Tinplate Page 11

  Within half an hour or so I could see the spires of Doom Abbey over the tops of the hedges, and I just prayed Mr Treasure was not on the battlements watching out with his binoculars for Beetles. I parked the car some way past the house, in the mud of a farm gateway, and made my way back towards the abbey on foot. I wished I was the kind of man who always wore a hat so that I could have pulled it down over my eyes, but every now and again, when I thought I might be seen, I put my hand over my forehead as if shielding my eyes from the glare of the sun. Unfortunately, the effect was rather spoilt by it not being out.

  However, the reccy was well worth while for my plans of the morrow. I noted that, from the front anyway, there were only two windows that were low enough to the ground to get through without asking to borrow a ladder. And luckily, both these windows were in the lee of a turret so my activities could not be overlooked by everyone else in the house. (I counted on only the housekeeper being indoors. Outdoors was a matter I would have to consider carefully.)

  The huge front door, however, was something else. It bore no resemblance to Gus’s in any particular, and looked as if it was built strongly enough to withstand the second coming of Attila the Hun. I couldn’t see it falling to a Barclaycard, or even American Express. So I reckoned it would have to be one of those two windows, which, from my one visit, I guessed must open from a little corridor that led off from the huge, manorial-type hall.

  I did not feel I should hang about very much longer so, with a last lingering look at the stone fortress I was to attack the next day, I went back to Bing and the Beetle. A moment later, I was on my way home.

  The afternoon was uneventful, but financially, rewarding. I sold a mint Meccano Aircraft Constructor set, circa 1937, to a tall bald man with a stoop for £285, and a very nice, but not perfect, Hornby Curlew tinplate boat in green and cream, circa same date, for seventy pounds. It was the evening that brought the bad news: number one, I didn’t see hide nor hair of Arabella (and I had grown used to both); number two, Inspector Blake rang through with more on the rolling Stone. They had discovered where he had stored all his furniture, cars and effects — in an old aircraft hangar near Taunton, on which he had taken a lease two years previously. Everything was apparently there, from Ferraris to fireguards, from garden furniture to pots and pans. Even his antique toy collection. But as Trevor Blake put it to me ever so considerately, ‘We have checked and double-checked those toys with your very detailed description of those stolen, and we regret to say none of them match up. But I must say, I envy Mr Vivian Stone in this one respect: it is a handsome collection, nevertheless.’

  I remarked that it didn’t mean to say he had not stolen mine, with which the Inspector had to agree.

  ‘There may be another hangar somewhere, Mr Marklin. After all, we did not find any diamonds either.’

  As a postscript, I asked him whether the woman’s body had been identified yet. He said they were working on it. I thanked him for trying to cheer me up, rang off, and spent the rest of the evening half watching television, half listening out for Arabella. For, whatever she might or might not have been up to recently, as Mr Lerner wrote, ‘I’d grown accustomed to her face.’

  *

  Next day eventually dawned, and my bed still bore only one depression, and that was me. But I girded my loins, downed a quick toast and marmalade (I collect the Golly badges for my cousin’s little girl in Chester), stroked Bing, and explained why he could not come with me today. I reversed the Beetle out of what was left of my lean-to — the plywood panel fell off as I put the key in — and made for Lulworth, the Porsche engine purring powerfully away.

  This time I parked in the village itself, in the pub car-park, and walked up towards the forbidding house, first on the narrow roadway, then across two fields, a route I had sussed out on the previous day. Eventually, I found a gap in the hedge through which I had a clear view of the house and grounds. I was more or less invisible to anyone who hadn’t put a homing device in my underpants. On the right, I could see the large barn, in which I had seen Treasure’s Silver Cloud and Arabella’s Golf. Today it only held an old Land-Rover with a dent in the door. In the centre was the house, and on my left, an impressive array of outbuildings and stables surrounding a courtyard that was neatly paved with stone setts. In fact, everything was neat — washed, brushed and tonsured — the epitome of order, if not necessarily of law.

