Solomons Seal (6 page)

‘That's not very ethical when you've been asked for a valuation.' I didn't tell him I was behaving just as badly, trying to raise his offer without telling him.

‘Perhaps not, but my offer was fair, even generous. I doubt he'll offer more. Anyway, he operates from Switzerland. Presumably he came over for last week's
Harmer's auction and stayed on to see some of his clients,' And he added on a note of envy, ‘The little bastard has managed to get his hands on some of the Arab oil money.'

‘You don't like him?'

‘No, none of us do. Operating out of Switzerland with clients like that, he can outbid us any time he wants. But mostly he buys privately. Two months ago he acquired a unique collection of Japanese Malayan Occupation stamps for a figure that is believed to have been in the region of eighteen thousand pounds. That's a hell of a price, but then he's like a professional burglar – he never grabs anything unless he knows he has a market.' He was gazing down at the pages of the collection left out on his desk. ‘I can't match him if he's got a wealthy client interested in this. Did he say he had a client interested?'

‘Yes.'

He nodded, and there was a trace of wistfulness in his voice as he said, ‘Probably the same one he sold the cover to. I wonder what he charged the poor devil for that? A lot more than the two hundred and twenty pounds he paid for it at auction, I'll bet.' And he added, ‘It carried the only example of this very odd stamp in existence. What do you suppose happened to the others? Went down with the ship, eh?' He shook his head. ‘And I don't even know what the finished label looks like. There was no illustration of it in the auction catalogue. Josh dug it out for me. It just said:
Cover with unrecorded ship label in deep blue with Port Moresby cancellation dated 17 July, 1911, also
Australia 1909-11 Postage Due 2d. cancelled at Cooktown. Some stains, otherwise fine, unusual.
The estimated value was fifty pounds plus.'

‘Berners referred to it as the Solomons Seal,' I said.

‘Did he now?' He leaned forward and picked up the page containing the proof of the entire stamp. ‘So that's one more piece of the jigsaw fallen into place. Presumably Holland's ships operated out of the Solomon Islands. Anything else he told you?'

I shook my head.

‘Oh, well, no point in going on, not now that I know Berners is after the collection.' He began to gather the pages, putting them back in their albums. ‘Whoever has that cover is probably prepared to pay over the odds for the die proofs, and there'll be others after them when they realise …' He gave a little shrug, his words hanging in the air. ‘Another Scotch?'

‘No.' I glanced at my watch. ‘I've got Rowlinson coming in to see me, and I'm running it fine as it is.'

‘The frozen food man?' And when I nodded, he said, ‘Wish more of my clients were as successful as that. Tell him to put his money into stamps. One of the few things that have never gone down in value.' He put the albums back in their original wrapping and handed the parcel to me. ‘For the sake of the girl, inform Berners you've got an offer of twenty-five hundred pounds. See what he says to that.'

I stared at him. ‘Are you serious?'

‘Yes, I think so.'

‘A figure like that, it could frighten him off.'

He nodded, a speculative look in those bright blue
eyes. ‘If it does, then I've got the collection, haven't I?' And he added, ‘But I doubt whether it will, not if his client is rich.'

‘I think,' I said, ‘I had better have that offer of yours in writing.'

‘Don't trust me, eh?'

‘I wouldn't trust anybody making a bid like that.' My voice was sharpened by disappointment, the sense of opportunity lost. But at least it disposed of my own offer. I couldn't outbid him at that figure.

He sat down at his desk and pulled a sheet of notepaper from a drawer. ‘You're sharp, Roy,' he said heavily. ‘What I had in mind was for you to quote him my offer so that he'd be forced to pay Miss Holland a thumping price.' He was gazing questioningly at me. ‘Then, if it did scare him off, you'd let me have the collection for the figure I originally offered.'

‘That would be dishonest,' I said.

He stared up at me a moment longer, not saying a word; then he wrote down his revised bid and signed it with a flourish. ‘You know, I must be mad,' he said, slipping it into an envelope and handing it to me. ‘But it's not often I've wanted anything as badly as I want that collection.'

‘It's your money,' I told him.

