Die-Cast (A Peter Marklin Mystery) Read online

  Die-Cast

  A Peter Marklin Mystery

  Neville Steed

  © Neville Steed 1987

  Neville Steed has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in Great Britain in 1987 by George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For Edward and Richard with love

  Table of Contents

  Die-Cast

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Die-Cast

  ‘Get out of here now, Longhurst, or I’ll call the police,’ Maxwell shouted back.

  ‘Not before I’ve finished with you, you won’t,’ Longhurst bellowed, and tried to bulldoze his way between the Frenchman and Saunders.

  ‘Who was that bloody woman you had in your car, when I saw you lunchtime, Maxwell?’ he continued shouting, as he struggled so violently with the two men that Saunders was knocked sideways into an antique table, which shed its canapés and champagne glasses to disintegrate on the floor.

  It was at that point that I ignored Arabella’s advice and moved forward into the fray. For by now, Longhurst had managed to grab Maxwell by the neck, and the one thing I do dislike at parties is murder.

  1

  ‘Now, sir, what other little gems do you have stashed away in your attic?’

  His question took me by surprise. He had been browsing in my Toy Emporium for at least twenty minutes, and up to then had not wobbled his handlebar moustache to utter a sound.

  ‘I’m afraid everything I have for sale I have on display,’ I rejoined, which wasn’t entirely true, but true enough, I reckoned, to pass muster with him.

  He moved slowly towards my counter, rubbing his chin with doubt.

  ‘Come, sir, I thought every old toy dealer kept something rather special away in his attic, waiting for the next big international auction, or a customer with a Saudi Arabian-size bank balance.’

  His rather large and florid face was now uncomfortably close to mine, and I took a step backwards, which produced the kind of piercing shriek you don’t normally have occasion to hear, outside a Turkish prison. I’d just, accidentally, applied an eleven-stone pile-driver, alias my whole weight, on my Siamese cat’s back paw. I bent down to apologise to the hapless Bing, but he’d vamoosed off into the house. When I rose again to counter height, I saw that my companion’s bewhiskered face was a good deal less florid.

  ‘Only my cat. I trod on him,’ I smiled. ‘But, anyway, what were you saying?’

  He pulled himself together, and some blood began its return journey to his cheeks.

  ‘I...er...was asking...’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I interrupted. ‘Little gems in the attic, Saudi Arabian-size bank balances.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘Tell me first, Mr — er—’

  ‘Truscott. Geoffrey Truscott.’

  ‘Mr Truscott. What are you really after? What do you collect?’

  He smiled, and suddenly I could see a little boy peeping out from behind the sixty-odd-year-old mask of his face.

  ‘Rarities, sir. Rarities.’

  I began to rather like him, and not just because rarities in the old toy business mean the exchange of quite large numbers of bank notes.

  ‘Car rarities? Commercial rarities? Ship rarities? Aircraft rarities...?’ He stopped me there.

  ‘Aircraft, sir. Aircraft.’ He stepped back from my counter and swung around to point at the display cabinet which housed, or should we say hangared, my considerable collection of die-cast aircraft, mainly old Dinkies, but also French Solido, Danish Teckno, and pre-war Tootsietoy from the USA.

  ‘Like those,’ he continued. ‘Only it’s highly unlikely I would find what I want on public display. That’s why I always ask about any gems in the attic.’

  I sighed audibly, because I was genuinely sorry not to be able to help him. The so-called gems in my attic did not include even one solitary aircraft. Some mint, boxed Britains Ltd soldiers, yes; a fine road-sweeping vehicle, and a pick-up truck made by the Citroën car company in 1928, yes; a beautiful tinplate paddle steamer by Carette circa 1910, yes. All entered for, and awaiting, the next Sotheby’s antique toy auction, where I reckoned they would attract far higher bids than I could raise by putting them on display in my Dorset seaside village shop in Studland.

  ‘Can’t help you right now, I’m afraid, Mr Truscott. I only have what you see on display. But if you tell me exactly what you’re after, I can always let you know if I ever come across such an item.’

