Cousin Once Removed Read online

  COUSIN ONCE REMOVED

  Gerald Hammond

  © Gerald Hammond 1984

  Gerald Hammond has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1984 by MACMILLAN LONDON LIMITED.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Postscript

  Chapter One

  A heavily-laden hatchback with a right-hand drive, adhering with great care to the right-hand margin of the road, turned out of the D709 at La Rochebeaucourt on to the D939 and built up speed towards Angoulême.

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to the shooting rights around here,’ Keith Calder said. He leaned forward to let the breeze from the open window cool the back of the driver’s seat. ‘You could let out a million pheasants in those woods and they’d stick around.’

  ‘The countryside’s just like ours,’ Molly said. ‘Except for the cover. And the poplars. And the sunflowers.’

  ‘And the heat.’

  ‘The heat isn’t so bad, now that we’re heading north,’ Molly pointed out. ‘When’ll we get home? The day after tomorrow?’

  ‘Probably.’ Keith took his eyes off the road to glance at his wife. Her usually vivacious face looked drawn. ‘Are you anxious about Deborah?’ he asked.

  ‘She’ll be all right with Janet,’ Molly said shortly.

  Now that it was too late to do anything about it, Keith could afford to be considerate. ‘Not much of a holiday for you, I’m afraid,’ he suggested.

  ‘The last week was all right,’ Molly admitted. ‘But I’m still about worn out.’

  ‘So’s the car.’

  Keith and Molly Calder had left home nearly seven weeks earlier, intending a fortnight’s touring holiday. But, as Keith said, a few business visits would make the whole trip tax-deductible. So they had toured the gun-centre at Liège. Molly had jibbed at the mileage entailed in extending the pilgrimage through Brescia and Burgos. Instead, they had attended auctions and trailed around junk shops in sweltering towns, haggling in a mixture of schoolboy French, pidgin English and sign-language. At first it had seemed that they might get home within a week or ten days of the date they were due. But word had gone round. Keith made friends. Doors had opened which were usually tight shut. A trail had led from one purchase to another. Keith had cabled for more funds. A final week had been spent in a rented farmhouse of golden stone and red pantiles deep in the Dordogne while Keith cleaned, greased, listed and packed his acquisitions and Molly at last found holiday peace in that tranquil countryside. Once, when Keith drove into Bordeaux to enquire about shipping his purchases home, she had gone along to shop. But Bordeaux had been expensive and Keith was already nervous about his own expenditure. Anything that Molly wanted was therefore a drain on after-tax funds. So all that Molly had acquired on her holiday was a deep and beautiful tan – and some French lingerie. Somehow the question of tax never arose when good French lace was in question.

  Molly sighed.

  Keith sensed the sigh. ‘We can snatch another week in a couple of months’ time,’ he suggested.

  Molly did a quick calculation. Two months would take them into the pheasant season. ‘Spend a week beating for you, up to my bum in wet kale? No, thank you very much,’ she said. ‘Next year Wallace can mind the shop, you can rent Chez Beaudout again and Janet and I can stay there with Deborah while you go off and tour the gunshops on your own.’

  ‘You mean that?’ Keith asked, amused.

  ‘Probably not,’ Molly admitted. Keith was a good husband and virtuous – when he remembered, which nowadays, Molly admitted to herself, was most of the time. But there had been occasions in the past when his affectionate nature had run away with him.

  ‘Hitch-hiker up ahead,’ Keith said, lifting his foot.

  ‘Why this one in particular?’

  ‘She’s Scottish.’ And indeed the blonde girl had a St Andrew’s Cross stitched to her rucksack.

  ‘She also has more tit and bum than she has clothes,’ Molly said.

  ‘That’s another good reason,’ Keith retorted. And Molly gave a quick snort of laughter.

  The girl came running up to Keith’s window. She had a sulky face but not without prettiness. Her skin was pink rather than brown, turning red at the nose and shoulders. ‘Are you going as far as Rouen?’ she asked.

