I said, ‘You should have stuck to the hotel business.’
‘Yes, often I think that. Between ourselves, too, I made more money. You think Martin Freeman killed this man?’
‘He might have done. But somehow it doesn’t seem to be his style. Anyway, one thing I’m pretty certain about is that Freeman’s not in England. He wrote a letter of resignation to his firm from Florence.’
‘I think tomorrow I go back to Paris.’
‘I should do that. If you like you can tell Monsieur Duchêne that if I ever catch up with Freeman I’ll try and do something about his antique coins.’
‘Thank you. And if you come there, look me up.’ He handed me a business card.
The next morning from the office I phoned Gloriana and made an appointment to see her at twelve. I handed Wilkins the Bill Dawson letter and asked her to check on Sabratha, Wheelus and Uaddan. You never knew when you might not pick up some small lead. I also gave her the Phs. Van Ommeren bill and asked her to check with them what travel arrangements they had made for Martin Freeman. When she raised an eye at this I said, ‘Tell them you’re speaking from the Intercontinental News Services, and it’s a question of checking for his expense account. Freeman worked there.’
When she had gone I sat and stared at the wall calendar. It didn’t help me beyond announcing that the day was Thursday.
Why, I asked myself, had old London-Scottish tie been strangled in Freeman’s cottage? Clearly—according to Jane Judd—he had been looking for Freeman and was using a thin cover story. I thought—from his condition—that he had gone to the cottage the day before I had, and met someone who resented his presence. Really resented it, too. I resented his presence too. If the police ever discovered that Paulet and I had been there, we should both be in trouble. I was used to being in trouble with the police, but Paulet didn’t strike me as the type who would handle it very well.
Thinking of Paulet, I began to go over the Duchêne antique coin angle. That sounded like Freeman, all right. Any stuff his friends left lying around he felt free to pocket. Paulet hadn’t put a price on the antique coins. But at the moment Freeman had five thousand in cash from his sister, a python arm bracelet worth another five thousand, which made him ten thousand pounds in funds, plus the value of the coins which would be . . . well, I didn’t know. Not knowing always irked me. I got up and went over to the low wall bookcase by the door.
Wilkins, when we had been flush once, had spent over a hundred quid on reference books, most of which we had never used. Some had never been opened. I pulled out Volume 16, MUSHR to OZON, of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and looked up the article on Numismatics. Perhaps I would get some idea of the value of the coins from that.
I didn’t. But I got something else. A shock. Leafing through the article I stopped at the first photographic plate. It was a full-page illustration of Ancient Greek coins, photographed by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. Each set of coins, reverse and obverse, carried a number. There were twenty-two sets illustrated. Below the illustrations a legend was set out referring to the numbers. I began to read through this and before I had finished the first line a bell began to ring. The line went: 1. Electrum stater of Lydia. 2. Electrum stater of Ephesus. 3. Gold stater of Croesus. 4. Daric of Persia.
I read right through and by the time I reached number twenty-two I was certain. It read: ‘22. Gold 100 litrae of Syracuse.’
The list of stolen coins which Monsieur Duchêne had given old Paulet had been copied straight out of the Encyclopaedia. For my money—none of your antique Greek stuff—it had to be a phoney. I’ve had a few startling coincidences happen in my life, but this certainly wasn’t one. Either Duchêne had given Paulet a phoney list and a phoney story to go with it, or both of them knew it was phoney. I considered the possibility of Duchêne stringing Paulet along, and then I considered the possibility of Paulet knowing the list was phoney. He seemed simple, straightforward, and a little more than inefficient. Well, that kind of act would make a good cover for whatever it was he or they wanted to cover.
I picked up the phone and called the Strand Palace Hotel. Lunch with Paulet might help to sort things out. After some hanging about, the hotel people told me that Paulet had booked out that morning. Wilkins came back in while I was still getting nowhere. ‘Sabratha,’ she said, ‘is the site of an ancient Roman town thirty-odd miles to the west of Tripoli.’
‘It could be,’ I said, ‘that what is wanted on this job is an archaeologist.’
‘Wheelus is the American Air Force base to the east of Tripoli. Wheelus course refers to the golf course which the Americans have built there. It’s called Seabreeze.’
‘Original name.’
‘Uaddan,’ said Wilkins, ‘is the name of a hotel, which also has a casino, in Tripoli.’
‘And what about the Van Ommeren people?’
‘They were very helpful. Some of the account is a carry-over from old travel charges, but the bulk is for air-booking from London Airport to the King Idris Airport, Tripoli. Via Rome.’
‘Date?’
‘He bought the ticket over a month ago and had the date left open, saying he would make his arrangements direct.’
‘He must have broken his journey and gone to Florence.’
‘Van Ommeren say they would be glad to have Mr Freeman’s present address.’
‘I’ll put them on the