  The elderly Flying Officer Kite face moved closer to mine once more.

  ‘I’ll begin with a real rara avis, sir, a gem amongst gems, the stunning crown for any toy aircraft collection...’

  ‘The Dinky Avro Vulcan,’ I interrupted, almost certain that I would be proved right, for the precious few Dinky had ever made of that famous British bomber were only just beginning to surface on the market at huge prices, and all from Canada, where the entire production run had been exported.

  He chuckled. ‘No, sir, not the Vulcan. A bird so rare that no one has yet tracked one down. No one. But they will, one day, they will. They said only one Vulcan had survived. Now we know of quite a few more. So there’s hope, sir, there’s hope.’ He looked at me with eyes afire with excitement. ‘I trust, sir, you know to what aircraft I am referring?’

  I suddenly held on to the counter, as I realised there was only one that could live up to both his description and his obvious lust for possession, an aircraft that every avid aviation toy collector had dreamt of possessing one day, from the first moment they had seen its tantalizing photograph in the Dinky advertisements in the 1939-40 Meccano magazines. A die-cast toy, measuring all of four inches wing-span, that if ever found, could fetch thousands of pounds at auction.

  ‘You can’t mean...?’ I began, but he interrupted me.

  ‘I do, sir. The de Havilland Flamingo air liner of 1940. The rarest bird of them all, would you not agree?’

  I nodded feebly. What else can you do? The Flamingo is the King Solomon’s Mines of the die-cast aircraft world, the Golden Fleece, the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow. Even that other bird, the Maltese Falcon of my favourite movie, would move aside for it.

  ‘Well,’ I managed to offer eventually, ‘If my attic contained that, I wouldn’t be running an antique shop, would I? I would be a wizard or a conjurer, a magician, a super-hero. With such an ability, I could probably also make gold out of lead, cause the lame to run, the sick to pick up their beds. And maybe, just maybe, even make the trains run on time.’

  ‘You’re laughing at me, aren’t you sir? All because, like so many, you don’t believe Dinky ever produced a Flamingo, do you?’

  He reached into the inside pocket of his blazer and pulled out a very Asprey-looking wallet. I was impressed before I saw the American Express Gold card, the Harrods and Air Travel cards, and the comely clutch of fifty pound notes, any one of which I could have done with right then. The old toy business is very cyclical. My present cycle had proved to have two flat tyres and a broken chain. I blamed it on the bad weather of the now thankfully past summer. From a small inside flap in the maroon leather, he produced the picture I knew so well, and handed it to me.

  ‘They made it, sir. That’s proof.’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s not, I’m afraid. It’s only proof they made a small woode
n model for appraisal and photography, or, at best, a brass master. It’s no proof they made dies from the brass-master and went into production.’

  A liver-spotted hand took the clipping from me and tucked it back into its leather bed.

  ‘Did you see the price in the advert sir?’

  ‘Yes. “Dinky Toy 62f. Price 6d each.” Every serious aircraft collector knows the words off by heart.’

  ‘Well, that’s proof in my book. Dinky never priced an item until they had made the dies and costed them. It would have been ludicrous commercial sense to do otherwise. Don’t you agree, sir?’

  I’d heard that argument before from other collectors, and it made sense. But, if that were true, what didn’t make sense was that nobody had ever seen or found any trace of a Flamingo, or even its box or packaging in nearly fifty years. Still, I did not want to throw cold water over the glowing coals of his quest. It is a tonic to meet someone with such a blinding optimism in these dark and rather dreary times, and especially someone of his age. I wondered where all his money had come from. One thing I did know — you didn’t chance upon it by tilting at die-cast windmills.

  ‘Well, I wish you luck. You could be right, and one day, you or someone like you will turn one up.’ I laughed, then went on, ‘I won’t let you know if I find one. I won’t need to. News like that goes through the old toy collectors’ world like greased lightning.’

  He replaced his wallet in his inside pocket, and put his hand on the counter.

