“The ship’s bell. The design upon it.”
“What does it signify?”
“I don’t know, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find out. I could no longer resist the temptation. I placed my hand over hers. It felt as firm and strong as it looked and her flesh was warm “But first I should like to - check the shop in Brighton and Jimmy’s room here. There might, be something we can use.”
She had not withdrawn her hand. “All right, shall we go to the shop first! The police have already been through it all, but they might have overlooked something. “Fine. I’ll buy you lunch.” I squeezed her hand, and she turned it in my grasp and squeezed back.
I’ll take you up on that,” she said. and I was too astonished by my own reaction to her grip to find a light reply. My throat was dry and my pulse beat as though I’d run a mile. Gently she removed her hand and stood up.
“Let’s do the breakfast dishes.”
If the girls of St. Mary’s could only have seen Mister Harry drying dishes, my reputation would have shattered into a thousand pieces.
She let us into the shop the back way, through a tiny enclosed yard which was almost filled with unusual objects, all of them associated with diving and the underwater world - discarded air bottles and a portable compressor, brass portholes and other salvage from wrecked ships, even the jawbone of a killer whale with all its teeth intact.
“I haven’t been in for a long time,” Sherry apologized as she unlocked the back door of the shop. “Without Jimmy-” she shrugged and then went on, ” - I must really get down to selling up all this junk and closing the shop down. I could re-sell the lease, I suppose.”
“I’m going to look round, okay?”
“Fine, I’ll get the kettle going.”
I started in the yard, searching quickly but thoroughly through the piles of junk. There was nothing that had significance as far as I could see. I went into the shop and poked around amongst the seashells and sharks” teeth on the shelves and in the display case. Finally I saw a desk in the corner and began going through the drawers.
Sherry brought me a cup of tea and perched on the corner of the desk while I piled old invoices, rubber bands and paper clips on the top. I read every scrap of paper and even rifled through the ready reckoner.
Nothing?” Sherry asked.
Nothing,” I agreed and glanced at my watch. “Lunchtime,” I told her.
She locked up the shop and by good fortune we stumbled on English’s restaurant. They gave us a secluded table in the back room and I ordered a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse to go with the lobster. Once I recovered from the shock of the price, we laughed a lot during the meal, and it wasn’t just the wine. The feeling between us was good and growing stronger.
After lunch we drove back to Seaview and we went up to Jimmy’s room.
“This is our best bet,” I guessed. “If he was keeping secrets, this is where they would be.” But I knew I had a long job ahead of me. There were hundreds of books and piles of magazines - mostly American Argosy, Trident, The Diver and other diving publications. There was also a complete shelf of springback files at the foot of the bed.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Sherry said, and went.
I took down the contents of a shelf, sat at the reading table and began to skim through the publications. immediately I saw it was an even bigger task than I had thought. Jimmy had been one of those people who read with a pencil in one hand. There were notes pencilled in the margin, comments, queries and exclamation marks, and anything that interested him was underlined.
I read doggedly, looking for something that could remotely be linked to St. Mary’s.
Around eight o’clock I began on the shelf that held the springback files. The first two were filled with newspaper clippings on shipwrecks or other marine phenomena. The third of them had an un-labelled, black imitation leather cover. It held a thin sheaf of papers, and I saw immediately that they were out of the ordinary.
They were a series of letters filed with their envelopes and stamps still attached. There were sixteen of them in all, addressed to Messrs Parker and Wilton in Fenchurch Street.
Every letter was in a different hand, but all were executed in the elegant penmanship of the last century.
The envelopes were sent from different parts of the old Empire - Canada, South Africa, India - and the nineteenth century postage stamps alone must have been of considerable value.
After I had read the first two letters, it was clear that Messrs Parker and Wilton were agents and factors, and they had acted for a number of distinguished clients in the service of Queen Victoria. The letters were instructions to deal with estates, moneys and securities.
All the letters were dated during the period from August 1857 to July 1858 and must have been offered by a dealer or an antique auctioneer as a lot.
I glanced through them quickly, but the contents were really very dull. However, something on the single page of the tenth letter caught my eye and I felt my nerves jump.
Two words had been underlined in pencil and in the margin was a notation in Jimmy North’s handwriting.
B. Muse.6914(8).”
However, it was the words themselves that held me. “Dawn Light.”
I had heard those words before. I wasn’t sure when, but they were significant.
Quickly I began at the top of the page. The sender’s address was Ia laconic
“Bombay’, and it was dated 16th Sept.
1857.
My Dear Wilton, I charge you most strictly with the proper care and safe storage of five pieces of luggage consigned in my name to your London address aboard the Han. Company’s ship Daurn Light. Due out of this port before the 25th instant and bound for the Company’s wharf in the Port of London.
Please acknowledge safe receipt of same with all despatch.
I remain yours faithfully, Colonel Sir Roger Goodchild. Officer Commanding 101st Regiment Queens Own India Rifles.
Delivery by kind favour of Captain commanding Her Majesty’s Frigate Pandier.
The paper rustled and I realized that my hand was shaking with excitement. I knew I was on to it now. This was the key. I laid the letter carefully on the reading table and Placed a silver paper-knife upon it to weight it down.
I began to read it again slowly, but there was a distraction. I heard the engine noise of an automobile coming down the lane from the gate. Headlights flashed across the window and then rounded the corner of the house.
I sat up straight, listening. The engine noise died, and car doors slammed shut.
There was a long silence then before I heard the murmur and growl of voices - men’s voices. I began to stand up from the table.
Then sherry screamed. it rang clearly through the old house, and cut into my brain like a lance. It aroused in me a protective instinct so fierce that I was down the stairs and into the hall before I realized I had moved.
The door to the kitchen was open and I paused in the doorway.
There were two men with Sherry. The heavier and elder of the two wore a beige camelliair topcoat and a tweed cap. He had a greyish, heavy lined face and deepsunk eyes. His lips were thin and colourless.
He had Sherry’s left hand twisted up between her shoulder-blades, and was holding her jammed against the wall beside the gas stove.
The other man was Younger, and he was slim and pale, bare-headed with long straw-yellow hair falling to the shoulders of his leather jacket. He was grinning gleefully as he held Sherry’s other hand over the blue flames of the gas ring, bringing it down slowly.
She was struggling desperately, but they held her and her hair had come loose as she fought.
“Slowly, lad,” the man in the cap spoke in a thick strangled voice. “Give her time to think about it.”
