“Lovely balance,” countered Mr Cartwright at once.
“Funny how many of these old horse pistols are still around,” mused Mr Hoole. He peered dubiously at the weapon’s stock, as if a fissure had suddenly been disclosed. “And some of them in very fair condition.” “Like those, for instance.” There was nothing wrong with Mr Cartwright’s reflexes.
Mr Hoole puffed his cheeks, said nothing. He picked up the second pistol and cradled it in both hands. With its bell-shaped muzzle, it looked more like an antiquated motor horn than a firearm.
There came the sound of the shop door opening. Both men looked round.
They saw what appeared to be a youth of about twenty, eager-faced yet diffident in manner. He was dressed in sports jacket and trousers. His first concern, it seemed, was a medieval Japanese war helmet hanging just inside the doorway, but on hearing the proprietor’s approach he abruptly and a little guiltily switched his attention from that fascinating article to Enoch Cartwright.
“Good afternoon, sergeant,” said Mr Cartwright.
Detective Sergeant Sidney Love, who was a good deal older than twenty and sometimes wished that he looked it, nodded cheerfully.
“Inspector Purbright’s compliments, and could you spare him half an hour,” he said, then added reassuringly: “Just a remand. You know. In and out. No bother.”
“What-now?”
The sergeant shrugged good-naturedly. “Well, you know... when it suits you...within the next ten minutes or so.”
Mr Cartwright, who did not look very pleased (but knew, unlike Mr Chubb, that the delicacy of his dual role of magistrate and dealer in sometimes dubious properties placed him under certain special obligations) said that he would be ready as soon as he had dealt with his present customer.
“Good-o,” said Love.
He strolled across to see what the little bloke in rimless specs was looking at.
“Nice duelling pistols,” he remarked, after some moments’ silent admiration.
Mr Cartwright gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Duelling pistols,” he echoed. “Hardly suitable for duels, sergeant. Not bell-mouths. Ha ha. Oh, no.” There had crept into his way of speaking an academic drawl that friends of the former occupant of a Broad Street scrap yard would have found decidedly odd. It was what Purbright called “Enoch’s JP voice”.
Love glanced at Mr Hoole, as if seeking reprieve from disappointment.
The optician seemed to have been using the time he had been on his own to cultivate a downright contempt for the goods on offer. He responded to Love’s appeal with a disparaging pout and “No, he’s right, of course. Just a couple of common horse pistols. Provenance unknown.”
Mr Cartwright glared at this imputation of illegitimacy. “They’re Purdy’s!” he declared. “Not a doubt of it. Hand-chased for the seventh Earl of Flaxborough. Superb examples.”
Mr Hoole bestowed upon the sergeant a sad, knowing smile. “Purdy’s!” With one fastidious finger, he flipped shut the lid of the case. “Dear me!”
There were further exchanges of a similar kind. Love told himself that these two nuts might be at it all afternoon and evening if he didn’t do something about it. He looked at his watch very ostentatiously, as might a boy at a new birthday present.
Mr Hoole eventually thrust the case under his arm. “I shall come back,” he said to Mr Cartwright, “when you are in less demand by the constabulary.” Halfway to the door, he turned. “Don’t worry about these; I’ll look after them.” A pause, then, “Such as they are.”
“Quite a character, your friend,” remarked Love, as the shop door closed again.
Mr Cartwright, JP, glowered. “And tight as arseholes,” he replied. This time his voice sounded perfectly natural.
The occasional court was held in one of the ground floor rooms at Fen Street police headquarters. A certain informality was conferred upon the proceedings by the sparsity of the furniture—two folding chairs and a card table—and the presence, in various corners, of a stolen spare wheel, a stack of back numbers of Horse and Hound, and a tea urn awaiting repair.
The chairs were occupied by Mr Cartwright and the young woman on loan from a nearby solicitors’ office who acted as deputy clerk of the court. Between them was the small table.
Standing close by—so close, indeed, that he seemed to have been placed to umpire some projected hand of cards—was the prisoner, Robert Becket, 38, photographer, of Ardrossan Court, Paddington, London.
Even the chief constable, gamely occupying the role of prosecutor, was obliged by lack of floor area to share in the general intimacy. He stood, papers in hand, almost shoulder to shoulder with Mr Becket, to whom, on one occasion, he actually offered apology for knocking his elbow.
As for the prisoner’s colleagues, only one—Clive Grail—had managed to squeeze into the room at all. He was wedged between the pile of magazines and PC Cowdrey, who gave evidence of arrest. Birdie Clemenceaux and Lanching had to be content to stand outside in the corridor.
Fortunately for all concerned, the chief constable took less than five minutes to catalogue Becket’s alleged misdeeds, request an adjournment until the following Thursday, and observe that the police offered no objection to bail, which he suggested might suitably be set at five hundred pounds.
“You will be remanded,” said Mr Cartwright, with enormous solemnity, “for six days, and granted bail in your own recognizances. Do you understand what that means?”
“Do you?” countered the defendant.
The chief constable intervened. He made to the magistrate a slight bow, more dismissive than respectful, informed Mr Becket that that would be all, then ushered him, in a bustling but quite amiable manner, from the court.
Chapter Three
Friday being publication day and a natural breathing space between one week’s news-gathering and the next, there was no need for Mr Josiah Kebble to be present at all in the tall, ramshackle building in Market Street that housed the editorial offices of the Flaxborough Citizen. His appointment as editor, however, was a recent one, having followed upon certain unfortunate events in the family of George Lintz, the previous incumbent, and he had not yet assessed how sharp an eye was being kept upon him by his distant but voracious employers in London. So he had come in. The better to display his diligence, Mr Kebble had moved a desk from the office used by Lintz—a remote and private room on the upper floor—down to the open area behind the counter. There he sat, in view of the double glass doors leading from the street, a sort of benevolent monarch, ready (and, indeed, eager) to grant audience to any member of the public, with the exceptions of a Miss Cadbury, doggy charity organizer, Bernadette Croll, the Mumblesby nymphomaniac, and a very sinister-looking barber called Tozer, who was more than likely to upset the two office girls, Sylvie and Carole, by ogling them fiercely and asking them if they had ever considered entering the lucrative and interesting profession of housekeeper.