Long Time Coming - Retail, page 3
part #18 of Robert Goddard Series
‘I see. Well, could I give you my phone number and ask you to contact me if you do hear from him? Or if your mother knows anything?’
‘All right.’ She reeled it off and I jotted it down.
‘Remember there could be a payment for information I can use, won’t you, Mr Swan? Could I ask your first name?’
‘Stephen.’
‘Thank you. I hope to speak to you again, Stephen.’
‘One thing, Miss Henchy.’
‘Uhuh?’
‘Can you tell me what my uncle was convicted of that put him in prison for thirty-six years?’
A pause. Then she replied, ‘No, Stephen. I can’t.’
‘Why not? Is it such a big secret?’
‘Yes. That’s exactly what it is. A big secret. So, let me know if you think you can help.’
Eldritch habitually stepped out into the garden for a smoke after dinner. That evening I joined him. It was a cold, still night. The sea running in the bay was barely a murmur. The scent of his Sobranie hung in the air.
‘You want one?’ he offered, the silver of his cigarette case catching the light from the kitchen window.
‘No, thanks.’
‘What, then?’ He coughed. ‘I suspect you didn’t come out here to judge how bad my lungs are.’
‘An Irish journalist phoned here today.’
‘Really?’ He didn’t sound particularly surprised. ‘What did he want?’
‘She was asking after you. Had we heard from you? Did we know where you were? That kind of thing.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said no: you hadn’t been in touch.’
‘Good. Thanks, Stephen. That was kind of you.’
‘She offered money for your story.’
‘Did she?’
‘Aren’t you going to ask how much?’
‘No. Whatever the figure, I can’t afford to sell. But tell me if you want.’
‘Actually, she never specified an amount.’
‘Ah. Right. Negotiable, I suppose. As most things are.’
‘Her name’s Moira Henchy.’
‘Henchy?’ Now he did sound surprised.
‘Yes. Do you know her?’
He seemed to have to mull the point over before replying. ‘Never heard of her.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
I gave him a moment to reconsider his answer. But he didn’t. So then I said, ‘It won’t end with one phone call, will it?’
‘No.’ He drew on his cigarette. ‘It assuredly won’t.’
‘I don’t want Mum bothered on your account.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure she isn’t.’
‘How will you do that?’
‘I’ll think it over. And let you know.’
There seemed to be only one way Eldritch could keep his word. That was by doing what I’d been willing him to do all along: move out of Zanzibar. He’d been dead to us all my life. I saw no good reason why he shouldn’t revert to that status. Mum would forget him soon enough. I was his only blood relative. And I was confident I wouldn’t miss him, sly old relic of a chancer that he was.
I decided to give him a few days to come to the obvious conclusion before putting it to him bluntly. But before the few days were up, something else happened.
The hall was an organized chaos of dust sheets, stepladders and paint pots, with the front door wedged open to aid drying, when an early-afternoon caller pressed at the bell.
‘Hold on,’ I shouted, balancing my brush on an open pot before threading my way along the hall.
I eased the door open and found myself looking down at a short, tubby, middle-aged man in a dark overcoat that was far too heavy for the springlike day, and a black Homburg. His round face was framed by a cushion of fat, emphasizing the smallness of his features, which he’d complemented with tiny, round-framed glasses and a smudge of moustache. A surprisingly vivid bow-tie peaked out between the raised lapels of his coat.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said with a smile. His voice was soft and precise. ‘I’m looking for Mr Eldritch Swan.’
I was tempted to say, ‘Join the queue’. Instead, I replied, accurately enough to my mind, ‘He doesn’t live here.’
The smile stayed in place. ‘Is he in?’
‘Like I just said, he—’
‘Excuse me, young man,’ he interrupted, ‘I don’t want to waste your time or mine. I assume you’re Mr Swan’s nephew, Stephen.’
‘How do you—’
‘Let me finish.’ He cautioned me to do so with a raised leather-gloved finger. ‘I have a proposition to put to Mr Swan. A potentially very lucrative proposition. On behalf of a client. My card.’ He plucked a card out of an inside pocket and slid it into my hand. I glanced down at it.
