The Corners of the Globe (5 page)

The constable was soon on his way to dig out Willy. Max suggested they have breakfast. Susan agreed, though she hardly ate anything served to her. Max heard himself expressing entirely groundless confidence that all was well. But all was not well. And Susan’s fears were not necessarily the worst of it.

‘He went out for a walk after dinner, but he was back within an hour. He knocked on my door and wished me goodnight at about half past ten. Why would he have gone out again after that?’

‘I don’t know. It’s odd, certainly.’

‘What did you do last night?’

‘Oh, I, er, dined at the Kirkwall Hotel. I fancied a change of scene. And then . . . I had a drink in one of the nearby pubs and . . . then I came back here.’

‘And you saw nothing of Selwyn?’

‘No.’ Max was committed to the lie now. ‘Nothing.’

‘I’m so afraid he’s met with some kind of accident, Max.’

‘Of course you are. But we shouldn’t assume anything. There may be a . . . simple explanation.’

‘Such as?’

Max was still trying to devise a convincing answer to that question when the constable returned. He looked altogether less willing to brush the matter off after rousing Willy Gibson from his bed and questioning him.

‘It appears there was a telephone call to the hotel at about’ – he consulted his notes – ‘a quarter to eleven. The caller, a man, asked Mr Gibson to bring Mr Henty to the phone. He said it was a very urgent matter. So, Mr Gibson fetched Mr Henty and left him to talk to the caller while he attended to other duties – taking you some tea, he said, Mr Hutton.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Max. ‘That’s true. He did.’

‘Well, when he got back to the desk the phone was back on the hook and Mr Henty was nowhere to be seen. About five minutes later, he came down, dressed for outdoors, and left. He said to Mr Gibson that he wouldn’t be gone long.’

‘Did the caller give a name?’ asked Susan.

‘He did, miss. And that’s a funny coincidence of sorts. He said his name was Maxted.’

‘Maxted?’

‘And your Christian name’s Max, isn’t that right, sir?’

‘Yes.’

‘Heard of anyone called Maxted?’

‘No.’

‘Miss?’

‘Me neither.’

‘I was wondering if Mr Henty misheard or misunderstood in some way, you see, and thought it was you, sir.’ The constable looked pointedly at Max.

‘Well, he’d have realized it wasn’t me when he heard the caller’s voice, wouldn’t he, constable?’

‘Yes, sir. He would. And it definitely wasn’t you?’

‘Of course not. I was in my room. Where Willy Gibson brought me a pot of tea. If you remember.’

‘Yes, sir. So he did.’

Thank God for that
, thought Max. Otherwise he might be suspected of creeping out of the hotel to make the telephone call. But who
had
made it? There was only one name that came to mind. And it was not one he had any intention of mentioning. As to why that person might have made the call . . .

‘I think I’m going to have to interrupt Sergeant Tulloch’s Sunday,’ the constable continued. ‘Which he won’t thank me for. But I reckon we’ll need to find this Mr Maxted, if we’re to get to the bottom of this.’ He fingered his moustache thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know what to make of it, I really don’t.’

‘What can possibly have happened, Max?’ Susan asked him after the constable had left. ‘Who is this man Maxted? What did he want? Selwyn’s never mentioned anyone of that name to me, yet it seems he knew him. What on earth’s going on?’

‘I don’t know, Susan.’

But that was not true. Max knew – or felt sure he knew. Fontana had made the call, disguising his American accent and using Max’s real name to lure Selwyn to the telephone. Then, somehow, he had persuaded Selwyn to meet him, out there in the dark, down by the harbour perhaps, close to the deep water of the bay.

Selwyn was dead. The certainty spread over Max’s mind like a stain. Fontana had not been prepared to buy him off. He had solved the problem in the way he much preferred – simple, effective, final. Max had no means of contacting him, of course. That was the beauty of it from Fontana’s point of view. There could be no protest, no accusation. It was done.

The moral canker of working for a man like Lemmer was borne in upon Max now. Honour was lost to him. Deceit was inescapable. Susan Henty needed his help. But he could not give it. He could not afford to.

WHILE MAX’S LIFE
continued to take violent and unexpected turns, that of the rest of the Maxted family, to whom he was always known as James, proceeded placidly and predictably at Gresscombe Place, in Surrey.

