Robert Goddard - Name To a Face

“Mr. Harding,” he said, removing a nearly expired cigarette from between his lips as his gaze swung up from the screen. “Come in.” He stubbed out the cigarette in a butt-filled ashtray and half rose. They shook hands. “Take a seat.”

Harding sat down on the rickety chair facing Shelkin across the desk. “Thanks for seeing me,” he said, with what he hoped was an ingratiating smile.

“No problem. I do most of my business through this thing these days.” Shelkin waggled a bony finger at the computer. “Personal consultations have become a rarity.”

“Well, thanks anyway.”

“Now, you said you aren’t enquiring about your own family.”

“Correct.”

“Pity. Harding’s an Old English name. Literally, son of a herdsman. Solid yeoman stock. You wouldn’t have Huguenot blood on your mother’s side, would you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Only, Huguenot lineage is my speciality.”

“So I believe.”

“Ah yes. You also said I came recommended. Who by, may I ask?”

“A friend of a friend. The thing is-”

“Ann Gashry” Herbert Shelkin smiled thinly in the silence that followed, then reached for the pack of cigarettes at his elbow, flipped up the lid and proffered it to Harding. “Smoke?”

“No, thanks,” Harding murmured, as his mind raced to cope with the realization that somehow Shelkin had rumbled him.

“I was lucky enough to get out of the Civil Service before the healthier-than-thou brigade forced the likes of me to skulk on the street.” Shelkin lit up and waved the match until it was extinguished, then snapped it between his fingers and dropped it into the ashtray. “I find tobacco helps me think. People don’t travel hundreds of miles to see me, Mr. Harding. I’m good at what I do. It’s given me a purpose in life since I retired. But I don’t have clients flocking to my door from all corners of the country. It just doesn’t happen. So, your visit has to have some deeper purpose than an idle interest in your family tree.”

“Yes, well… it does.”

“Indeed. And since it comes in the same week as the theft of an emerald-and-diamond ring from the late Gabriel Tozer’s house in Penzance, I thought I knew what it was even before you arrived. Your reaction to my mention of Miss Gashry’s name confirms it.”

“How did you… hear about the theft?”

“There are no secrets in cyberspace. Isbisters’ catalogues are accessible online. The abrupt withdrawal of Lot 641 from yesterday’s auction didn’t go unnoticed.”

“I can’t believe they broadcast the reason for its withdrawal over the Internet.”

“They didn’t. But I have my sources. One of them tells me a man called Harding was due to buy the ring on behalf of Barney Tozer, Gabriel’s expatriate nephew.”

Harding could not suppress a sigh of resignation. The game appeared to be up. “I see.”

“I’m glad you do.”

“Who is your source?”

“That would be telling. And I think it’s your turn to tell. Why are you here?”

“I’m trying to find out why the ring was stolen, Mr. Shelkin. And who stole it.”

“Did Miss Gashry accuse me, perhaps?”

“Certainly not.”

“You’re a poor liar, Mr. Harding.” Shelkin drew deeply on his cigarette. “But that’s no bad thing. Let me see if I’ve understood your predicament. You’re in hock in some way to Barney Tozer.”

“No.”

“You owe him a favour, then. Something of the sort, at any rate. The favour was to represent him at the auction and buy the ring. But the ring’s been taken from under your nose. You’ve heard the sad tale of Kerry Foxton and you think there’s a connection. You’ve gone to see Ann Gashry and she’s told you… what? All about her ancestor, Francis Gashry?”

“Yes.”

“All she knows, anyway. I should never have shown her the report. She convinced Miss Foxton I had the missing pages. Perhaps she’s convinced you too. It isn’t true. They were missing when I found the document, forty-two years ago, lying neglected in the Admiralty archives. My curiosity was aroused at once. There’s nothing like a gap in the record to whet the appetite.”

“And has your curiosity ever been satisfied?”

“No. It hasn’t.”

“Who could’ve taken the pages?”

“Anyone with access to the archives, in theory. But it seems more likely to me that the pages were removed when the report was submitted-or shortly after.”

“Who’d have done that?”

“The man it was submitted to is the most obvious candidate. Sir Charles Wager, First Lord of the Admiralty. A Cornishman, as it happens. Born West Looe, 1666. Acquired a large estate nearby in later life, Kilmenath, bought with some of the colossal fortune he obtained in prize-money from the capture of a Spanish treasure fleet. Also the local MP. A man of substance. A man of few words. A man of mystery.”

“Why should he have removed part of the report?”

“Who can say? But Francis Gashry’s career started to take off straight after his mission to Penzance. He was Assistant Secretary to the Admiralty within two years. Within five he was Commissioner of the Navy MP for East Looe and husband of the wealthy young widow of Wager’s nephew, through whom he ultimately inherited Kilmenath. Not bad for the son of a penniless Huguenot refugee. Not bad at all.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Wager all but adopted Gashry as his son and heir, buying his lifelong loyalty-and silence-on whatever subject it was required.”

“Why should it be required where Godfrey Shillingstone’s Scillonian researches were concerned?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Harding. But if Gashry’s theory was correct, the theft of the ring from Castle Horneck was intended to disguise the theft of something else. Something Shillingstone had brought back with him from the Scillies. Something more than geological specimens.”

“What could that have been?”

“I can only repeat myself: I don’t know. As I told Miss Gashry and Miss Foxton when they came to see me seven years ago.”

“But that’s not all you told them. You warned Kerry off. You described the subject as ‘dangerous ground’.”

“Did I?” Shelkin frowned. “I don’t recall.”

“Come off it. You recall everything.” Harding leant across the desk. He sensed he might be able to gain the upper hand after all. “What makes it dangerous ground?”

Shelkin’s lips tightened into a pout. He played for time by flicking ash off his cigarette and taking a long drag on it. Then his expression softened appeasingly. “There’s no danger that I know of. My warning was a clumsy attempt to discourage Miss Foxton from prying further into a puzzle I still had high hopes of solving. She was a journalist. I didn’t want all my painstaking work scooped by her.” He shrugged. “It’s a bitter irony that she subsequently died in circumstances Miss Gashry interpreted as proving there was substance to my warning. But there wasn’t. How could there be?”

“You tell me.”

“It can’t possibly matter to anyone today what Shilling-stone was up to, Mr. Harding. It’s interesting, but inconsequential. Historically speaking, it’s a byway of a byway.”

“How come your ‘painstaking work’ has never got to the bottom of it?”

“Simple lack of evidence. I’ve explored every avenue. They’ve all turned out to be cul-de-sacs.”

“Tell me about some of them.”

“To what purpose?”

“To convince me they really were cul-de-sacs.”

“Good God, this is intolerable.” Shelkin angrily stubbed out his cigarette, the modest effort of which sparked a coughing fit. He braced himself against the edge of the desk as the fit slowly subsided, along with his indignation. There was a long pause as he recovered his breath. Then he started speaking quickly, in a clipped, matter-of-fact tone. “Shillingstone’s exchange of letters with Lord Godolphin, in which he’s given carte blanche to delve where he likes on the Scillies, yields no hint of what he hoped to find there. The second earl was a notoriously incurious man and seems to have granted permission largely because of Shillingstone’s persistence. Shillingstone’s papers were donated after his death to his old college at Oxford, but were destroyed in a clear-out in the nineteenth century. William Borlase’s Cornish Antiquities , published 1754, refers to Shillingstone’s work on the Scillies as ‘unprofitable’ without elaboration. And my extensive explorations of later generations of the Shillingstone family have turned up precisely nothing. Need I say more?”