F. J. Twisk
Solicitor
3 Ely Court
London EC1
Telephone 01-278 6296
‘You’ve come a long way, Mr Twisk,’ I said noncommittally.
‘I’m putting up at the Redcliffe, Mr Swan. Your uncle can find me there. I know he’s been staying here since his release from prison. Impecuniousness is the curse of many an ex-con, if you’ll pardon the term. I’m in a position to solve that particular problem for him. The solution might even be described as overkill.’ His smile had tightened. ‘I’m here to do my client’s bidding. Your uncle would be well advised – and certainly well rewarded – to do the same. Tell him it concerns this.’
Another pluck at an inside pocket produced a newspaper cutting, which he laid gently in my palm. Under the headline Pick of American tycoon’s collection comes to London was a screed of prose about some new exhibition at the Royal Academy. I caught the name Jay Brownlow, along with a jumble of artistic greats: Monet, Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse and the like. Brownlow I remembered as an American food-canning dynasty, Jay as its public, party-going face of earlier in the century. I’d never heard of his art collection before. But it was no surprise he had one. It went with the territory.
‘What’s this supposed to mean?’ I asked. But, looking up, I saw that Twisk had no more to say to me. He was already making off along the street at a brisk, short-paced clip. What he’d come to do he’d evidently done.
According to the newspaper cutting, Jay Brownlow had taken up art collecting as he had charitable giving after a misspent youth that had made no discernible dent in his family fortune: a Jazz Age bon viveur turned middle-aged connoisseur-cum-philanthropist. He had died in 1972, decreeing the wider world should have a chance to see the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces adorning the walls of his Baltimore mansion. Hence the touring exhibition that had just arrived at the Royal Academy. The Daily Telegraph’s art critic gave it top marks. ‘An extraordinary concentration of high-quality painters’ highest-quality work.’ The Picassos were singled out for particular commendation. Someone, Twisk presumably, had underlined the phrase ‘A roomful of glittering Cubist gems’.
What Eldritch had to do with this was likely to prove impenetrable unless I could wheedle it out of him. But I was actually more interested in using Twisk’s visit to hasten my uncle on his way. He was welcome to keep his secrets if we could be rid of him.
I told Mum what had happened and was gratified to see how disturbed she was. The mystery of what crime Eldritch had committed was beginning to cast its shadow over her, admittedly with a lot of encouragement from me. In the circumstances, his reaction to the news was every bit as suspicious as I might have hoped.
‘You told him I’ve been staying here, Stephen?’
‘He already knew.’
‘How could a solicitor from London know that, Eldritch?’ Mum asked.
My uncle shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’
‘But you must have an idea what the lucrative proposition is that he wants to put to you,’ I said.
Another shrug. He produced a pair of glasses that looked as if they had probably been Irish Health Service standard issue circa 1960 and proceeded to skim-read the cutting. ‘Who’s his client?’ The question was barely more than a rhetorical murmur.
‘He didn’t say.’
‘You mentioned a card.’
‘Here.’ I handed it to him.
‘Ely Court.’ He shook his head. ‘Someone’s playing games with me. Do you have a map of London, Stephen?’
‘An A to Z, yes. You want to know where Ely Court is?’
‘Confirmation … would be useful.’
I fetched the A–Z from my room and looked up Ely Court in the index as I wandered back downstairs. It was so small it wasn’t actually shown on the map, listed merely as ‘off Ely Place’, a cul-de-sac running north from Holborn Circus.
Mum caught my eye as I re-entered the sitting-room. Eldritch was staring into space – or, rather, into a past he had no wish to revisit. He looked older and frailer than ever, hunched in an armchair, dressed in his dead brother’s clothes, a shaft of sunlight revealing every line and crevice on his haggard face.
‘The A to Z,’ I said, holding the book in front of him, open at the listed page. ‘Ely Court is off Ely Place.’ I pointed. ‘There.’
He put his glasses back on and peered at the map, then took the book from me and peered some more. ‘Damn it all,’ he said under his breath.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘It’s close to Hatton Garden,’ he replied. ‘Too close to be a coincidence.’