  ‘Hop in.’ Keith reached back and unlocked the rear door.

  The girl slid her brand-new rucksack across the rear seat and ducked inside. ‘You’re on holiday?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ Molly said. ‘And you?’

  ‘Just on the way home. I’m to meet up with friends in Rouen.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Glasgow.’

  ‘You don’t sound Glasgow.’

  ‘I was brought up in Fife,’ she said quickly.

  In Angoulême the sign-posting petered out. They threaded their way by a mixture of feminine intuition, male hunch and faint recollections of having once passed that way before, albeit in the opposite direction, and picked up the Poitiers postings. Keith set them moving fast up the N 10.

  ‘Another hitch-hiker,’ Molly said. ‘A Brit.’

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ Keith muttered. ‘I have un petit Froggy up my tail.’ He left the Union Jack, spectacles, teeth, knobbly knees and anxiously waving thumb far behind.

  ‘Seemed like a nice boy,’ Molly said.

  ‘I don’t pick up nice boys.’

  ‘I noticed. Here’s another.’

  The next hitch-hiker had the St Andrew’s Cross on his rucksack. He seemed about to raise his thumb, then suddenly turned away.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Keith said.

  ‘The woodcock? I saw it.’

  ‘Woodcock?’ Keith forgot about hitch-hikers.

  *

  They made good time through Poitiers and Châtellerault. Keith turned off the péage into Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine for a quick lunch. They had stayed a night at Le Boule d’Or on the way south. Keith, who loathed getting back into a car which had stood in hot sun, turned up a narrow lane and under the archway into the shaded courtyard.

  They were hardly seated before the girl excused herself. She was back within two minutes. ‘I’ve met a friend,’ she said. ‘It’ll be less bother for you if I go on with him. Can I get my rucksack out of your car?’

  Keith gave her the key. Keith and Molly had finished eating before they began to wonder why she had not returned it. Keith called for the bill. ‘You can pick them, can’t you?’ Molly said. ‘All we need just now’s to have the car stolen.’

  But the car was still in its patch of shade under the trellis. The doors were unlocked, the key in the ignition. The parcel shelf was in the driver’s seat and the interior was in turmoil.

  ‘Turned over, by Christ!’ Keith said. ‘Shall I get the fuzz?’

  ‘Let’s see what we’ve lost first. If we get the gendarmes we could be here for days.’

  Half an hour later Keith closed the last case. He sniffed suspiciously at the necks of his two jerricans and scratched his head. ‘If there’s anything of mine missing I can’t think what the hell it is. Are you short of anything?’

  ‘One bra, but I think I left it on the washing line. It wouldn’t have fitted her anyway.’


  ‘Not by a litre or two,’ Keith agreed. ‘Right. Shall we press on for Dieppe?’

  ‘I’m ready. En avant!’

  Keith stormed the car out into the main street. There was a shrilling of anguished tyres. ‘Keep right,’ Molly screamed.

  *

  By dint of furious driving they caught the last boat of the evening out of Dieppe. They had budgeted for another night in France and were over-provided with francs. Molly was touched when Keith avoided the counter for duty-free drink and instead bought her a large phial of perfume.

  They ate dinner. Afterwards they had intended to sleep but instead shared out the remaining francs and settled down to lose them in the company of several compulsive gamblers, in the tiny casino that occupied one wall of the lounge. Keith was soon cleaned out but Molly proved a small but steady winner. The boat came through the Newhaven harbourmouth as she was changing her chips for a useful wad of British notes.

  ‘How come you’re always lucky at blackjack?’ Keith asked as they descended the stairs to the lower car-deck.

  ‘It’s not luck. Wallace told me how to do it. You just never have the biggest bet on the table. The banker plays against the hand with the most money on it, even if it means letting smaller bets win.’

  ‘He never tells me anything useful like that.’