  ‘Well, sir, I thank you. But to show you I’m serious, I’ll tell you what I’ll pay for a Flamingo in any paint condition as long as it is structurally complete.’ He took a deep breath, then whispered ‘Fifteen thousand pounds.’

  Now it was my turn to take a deep breath — and whisper, ‘I’ll remember that, Mr Truscott. I’ll remember that.’

  His rather veined, moon-like face broke into another of his boyish smiles. ‘I’m sure you will, sir. I should add, my offer of course, is not exclusive to you. I mention it to every dealer I come across in my travels. Today I was in Bournemouth on business, and was told about your shop by a competitor of yours in Boscombe; Second Childhood, I think the shop is called.’

  ‘That’s right. Good shop. Nice things, especially tinplate.’

  ‘They speak well of you too, sir.’ He looked at his wafer-thin Piaget watch. ‘I must be away — I have another meeting in Bournemouth at five. No peace for the wicked.’ He grinned, gave me a card from his pocket and made to leave. At the door, he turned and added, ‘In case you’re wondering if my offer is genuine, and I have that kind of ready spondulicks,’ (I hadn’t heard that word for donkey’s years), ‘let me tell you who I am. Since returning from the RAF some years ago, I arrange aviation armament deals for certain Arab states. They pay promptly and they pay well. Very well, my dear sir, I can assure you. So remember, anything rarer than a Vulcan. I have six of them already, you see-from Dinky, Tekno, Solido, prototypes, brass masters, mock-ups. I’m sure you’ve got the picture.’

  He closed the shop door carefully behind him. Out of curiosity, I came out from behind the counter, and went over to my front windows. I was just in time to see the long, sweeping shape of a Panther de Ville glide away from the kerb opposite, leaving a group of school children adrool with envy on the pavement. I looked down at the card in my hand. It said very simply in heraldic style script, ‘G.J. Truscott Esq, Purveyor of Defense Systems, Windlemere Manor, Windlemere, Salisbury, Wilts’, plus two telephone numbers and a telex code.

  I smiled a very sad smile, and wondered how many men, women and children had been killed by the arms he had sold to raise money to keep him in the lap of luxury, and indulge the innocent and wide-eyed pastime of antique toy collecting at the very highest and most expensive level.

  I slowly tore up the card, because, whilst I needed money, I did not need it that badly. I made my way back to the kitchen, where Bing was waiting with a very dark expression in his blue eyes. He watched me throw the pieces of card in the waste bin, then couldn’t resist sidling up. I stroked him and felt his back paw to make sure there was no injury, and, as I did so, I had a wild and wonderful thought that almost completely eradicated the unpleasant after-taste of Truscott’s visit. Indeed, I began to regard our meeting as the start of a very promising new cycle for the modest Toy Emporium of Studland in the splendid and tranquil county of Dorset, with tyres and chain now mended, and, with luck, ten-speed gears to boot.

  *

  The continued absence of customers for the rest of the day — Truscott had been my only visitor — was rather compensated for by my enthusiasm for my newly minted business plan. And the peace and quiet enabled me to ponder on some of the problems I would inevitably face in its successful execution.

  At ten to five, I decided such deliberation was best carried out in the comparative comfort of my own modest sitting room, not on a hard chair behind a hard counter in an empty emporium. As I went to the door to lock up and swing my ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’, I saw a familiar set of grizzled features at the shop window, and I recognised instantly the truth of that old adage, ‘The best laid plans of mice and men...’ He came in, with that special kind of grin people wear when they want to trigger congratulations.

  ‘A’ternoon, old son,’ he beamed. And it wasn’t too difficult to see why he was beaming. He was hiding one arm behind his back.

  ‘Okay, Gus. What have you discovered for me this time?’ I asked in a tired voice.

  He clumped over to the counter. ‘No, it’s not like last time, Peter. I’m sorry about last time, but I think these might be more what you’re after.’

