know what these are?’

‘Proofs,’ I said. ‘But it did occur to me they might be fakes.’

‘Look again.’ And he pushed one of the pages towards me.

I bent forward, examining once again the two little rectangles of thick yellowish paper, one showing the frame of the stamp, the other simply the unadorned shape of what looked like an Arctic or North Atlantic seal. On the other page there was just the one rectangle of paper showing the seal inside the frame. ‘Doesn’t anything strike you now?’

I shook my head. There was no value given, no indication of country, the frame surround all black.

He turned the pages round, lost in thought as he stared down at them. ‘I’m not quite sure if they’re die or plate proofs. That’s why I wanted the magnifying glass. The whole process, as you know, starts with the die, and it is from this original picture, engraved on the flat, that the roller impression is taken by rocking it back and forth over the die under pressure. This transfer, or roller die, is then used to transfer the impression, again by rocking back and forth, on to the actual plate from which the final stamp will be printed. Now, I think these are die proofs. That’s to say, they’re taken from the original flat engraving; in the case of the one showing the seal inside the frame, both dies have been used on the same sheet of paper, the proofs being struck off singly. They have that extra sharpness. If they were plate proofs, they would have been taken from the plate itself after it had been hardened for printing the full sheet of stamps.’ He leafed back through the album, pausing several times. Finally he turned again to the pages with the proofs. ‘Very interesting,’ he mused. ‘The collection itself, I mean. As you say, no Queen’s heads. The stamps are all of ships and views, with a sprinkling of animals. Recess or line-engraved printing, mostly Perkins Bacon, the first printers of postal labels and specialists in line-engraving for banknotes.’

He leaned back, and I guessed I was in for one of his lectures. He loved giving tongue on the printing of stamps, and though he could be very interesting on the subject, he always talked as though the other person knew nothing at all about it. ‘Perkins Bacon now. They produced the Penny Blacks of 1840, all our early stamps, the Penny Reds and Twopenny Blues. Then De La Rue took over, printing by the letterpress process — surface printing. Not nearly as attractive, and the colours harder. So anybody collecting stamps in the ordinary way at the turn of the century would almost certainly have included some of the early line-engraved GBs.’ He picked up his glass, which was empty, and held it out to me. ‘While you’re pouring another drink, you might fill me in on the background, or didn’t you ask her?’

‘About the man who made the collection?’

He nodded. ‘Carlos Holland. Was that his name? It’s on the flyleaf of each album.’

‘Why do you want to know about him?’ I asked. ‘It can’t make any difference to the value of the stamps surely.’

‘I’m curious, that’s all. This isn’t an ordinary collection. I think he put it together because he was exploring design possibilities before ordering stamps he required for his own official use. He was probably a colonial governor, somebody like that.’

‘And the die proofs at the end represent the design of his choice, is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yes, that’s about it.’

‘Well, I can tell you this, he wasn’t a colonial governor.’ I reached for the gin bottle and the Angostura. ‘But you’re right about the name.’ And I passed on to him what little I had been told about Carlos Holland.

‘So the ship was a total loss. It went down with all hands.’

‘That’s what I understand.’

‘Then he couldn’t have had this collection with him at the time. If he had, it would be at the bottom of the sea. So how did it come into Miss Holland’s possession?’

‘As I understand it, the albums were among her brother’s things when he was invalided home.’

‘How did he come by them?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Didn’t you ask her?’

‘No.’

‘Very odd,’ he murmured, shaking his head. ‘This man Carlos Holland leaves a collection of carvings with his brother, but not the stamps. And then, somewhere on his way out to the Pacific, at some port of call, he suddenly decides to leave these albums ashore. And there’s something else,’ he said, gazing abstractedly at the albums. ‘What about the sheets?’

‘Sheets?’

‘Yes, the sheets,’ he said almost irritably. ‘The printed sheets of the final stamp.’ He looked up at me over his tumbler. ‘You say he owned some schooners and came back to England to add a steamship to his fleet. That suggests he required stamps for the franking of mail carried in his vessels. So where are the sheets?’

‘Presumably at the bottom of the sea.’

He nodded, but I could see he was not wholly convinced. ‘Very odd,’ he said again. ‘And the design … I can only recall having seen two ship stamps, and like the “Lady McLeod” stamp, they both carried the picture of the ship. This stamp doesn’t; the picture enclosed in the frame is of a seal. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’

The collection includes quite a few stamps with ships on them.’

‘Exactly. And he chooses a seal as his emblem. Seals don’t swim around coral reefs in the warm waters of the South Pacific. Not the grey or Atlantic seal, which I think this is.’ He gave a little sigh. ‘Pity the girl isn’t here to answer a few questions.’