  I moved a little further down the hedge to get a better view of my two candidate windows. And as I did so I heard voices and saw Treasure’s housekeeper in coat and hat, standing by the front door with the Corfe ‘toucher,’ Ken Gates. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but soon Gates disappeared down the main part of the garden, in the direction of a five-barred gate that, I assumed, led onto farmland. The housekeeper also disappeared for a moment, but then rematerialized on an ancient, curly-framed lady’s bicycle and pedalled off down the drive. I decided I could not have been donated better timing if it had been rehearsed, so, as they always used to say in my boyhood Biggies stories, ‘I made my move’.

  I ‘Pink-Panthered’ my way across to the right hand of my two windows, and crouching down, listened hard. Nothing but silence. I had a screwdriver in my pocket, which I applied to the wooden frame of the window. It would not even go in the crack. Oak is like that when it wants to be. After about three minutes of scratching about, I gave up the more scientific approach, and taking my Barclaycard from my wallet, I held it against the leaded window pane next to where I could see the inside handle. Then I gave the card a blow with my fist (not exactly what Gus had intended for the plastic money, but there you go), the glass shattered and fell inside with a resounding series of tinkles. But saved by the Bank, my fist was okay. Not a scratch on the leather of my glove even. I put my hand through the jagged hole, undid the latch, and was in the house before you could count too many incriminating seconds. And I remembered to pick up my Barclaycard from the parquet flooring.

  The house smelt of Mansion polish, like my mother’s place in Charmouth. (That was the only similarity.) Suffice it to say that, having listened hard once again to detect if my entry had been noted, I made off round the rest of the house at a rate of knots. I had no desire to stay there a moment longer than I had to. I won’t take you on a conducted tour of the castle, it would be very tedious. But basically, I searched everything that could possibly house a toy or a diary. The toys were easier — they were all together. I found them in the third room, a child’s room with a vengeance, containing a really remarkable collection of both splendid and more mundane toys, dating from around 1920 up to around 1955. Seemingly almost every Dinky ever made, both here and in France, was stacked neatly in its original box or, the early ones, in glass cabinets lining the walls. (The earliest Dinky cars, unlike their aircraft, did not run to boxes.) There was also a wide and varied collection of American Tootsietoy diecasts, aircraft, cars and ships; Solido by the hundred; Mercury models from Italy. And so on, and so on, and so on. I won’t even begin to describe the tinplate. Almost every major German, American, British and Empire, and Japanese manufacturer was represented, as far as I could determine from a quick glance at the parade of shelves. Mr Treasure had certainly kept the real scale of his obsession a darkly veiled secret, and I wondered why. It couldn’t just be for fear of burglars or the tax man, or could it? After all, Mr Chalmers was a pretty secretive soul about his own toy transactions.

  But look as I might in that toy room, and every other place in the house, bar the attics, my eleven tinplates were not to be seen.

  I did discover a few interesting other bits and pieces about the hairy-handed keeper of the castle. Like toys weren’t the only thing he collected. In a wardrobe in the dressing-room, off what was obviously the main bedroom, there was evidence of quite a different kind of hobby. And much more of the Unity Mitford kind. Nazi memorabilia: a full Nazi officer’s dress uniform, complete with armbands and cap and highly polished boots; a rack full of short leather riding whips and straps; a large
drawer, up to the brim with badges, awards, medals, Iron Crosses. Another was full of black and white photographs taken at various Third Reich rallies, and hundreds of Nazi propaganda cigarette cards. Really, Mr Treasure, what would your friends have thought of you, if they knew? But then, I guessed, one or two might have liked it. Derek, perhaps, for one, kissing the toe of Treasure’s jack boot. And then, in some tiny plastic bags, were ‘some substances’, as they say, that did not smell like face powder.

  But, amongst other things, it was the diaries I was after, not his sexual apparatus or sensory stimuli. In every room, I searched any drawer or bureau I could find, for Treasure had to keep them somewhere. And, at least the current one, somewhere accessible. It was the current one I was really interested in, and its entries for the last few weeks. But my labours were in vain. Books there were in plenty, from leather bound classics and first editions, to the current outpourings of the popular fiction writers, but short of taking down and examining every single book in his huge library, I could not find anything that approximated to a diary. I thought that was a very curious phenomenon in the home and castle of an obsessive diary writer and memorabilia maniac. But the curiosity of the phenomenon helped me forward not one jot.