  ‘Last time’ was his so-called discovery of mint condition old Dinky toys. They turned out to be old Dinky toys all right, but every one was a repaint, expertly done, but repainting generally knocks the stuffing out of the value of small die-cast toys. Not that it was Gus’s fault. He is a retired fisherman, best friend and pain in the arse by profession, and not a Sotheby’s whizz kid. And the man who originally sold them to him in Swanage swore they were totally original. Contrary to popular belief, there are sharks round the Dorset coast.

  Gus brought his arm round from behind his back and deposited a Marks and Spencer plastic carrier bag on the counter.

  ‘Didn’t know Marks and Sparks were into old toys now,’ I attempted as a joke. Gus treated it with the contempt it deserved, and plunged his huge hand into the bag. When it emerged, there was nothing to see. He cackled, then opened his fist. If he’d been almost anything but a six-foot, burly and weather-beaten old fisherman, I could have kissed him. Nestling in the life lines of his palm was a tiny, red tin plate car, all of three and a half inches long.

  ‘Got more,’ he grinned. ‘Six altogether.’

  ‘All red?’

  ‘No, all colours — green, blue, stony colour. Look.’

  He opened up the bag. Inside were five more cars, identical save for their colour, and all, bless ’em, had tiny Shell oilcans on their running boards, proving they were of genuine pre-war Minic manufacture. (Post war ones had the cans deleted.)

  ‘Where did you get them?’ I asked, now rather excited, ‘and what’s more important, how much did you pay?’

  ‘From an old lady I put up some shelves for — in Osmington. She used to have a little sweet-shop there, sold toys as well. When she gave up, she forgot all about the unsold stuff in the attic, until I happened to mention my friend — that’s you — who loved old toys. In a trice, she’d upped and got ’em. I didn’t pay a brass farthing for them, neither.’ He winked. ‘Gave them for being so obliging.’ Old ladies seemed to do that with Gus. I never dared ask why.

  ‘Know how much they’re worth, Gus?’

  He held one up and turned it over. ‘Marked “6d” on its bottom, see?’

  ‘That’s how much they cost pre-war. Mint Minic Fords like these are now worth sixty to seventy pounds each.’

  For a minute I thought Gus was going to faint.

  ‘Gor — that’s,
let me see...’ Maths was never the subject Gus had mastered summa cum laude, so I completed his calculation for him.

  ‘Three hundred and sixty pounds, at least.’ Then I added, ‘Pity there are no boxes though.’

  Gus perked up again. ‘Oh, there are. I left them at her place.’

  I threw my hands up in the air. ‘But Gus...’

  ‘I ain’t going back, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Didn’t do the greatest job on her shelves. They could be a bit wobbly by now. My screws weren’t really long enough for her walls. Should have bought some others really.’

  I laughed out loud. It was typical of Gus not to buy anything new, if something he owned already could be botched to fit, albeit temporarily.

  ‘Okay, Gus. Arabella and I are going over in that direction tomorrow evening. I’ll pick up the boxes on the way.’

  ‘Where you going, then?’ Gus wasn’t exactly nosy, not in a nasty sense. He just reckoned that friends should tell each other every flipping thing. I’d grown to accept his attitude as quite normal. Love Gus. Love his questions.

  ‘I told you the other day. It’s film star night.’

  Gus rubbed his nose. ‘Oh, yeah. I remember now. That Lana Lee Whatsit...’

  ‘Claudell.’

  ‘That’s her. Well, hope you enjoy it, that’s all.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t we?’ I asked with some trepidation.

  ‘Nothing. Only her so-called husband-fella, Maxwell, I think his name is, hasn’t half put people’s backs up round here already. And he hasn’t been in England five minutes neither. And she’s such a nice lady — for an American. And a famous film star. Or so they say. Don’t know why she had him back. I thought they’d been separated for years.’

  ‘They had been. I don’t know why she allowed him back. Maybe it was in the interest of their eight-year-old — Tara-Lee, I think she’s called. No business of ours really, though. I’ll tell you what Maxwell is like after tomorrow night.’