‘Hatton Garden? The diamond district?’
‘Exactly.’ He passed the book back to me and took another look at Twisk’s card. ‘Journalists and lawyers. You know it’s time to worry when you have both of them on your trail.’
‘Do you intend to see this man, Eldritch?’ my mother asked.
He sighed. ‘It seems I may have to.’ He levered himself out of the chair and plodded towards the door. ‘Excuse me. I need to … consider my position.’ In the doorway, he stopped and gazed around the dust-sheeted hallway. ‘It’s a pity you can’t just … redecorate a life,’ he mused. Then he started slowly up the stairs.
FOUR
Eldritch went out an hour or so later, telling Mum he wouldn’t be back for dinner. He didn’t say where he was going, but it seemed obvious. He wasn’t exactly the centre of a wide social circle. I didn’t see the going of him myself. But I planned to be on hand when he returned. And to find out, if I could, whether he had taken on the ‘lucrative assignment’ Twisk was offering him. As it turned out, I got my chance to do that long before he returned.
Mum was engrossed in some TV cop show when the phone rang late that evening. She signalled for me to answer it. To my surprise, the caller was Eldritch.
‘I’m at the Redcliffe Hotel, Stephen,’ he announced.
‘I thought you might be.’
‘Do you think you could join me here? There’s something I’d like to put to you. Man to man.’
‘What about Twisk?’
‘He’s toddled off to bed. But I’ve … reached an agreement with him. That’s what I want to discuss with you. Meet me in the bar, there’s a good fellow.’ His unusually avuncular tone suggested he’d already spent some time in the bar. ‘I’ll buy you a drink. Well, Twisk will. Or, rather, his client. We really should talk, Stephen. Do say you’ll come.’
I’d spent one university vacation working at the Redcliffe. It maintained the palm-court tradition in the teeth of changing fashion, though it looked more like a maharajah’s seaside retreat thanks to its Indian-style architecture. That was a legacy of its original owner, Colonel Robert Smith, who’d retired there after making pots of money building roads, bridges, houses and palaces all over the subcontinent. Torbay’s mild climate had always attracted well-heeled Britons returning home after long years abroad. In that sense, Eldritch fitted in perfectly, bar the well-heeled part, of course.
Dancing was in progress in the ballroom, the band doing its brassy best to fill the floor. Eldritch was at a central table in the adjoining bar, in the lee of a pillar, sipping whisky and apparently lost in thought. He was wearing his brown pinstripe suit and smoking one of his Sobranies with an air of half-remembered decadence. All in all, the hotel could have done worse than hire him to enhance the mood of a bygone age.
He looked up as I approached and nodded to the barman, which sufficed to get me whatever I wanted to drink. I settled for a beer and joined him at his table.
‘Cheers,’ I said, with less than wholehearted enthusiasm.
‘Your good health, Stephen.’ He took another sip of whisky. ‘I haven’t tasted Scotch in thirty-six years, you know. Thanks to Twisk’s client, I’ve been able to break my drought with a particularly fine malt.’
‘Who is his client?’ I asked in a casual tone.
‘He won’t say. But evidently no skinflint. Twisk didn’t stint himself when it came to ordering wine with our dinner. I haven’t tasted Chambertin in thirty-six years either.’
‘I take it from all this generosity on his part you’ve agreed to do what his client wants.’
‘Yes.’ Eldritch winced. ‘Which I’ll no doubt come to regret.’
‘Why do it, then?’
‘No choice. I can’t stay on at Zanzibar. And, as I’m sure you’ve already come to suspect, I haven’t the means to move anywhere … tolerable. So, I need money. Enough to take me somewhere … where I can die in comfort. The Riviera, perhaps. Cannes. Nice. Somewhere like that.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Are you planning to tell me what you have to do to fund your Mediterranean dotage?’
‘Yes. I am. That’s why I asked you here. But let’s go somewhere quieter.’ He glanced towards the ballroom. ‘I can’t compete with a saxophone.’
