Lovers Make Moan

and the item isn’t labelled like the rest are. I’m surprised you included it in a collection of this value,” she added, turning to Lynn.

“Would you point out the blade?” said Conway.

Mrs Wells went to the third of the glass cases she had examined and pointed to a slim dagger which had a simple hilt made of walnut and a single ring on the metal quillon-block. The blade was about fifteen inches long, some of it having been inserted in the hilt. The inspector put a handkerchief over his hand, picked up the dagger and closed the case, laying the dagger on top of it. Lynn said indifferently, “Oh, that thing! It’s the dagger Jasper had made for himself to wear in the play. I don’t know what it’s doing here. It’s worthless.”

“Would you turn it over, please? Ah, that’s it!” said Mrs Wells. “Well, I never! Yet I suppose it’s natural enough, when you come to think.”

“Then pray share your thoughts with us, Mrs Wells,” said Dame Beatrice. “You recognise this dagger. That is obvious.”

“Not the hilt I don’t. That’s why I passed it over the first time. There’s no doubt about the blade, though. Here, take my glass and look for yourselves. Can you make out the lettering on the blade? The beginning of the words has been cut off, but there’s enough left for you to see.”

The Chief Constable took the watchmaker’s glass she produced and studied the blade. He then read aloud “chior etter” and, removing the glass, which he handed back, he added, “Obviously the letters mean more to you than they do to me, Mrs Wells.”

“Well, they’re a modern forgery, of course, like the blade itself,” she said, “but they stand for Melchior Diefstetter of Munich. He was a famous German swordsmith of the middle of the sixteenth century. This is the lower end of the blade of that rapier I sold that poor boy. Goodness knows why he had it cut down. Mind you, although this is much later than Diefstetter’s time, and the hilt is almost new, like I said, it’s a nice bit of work had it been genuine.”

“Genuine?” snorted Lynn. “Of course it’s not genuine, although it could deceive some people, I suppose.”

“If it had been genuine,” Mrs Wells went on, “it would have been a real collector’s piece and I certainly would not have let it go to that boy for what he gave me.”

“How did it come into your possession, Mrs Wells?” asked Dame Beatrice, motioning Lynn to remain silent.

“Oh, in the usual way, through the trade. There was an auction and one or two items interested me. The whole lot had been in the armoury of a big house in the Midlands. I got”—she looked hopefully at Marcus Lynn—“a genuine haute-piece and a fifteenth-century German sallet, but when it came to the rapier, well, everybody knew it was a dud and there were no bids, so, in the end, I got it thrown in with quite a nice German gothic mace, late fifteenth century, for which I knew I’d got a customer.”

“Do you know an antiques dealer named Rinkley, Mr Rinkley’s divorced wife, who has a shop in this town?” asked Dame Beatrice.

“Oh, most of us know each other in the trade, but she wasn’t at this particular sale. Her specialities are china and glass, so there was nothing to interest her. Living not so far apart, and our professional lives never crossing, as you might say, if I hear of anything in her line I let her know and she does the same by me. That’s really as much as I know about her.”

“What is a haute-piece?” asked the Chief Constable.

(“Shades of Rosamund!” murmured Laura to Dame Beatrice.)

“Oh, it’s a guard for the neck. It was placed on the pauldrons.”

“And those?”

“They are the thick metal plates which protected the shoulders.”

“And a sallet?”

“That is—if you’ll excuse the description—a po-shaped helmet, sixteenth century, with just a slit for the eyes. It’s a bit longer at the back than the front to ward off a slash on the back of your neck. I believe the foot-soldiers used to wear them against attacks by cavalry.”

“Thank you. Well,” the Chief Constable went on, “it seems it must have been Jasper himself who placed this dagger amongst his father’s collection.”

“Like hell he did!” exclaimed Lynn indignantly. “Of all the damned impudence! I wouldn’t have that pseudo object among my collection if Jasper had gone on his bended knees to me. Still, I mustn’t curse the lad now.”

“Where did you see it last, Mr Lynn?” asked Conway.

“Hanging from a hook on the lad’s bedroom wall with a damned silly notice pinned up underneath it to the effect that She—whoever She is—buckled it on for him at the last performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There followed the last date of the play and then there was this foolery that he was going to become a Buddhist monk.”

“Interesting,” said Dame Beatrice. “He shaved his head to try out how he would look, I suppose. It suggests doubt.”

“Well, what’s our next move?” asked Laura, when they were alone again.

“We must find the person who cut up the rapier and turned it into two daggers. The police are already looking for him.”

“Nobody is going to admit to having done it. After all, two murders have been committed with the beastly things.”

“Or two suicides; or one murder and one suicide. In neither case has murder been proved. As to the person who converted the rapier into the daggers, we now have a little more to go on. Ring up Mr Lynn and ask him whether he employs an expert to examine his collection of weapons from time to time and keep it in good order. I think there must be someone of that sort in the background.”

Lynn’s expert was employed by a museum whose collection of weapons, although significantly smaller than that