He laughed. ‘You remember somebody suggesting a long time ago that ocean racing was like tearing up fivers under a cold shower? Well, stamps are a bit like that. You get a hunch, a feel about something, and then you become so obsessed you've got to have it whatever the cost.'

He saw me to my car, and as I was getting into it, I remembered what he had said to me on the phone, that something very odd about those die proofs had come to light. I asked him what it was, but he laughed and shook his head. ‘When you've got more time and are prepared to show a little more interest—'

‘I'm a lot more interested now you've upped your bid by such a large amount.'

‘If I get the collection, then I'll tell you. Okay?'

I was annoyed with myself then, wishing I weren't already late for my appointment. All I could think of as I drove fast through the quiet Essex countryside was his extraordinary behaviour. I had no idea what his financial position was, but he lived quite modestly, certainly within his pension, and though he presumably made a profit out of buying and selling stamps, I was sure an offer like that would be stretching his resources. I had seen quite a bit of him since his wife had died a couple of years back. I liked him, and not doubting for a moment that his original valuation had been arrived at in good faith, I was afraid he had been carried away and was offering too high a price.

I was almost a quarter of an hour late when I turned into the concrete driveway, and from two fields away, just after I had hit the dirt track, I could see Rowlinson's Aston Martin standing outside the hall. I found him sitting under the walnut tree by the moat, watching a pair of mallards, his dark, almost Welsh features brooding and sullen.

‘Sorry I'm late,' I said. ‘Can I offer you a drink?'

‘No thanks.' He tossed the broken half of an old
walnut shell into the water. ‘I'm afraid I've some bad news for you. I'm selling.' He didn't look up, just sat there staring into the water. ‘Not your fault. Your ideas were fine, and I think they'd have worked. But I can't fight Bessie and the board. We've decided to expand further, and we need the money.' He picked up another walnut shell, breaking it between his fingers. ‘Doesn't look as though I'll have time for any more long trips, so no point in hanging on to the property. Pity. But there it is.'

I stood there, not saying anything. There was nothing to say with my hopes dashed like that. I had known Chips Rowlinson for about six years, ever since I had sold him a new engine for his boat and arranged its installation. Then, after I had taken the job with Browne, Baker & Browne, I learned he was looking for a larger residence. I was lucky, I managed to find him a lovely old manor house near Tolleshunt D'Arcy, and I got him the land to go with it much cheaper than he expected. As a result, he had come to regard me as his land and agricultural adviser, which was why he had turned to me when the rundown sheep station with the ridiculous name of Munnobungle had become a problem. I had looked at the rainfall figures in that part of Queensland, and I was certain deeper boreholes and a switch to cattle and sorghum would help to make it profitable. It just needed somebody there to get the place back on its feet. ‘I'm sorry you've decided to sell,' I murmured.

‘So am I.' He got slowly to his feet. ‘Don't think I want to. I've had a lot of fun out of it. Marvellous
country.' And he began talking in that quick, energetic way of his about the climate and the people, the sense of space, and trips he had made out to the Barrier Reef in fishing boats and in a Cessna he had hired from an outfit called Bush Pilots Airways. He was pacing up and down the edge of the moat, his head up as though sniffing the air. ‘You know, I've half a mind to pack it in here, let the tax boys have their last bite at me and go out there for good. There's a sense of freedom, like a breath of fresh air. The sea, the fish, all that coral, and over the horizon to the north-east islands hardly anybody has ever seen. The Solomons, the Bismarcks; I never got as far as that. Only Papua New Guinea. But that was enough. One of the last lost primitive frontiers.'

‘Primitive enough to believe in magic?' I asked. ‘Death wishes? That sort of thing?'

‘Oh, yes. It's witchcraft really, but they call it sorcery.' He had stopped and was staring out at the moat. ‘I was at Mendi, and there was a young Australian lawyer staying at the hotel with me, running a course for local village magistrates, and he had just come face to face with this problem. What the devil does a magistrate, or a High Court judge for that matter, do when a case is brought against a man for putting a death wish on another? Is it murder? Difficult under our laws. No physical attack, no weapons. But they know it's murder, and if the law doesn't act, then the relatives will. They'll take the law into their own hands. They call it pay-back. It's feuding, of course. Can go on for generations.'