‘I don’t think she’d be able to help you. She didn’t seem to know very much about the stamps. All she said was that they were among Timothy Holland’s things when he arrived back in England and that another brother, Jona Holland, wrote that he’d been very excited by the find.’

He nodded. ‘Well he might be if he knew anything about stamps.’ He was silent for a while, sitting there staring at the black impression of the proof. ‘But no sheets,’ he muttered. ‘I wonder …’ He sat back, toying with his glass. ‘If I’m right, then there must have been sheets of those stamps. I wonder where they are. Somebody must have them.’ He shrugged, closing the album slowly and with a certain reluctance. ‘I think I’d better take this collection along to somebody who knows more about ship stamps than I do. Josh Keegan is the best bet. And if he doesn’t know, he’ll tell me who to go to. I’ve a feeling … I’m not sure, mind you, but I think a stamp rather like that die proof came up for sale at a Robson Lowe auction some years back. Josh may have been at the sale.’ He downed the rest of his drink and got to his feet. ‘I’ve got to go now. Mind if I take the albums with me?’

I hesitated, unwilling to let them go now that I knew he was interested. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. Obviously he couldn’t give me a valuation on the spot.

‘Good.’ He had noticed my hesitation and smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of them.’ He picked up the albums, holding them out to me. ‘Pop them in a polythene bag, will you? Don’t want to get them wet rowing ashore.’

He had a supper date with friends near Maldon and when he had seated himself carefully in his dinghy he looked up at me, his bright eyes twinkling. ‘I could have valued the collection off the cuff, made you an offer, and, given the girl’s circumstances, she’d probably have accepted. Instead, I’m seeking expert opinion for you. Greater love hath no man.’ He picked up the oars, and as I tossed the painter into the bows, he began to drift away on the tide. ‘I’ll tell Josh to ring you direct if he’s anything of interest to report. Otherwise, I’ll come back to you myself and make an offer for the lot.’

‘You really want it then?’

He nodded, smiling at me like an amiable frog. ‘Yes, I do. First time I’ve ever had a collection in my hands that was made for the purpose of choosing a design. Three or four days and I’ll hope to be back to you with that offer.’

‘Well, see that it’s a fair one,’ I said.

He laughed, back-paddling against the tide, the plastic dinghy so low in the water it looked on the verge of sinking. ‘Suspicious bastard you are. Whatever the business ethics in your world, Roy, stamps are still a gentlemanly occupation.’ And with that he swung the little boat round and headed for the nearest landing pier.

As soon as I was home, I got out the catalogue and looked up Trinidad. There it was, the first Crown Colony stamp listed, a 5c. blue. A note underneath read: The ‘Lady McLeod’ stamps were issued in April, 1847, by David Bryce, owner of the s.s. Lady McLeod, and sold at five cents each for the prepayment of the carriage of letters by his vessel between Port of Spain and San Fernando. Used examples are pen-cancelled or have a corner skimmed off. The value of it unused was given as £6,000, used £2,000.

I sat there staring at it for a long time. Even though the Holland stamp was used, or rather pen-cancelled, and the condition of it not that good, it put the collection in a different class, quite outside my range. To buy it, I’d have to sell most of my carefully acquired GB stamps. Either that or the boat.

I put it out of my mind after that, which wasn’t difficult since I was loaded with all Packer’s work. And on top of that Rowlinson sent me the figures for Munnobungle, asking me for my comments as soon as possible.

It was not until the following Friday that I heard from Tubby, a formal letter that read:

Dear Mr Slingsby,

I have now gone through the whole collection with a view to valuation. Excluding the ‘Lady McLeod’ and the die proofs on the last two pages, the theoretical value is £1,273 based on the latest Stanley Gibbons catalogue. Bearing in mind their condition, my estimate of the actual value is around £500 — at auction they might well reach a little more, equally they might fetch less.

The value of the die proofs is impossible to estimate. A copy of the actual stamp does exist, in deep blue, but it did not go through the post in the normal way. It was apparently on a cover (i.e., envelope) which bore an Australian postage-due stamp. In other words, the Australian postal authorities refused to accept it, regarding it as no more than a private label. This cover was sold at a Robson Lowe auction about two years ago for £220, a high price considering it’s an unknown and so had curiosity value only. Josh was at the sale and recalls that it was bought by a dealer handling European accounts. In the circumstances, I think it fair to value the die proofs at the same figure.

As regards the ‘Lady McLeod’ Trinidad ship stamp, this is more difficult to set a value on. In prime condition the current value of a pen-cancelled example is put at £2,500. What this particular example would fetch at auction is anybody’s guess, but Josh was quite prepared to give £550 for it, so I think £600 would be a fair valuation.

Thus, my valuation for the two albums is £1,320 and, as agreed, there is no charge for this.

