a sear spring in the flintlock. I got the impression it slotted into rather than onto something, but it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Despite my ignorance, I was certain it was the object for which Sheila had been killed.
I was dried and in my priest hole by nine o'clock. I was nervous, because I was going to kill somebody.
Who, I didn't know. Nor where, nor when, nor in what circumstances.
But I knew how.
He would get nothing but the best, the very best Lovejoy could manage. Price no object.
I had a small amount of black powder—smoky gunpowder— in a pistol flask belonging to the Barratt guns. They wouldn't do. Percussion, after all. Let's do it properly. I began to go over the contents of the shelves.
Now, Lovejoy's no killer. I love these flinters the way I love Bilston enamels and jades, as examples of supreme craftsmanship. I don't like weapons because they're weapons. Only maniacs love them because they kill. During one of these tiresome wars we used to have I was conscripted and put into uniform. We were stationed on a snowy hillside in the East and given some field guns to shoot. The trouble was, an army on the opposite hillside had guns of their own and kept trying to kill us by shooting back. For me, I'd just as soon we all kept quiet, but the general feeling was that we ought to keep firing. I couldn't see what it was all about. Our hillside had nothing but a few trees, and from what little I could see of their hillside they were just as badly off. It was a waste of time, in addition to which I was frightened to death. But now I began to wish I'd taken more notice of the bare essentials during training.
The Barratts wouldn't do, so could the Nocks? Samuel Nock had made special holster and pocket flinters swan-necked in the French manner, but occasionally deviated into singles made in a special utilitarian style. I had a pair of double-barreled side-by-side flinters of his making. They really were precious to me, so I included them as possibles. A Brown Bess, heavy as hell, wouldn't do. The space might be too confined when I came to it, and forty- odd inches of massive barrel might prove cumbersome. Also, he was going to die slowly if the opportunity offered a choice; the Land Pattern might help him on his way too precipitately. We had matters to discuss. Reluctantly I put it aside.
The Adams revolving long arm was gone to Dick. That left me with two Eastern jezail guns, flintlock of course, the Adams pocket weapon, an elegant gold-inlaid La Chaumette pinfire weapon with a folding trigger, a Durs air gun you have to pump up, a Cooper blunderbuss, an early Barbar flintlock brass-barreled blunderbuss good enough to eat, a lonely Henry Nock dueler I'd been trying to match with its missing partner for twelve years, and last but not least the beautiful Mortimer weapons acquired that terrible day from Dick's boatyard. The Mortimers it was.
I melted a piece of lead bar over a spirit lamp and poured it from the pan into the bullet mold, crushing the brass handles firmly to avoid pocking the bullet surface with bubbles. Twelve attempts it took before I got two perfect spheres of dulled lead. After cooling them, I polished both in a leather cloth until they were almost shiny.
The black powder I poured into the pistol flask. It was set correctly on the dispensing nozzle, so I cleaned inside the barrels with a swab of cloth screwed onto the wrong end of the ramrods. All this is easier said than done with white linen gloves on, but you must never leave fingerprints on a flinter. It ruins the browning after some years, and actually precipitates real rust even on the best Damascus barrel. The barrels cleaned, I poured the dose of powder into each, and forced the bullets in after tamping the powder down. It was hard work getting them to the bottom of the breech but I managed it. After that, a soft wad of cloth torn from a handkerchief down each barrel to keep the bullets in. Then a squirt of powder into each flashpan, bringing back the cocks to the half-cock position where the triggers wouldn't work them and clapping the steel closed, and all was lovely.
I replaced them in their mahogany case, pulling the safety catch into the halt position and dusting them off. They looked priceless, stylish, graceful, wondrous in their red-felted boxwood recesses among the accessories. Every item fitted snugly. Even the case itself was brilliantly designed, a product of an age of skilled thinkers.
There was one more thing they looked—lethal, maybe even murderous.
And that really pleased me, because I was going to blow some fucking bastard's brains out.
Chapter 11
I'll be frank.
Before this the business had been a bit unreallike. You know the sort of thing—income tax rebates or these insurance benefits you get if ever you reach ninety. My attitude I suppose was one of blissful pretense. Sheila always said I pretended too much; 'romancing,' she called it. The Judas affair had previously been somehow at a distance, even though I'd been involved in setting up a search for the pistols through the trade. I suppose there was some excuse, since you can't believe in a Martian in Bloomsbury in quite the same way you might believe in the Yeti or Nessie. I'd paid lip service of sorts to the Judas pair idea. If they were mythical, well, O.K., I would spend time chasing a myth. If the bloke that had killed two people for those precious things believed in their existence, so would I. Funny, but my mind began to work clearer now I believed.
If he had searched and followed and then killed for a small accessory like my turnkey, it followed for certain that there could be no possible doubt about where the Judas pair were.
And I understood his anguish. Imagine the distress of scientists as they search for that one missing-link creature whose existence will finally prove a million theories. Imagine the shepherd's grief as he finds his prize sheep's gone absent. Double all those sorrows, and it comes somewhere near the anguish of a collector with a stupendous possession that is one vital component short. I would have felt compassion in other circumstances, even shared part of his grief. Now I cackled with evil laughter as I emerged from my priest hole and went about letting the light into the cottage and unlocking doors and windows. Let him suffer. He'd come again; somehow and sometime he'd come because I had the instrument he wanted.
From now on I would have to be ready every minute of every day. I therefore checked the garden from behind the curtains and decided to play the game to its fullest.
I telephoned George Field. His wife answered. George was out.
'I want a list from him, Mrs. Field,' I explained. 'Tell him I need urgently—within the day—the names of all those people his brother was friendly with, known collectors or not. Dealers included.' She was all set to chat, but I cut it short and then rang Geoffrey.
'Look, Lovejoy,' he began wearily, but I wasn't being told off by any village bobby. I was going to do his job for him and he was getting paid from taxes I provided.
'Silence, Geoffrey old pal, and listen.' He listened in astonishment while I said my piece. 'I want the names, ranks, and stations of the people in charge of Sheila's… accident.' Straightaway he began his spiel about not having the authority to divulge and all that. 'Listen, Geoffrey, I'll say this once. You give me the names now, or I'll take your refusal as obfuscation and ring the Chief Constable, Scotland Yard, and my local M.P. I'll also ring the local
