Cousin Once Removed Read online

  ‘I don’t know, and I’m not particularly bothered. If you want to puzzle your head over it, you may as well know that the coach was Scottish too, and the same crest was on the panels as on the gate-posts of the place. Figure that one out. Old Jules Michelet was a gem. We got on like brothers. But, Christ, how that man could drink! We got stoned together for about three days and Molly hasn’t forgiven me yet. They have sort of fermented prunes over there that can just about blow your head off. I brought a jar of them back for Ronnie and we’ll see what he makes of them. The customs man looked at them a bit oddly, but he let them by.

  ‘I’d been browsing round the shops and the dealers, but old Jules tapped me straight into the peasant network. “You go and see old so-and-so,” he’d say. “He’s got his grandfather’s musket hanging over the fireplace.” And when I’d bought old so-and-so’s grandad’s musket, old so-and-so would pass me along to a neighbour whose great-uncle had been gamekeeper to Richelieu’s nephew or something. Those peasants hate to lose anything. I came across a few guns which had been hidden away from the Nazis during the war and never taken out again. One old boy had an Alexander Forsyth shotgun by Joe Manton which had been converted, very crudely, to percussion-cap, and Molly spotted the original scent-bottle primer on a shelf in the barn.’

  The customer nodded and left the shop. Wallace hardly saw him go. ‘F-first or second model?’ he asked keenly.

  ‘First.’

  ‘Well, all right. It d-doesn’t sound as if you’ve wasted much of the firm’s t-time or money, so I’m not quite as furious as I was. Have you,’ Wallace asked sternly, ‘got every bill and receipt for the taxman?’

  Keith nodded several times. ‘Every last one. Would I have dared face you if I hadn’t?’

  ‘You might have t-tried.’

  ‘I’d have sent Molly to break it to you. Now, I’ve got a couple of calls to make. If Molly looks for me, tell her I’ll be back shortly. And I must get down to preparing a catalogue of those guns.’

  ‘First things first,’ Wallace said. ‘There’s a dozen or more guns in for overhaul, all wanted in time for the grouse.’

  ‘They’ll get them in time for the pheasants.’

  ‘Split the difference,’ Wallace said. ‘Partridges. How did you get on driving in France?’

  ‘They were all driving on the wrong side, but I soon sorted them out,’ Keith said. ‘See you!’

  *

  Newton Lauder’s premier wine merchant was situated only a few yards from Keith’s shop, but Keith had no special contact with its proprietor. For this errand he needed a friend. He drove several streets north and west to where, among the more expensive houses of the town, he could park outside what was little more than a very superior off-licence. Andy Coutts, the owner, was a vintage arms enthusiast and a regular customer at the shop.

  Keith carried his bottles inside and set them on the counter. ‘Horse-trading time, Andy,’ he said.

  Andy Coutts studied the bottles. ‘Champagne cognac!’ he said. He referred to a tome on the counter. ‘I can give you a damn good trade on these. You’d a good holiday?’

  ‘Just grand! And while I was looking around I remembered you turning out with a Le Page shotgun, and the hammers not matching.’ Keith took a small object from his pocket and laid it beside his bottles. ‘Don’t lay a finger on it yet, but would that not make a better match?’

  Coutts’s eyes lit up. His hand moved but stopped at Keith’s headshake. ‘It would.’

  ‘I could make it so’s you’d not know the difference. Now, bide a wee minute. Look but don’t touch.’

  Keith went out to his car and took out his two jerricans. From the mouth of each he tipped out a gill or so of liquid into the gutter. With a damp cloth he wiped carefully round the neck of the can marked ‘Petrol’ before carrying both inside. On the counter, he picked away with his knife at the wax seals round the black plastic cups in the necks of the cans, and picked the cups out. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Eight gallons of good claret, straight from the vineyard in the Médoc. Personal stock of the proprietor, who was selling me a miquelet at the time. He’d half-promised it to somebody else who hadn’t come up with the money. It was in rather tatty condition, so I made him throw in the wine.’ The value of the wine was included in the receipt for the gun, but Wallace need never know.