I think it would be a great pity to break this collection up and sell the stamps piecemeal. I remain personally interested in it as a curiosity and am prepared to offer £1,500 for the collection as it stands. Perhaps you would convey this offer to Miss Holland. I do not honestly think she will do better than this, and I will keep the albums here in my safe until I hear from you.

No sailing this week-end. I promised to go down for my son’s half-term.

Sincerely,

J. L. SAWYER

I did something then on the spur of the moment that was pretty daft. I wrote to Miss Holland telling her that I was enclosing Commander Sawyer’s letter valuing the stamps and offering for them. And then I added that I was personally interested as a collector and asked if I could drive over and see her as I might be able to offer her slightly more. To this day I don’t know how much I was motivated by my interest in the collection, how much by my desire to see her again, and it was only after the letter had gone that I began to worry about raising the cash. But if Rowlinson did decide to offer me the job in Australia, I would be selling the boat anyway, and that would more than cover it.

Almost a week passed, and no word from Miss Holland, nothing from Rowlinson, though I had sent him an outline of my ideas for halting the losses on his Queensland property. And then, after a deadly dull morning arguing with bureaucrats and tenants over rent increases for a row of tenement houses, I returned to the office to find that Rowlinson’s secretary had phoned to say he would call at my home at 7 p.m. Also, Eric Chandler had been trying to get me. The only business we had with Rose, Walker amp;c Chandler at that moment was The Passage valuation and sale of contents, and when I rang him back to point out that I had sent my rough estimate of the current value of the house the previous week, he said, ‘Yes, of course, and that’s all being dealt with.’ He had a high-pitched East Anglian voice. ‘But now we need her signature, and she’s disappeared. I wondered whether you could help me. You met her, I take it, when you did the valuation?’

‘Yes.’

‘When was that?’

‘About a fortnight ago.’

‘Was she alone?’

‘As far as I know.’

‘I see.’ There was a pause, and I asked him what exactly he had meant, saying she had disappeared.

‘Gone away,’ he said, ‘leaving no address. Most extraordinary. There’s a mortgage on the house, and we’re negotiating with the mortgagors on the basis of your valuation. Obviously she can’t sell the property unless they agree to termination and are satisfied there will be sufficient funds to cover everything as a result of the sale. And now she’s gone. I had written to her twice — there’s no phone there, you see — and when she didn’t reply, I told one of my staff who had to call on a client in Woodbridge yesterday to go on up to Aldeburgh and see her. She didn’t answer the door, and when he enquired of the neighbours, he was told she had left. At least, they had seen her leaving in a taxi with two large suitcases. That was on Saturday, and no forwarding address. He enquired of the neighbours, the local shops, and checked with Aldeburgh Post Office. Milk and paper delivery had been stopped and the bills paid. I thought you might be able to help.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, I haven’t seen her since her father died. That was three or four years ago. You’ve met her recently, and I was wondering whether she’d given you any indication she might be going away — to stay with a relative or friends. She can’t have had an easy time of it these last few years, looking after that brother of hers. He was very badly injured, you know. Now, can you help me at all?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ I told him. ‘I was expecting a letter from her myself, and she certainly didn’t say anything about going away.’

‘You talked to her, then?’

‘For a short time, just before I left when she brought me some tea.’ I started to tell him then about the wood carvings and Carlos Holland, but he interrupted me.

‘Yes, but what was her frame of mind? I’m just trying to decide whether I ought to do something about it. I can’t ever remember a client going off suddenly like this without a word when we’re trying to get a mortgage position cleared up. And it was at her request, I may say. But the point is this … well, life hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses for her, first her father, then her brother — I wondered whether you’d been able to form any opinion of her mental state. She’d no relatives in the country, nobody she can turn to, I do know that.’

‘If you’re worried she may be suicidal,’ I said, ‘you can forget it. That was not her mood at all.’ And I added, ‘She’s got another brother, I believe. Why not contact him? Presumably you have his address.’

‘I don’t think that would help. He’s out in the Pacific somewhere.’

‘Had she any money of her own at all, money she could use to fly out there?’

‘I can’t answer that.’ There was a pause, and then the high, crisp voice said, ‘Well, thank you. Thank you very much for your help.’ And he put the phone down.

There were a lot of papers piled on my desk, but it was difficult to concentrate, wondering if I had been justified in declaring so categorically she was not in a suicidal state. Nothing in our conversation had indicated that she had any friends in England, and though she apparently had the money to pay her bills and hire a taxi, that didn’t mean she had enough to do whatever it was she had in mind. And here I was with a bid of £1,500, which I had offered to increase, and no means of contacting her.

And then, just as I was packing up to leave, stuffing Rowlinson’s papers into my briefcase so that I could refresh my memory before he came to see me that evening, the girl in the outer office rang through to say a Mr Berners was on the phone wanting to speak to me personally. I told her to find out what it was about, but she had already done that; all he would say was that a Miss Holland had told him to contact me.

