The whole of Tachnadray was silent. It was ten-thirty, long past nightfall. Michelle, lustrous as a grisaille-glass Early English cathedral window at sunset, had met me as instructed in our lonely office. Our only light was candles and an oil lamp.
“Ready?” I asked huskily.
“Yes,” she said. Her face glowed, her eyes danced.
Cunning to the last, I dialed and passed the receiver. “Our first phone call from Tachnadray.”
“This is the house auction secretary speaking,” she said. “Could I please have, ah, Tinker?”
I egged her on. “Don’t forget the room.”
“Tinker? This is Mrs. Michelle, auction secretary. You will please transfer to a separate extension in a room away from noise.” An alarmed expression, her hand on the mouthpiece. “He says he can’t, Ian. It sounds like a…”
“It is a pub. Tell the boozy old devil to take his beer and Ted can shoot refills through the hatch.”
“He’s going,” Michelle whispered. “What a dreadful cough.”
“You’re doing great.”
“He said ‘Where’s Lovejoy?’ That’s the name you—”
Tinker’s cough ground out as I took the receiver. “Tinker? Course the seam’s on. Listen: Make sure you remember this bird’s voice, d’y’hear? She’ll be doing the phoning every night. She’s new, so talk slow, understand? And a new pub every night. Treble Tile tomorrow, same time. Make sure she gets the number.”
“Bird indeed,” Michelle muttered.
“And, Tinker. I’ve decided on the auctioneer. Tee up Trembler.”
“Bleedin’ ’ell,” Tinker croaked. “Asking for trouble?”
I lost my rag. “Do as you’re bloody told,” I yelled. “Everybody’s flaming boss until it’s time to pick up the tab —”
“Awreet, Lovejoy. I’ll find him. But Aussie’s free and Flintstone’s out of clink—”
“Trembler!” I bawled, then, smiling, passed Michelle the receiver. “Off you go, love.
Good luck. Tell Tinker to glam Trembler up. And get a typewriter.”
“Glam? A typewriter? Where from?” she was asking, round-eyed, as I took my leave with a candle to light my way. I didn’t reply. Where from, indeed. Did I have to think of everything? I went to see if there was blood on the laird’s old car.
The monster motor was housed in a drystone coach house behind Duncan’s workshop.
Before knocking off as night fell, I’d trailed a cable from the window while Duncan had a final smoke at the door, his closing ritual safe from our volatile solvents. I’d left the switch down.
The cable stretched to the coach house, explaining its length. Robert padlocked the double doors on the motor’s return, always good for a laugh. I opened the door, trailed the cable in after me, pulled the leaf shut. A bulb from my pocket, and I started searching.
Say, forty minutes later, and defeat. No blood that I could see. Blood’s russet after a few minutes, then brown, then black. It was a common-enough art stain in its time, and you can tell the shade. Therefore, Joseph, who was Michelle and Duncan’s son, who’d “betrayed Tachnadray” and was now kept imprisoned at Shooters, had returned without being bludgeoned. Persuaded? Drugged? Gunpoint? I gave up. Lots of puzzles in clan country. Not a lot of explanations.
Two dozen letters next morning, proving my denials to the world’s press were working a treat. Michelle drumming her fingers, saying things like, “Where’s that Hamish got to?” Mrs. Buchan gave me a three-plate breakfast and some scruffy young lass zoomed coffee to our office.
“I like your new nail varnish, Michelle. Women don’t use enough makeup.”
“Thank you,” she said. She was narked because the coffee bird was talkative.
“Shouldn’t we make a start? There’s so much to do.”
And there was. I’d nicked a few old fruit boxes, into which she sorted the letters by postmark. I was pleased. I like evidence of suspicion. It means people are thinking.
“Haven’t you got little feet?” I said. “Has everybody got titchie plates in Belgium?”
“Tinker’s list is completely erratic,” she began, ignoring this banter. “I tried to make him dictate items according to the dealers. He was most abusive.”
“Tut-tut.” I apologized for Tinker, struggling for sobriety. “You’ll have to cross-file, love.”
“And he doesn’t seem to know you as… as Ian McGunn, Ian. Only by that absurd nickname.” She wasn’t looking up. We’d never been closer. I said nothing. She shrugged and began, “First, then. A tortoiseshell—”
“No, love. Give everything a number, starting at one-zero-zero-zero, or you’ll make mistakes. Documentary errors run at four percent among auctioneers.”
“Number one thousand, then. A tortoiseshell armorial stencil, from Three-Wheel Archie.
Then a word: quatrefoil.”
I almost welled up. Putting him first was Tinker’s way of saying everything was normal between me and Three-Wheel, that he was back on my side. I coughed, and covered up my embarrassment by explaining, “Quatrefoil’s the code you’ll use for secretly pricing Archie’s items. No letter recurs; ten letters, see? Q is one, U is two, so on to L, which is nought. It’s called steganography. You can use the letters to denote any amount of money.” Craftsmen serving noble houses cut coat-of-arms designs in tortoiseshell for ease of repainting armorials
