Peter Dickinson - Some Deaths Before Dying

“Well, it’s a bit tricky, so I’d better make it clear that I’m not making any accusations. This is just something I want sorted out.”

He picked up a brown envelope that had been lying on the table, took out a photograph and gave it to her. It was an eight-by-six, black and white on matte paper, and looked fairly old, but the focus was spot on, with every detail exact, the two pistols nestling into their fitted box with tools and paraphernalia around them. There was no mistaking the silver initials on the butts.

“That certainly looks like it,” she said. “How did you get hold of this?”

“My mother took it,” he said. “Ages ago. She gave my father the pistols just after the war some time. She’d no idea how good they were—bought them for the initials, same as his, you see—but then Dad did a bit of research and found out about Ladurie and all that.

My interest is that Dad left them to me in his will, and then he had a couple of strokes, pretty bad, but he hung on for a couple of years not knowing much about anything, and when he finally snuffed it they’d disappeared. My mother’s still with us, but she’s past it too now, poor old thing, and whenever I’ve asked her about the pistols she’s thrown a wobbly, so I’ve been waiting till she passed on before I did anything about it. They were supposed to be in the bank, like I told you…”

“You said you’d got the other one.”

“Did I? Well yes, but you weren’t giving me much chance to catch your attention. Sorry about that, but you’ll see why my eyebrows went up when you showed up on the box toting one of Dad’s pistols?”

“I suppose so, if that’s what it is. I mean, are you sure that one of yours is missing? If you haven’t actually seen them. I mean…”

“Well, no, I can’t be dead sure, but I’d bet my boots there aren’t any others. Ladurie didn’t make that many guns and his order-books still exist—Dad went into all this—and ours are there just as a single pair. The entry’s marked J. M. You see?”

“All right. I’ll accept that. Now, before we go on I’ll need to know how you got hold of me. The people at the programme promised us total confidentiality, and I’m careful about that sort of thing.”

“I was afraid you’d ask that. It’s a bit awkward. I’ll put it like this. Programme comes from Bristol, right? Well, it just so happens that there’s someone there who owes me a considerable good turn. I called them—notice I’m not saying if it’s a man or a woman—and said—”

“Had you called the programme first and found out that they weren’t going to tell you anything?”

“Not how I do things. If you know someone in the business, you get straight onto them. Networking, don’t they call it these days? So I didn’t think anything of it till this whoever got back to me and said they’d got what I wanted but I mustn’t let on how I’d found out or they and a good friend of theirs would be really in the shit. Of course if I’d known that’s how it was in the first place, I’d never have asked them. You see?”

“In that case, I’m afraid—“

“Hold it. Hold it a moment. As far as I can see we’re in much the same boat. We’ve both got hold of something the other one thinks we’ve no right to, and neither of us is willing to say how we got it. The difference is—now, don’t get me wrong, I’m dead sure you’re doing it in all innocence—but the difference is that all I’ve got is a name—I looked your number up in the book—it had to be somewhere near the Maidstone and there’s not that many Pilchers around—the difference is that what you’ve got is worth quite a lot of money, once the pistols are back together again, which they bloody well ought to be in any case, and one way or another, Mrs. Pilcher, I intend to see that it happens. I don’t want to have to go to law over it, if I can help it. Bloody expensive, lawyers are, in case you don’t know…”

“I’m one myself.”

“Are you now? Are you now?”

The blue eyes had come to life and were twinkling with factitious charm, but Jenny guessed that this was his response to being for the first time mildly taken aback. She didn’t much like Mr. Matson and was far from sure how much of the truth he was telling her. A good deal, she guessed, but neither the whole, nor nothing but. He had, however, two holds on her of which he was unaware. The minor one was that she was enjoying her drink and now wanted the other half. The major one was that at all costs the thing should be sorted out without troubling Uncle Albert.

Jenny had been looking through the boxes in the attic for clothes for the Oxfam sale while she waited for the engineer to service the washing machine. She’d had to take the whole day off because they wouldn’t tell her when he was coming. She’d found the box beneath, some strange old cricketing whites—wrong shape and generation for Jeff, and he’d never been a games player, but she had found no end to the weirdness of the objects he’d hung on to. (She herself was a ruthless thrower-out, except in the case of cotton socks. Her bottom drawer held nothing else but favourite pairs, now worn so thin that they would have been in holes after one more use, so she had not been able to bring them to that point. Typically, Jeff had never queried this quirk.) When she’d opened the box and seen the pistol she’d thought it was the same kind of hoarded curiosity as the cricket whites, but beautiful. Then the doorbell had rung, so she’d carried it: downstairs and put it on the hallway shelf as she opened the door.

Her caller was the engineer she’d been waiting for, a cheery oaf who apparently expected to be admired for the simple virtue of being male, and became openly contemptuous when Jenny didn’t respond. They had parted in mutual loathing, leaving Jenny feeling that she couldn’t move comfortably around her own kitchen until it was aired and decontaminated of his presence.

Then Anita Verey had shown up to collect the Oxfam clothes, but also carrying an absurd clock ornamented with stuffed finches which bobbled around at the strike, a series of bird-like twitters. She was on her way to ask about it at this TV programme which happened to be in town. She’d wanted someone to chat to while she queued. Jenny had felt the need to be out of the house for a bit. Anita was good company, and it would be pleasant to get to know her better. Thus it was that Jenny had taken Uncle Albert’s pistol to The Antiques Roadshow last summer.

She’d told Jeff when he came home.

“Oh, God!” he’d said. “It’s all right, darling, you couldn’t have known. Let’s just hope the old boy doesn’t get to see the programme. When’s it on?”

“Uncle Albert? Why? What’s up?”

“You remember I had to sort his stuff out when he went into Marlings? He was a bit more on the spot then than he is now, but he was pretty bewildered all the same. He sat in the middle of the room while I did the packing. He wasn’t interested. Anything I asked him about he said, ’I’m through with that. Chuck it out.’ I’d noticed he was clutching this box on his lap and I assumed it was something he was set on taking with him, but when I’d finished he pulled himself together and handed it to me.

“‘Now you’ve got to take care of this,’ he said. ’Seeing I don’t know who’s going to come poking around this place you’re sending me to. You put it somewhere safe and don’t you go showing it around nor telling anyone about it. Right?’

“I took it from him and without thinking I started to open the box and see what was in it, but…well, remember me telling you how I was brought up scared stiff of him, though as far as I know he’d never laid a finger on anyone, or even raised his voice to them.”