I thought perhaps it was to give me her address, but when he was switched through, it was the stamps he was interested in. He was a dealer, and he had heard from somebody in the trade there was a collection available that included proofs of a stamp he thought might interest a client of his. ‘When I go to see Miss Holland, I find she don’t have the collection any longer. You have it, so now I am asking you what time tomorrow is convenient for me to see it.’

‘When was it you saw Miss Holland?’ I asked.

‘On Thursday. Last Thursday afternoon.’

He had an accent I couldn’t place, and it irritated me. ‘How did you get her address?’

‘From a Mr Keegan who is making some enquiries of me. He made a note of it when he is asked to consider the authenticity of the die proofs. So now, when can I see the proofs please?’

I remembered there had been a label with her name and address on the brown paper she had wrapped the albums in and I had used the same wrapping before putting them in a plastic bag and giving them to Tubby. ‘I am afraid the collection is not available for viewing here.’

‘But you are handling the sale, Mr Slingsby. If it is not with you, where is it please?’

‘It’s being valued. My instructions at the moment do not go beyond obtaining a valuation.’

‘I do not understand. Miss Holland tells me you are handling the sale for her and I must go to you to see the proofs.’

‘I think you misunderstood her.’

‘No, I do not misunderstand her. She said to go and see Mr Slingsby, and she gave me your address in Chelmsford. So, if you are handling the sale, you cannot just tell somebody who is interested to go away. It is your duty to co-operate and make the collection available for anybody to view who wishes.’

‘I don’t need to be told my duty,’ I said sharply. A door slammed down the corridor, and I looked at my watch: rush hour already. ‘If you give me your address, Mr Berners, I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I’ve contacted Miss Holland.’

‘Do you have the valuation yet?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And I also have a firm offer which I have passed on …’

‘How much?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’

‘Okay then, the valuation. How much does your dealer friend value it at?’

There was something about the way he said ‘your dealer friend’ that I didn’t like. ‘I think you will have to ask Miss Holland that.’

‘How can I? She is gone abroad, and I am asking you because you are handling the sale.’

‘I am not handling the sale,’ I repeated angrily, irritated beyond measure at his insistence. ‘All I have agreed to do is obtain a valuation.’ By that time his words had registered, and I asked him how he knew she had gone abroad.

‘She tell me, of course. She tell me when she said you would be selling the collection for her. Now, this dealer friend of yours — he has valued the stamps and I take it also made the offer for them. In the circumstances, I think you have to tell me one figure or the other. It would be most unethical for an agent to conceal a professional valuation in order to protect his friend’s bid for a property. Eh, Mr Slingsby? So, now you give me the figure please.’

I was greatly tempted just to slam the phone down, but he was so obviously a trouble-maker it didn’t seem worth it. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘the collection has been valued at one thousand three hundred and twenty pounds.’

‘And the proofs? I am only interested, I think, in the die proofs. I take it he has valued them separately.’

‘Yes, at two hundred and twenty pounds.’

‘Ah yes, of course, two hundred and twenty pounds. How many die proofs are there?’

‘Three, two on one page, one on the other.’

‘Can you describe them for me?’

I did so, and he said, ‘Good. That confirms what I have been told, that these are die proofs of the Solomons Seal. Kindly do not dispose of them until I have had the opportunity to view and put in a bid. I will call at your office in Chelmsford tomorrow afternoon, say, three o’clock. Please have the stamps available then.’ And before I could say anything more, he put the phone down.

I sat there for a moment, thinking back over the conversation, still annoyed by his manner and the inferences he had drawn. But for all I knew the valuation might be too low, particularly for the Trinidad ship stamp. I reached for the phone again and dialled Tubby’s number. Fortunately he was at home, and his voice sounded cheerful as he said, ‘She’s accepted, has she? I’m probably paying over the odds, but-’

‘No, she hasn’t accepted,’ I told him. ‘She’s gone off somewhere, leaving no address, and now there’s somebody else showing an interest.’

‘Who?’

‘A man called Berners. A dealer.’

‘I see.’ His cheerfulness had suddenly evaporated. ‘So you want the collection back?’

‘He’s coming in to see it tomorrow.’ And I told him briefly what the man had said, adding, ‘It appears your profession is not so gentlemanly, after all.’

‘Berners is not exactly typical,’ he growled. There was a pause. ‘You want to pick up the stamps right away, do you?’

‘I think it would be best. I’m not a stamp dealer, and I didn’t like his attitude.’

‘All right.’ I was just about to ring off when he added, ‘I was going to phone you this evening anyway. Something very odd has come to light. Tell you about it when I see you.’