  ‘I’m in no position to bottle that kind of stuff,’ Coutts protested.

  ‘You deal with the hotels. Sell it to them for table carafes.’

  ‘You could sell it to them yourself.’

  ‘I’m not wanting to sell it, I’m wanting to swap it. That way it needn’t figure in anybody’s books. But if I swapped it with a hotel I’d have to take their booze at hotel prices.’

  Silence fell between them. Through the shop’s window Keith admired the figure of a red-haired girl who was pricing the wines on display.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Coutts said slowly.

  ‘All right.’ Keith picked up the hammer. ‘If you don’t want to oblige me. . . .’

  ‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t,’ Coutts said hastily. ‘Just what sort of a deal did you have in mind?’

  ‘Start with a bottle of Médoc for my partner. Something cheap that he wouldn’t recognize the name of.’

  Twenty minutes of hard bargaining later, Keith fitted the last case of beer into the back of the car. He stood back to admire the stack of assorted alcohols, almost into the path of a passing Capri. ‘And every drop of it duty-free,’ he told himself. ‘Accountants don’t know everything.’

  He drove off to collect his dogs.

  Chapter Two

  Holidays, even holidays taken on money never shared with the Inspector of Taxes, have to be paid for in other ways. Wallace’s wife, Janet, was adamant that, after holding the fort for so long, she and Wal were going to have a break of their own and they were going to have it before the shooting season opened and thereafter took up all of the men’s time until late the following February. She took a reluctant Wallace off to visit an aunt in Fort William.

  With a lot of help from Minnie Pilrig, their occasional assistant, and such time as Molly could spare from house and baby, Keith found himself running the shop, overtaking the backlog of gun repairs, preparing his catalogue and coping, in such time as he could spare, with his own specialized branch of the business, which was dealing in antique weapons and appurtenances and modern replicas thereof. All this he managed to do by keeping up a furious pace through rather more hours than God had ever allocated for work until, as he said, he would have been fresher if he had never gone on holiday at all.

  ‘I could have done with a holiday myself,’ Molly pointed out.

  ‘Am I very inconsiderate?’

  She gave him a kiss on the ear which sent a jolt straight to his vital organs. ‘I never expected anything else,’ she said.

  And so he slogged on for ten hard days.

  On the eleventh, Molly was taking care of the shop while Minnie Pilrig tended the needs of her own family. Keith’s workbench, together with the antiques side of the business, had years before been squeezed out of the shop by the expansion of retail trade under Wallace’s management. So it was on the first floor of Briesland House, among the racked weapons of older days, that Keith was working on the more modern guns when Molly telephoned. He turned the Vivaldi tape down to a whisper.

  ‘Sir Henry Batemore just rang,’ Molly said. She sounded awed. ‘He wants you to go and see him.’

  ‘At Wallengreen Castle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘He didn’t say. He just said to be there at twelve.’

  ‘Call him back. Tell him to come here. I’ll see him at two sharp.’

  ‘Keith!’ Molly was shocked. ‘You can’t do that. He’s important.’

  ‘Not to me, he isn’t. He doesn’t shoot and I never heard of him owning anything worth having in the way of guns. He fishes, but he never puts any business our way. The hell with him.’
/>   ‘But, Keith, isn’t he Home Secretary or something?’

  ‘Something. He’s Shadow Home Secretary. There’s a difference. He isn’t even our MP. . . . And his son’s one of those hunt saboteurs. I’m not driving thirty miles each way because Sir Henry crooks a finger.’

  ‘Well, I’m not calling him back to say so.’

  ‘Molly, I’m busy!’

  ‘You want to insult the Shadow Home Secretary, you call him back. I’ve got customers in the shop.’ She hung up.

  Keith glared at the phone while his hands resumed dismantling an Anson and Deeley action. When it came down to it, he was chary of antagonizing an influential man and potential customer and one, moreover, who might have considerable clout with the police after the next election. He relieved his feelings with the rudest word which, for the moment, came into his mind. The gun retorted by flicking its top-lever spring over his shoulder and into the darkest corner of the room.