  ‘You never listen to him. But he’s an accountant. He knows that sort of thing.’ They threaded between cars and lorries to where the hatchback stood. Molly stopped dead. ‘No!’ she wailed. ‘Not again!’

  This time the hatchback door had been forced. Inside the car the disorder was an exact repetition. Molly, who deplored bad language, uttered a word which she had heard Keith use but which she barely understood.

  ‘Quick,’ Keith said. ‘Same tidy-up job. Save your opinions for later.’

  ‘Leave it. The cars are beginning to move.’

  Keith snorted. ‘No way am I driving through customs with the car in this state.’

  ‘And to think that you called me houseproud!’

  They set to, forcing clothes and presents back into their cases any old how. When the car in front moved off, Keith pulled his out of the stream of traffic. ‘I didn’t want to be last off,’ he said fretfully. He made a few deft adjustments to the stowage. ‘Well, if there’s anything missing it can’t be anything expensive. You’re sure your cameras are all there?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Then find me something to tie this door down with.’

  They were the last vehicle up the ramp. Keith took the green lane but a customs officer waved him down. ‘I said we shouldn’t be last,’ he whispered. ‘They’ve got time to give the last car the full treatment.’ He heaved himself out of the car and untied the half-a-pair-of-tights which held the hatchback door shut, keeping up a constant grumble about the damage while the bored man poked through their luggage, sniffed at Keith’s two jerricans and glanced disapprovingly at the bottles displayed on the back seat.

  Five minutes later they were pulling out of Newhaven’s one-way circuit. A heavy lorry bore down on them with horn blaring and lights ablaze. ‘Keep left,’ Molly screamed.

  Keith jerked the car across the road. The lorry howled angrily past. Keith smoothed out his swerve and pretended that it had never happened. ‘Shall we drive right through?’ he suggested. ‘Get home in time for lunch?’

  ‘Yes, let’s. If you’re fit to get us past London you can sleep while I take us up the motorways.’ Molly patted his knee. ‘You can’t wait to see Deborah again either, can you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Keith hid a yawn. It was his dogs in their boarding kennel that were uppermost in his mind.

  *

  In Scotland there was what passed for a heatwave, but the Calders found it cool after the sun of southern France. They breezed along until at last they turned down off the main road and Keith drove through the town of Newton Lauder and out to Briesland House, their home. They ate, bathed and changed before heading back into the town. They had slept in turns on the long road north. Molly was drowsy but Keith had come alert again.

  They parked in the quiet square, almost outside the shop with its black fascia and elegant gold lettering – Keith Calder & Co. Underneath, in very small letters, it added ‘Gunsmith to Royalty’, on the strength of an emergency repair once carried out to the drilling belonging to a remote relative of ex-King Zog. Nobody had ever objected.

  While Molly, softly cooing, fled upstairs to renew acquaintance with her only child, Keith sidled into the shop to face his partner.

  One look at Wallace James’s long, bony face told Keith that his partner was understandably peevish. Keith would also have known this by the absence of Wallace’s slight stammer, which disappeared miraculously in moments of anger. Wallace’s first words made his sentiments clear. ‘You go and bugger off,’ he said, ‘for a short holiday abroad, leaving me to look after the business, my wife to bring up your family and Molly’s brother to look after your home and garden, and you stay gone for about two bloody months! And we’d hardly have known you were still alive but for regular demands for more and more money.’

  ‘I’ve spent a bit,’ Keith admitted, ‘but I’ve spent it well.’

  ‘So as well as being overdrawn again we’re also overstocked?’

  ‘I can turn this lot over for a hell of a profit,’ Keith said.

  Wallace was slightly appeased. ‘Just as long as you do turn them over,’ he said. ‘I don’t want them going plop into your personal collection and getting stuck there.’

  ‘I don’t have a personal collection.’

  ‘Then why’s the best specimen of each type always priced at more than it could ever fetch?’

  They were interrupted in this long-running argument by the arrival of a prospective customer, a young man with pink skin and a leather hat who turned away to the rack of trout rods. ‘Just browsing,’ he said.

