Hammond Innes - Solomons Seal

‘But it would surely have been easier to steal printed stamps.’

‘I don’t think so. Perkins Bacon’s security wouldn’t have been that bad. Any stamps the thief could have got his hands on would have been from cancelled sheets. They would have been overprinted with the word SPECIMEN. But it’s very doubtful whether they would have regarded Colonial stamp dies as objects liable to be stolen. Josh says security at Perkins Bacon was very strict for GB dies, but probably quite negligible as regards the dies for foreign and colonial issues, and a print shop like theirs would have been full of stored plates and dies.’

But by then I had remembered something he had said to me here in this room, so long ago it seemed now. ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘The seal — that’s from an early Newfoundland stamp. Didn’t you say those stamps were printed in America?’

He nodded. ‘That’s quite correct. The 1865-70 set was a completely new issue printed by the American Bank Note Company of New York. The Seal-on-Icefloe die was used for the five-cent brown, also for the two later issues, first in black, then in blue. After that the seal was re-designed, and the printing switched to Montreal.’

‘You’re surely not suggesting there was a thief at the American printing house, too?’

‘No, of course not.’ He sounded quite shocked. ‘The seal was designed by Jeens on the instructions of Perkins Bacon, and the die was made by them here in London and sent across to New York. In addition to the seal, Perkins Bacon engraved and cast a die of the Jeens Codfish design. But that design was used for banknotes only. The Jeens Codfish has a straight tail; the codfish on the two-cent stamp a curled-up tail. The seal, on the other hand, was used for both banknotes and stamps.’ He picked up the Records book, turned back the pages and, having found what he wanted, pushed it across to me again. ‘There’s de Worms’s account of what happened.’

It was a long note headed Seal and Codfish at the end of the chapter on Newfoundland, and a few pages back there were illustrations of both the seal and the codfish designs. It confirmed that the die for the Jeens seal had been engraved in London by Perkins Bacon, probably for the banknotes first, and this die was presumably stored there in 1862, when the thief was discovered.

I was still reading when Tubby went on, ‘Well, there you are, Roy. That’s the mystery that has puzzled all the experts ever since the results of Percy de Worms’s painstaking research into the Perkins Bacon files and letter books was published. On the face of it these two volumes appear quite straightforward, a fascinating, but very mundane day-to-day record of correspondence, meticulously copied and filed away by the Perkins Bacon clerks. We know how many stamps they printed of every colonial issue, how many they dispatched, every detail of the advice they gave on design, paper, ink, gum, perforation, how the sheets were to be preserved in transit, all their costings. And then, in the midst of a protracted battle with the Crown Agents, that laconic statement that there was a thief in the print shop. No details, nothing — just the bald declaration to excuse a delay. As de Worms says, a strange admission for a firm of security printers to make.’ And he added, raising his glass to us with a slightly wry smile, ‘Here’s to you and the Solomons Seal collection. We’ll have some idea of what other experts think when the bidding starts on Thursday for Lots Ninety-six and Ninety-seven.’

The auction was still a full day away, so that Perenna and I had two nights together at Great Park Hall before driving across country to Birmingham. Keegan had given us copies of the catalogue, and I looked through it that evening. The first seventy-two lots were GBs, including some very good Seahorse issues and, of course, the block of four £5 orange. Lots 73–95 were collections of GB and Commonwealth stamps; then came the Carlos Holland ship label design collection, followed by the Solomons Seal sheet. There were estimates of what each lot was expected to fetch, but not against ours, the blank at the right of the page making them very conspicuous. Presuming the lots were disposed of at about the same rate as at Harmers or other London auction houses, Lots 96 and 97 would come up sometime around 3–3.30 p.m. It was sensible timing since the wealthier dealers, who might have come down specially for those two lots, would have plenty of time for lunch, and if the Carlos Holland collection fetched about £5,000, which is what Keegan had originally suggested, how much, I wondered, would the full sheet fetch?

We talked it over during the evening meal, finally settling for a figure of £10,000 for the two lots. Afterwards I showed Perenna my own collection. Keegan, knowing roughly its contents and quality, had said it could fetch somewhere between £2,500 and £3,000 in view of the high prices now being paid at auction for second-rate material. But sending it to auction meant a delay of three months at least, and the same was true probably of Perenna’s wood carvings. What we needed was cash, now.

Wednesday I spent a miserable day arranging the termination of my lease of the Hall and the sale of my boat, having first delivered Perenna to the nursing home near Colchester. When I picked her up in the evening, our moods were very different — where I was depressed, she was buoyant, bubbling over with the extraordinary progress Tim had made. ‘It’s unbelievable. And not at all gradual. It happened just like that, quite suddenly he was a different man. They can’t understand it. The matron even phoned the doctor so that I could have a word with him. He couldn’t explain it either.’

It had been one of those glorious, still October days, and I still had the hood down, so that we had to shout at each other to make ourselves heard. ‘So what do you think? That the curse was lifted?’

‘Yes, of course. But I couldn’t tell them that.’

‘When did he snap out of it?’

‘August fifth. You’re thinking of Hans, are you?’

I nodded, glancing at her quickly sitting there beside me with the red-orange hair blowing in the wind. I was remembering the log book and Jona’s neat entry recording his death and the burial of his ashes in the cove to the north of Madehas. The date had been July 30.

‘It wasn’t Hans who put that curse on Tim,’ she shouted into the wind. ‘It was Sapuru. Sapuru died on August fifth. Remember? And Tagup, remember what Tagup said that evening he came to say goodbye to us at the motel? He said Sapuru could have been killed by an old curse, one that his weakened vitality was no longer able to resist. Tim spent weeks fashioning things out of driftwood and all sorts of bits and pieces I scavenged for him off the seashore. He’d sit for hours staring at them, his lips moving. He knows all about sorcery.’ And she added, ‘Funny, isn’t it? Sapuru puts a curse on Tim after he’d discovered what the Co-operative was planning. But it wasn’t strong enough, and in the end it’s Tim’s curse that kills Sapuru.’ She laughed, not humorously, but a little wildly. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? But it’s true, I tell you. It fits. It must be true. The only possible explanation. Oh, my God — how little this civilised world remembers or understands.’ She put her hand on my arm, a quick, urgent gesture. ‘Forget it, will you? Please. You don’t have to believe it. I see you don’t, so forget it. And when you meet Tim, don’t ever let him know what I said. Please.’

That night we fell into bed still arguing about the future and whether we shouldn’t just give up, forget about the Holland Line and that battered old LCT. No point in destroying ourselves and losing everything we had for the sake of a ship. It was pride, too, of course. But I think both of us had by then come back down to earth and knew bloody well we couldn’t make a go of it on the sort of capital we could hope to raise. The cost of ship repairs alone was such that the first major breakdown would see us broke.