He shook his head, still with that sour little smile. ‘I don’t make any offer until I know how much I have to beat. I think in fairness to your client, to Miss Holland, you have to tell me that. You say it is high.’
‘Very high,’ I told him.
‘Higher than one thousand pounds?’
‘Much higher.’
He frowned, his hand moving up to his blue jowls and the high dome of his forehead catching the light. The hand came away, the head thrust forward. ‘You have this offer in writing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Show me. I don’t believe it.’
I started to tell him that I wasn’t accustomed to having my word doubted, but I checked myself. The figure was so preposterous that in his shoes I would have been equally incredulous. ‘All right,’ I said, and I took Tubby’s letter from the drawer in my desk and handed it to him.
He picked it up, holding it close to his face. ‘C’est incroyable!’ he breathed. ‘Who is this?’ He peered closely at the signature. ‘J. L. Sawyer. A dealer?’ he asked. ‘Yes. I remember now. I have met him. An amateur.’ He said it half in contempt, half in wonder. And then he looked at me over the top of the letter. ‘Have you had any other offers?’
I shook my head.
‘Then why does he go directly to this very high figure of twenty-five hundred pounds? It cannot be for the “Lady McLeod” Trinidad stamp; that is in too poor condition.’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘He just seems fascinated by the collection as a whole, and by the proofs, of course.’
‘Why? What is his interest?’
‘He seems to think it has great curiosity value.’
‘He wants it for himself then, not for a client?’
‘Yes, for himself.’
He shook his head as though in wonderment at the stupidity of it. ‘Well, I’m not sure now. For myself I could not go beyond fifteen hundred pounds, maybe a little more. But above his figure, no — not on my own responsibility, you understand.’ He had been speaking slowly, more to himself than to me. Then abruptly he put the bid letter down on the desk. ‘You must give me a little time. I have to consult my client about this.’
‘Miss Holland needs the money,’ I said. ‘If you would like to use my phone.’
But he shook his head. ‘My client is not in England any more. He is somewhere in Europe, I think. You must wait a little, until I can contact him.’
‘How long?’
‘A fortnight, three weeks — I’m not sure. Shall we say a month? I expect him to be in England again sometime next month.’
I hesitated. A month would take us to July 23. That would be running it fine if she was leaving the ship at Callao or Valparaiso. ‘I’ll give you three weeks.’
He seemed about to argue, but then abruptly he nodded. ‘Three weeks then. Meantime, I have your word that you do not sell to this man Sawyer before I contact you again.’
‘You have until July sixteenth,’ I told him. ‘If I haven’t heard from you by then-’
‘You will hear from me. That I promise you.’ And he got to his feet. ‘It’s very strange,’ he said, shaking his head and frowning again. ‘I don’t understand why Sawyer is making this bid. It can only be that he hopes to twist my client’s elbow.’ He suddenly spun round on me. ‘You think he knows who my client is?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
He seemed puzzled and uneasy as I showed him to the door. I, too, was beginning to wonder about that client of his. I was wondering about a lot of things, particularly the sheets Tubby had talked about. If the proofs were worth this sort of money, what would a whole sheet be worth, a solid block of 120 or 240 of the printed stamps?
Though Packer was back by then, I decided to deal with the sale preliminaries myself. I could then have a look at that loft. A lot of papers and records are usually left behind by the occupants when the house and its contents are up for sale. There was sure to be something there, and a closer look at those old photographs might help. But first I needed more information about the family’s background. I rang Chandler and asked him to have a drink with me before lunch at the County Hotel next day.
I thought he might be a little less reticent over a drink than if I saw him at his office. Unfortunately I was delayed, and he had already bought his own drink by the time I got there. It started us off on the wrong foot. ‘I can only give you a quarter of an hour,’ he said primly.
‘And I’ve got to be at Rowlinson Fast Freeze by one.’ I wasn’t in the best of tempers. I’d just had a long session with Sam Baker, who had told me bluntly that if I went off to Australia to do a job for Rowlinson on my own account, it would be the end of our association. With business the way it was I knew he was taking advantage of the situation to edge me out. In the end we had had a blazing row, and I had walked out, telling him he’d better start advertising for another office boy right away. I got myself a drink and steered Chandler to an empty table.
‘So you’re lunching with Chips Rowlinson.’ He was looking at me the way a thrush eyes a worm, his eyes bright behind his glasses. ‘There’s talk that they’re expanding again. If I can assist in any way …’ He left it at that. ‘Well now, you want some information on the Hollands. May I ask why?’
I explained briefly about the stamps, but when I asked him about Carlos Holland, he said, ‘I wouldn’t know about that. Before my time. In any case, I’m not at all sure I’m at liberty to discuss their affairs with you.’
‘Then why did you agree to meet me?’
He smiled suddenly, his glasses catching the light. ‘Like you, perhaps I’m a little curious. Also, I don’t like loose ends. I ought to have been informed. She should have told me she was going abroad, not written to me so that I only received the letter after she had sailed.’
I asked him how long his firm had been acting for them, and he said, ‘Since January 1922. I had one of my juniors check through the files. Fortunately they were in store here when our Moorgate office was gutted in the Blitz. The first conveyance we handled was for the sale of a London office property, then shortly afterwards a house in Surrey. Of course, the partner who dealt with that is dead now.’
‘Presumably he was acting for Miss Holland’s grandfather.’
‘Yes. Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence Douglas Holland. He sold up and went abroad shortly after the First World War.’
‘Do you know where he went?’
‘Singapore. His address was care of a bank in Singapore. We had to have his bank address, as he had arranged for us to manage his affairs. At that time all his funds were invested in this country. Later he instructed us to sell most of his investments and remit the proceeds to a bank in Sydney, Australia. In 1923 he changed his address again to a Post Office Box number at Port Moresby in Papua. After that there’s nothing on the file until his son, Captain Philip Holland, arrived in England with his family and we handled the conveyancing, first for a farm near Snape, and then, when he sold that, for the purchase of the house at Aldeburgh.’
‘I take it her grandfather was dead by then?’
He nodded. ‘Apparently Colonel Holland disappeared the same year they came to England.’
‘When was that?’
‘About six years ago.’
‘You say he disappeared.’
‘Yes. Made an end of it, that was what she said. He took a native boat and just sailed off into the blue.’
‘Did she say why?’
‘No. She wasn’t there at the time. Anyway, she had come to see me on business, and that was a private matter. I didn’t ask her.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t know whether I should tell you this, but she was badly injured, and her mother was killed, in some sort of an outbreak of native hysteria. I think perhaps this preyed on the old man’s mind. He must have been over eighty, and at that age, nearing the end of his life …’ He sighed, a solicitor’s acceptance of the vagaries of elderly people. That’s what decided Captain Holland to sell up and come to England. Wanted to get away from it all.’