  Wallace returned his attention to Keith. ‘All right, then. What did you bring back?’

  ‘Not to say bring back, because I bought about forty guns. The car couldn’t have pulled a load like that and I didn’t want a hassle with the customs. That’s why we spent the last week at Verteillac, listing and packing them for consignment. I sent them by coaster, so God knows when they’ll fetch up. All I brought back with me was a bottle of Médoc for you. Not a well-known château but I think you’ll like it.’

  Wallace’s manner showed a nice mixture of gratitude and irritation. ‘Very good of you,’ he said stiffly, ‘but not the cleverest use of your duty-free allowance.’

  Keith shrugged and smiled. ‘I’ll be the judge of that. If I can’t do a favour for a friend. . . .’

  ‘We’ll d-drink it together. Now, tell me about the trip.’

  ‘It was just great,’ Keith said. ‘I thought the country had been picked clean, but I managed to pick up a few good pieces in need of restoration. Somebody told me that Monsieur Becquet of the Armurerie Central in Riberac had a stock of bits and pieces, so I called on him and he produced boxes of old hammers and things. I wanted to buy the lot but he’d only sell individual items, which is why we spent a week nearby, matching up missing hammers and so on. Anyway, he put me on to a collector near St Aulaye who wanted to sell some things to raise cash for a sale that was coming up in Bordeaux.’

  ‘Aha!’ Wallace said. He hunted in a drawer under the counter and produced a press cutting. ‘That’ll be how this came about. It was in The Scotsman about a fortnight ago.’

  Keith read:

  PISTOLS COMING HOME

  A rare pair of Scottish duelling pistols, made by Ross of Edinburgh and dating from about 1830, will soon be returning to Scotland after an absence of many years.

  coach in barn

  The pistols, described as percussion and with three-quarter stocks and octagonal barrels, are in the original case. They were found in a coach which was itself discovered by masons demolishing an old barn near Libourne, France. The coach, for no known reason, had been walled up in the end
of the barn.

  The coach, said to be in ‘remarkably good condition’, will go to the Musée des Artes in Bordeaux. The pistols came under the hammer in an auction last Wednesday at the Galleries Ramboult, also in Bordeaux. They were bought by Mr Keith Calder of Newton Lauder, for the equivalent of £85.

  ‘Eighty-five quid doesn’t seem much for a good pair of duellers,’ Wallace remarked.

  ‘They’re pretty badly rusted,’ Keith said, ‘but they should clean up. There was some rare stuff in that sale, Wal, but most of it fetched far too much. Quite a few of the guns were British – the whole region’s riddled with English names. It belonged to the English Crown until the middle of the fifteenth century, but there was a special trading relationship for a hell of a time after that.

  ‘Anyway, my collector got what he was after and he made up the money by selling me a duck’s-foot pistol, slightly damaged, and a double-barrel French flintlock of Wender type – you know, Wal, the barrels turn over – and it’s in good enough nick for a museum, except that the engraving verges on the pornographic.

  ‘And at the sale a French artisan type came and spoke to me. Well, I’d been getting by in schoolboy French with a few technical terms thrown in, but this old boy spoke a strong patois filtered through solid garlic. We managed to understand each other with a little help from the rest of the crowd who all joined in. I’d just discovered that if you pick the English word that sounds most likely to have come from the French, and use it, they may laugh but they’ll understand it.’

  ‘The trouble with you,’ Wallace said, ‘is that you get so damned interested in things.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Keith said without really hearing. ‘It turned out that he was foreman of the gang that had found the coach and they were in for a share of whatever the pistols fetched. He wasn’t too disappointed with the price – it was all found money to them – so he wanted to buy me a drink. In the end he took me out to see the place – not exactly a château, more an old, up-market farmhouse.’

  ‘Why would anyone want to wall up a pair of Scottish pistols in a coach in a French barn?’ Wallace asked.