  *

  Twelve noon was already past when Keith turned his car through the gates of Wallengreen Castle. For this the labyrinthine roads which thread the lusher plain near the English border, and a system of sign-posting which seemed to assume that he already knew the way, were to blame.

  Scotland teems with castles, many of them reminders of a war-torn history. Some are ruins. Some, because any man may call his home a castle, are little more than minor country houses with a token battlement or two. Others are almost fortified palaces. Wallengreen Castle was no Victorian fantasy but a sizeable sixteenth-century stronghold which had been modernized as far as was essential for comfortable living and not an inch beyond. The work had been done with taste and a respect for the old structure, and the result was that the building had a strange, grim charm like, Keith thought, a murderous teddybear.

  Keith parked on gravel, climbed granite steps and thumbed a modern bell-push. The heavy outer doors were already open. There was movement beyond an inner, glazed screen and a butler opened its door. Keith was not unacquainted with butlers; indeed, at one time the butler to a noble but impoverished household had come poaching with him regularly, strictly for his lordship’s table. This butler, however, was large, portly, pompous and attired in the height of formality and discomfort – and apparently proud of it. Keith disliked him on sight.

  Keith produced his business card. The butler examined it as if it had been a dead mouse. ‘The tradesmen’s entrance is at the back,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t give a hoot where it is. I come in this way or not at all,’ Keith said slowly and distinctly.

  The butler blinked at him. ‘Round the back,’ he repeated.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Keith said. He turned and descended the steps towards his car.

  The butler followed him as far as the head of the steps. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going home. I’ll write to Sir Henry and tell him why. And I’ll tell him that if he still wants the favour of an interview he can make a fresh appointment and come to my shop at my convenience. And a bloody good day to you too!’

  The butler squared himself for battle and then suddenly capitulated. ‘Come this way, please,’ he said.

  Keith followed a back which radiated injured dignity, through the two sets of doors, across a hallway and up a twisting flight of stairs into a gallery. This was lit by large windows of comparatively recent date, looking on to a courtyard or bailey bright with flowers. In keeping with the building’s original purpose most of the windows, old and new, overlooked the courtyard and Keith could easily have skimmed a quick impression of the interior workings of the castle. But the other long wall of the gallery was racked with row upon row of guns. Keith almost stopped in his tracks but walked on, using his eyes. The butler opened a heavy door at the far end.

  ‘Mr Calder,’ he announced and stood back.

  Keith moved forward and heard the door close behind him. Sir Henry was writing at an ornate desk and did not look up. Keith did not expect him to – he knew how the game was played. He seated himself on a tapestry chair and looked round the book-lined room.

  Out of the corner of his own eye he could see the other man surreptitiously eyeing him. Sir Henry Batemore was in his early fifties. He had been of middle build before he had begun to spread about the belly. His face was flattened, reminding Keith of a Pekinese. His eyes were watery and seemed slightly bloodshot. All in all, an undistinguished and puffy set of features was saved from absolute mediocrity by a crown of prematurely white hair which looked very well on television and by the deeply resonant orator’s voice which had been his major political asset.

  ‘Do sit down.’

  ‘I already did,’ Keith pointed out.

  ‘Yes.’ Sir Henry nodded in forgiveness of the presumption. ‘You may be wondering why I sent for you.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Mr Calder, you have just returned from abroad where you purchased a number of antique guns.’

  ‘I know,’ Keith said.

  ‘There is no need to take that tone,’ said the mellifluous voice. ‘I am merely opening up the subject. Mr Calder, I want first refusal of any of the guns which you brought back with you.’

  Keith thought, and then shook his head.

  ‘Mr Calder, I intend to have it.’ Years in high office seemed to have convinced Sir Henry that a demand made loudly enough and in an Oxford accent was bound to be acceded to. But he did not know Keith Calder.

  ‘Why should I give you preference over my other customers?’ Keith asked. ‘And, anyway, which one do you want?’

  ‘I’m not prepared to tell you which one. I’ve no intention of being held to ransom.’