  I looked at my Seiko, and I reckoned I’d been an intruder quite long enough for the health of my pension plan. On my way out, the way I came, I noticed a small oil painting of a rather striking woman of about thirty hanging in a dark corner of the hall. I memorized the features of her face, just in case, and checked the portrait for a date. It had one — 1979. I guessed I had just met Mrs Veronica Treasure for the first time.

  And then I was gone, and I just hoped Marks and Spencer’s best brown leather gloves (medium size) did not leave highly in dividualistic prints. Or my Marks and Spencer trainers for that matter. But then I was not the only person in the world with a pair of those, was I?

  *

  The tension of being an intruder began to loosen as I beetled home, and it let in a huge feeling of disappointment and frustration. I had taken a monumental risk for plug zero, and I was no further informed at all — unless you include snooping on another person’s sexual life as a giant leap forward for person-kind. Treasure just did not seem to have the stolen toys. Yet somehow I was not entirely convinced. After all, he did not seem to be a fanatical diary keeper, from my little investigation, either. Yet I knew he was. Correction: Arabella told me he was. And why should she lie? Unless, of course, she was totally in league with Treasure, and had been lying all the time. But then, how would concocting a story about diaries help Treasure? I was getting very confused — and that was without including the possibility that Treasure had murdered his free-wheeling wife, the lady of the portrait. And I was depressed, too, at the thought of having to go through the same scary exercise with Rankin’s home, if hairy hands proved to be as pure as the driven snow.

  By the time I got home, I knew there was only one intelligent response to the whole shebang — I went to the pub. But it was a move that I very soon regretted, for I met Gus. Now I rate Gus very highly in the scheme of things, but it was what he said that worried me to death.

  ‘Surprised to see you back,’ was his first remark.

  ‘What do you mean? I wasn’t planning to stay there,’ I said almost in a whisper as I didn’t wish every beer brain in the pub to know of my escapade.

  He took my hint and lowered his not inconsiderable voice.

  ‘Thought you might be staying somewhere at Her Majesty’s pleasure,’ he replied.

  ‘Why? I was very careful. Didn’t get in quite the way you showed me, but I got in.’ I took a draught of my Heineken. ‘But I couldn’t find a sausage to pin on him. Not a diary, nor my toys. Nothing.’

  ‘No? I learnt something this morning, that’s all. Came over to tell you, but you’d gone.’

  ‘Learnt what?’ I said impatiently.

  ‘Doesn’t really matter now.’

  ‘Come on, Gus. There you go again. Tell me — it might be important.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘So?’ I gripped his wrist — his Heineken raising wrist. That did it.

  ‘Chatting to an old mate of mine in Weymouth this morning, I was. He’s an electrician, very good with wires. I asked him what he knew about Treasure. He said, not a lot. But he knew the house quite well …’

  ‘Come on. Get to the point.’

  ‘That is the point. He knew the place well because two year ago, he installed an elaborate burglar alarm system. And it’s wired direct to the nearest police station. That’s all.’

  I almost had an attack of the vapours on the spot. I held onto the bar.

  ‘That’s why’, he continued, ‘I didn’t really expect you to be back for a bit. So I came round here to cheer myself up.’

  I took his hand and led him over to a window seat. I needed to sit down.

  ‘My God,’ I breathed, ‘then why didn’t the bloody burglar alarms go off?’

  I couldn’t believe that even a mate of Gus’s could be that bad an electrician.

  *

  My slough of despond was made a trifle less soggy when I got back by a picture postcard lying on my doormat. It bore a rather luridly coloured picture of steep green hills, and underneath ‘The Mynd, above All Stretton’. I turned it over. It was postmarked Owermoigne and dated two days before. Beyond my address, it had nothing written on it bar a signature, ‘Often’. I smiled. Crook she might be, but it was her almost criminal sense of humour that got me every time. I put the postcard behind a Victorian dish on my kitchen dresser, where Bing couldn’t see it, and made myself some lunch. All the time I was eating, I wondered why she did not call. I’d wear a little Hitler moustache for one of her smiles, that’s how far gone I was.

