Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

I shook my head.

‘Oh, well, no point in going on, not now that I know Berners is after the collection.’ He began to gather the pages, putting them back in their albums. ‘Whoever has that cover is probably prepared to pay over the odds for the die proofs, and there’ll be others after them when they realise …’ He gave a little shrug, his words hanging in the air. ‘Another Scotch?’

‘No.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘I’ve got Rowlinson coming in to see me, and I’m running it fine as it is.’

‘The frozen food man?’ And when I nodded, he said, ‘Wish more of my clients were as successful as that. Tell him to put his money into stamps. One of the few things that have never gone down in value.’ He put the albums back in their original wrapping and handed the parcel to me. ‘For the sake of the girl, inform Berners you’ve got an offer of twenty-five hundred pounds. See what he says to that.’

I stared at him. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘A figure like that, it could frighten him off.’

He nodded, a speculative look in those bright blue eyes. ‘If it does, then I’ve got the collection, haven’t I?’ And he added, ‘But I doubt whether it will, not if his client is rich.’

‘I think,’ I said, ‘I had better have that offer of yours in writing.’

‘Don’t trust me, eh?’

‘I wouldn’t trust anybody making a bid like that.’ My voice was sharpened by disappointment, the sense of opportunity lost. But at least it disposed of my own offer. I couldn’t outbid him at that figure.

He sat down at his desk and pulled a sheet of notepaper from a drawer. ‘You’re sharp, Roy,’ he said heavily. ‘What I had in mind was for you to quote him my offer so that he’d be forced to pay Miss Holland a thumping price.’ He was gazing questioningly at me. ‘Then, if it did scare him off, you’d let me have the collection for the figure I originally offered.’

‘That would be dishonest,’ I said.

He stared up at me a moment longer, not saying a word; then he wrote down his revised bid and signed it with a flourish. ‘You know, I must be mad,’ he said, slipping it into an envelope and handing it to me. ‘But it’s not often I’ve wanted anything as badly as I want that collection.’

‘It’s your money,’ I told him.

He laughed. ‘You remember somebody suggesting a long time ago that ocean racing was like tearing up fivers under a cold shower? Well, stamps are a bit like that. You get a hunch, a feel about something, and then you become so obsessed you’ve got to have it whatever the cost.’

He saw me to my car, and as I was getting into it, I remembered what he had said to me on the phone, that something very odd about those die proofs had come to light. I asked him what it was, but he laughed and shook his head. ‘When you’ve got more time and are prepared to show a little more interest-’

‘I’m a lot more interested now you’ve upped your bid by such a large amount.’

‘If I get the collection, then I’ll tell you. Okay?’

I was annoyed with myself then, wishing I weren’t already late for my appointment. All I could think of as I drove fast through the quiet Essex countryside was his extraordinary behaviour. I had no idea what his financial position was, but he lived quite modestly, certainly within his pension, and though he presumably made a profit out of buying and selling stamps, I was sure an offer like that would be stretching his resources. I had seen quite a bit of him since his wife had died a couple of years back. I liked him, and not doubting for a moment that his original valuation had been arrived at in good faith, I was afraid he had been carried away and was offering too high a price.

I was almost a quarter of an hour late when I turned into the concrete driveway, and from two fields away, just after I had hit the dirt track, I could see Rowlinson’s Aston Martin standing outside the hall. I found him sitting under the walnut tree by the moat, watching a pair of mallards, his dark, almost Welsh features brooding and sullen.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’

‘No thanks.’ He tossed the broken half of an old walnut shell into the water. ‘I’m afraid I’ve some bad news for you. I’m selling.’ He didn’t look up, just sat there staring into the water. ‘Not your fault. Your ideas were fine, and I think they’d have worked. But I can’t fight Bessie and the board. We’ve decided to expand further, and we need the money.’ He picked up another walnut shell, breaking it between his fingers. ‘Doesn’t look as though I’ll have time for any more long trips, so no point in hanging on to the property. Pity. But there it is.’

I stood there, not saying anything. There was nothing to say with my hopes dashed like that. I had known Chips Rowlinson for about six years, ever since I had sold him a new engine for his boat and arranged its installation. Then, after I had taken the job with Browne, Baker amp; Browne, I learned he was looking for a larger residence. I was lucky, I managed to find him a lovely old manor house near Tolleshunt D’Arcy, and I got him the land to go with it much cheaper than he expected. As a result, he had come to regard me as his land and agricultural adviser, which was why he had turned to me when the rundown sheep station with the ridiculous name of Munnobungle had become a problem. I had looked at the rainfall figures in that part of Queensland, and I was certain deeper boreholes and a switch to cattle and sorghum would help to make it profitable. It just needed somebody there to get the place back on its feet. ‘I’m sorry you’ve decided to sell,’ I murmured.

‘So am I.’ He got slowly to his feet. ‘Don’t think I want to. I’ve had a lot of fun out of it. Marvellous country.’ And he began talking in that quick, energetic way of his about the climate and the people, the sense of space, and trips he had made out to the Barrier Reef in fishing boats and in a Cessna he had hired from an outfit called Bush Pilots Airways. He was pacing up and down the edge of the moat, his head up as though sniffing the air. ‘You know, I’ve half a mind to pack it in here, let the tax boys have their last bite at me and go out there for good. There’s a sense of freedom, like a breath of fresh air. The sea, the fish, all that coral, and over the horizon to the north-east islands hardly anybody has ever seen. The Solomons, the Bismarcks; I never got as far as that. Only Papua New Guinea. But that was enough. One of the last lost primitive frontiers.’

‘Primitive enough to believe in magic?’ I asked. ‘Death wishes? That sort of thing?’

‘Oh, yes. It’s witchcraft really, but they call it sorcery.’ He had stopped and was staring out at the moat. ‘I was at Mendi, and there was a young Australian lawyer staying at the hotel with me, running a course for local village magistrates, and he had just come face to face with this problem. What the devil does a magistrate, or a High Court judge for that matter, do when a case is brought against a man for putting a death wish on another? Is it murder? Difficult under our laws. No physical attack, no weapons. But they know it’s murder, and if the law doesn’t act, then the relatives will. They’ll take the law into their own hands. They call it pay-back. It’s feuding, of course. Can go on for generations.’

‘And the Administration, the district officers — a patrol officer, for instance, would he believe in it?’

‘Yes, I imagine so. I did see it once myself. Not in Papua New Guinea, in West Africa, when I was a sapper there. I had a company out in the bush throwing a Bailey bridge over a swollen river, and my best sergeant went sick on me. Nothing obviously wrong, only that he’d had a go at another man’s wife in a nearby village and the local witch doctor had been paid to put a spell on him. Medicines didn’t do any good, so I had to go and search the old wizard out, buy him off and the injured man as well.’