  Keith decided that he was going to nail Sir Henry’s hide to the barn door. ‘No way am I going to give you first pick if I don’t know what you want. Why don’t you buy the whole lot?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Say . . . twelve grand.’

  ‘That’s blackmail?’

  ‘Balls,’ Keith said sweetly. ‘You should know the meaning of the word blackmail. After all, it originated hereabouts, possibly it was first said either by or about the laird of this very place. If you buy them from me and let me resell the ones you don’t want on your behalf, you might well end up showing a profit.’

  Sir Henry thought it over for a few seconds and then shook his head. ‘I’d have to place too much trust in your integrity and your judgment.’ He paused and a glint came into his eye. ‘Now, suppose I were to offer you your choice of any five of the guns outside in exchange for, say, any two of yours.’

  Keith realized that, although he disliked Sir Henry and all that he stood for – including Parliament – they nevertheless had some common ground. Each was a natural higgler in the market place. He settled down to enjoy himself. ‘You had your butler whip me through there in about ten seconds flat,’ he said. ‘You wanted to whet my interest without giving me time to study them. Well, I don’t need half that time to get the general picture. Any valuable guns out there were sold many years back. Maybe times were hard. Then times got better and your interior decorator or your wife or somebody filled up the blank space by buying in guns. But they’re like your books in here, bought by the yard for the sake of the bindings.’

  ‘You’re going out of your way to be insulting,’ Sir Henry said, although he looked faintly amused.

  ‘If you want to tell me that you read theology in German to get to sleep,’ Keith said, ‘go ahead and try to convince me. Those guns outside comprise about a hundred Tower muskets, probably bought when the Tower of London was selling them off for a few quid each. They fetch a bit more now, but they’re still the commonest flintlock going, and that number would be a drag on the market. Then, just to add a little variety, twenty-odd clapped-out hammer-guns of rockbottom quality have been thrown in. And even those have probably been picked over by some dealer.’

  ‘A friend of my son bought one,’ Sir Henry admitted. ‘But the man’s a rank amateur. There could still be something worth having.’

  ‘T
here is. Two that I noticed. There might be more. I don’t think so, but there might. If I go and look I’ll have a better idea whether I can meet you.’

  Sir Henry hesitated and then nodded. He began to get up.

  ‘No,’ Keith said firmly. ‘I’m not having you looking over my shoulder. If I trade in the dark, then so do you.’ He walked out into the gallery, closing the door behind him. Although he was almost certain that nobody was watching, he spread his attention over the whole collection. How the hell had a Maynard tape-primer got in among that collection of rubbish? And how had a collector of even modest competence missed it? The Frazer shotgun was understandable – it had been crudely converted from pinfire to centrefire. He returned to the study.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Just the two. One good, one moderate.’

  ‘Which two?’

  ‘Uh-uh,’ Keith said. ‘For that kind of advice I charge a fee. I wouldn’t want them disappearing to Christie’s.’

  ‘You can trust me.’

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ Keith said. ‘But your profession’s against you.’

  For the first time, Sir Henry Batemore threw back his head and laughed. Like Keith, he was enjoying the battle of wits. ‘I suppose it is at that! Well, make me a proposition.’

  Keith could make a very good guess as to what Sir Henry was after. ‘Without having the faintest idea what you’re after,’ he said, ‘my hands are tied. But try this for size. We might have a deal if I could be sure you weren’t after any of the more valuable guns I’m bringing back. Can I take it that you’re not interested in a French matchlock with matching musket-rest? Or an early Dutch snaphaunce, showing a bulge deriving from the wheel-lock? Or a duck’s-foot pistol?’ While he spoke, Keith was watching the other’s eyes.

  But Sir Henry looked away. ‘Oh no, you don’t,’ he said. ‘I might just as well tell you aloud which ones I want. Let’s try it another way. I’ll trust you this far. If you were out to buy my two guns, what would you offer?’

  Keith named a figure.

  ‘Right,’ Sir Henry said. ‘When your guns reach your shop, you let me know. I’ll meet you there. I’ll buy what I want at your list price, and provided that I’m the first customer to see any of your guns, you can buy my two for half your figure. How does that sound?’