  By midway through the afternoon, interrupted by a retired Colonel I knew vaguely who bought a pre-war Frog ‘Interceptor’ flying model fighter complete with box and winder for seventy pounds, and an acned youth who shelled out twenty-five pounds for a Spot-On Humber Super Snipe, I got my mind back into some kind of shape and had decided on my next plan of action. My intuition seemed to bring me to the firm conclusion that the diaries must exist, and that they could provide the answer, one way or the other, not only to the stolen tinplates, but probably, to the fate of the strikingly good-looking lady hanging in Treasure’s manorial hall. Once I’d found them, I could either nail Treasure or count him out of my list of suspects. Vivian Stone I just had to leave to Inspector Blake. Rankin I would have to Barclaycard (I dreaded it), and all the other possibles, like Monsieur Vincent, Chalmers himself, and collectors from other parts of the country, had to await the elimination of Treasure, Stone and Rankin. It was the only way I could see to make any sense of any of it, or any forward progress. After all, Blake had said intuition was the policeman’s greatest asset. I was banking on it working for laymen, too.

  Just at that moment the telephone rang and, speak of the devil, it was Detective Inspector Trevor Blake. How’s that for intuition?

  ‘Any news?’ I asked, in the half-hope.

  ‘Not about your toys, Mr Marklin, I’m sorry to say. We haven’t caught up with Mr Stone yet. It’s more difficult once they get abroad, you know. Got to tread carefully. I really just rang to see if you had any more bright ideas about our little find in the Spitfire excavation.’

  ‘No, why should I?’ I remarked suspiciously.

  ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, Mr Marklin. I don’t suspect you of anything. I just wondered if you had come up with any more hypotheses.’

  There was a pregnant silence, and I knew I would be missing a trick if I didn’t forward something. It isn’t every day you get Scotland Yard on your side, so I took a deep breath, and jumped in way over my head — taking my old Mum’s advice again.

  ‘It’s Treasure. At least, I think so. It’s his wife who is supposed to have gone to Switzerland. She didn’t, or something. He murdered her and buried her under the oak tree, where no one would ever find her. Removed most of the skull so t
he remains couldn’t be identified …’ I was beginning to lose my confidence rapidly. ‘Could be, couldn’t it? I don’t know. You asked me so I told you … and, then again, who knows? It’s got nothing to do with me, anyway. It’s those stolen toys I want back. What skeletons you find are your problem, not mine …’

  I began rambling, but he interrupted me before I could make an even bigger idiot of myself.

  ‘Very interesting, Mr Marklin. Don’t get flustered — I’m not going to tell anyone else of your little hypothesis.’

  I didn’t say anything more, so he went on in his quiet, authoritative voice. ‘Let me feed you some more information, Mr Marklin. You’ll read about it sooner or later in the papers, anyway. The woman’s bones show traces of acid. Could be to help the dissolving of the flesh, don’t you think? Make identification harder should the body have been found earlier, I would imagine. And, by the way, we know Mrs Treasure went to Lausanne. We have a copy of her hotel registration form. Apparently there was a man with her. All fits the rumours of the time — that she went off to meet her lover, Mr Marklin, not remained here to meet her death.’

  ‘Look, as I said, that’s your problem, Inspector. Avoiding imminent backruptcy is mine. I’m not loaded, you see, like Lord Peter Wimsey was, and I don’t receive a steady old age pension cheque like Miss Marples, and I’m not paid a retainer like Philip Marlowe …’

  ‘I’ll remember that in future, Mr Marklin. Don’t lose any sleep on my account, please. I’ll keep you informed if I hear anything.’

  ‘On the toys?’

  ‘On the toys, Mr Marklin. Goodbye.’

  I did not give myself too long to digest his call before I decided to act on my intuition and call Deborah.

  ‘What can I do for you today, Mr Wonderful?’ she oozed into the phone, and I guessed she’d had one of those advertising meetings with an ample alcohol content.

  ‘Make a little assignation for me?’