On Friday, Messiter came in about eleven as usual, relaxed, indistinguishable in dress from the stockbrokers and bankers: dark suit, old boys’ tie, shoes gleaming. With a smile he peeled a note from his wallet and bought his box of five Imperial Panatellas, a ritual that from the beginning had signalled goodwill towards his landlord. Braid sometimes wondered if he actually smoked them. He did not carry conviction as a smoker of cigars. He was a quiet man, functioning best in private conversations. Forty-seven by his own admission, he looked ten years younger, dark-haired with brown eyes that moistened when he spoke of things that moved him.
‘Any letters for me, Mr Braid?’
‘Five or six.’ Braid took them from the shelf behind him. ‘How is business?’
‘No reason to complain,’ Messiter said, smiling. ‘My work is my hobby, and there aren’t many lucky enough to say that. And how is the world of tobacco? Don’t tell me. You’ll always do a good trade here, Mr Braid. All the pressures — you can see it in their faces. They need the weed and always will.’ Mildly he enquired, ‘Nobody called this week asking for me, I suppose?’
Braid had not intended saying anything, but Messiter’s manner disarmed him. That and the shame he felt at the suspicions he had harboured impelled him to say, ‘Actually there was a caller. I had a detective in here — when was it? — Wednesday — asking about you. It was obviously a ridiculous mistake.’ He described Inspector Gent’s visit without mentioning his own investigation afterwards with the ladder. ‘Makes you wonder what the police are up to these days,’ he concluded. ‘I believe we’re all on the computer at Scotland Yard now. This sort of thing is bound to happen.’
‘You trust me, Mr Braid, I appreciate that,’ Messiter said, his eyes starting to glisten. ‘You took me on trust from the beginning.’
‘I’m sure you aren’t stacking stolen goods upstairs, if that’s what you mean,’ Braid told him in sincerity.
‘But the inspector was not so sure?’
‘He said something about a search warrant. Probably by now he has realised his mistake. I don’t expect to see him again.’
‘I wonder what brought him here,’ Messiter said, almost to himself.
‘I wouldn’t bother about it. It’s a computer error.’
‘I don’t believe so. What did he say about the lock I fitted on the door, Mr Braid?’
‘Oh, at the time he seemed to think it was quite sinister.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t worry — it doesn’t bother me at all. You consulted me about the damned thing and you pay a pound extra a week for it, so who am I to complain? What you keep in there — if anything — is your business.’ He chuckled in a way intended to reassure.
‘That detective carried on as if you had a fortune hidden away in there.’
‘Oh, but I have.’
Braid felt a pulse throb in his temple.
‘It’s high time I told you,’ said Messiter serenely. ‘I suppose I should apologise for not saying anything before. Not that there’s anything criminal, believe me. Actually it’s a rather remarkable story. I’m a philatelist, as you know. People smile at that and I don’t blame them. Whatever name you give it, stamp collecting is a hobby for kids. In the business, we’re a little sensitive on the matter. We dignify it with its own technology — dies and watermarks and so forth — but I’ve always suspected this is partly to convince ourselves that the whole thing is serious and important. Well, it occurred to me four or five years ago that there was a marvellous way of justifying stamp collecting to myself and that was by writing a book about stamps. You must have heard of Rowland Hill, the fellow who started the whole thing off?’
‘The Penny Post?’
Messiter nodded. ‘1840 — the world’s first postage stamps, the Penny Black and the Twopence Blue. My idea was not to write a biography of Hill — that’s been done several times over by cleverer writers than I — but to analyse the way his idea caught on. The response of the Victorian public was absolutely phenomenal, you know. It’s all in the newspapers of the period. I went to the Newspaper Library at Colindale to do my research. I spent weeks over it.’ His voice conveyed not fatigue at the memory, but excitement. ‘There was so much to read. Reports of Parliament. Letters to the Editor. Special articles describing the collection and delivery of the mail.’ He paused, pointing a finger at Braid. ‘You’re wondering what this has to do with the room upstairs. I’ll tell you. Whether it was providence or pure good luck I wouldn’t care to say, but one afternoon in that Newspaper Library I turned up The Times for a day in May, 1841, and my eye was caught — riveted, I should say — by an announcement in the Personal Column on the front page.’ Messiter’s hand went to his pocket and withdrew his wallet. From it he took a folded piece of paper. ‘This is what I saw.’
Braid took it from him, a photocopy of what was unquestionably a column of old newspaper type. The significant words had been scored round in a ballpoint.
A Young Lady, being desirous of covering her dressing room with cancelled postage stamps, has been so far encouraged in her wish by private friends as to have succeeded in collecting 16,000. These, however, being insufficient, she will be greatly obliged if any good-natured person who may have these otherwise worthless little articles at their disposal, would assist her in her whimsical project. Address to Miss E.D., Mr Butt’s, Glover, Leadenhall Street.
Braid made the connection instantly. His throat went dry. He read it again. And again.
‘You understand?’ said Messiter. ‘It’s a stamp man’s dream — a room literally papered with Penny Blacks!’
‘But this was—’
‘1841. Right. More than a century ago. Have you ever looked through a really old newspaper? It’s quite astonishing how easy it is to get caught up in the immediacy of the events. When I read that announcement, I could see that dressing room vividly in my imagination: chintz curtains, gas brackets, brass bedstead, washstand and mirror. I could see Miss E.D. with her paste pot and brush assiduously covering the wall with stamps. It was such an exciting idea that it came as a jolt to realise that it all had happened so long ago that Miss E.D. must have died about the turn of the century. And what of her dressing room? That, surely, must have gone, if not in the Blitz, then in the wholesale rebuilding of the City. My impression of Leadenhall Street was that the banks and insurance companies had lined it from end to end with gleaming office buildings five storeys high. Even if by some miracle the shop that had been Butt’s the Glover’s had survived, and Miss E.D.’s room had been over the shop, common sense told me that those stamps must long since have been stripped from the walls.’ He paused, smiled and lighted a cigar.
Braid waited, his heart pounding.
‘Yet there was a possibility, remote, but tantalising and irresistible, that someone years ago redecorated the room by papering over the stamps. Any decorator will tell you they sometimes find layer upon layer of wallpaper. Imagine peeling back the layers to find thousands of Penny Blacks and Twopence Blues unknown to the world of philately! These days the commonest are catalogued at ten pounds or so, but find some rarities — inverted watermarks, special cancellations — and you could be up to five hundred a stamp. Maybe a thousand. Mr Braid, I don’t exaggerate when I tell you the value of such a room could run to half a million pounds. Half a million for what that young lady in her innocence called worthless little articles!’
Braid had a momentary picture of her upstairs in her crinoline arranging the stamps on the wall. His wall!
As if he read the thought, Messiter said, ‘It was my discovery. I went to a lot of trouble. Eventually I found the Post Office Directory for 1845 in the British Library. The list of residents in Leadenhall Street included a glover by the name of Butt.’