‘And the Administration, the district officers – a patrol officer, for instance, would he believe in it?'

‘Yes, I imagine so. I did see it once myself. Not in Papua New Guinea, in West Africa, when I was a sapper there. I had a company out in the bush throwing a Bailey bridge over a swollen river, and my best sergeant went sick on me. Nothing obviously wrong, only that he'd had a go at another man's wife in a nearby village and the local witch doctor had been paid to put a spell on him. Medicines didn't do any good, so I had to go and search the old wizard out, buy him off and the injured man as well.'

‘And your sergeant recovered?'

‘Oh yes, once he knew the death wish was lifted. Funny thing is that this sort of magic doesn't seem to be an oral or even a visual art. The sorcerer seems able to do it by remote control, by telepathy.' He was silent a moment, still staring into the moat, which was now becoming shadowed from the rays of the sinking sun. ‘Quite honestly,' he said quietly, ‘it's something I can do without. It's quite beyond my comprehension, and I don't want to know about it.'

His acceptance of it, the way he had reacted to it – a hard-headed businessman … I was appalled. Here in England, in this most mechanical, most material of all ages … ‘When you were out there,' I said, ‘did you ever hear the name Holland mentioned?' And when he looked at me with a surprised lift of his eyebrows, I added, ‘There was a Carlos Holland ran ships in the islands around the turn of the century.'

He shook his head. ‘Queenslanders aren't much
interested in the past. Life's too hard, and they live for the present. What they talk about mostly is the price of sheep or cattle or sugar, and how that randy old sport out at Dead Horse Springs has shacked up with some raw kid up from Brisbane. And if they do mention the past at all, it's to curse the Chinks for mining out all the gold on the Palmer River.'

He had spent a week up in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, and he talked about that for a moment, how the people there had developed their pig and cassowary economy to a degree of complexity that was quite as difficult for the uninitiated to comprehend as the City's dealings in stocks and shares. ‘But the rich man, the banker as you might say, doesn't lend, he borrows, so that individuals, sometimes whole clans, become tied to him. Splendid fellows,' he added. ‘A real fighting people who are not averse to a little cannibalism if it will increase their virility.' I think he saw my mind had strayed, for he suddenly switched back to my question. ‘No, the only Holland I ever heard of was a fellow called Black Holland. He was killed by an abo half-breed in a bar brawl up near Ingham. Lewis, that was the abo's name. He was tried for murder. Queer fellow, you buy him a drink and he'll tell you a tall tale about some forgotten gold mine.'

‘How would an aborigine have come by a name like Holland?' I asked.

‘His father, of course.' His tone was terse, as though suddenly bored. ‘If the father is white, they'll cling to the name, like all those hyphenated Smiths. Human nature is much the same everywhere. But Black
Holland wasn't an abo. He was from the islands. Bougainville, I think.' He dropped the subject then. ‘Now, about Australia. I know you were very set on the idea of going out there to look after my interests. That's why I wanted to tell you the situation myself. The final decision to expand was only taken yesterday.' He was staring up into my face very intently. After a moment he said, ‘But I do need somebody I can trust to go out there and organise the sale of the property. Will you do that for me? All expenses paid, of course.'

I didn't say anything for a moment, as I tried to readjust to this totally different offer. It wasn't at all what I had been hoping for, but at least it would give me a chance to see whether there was more of a future for me out there than there seemed to be here in England. I think he misunderstood my silence, for he said, ‘I'm not leaving it to some smart-alec land agent out there. Like as not, he'd take me for a ride. Can't blame him, a Pommie with a lot of land and nobody looking after his interests. I'd be a sitting duck. Well?'

‘I'll think about it,' I said.

He stared at me a moment longer. ‘Tell you what I'll do. You've been through all the figures. You know what I paid for the place. I'll give you a percentage of the net difference between my purchase price and whatever you manage to get for it. Say ten per cent. Would that help?' And without waiting for a reply, he turned abruptly and walked to his car.