The first-floor lounge, Colonel Smith’s old ornately ceilinged drawing-room, was where guests often retired for coffee after dinner. They’d all been and gone by the time we walked in, though coffeepots, drained cups and chocolate-crumbed plates remained on several tables. We sat by one of the windows that looked out into the bay, with the lights of Torquay twinkling in the distance.
Eldritch was breathing hard but shallowly after climbing the stairs, a smoker’s cough rumbling away in his chest. It didn’t stop him lighting another Sobranie, though.
‘I reckon my lungs are shot,’ he said when he’d recovered his breath. ‘Smoking was about the only pleasure there was in prison. On the other hand, my liver’s probably A1 on account of the enforced sobriety. The way I was going in 1940, cirrhosis would probably have got me long since if the Garda hadn’t felt my collar. It’s not much of a consolation for spending all those years inside, but maybe I should be grateful. What do you think?’
‘I … don’t know.’
‘No. No more you do. No more does anyone who hasn’t gone through it. Buried alive. That’s what I was. Entombed. Walled up. After a few months at Mountjoy, they sent me to Portlaoise. And there I stayed until January of this year. I first saw the town the day I was released. I’d arrived at night in the back of a van. And you could only see sky from the cells or the exercise yard. Just a patch of sky. Grey, usually. Grey and blank. Like wadding inside a box. You have no idea, Stephen. You can’t imagine what it’s like. I couldn’t, unless I’d been through it. And if I had been able to, I couldn’t have imagined surviving it.’
‘How did you survive?’
‘I’m not sure. By not counting the days, I suppose. By not expecting it to end. By not hoping. But I’m hoping now. That’s the worst of it. That’s what happens when people offer you money. I can’t sell my story to Moira Henchy or anyone else. But I can do what Twisk’s client is asking. It’s a calculated risk. But I have to take it.’
‘And what is it?’
He sighed and drew on his cigarette. ‘He – or she – wants me to prove the Picassos in the Brownlow Collection were stolen from a man called Isaac Meridor. In 1940.’
‘Were they?’
‘Certainly.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I helped steal them.’
I stared at him in silent astonishment for a moment. His responding gaze was sardonic, almost mischievous.
‘It’s not what the Irish put me away for, Stephen. Ironically, I was innocent of what they accused me of. But innocent of all wrong-doing?’ He smiled. ‘Hardly.’
‘Why are you admitting this to me?’
‘Because I need your help. And because, as Neville’s son, you’ve shared to some degree in our family’s ill-gotten gains.’
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Let me explain. According to your mother, Neville used a bequest from our father, your grandfather, to fund his early retirement and the purchase of Zanzibar. It was a lot more than he might have expected to receive. And not just because he didn’t have to split it with me. The old man was as big a rogue as I am in his own way, you see. I don’t suppose your father ever told you that. Well, maybe he never knew, though I find that hard to believe.’
Dad had always attributed Grandad’s unsuspected affluence to shrewd investment. I’d suggested it might have had less respectable (or more interesting) origins myself a couple of times, much to his annoyance. Naturally, I wasn’t about to admit that to Eldritch. But I did want to know where his claims were leading. ‘What kind of rogue exactly?’ I prompted.
‘The bribable kind, Stephen. Isaac Meridor was a Belgian diamond merchant, one of Antwerp’s wealthiest. A Jew, as almost all the merchants were, and are, I dare say. Unlike most of them, however, Meridor had stakes in several mining companies in the Belgian Congo, where the diamonds actually came from. He’d been out there as a young man, employed as an agent by one of the companies. Ever read Heart of Darkness?’
‘Yes, I have.’ And who, having read it, could forget it? Conrad’s defining vision of horror and brutality in the Congo of the late nineteenth century was as powerful as it was forbidding.
‘Enough said, then. Meridor was a part of the system that ran that charnel house. But he didn’t go mad like Kurtz. He went another way: into business. The mining companies made handsome profits. Costs are low when labour’s free, when all’s said and done. But King Leopold, and later the Belgian government, after he sold the colony to the state, held half the shares in all the companies and added on a load of taxes and fees as well.