The ripples that had disturbed it in the wake of Sir Henry Maxted’s fatal fall from a Paris rooftop had faded. Sir Ashley, the new baronet, had suppressed the scandal of his father’s death as best he could and was determined no more should be heard of it. He was mightily relieved Max had signed away the duties of executor to the family solicitor, Mellish, and regarded the extended absence from England hinted at in Max’s letter to Mellish on the subject as a prospect devoutly to be welcomed.

His wife, Lydia, the new Lady Maxted, was at one with him on both points. The problem of her brother-in-law, as she categorized it, had been solved. No cloud now hung over the delivery in due course of a third child to add to her darlings Giles and Henrietta. Spring had arrived to add lustre to the view from the drawing-room windows of Gresscombe Place. All was safely gathered in.

‘And there will be no biplanes whining over the countryside like giant mosquitoes,’ as she had remarked only recently. ‘What a relief.’

She had not visited the London flat since Max had shot dead an intruder there, a man the police still seemed unable to identify conclusively. She was not at all sure she would ever go there again, unless it was to supervise the removal of the furniture after persuading Ashley to sell it. She did not relish the idea of using a bathroom she knew to have been the scene of a shooting. The incident, frightful as it was, especially for the unfortunate Mr Brigham, was so far outside her vision of how life should proceed that she thought on the whole the flat was best disposed of.

But that would wait for another day. The presence as a luncheon guest of the elder Lady Maxted’s brother, Uncle George, was the slightest of irritants. There were occasions when he was genuinely amusing, regrettably offset by those on which he descended into vulgarity, usually as a result of drinking too much. Today, however, he had imbibed modestly. And soon he would be gone. All, from Lydia’s point of view, was indeed set fair.

George Clissold’s relative sobriety had an explanation Lydia could not have guessed at. When inviting her brother to join them, Winifred, the elder Lady Maxted, had emphasized he should keep a clear head with which to consider a matter of some delicacy she wanted his advice on. So it was that a post-luncheon walk down to the orchard was not intended, as she had suggested, ‘to aid digestion’, but to facilitate confidential conversation.

George’s customary levity had never blinded Winifred, as it had others, to his fundamental qualities of honesty and reliability. She knew him as the best of brothers, one who would come to her aid when all others failed her – and never speak of what he did on her behalf.

‘Where would I be without you, George?’ she asked as they entered the blossom-clouded orchard.

‘Better off,’ George replied, chewing on his cigar. ‘You’d have Papa’s money rather than me.’

‘I wasn’t speaking of money.’

‘No? Sorry. It’s spending time with Ashley that does it. The boy never stops talking about how much profit he hopes to squeeze out of the estate.’

‘Ah . . . you noticed.’

‘Hard not to. If you need my help to persuade him to leave well alone, I’m not—’

‘This is nothing to do with Ashley, George. Or the estate.’

‘What, then?’

‘You’ll recall the matter of the Sumerian cylinder-seals – one of the assets Henry sold to finance a secure and comfortable future with—’

‘Oh, those?’ George cut in, sparing his sister the need to refer directly to Henry’s Parisian mistress. ‘What’s the matter? Curator of the county museum been on to you again? You’ll just have to tell him Henry sold the seals and there it is.’

‘I’ve already told him that. And he took it in surprisingly good part.’

‘Glad to hear it.’

‘The blossom’s lovely, isn’t it?’ She paused to run her finger over a soft white petal. ‘The pears are even more beautiful than the apples, don’t you think?’

‘Not sure I can tell the difference, Win.’

‘No. It requires an expert eye. As telling the difference between many things does. Genuine Sumerian cylinder-seals, for instance . . . and fakes.’

‘Fakes?’

‘I’ve received a letter from a man who claims to have bought them from Henry. He also claims that what he bought . . . are forgeries.’

‘Good God.’

‘His name is Arnavon. Read the letter for yourself.’

Winifred took the letter out of the pocket of her dress, removed it from its envelope and handed it to George. ‘He expresses himself politely but very firmly on the subject.’

George wrestled a pair of glasses from his jacket, perched them on his nose and held the letter at arm’s length before him. ‘The address is a hotel in Paris,’ he said.

‘Yes. We can be grateful he hasn’t come here to demand restitution, I suppose. Read what he has to say.’

George cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. ‘“My dear Lady Maxted, I am informed that you are the widow of Sir Henry Maxted, regrettably deceased. I offer you my condolences on the loss of your husband and apologize for the necessity of writing to you. Prior to his demise, I purchased from a dealer in antiquities named Soutine, acting on Sir Henry’s behalf, a small collection of what were represented to me as twenty-third-century
BC
Sumerian cylinder-seals. I have a receipt for the transaction, dated nineteenth March, in which they are so described. The purchase was concluded the day before I was due to sail to Montréal.” – I see he puts an accent on the e in Montreal; he’s French Canadian presumably – “I therefore had no opportunity to seek authentication of the articles prior to my departure, but saw no need to do so in view of Sir Henry’s unimpeachable credentials as—”’

George broke off for a draw on his cigar. ‘He’s a wordy blighter, isn’t he?’

‘Wordy, but insistent, you’ll find. Please read on.’

George sighed heavily and resumed. ‘“The items were destined for the collection of Sir Nathaniel Chevalier, the well-known amateur Assyriologist, whom you may have heard of in his former capacity as chairman of the Continental Pacific Railway Company.” – Mmm. Can’t say I have. – “I am sorry to have to notify you, however, that the seals, when examined upon my arrival in Montréal, were found to be modern imitations, probably less than a hundred years old. I cabled Monsieur Soutine and Sir Henry in Paris, but received no reply, although my subsequent enquiries established that Sir Henry had died in a tragic accident shortly after my departure.”’

George broke off again. ‘He’s rather out of date where the cause of death is concerned, isn’t he?’

‘He may no longer be. Read on.’

‘“The continuing failure of Monsieur Soutine to respond to my cables has obliged me to return to Paris, bearing with me Sir Nathaniel’s explicit instructions to reclaim the money paid plus a sum to be agreed by way of compensation. Sir Nathaniel has authorized me to say that he would feel reluctantly obliged to take legal action should no such repayment and compensation be forthcoming. Consideration for your position as a widow has prompted him to stay his hand for the present. I have been unable to contact Monsieur Soutine. His offices are closed and his whereabouts are currently unknown. I have no alternative therefore but to raise the matter with you. I feel sure you do not wish your late husband’s reputation to be besmirched—”’

‘Besmirched?’ George suddenly exploded. ‘My God, he’s damned high-handed, isn’t he? This is surely between him and the dealer, Soutine. And what about caveat emptor?’

Winifred sighed. ‘Monsieur Soutine is nowhere to be found, George. Our address, on the other hand, is clearly listed in
Burke’s
. I do not wish to be sued by a Canadian railway magnate. I feel he can probably afford to employ better lawyers than we can. Now, please finish reading the letter.’

George harrumphed and peered at the document anew. ‘“I feel sure you will agree that a private financial settlement of the claim is preferable to litigation. I will await confirmation of this from you or your appointed representative. I can be contacted at the above address until the end of next week. I remain, etcetera, etcetera, S. V. Arnavon, esquire.”’

Winifred retrieved the letter before George succumbed to the temptation to screw it up and drop-kick it into one of the trees. She looked at him indulgently. ‘I was angry when I first read it myself. Angry with Henry, most of all, I must confess.’

‘You surely can’t suspect Henry of deliberately selling fake antiquities?’

‘We know he was trying to raise money by all means at his disposal, George. Perhaps he hoped to sell the cylinder-seals several times over.’

‘I can’t believe that of him, Win. He was always too damned . . . honourable.’

‘You may be right. He was honourable, of course, in his own fallible way. Besides, I doubt there’d have been enough time between retrieving the seals from the museum in Guildford and selling them in Paris a week later to have convincing copies made. I suppose the greater likelihood is that they were never genuine in the first place. Some enterprising Mesopotamian merchant probably sold them to Henry’s father shortly before he came home. I wonder if Sir Charles eventually realized they were fakes. That might explain his willingness to consign them to the county museum.’

‘Where nobody ever noticed they had M
ADE IN
B
AGHDAD
1870 stamped all over them.’

Winifred smiled weakly. ‘I wish I could merely laugh this off, George. I really do. While the pomposity of Mr Arnavon’s tone suggests he might be a suitable subject for humour, alas I fear we must take him seriously. I do not think I can bear any more rants by Ashley about his father’s failings.’