By contrast, James's clocks are anything but vulgar, probably because it was his father who bought them and not James. I took them to Sotheby's to be valued and discovered they are worth more than double the Ł12,000 they were insured for. Thus, after paying James Ł12,000,1 retain Ł11,500 from the insurance cheque and have effectively purchased from my contemptible husband a fine investment, valued at Ł25,000.
As I said, revenge is a dish best eaten cold...
*14*
Earlier that afternoon, a tall, distinguished-looking man was shown into Paul Duggan's office in Poole. He gave his name as James Gillespie and calmly produced his passport and his marriage certificate to Mathilda Beryl Gillespie to prove it. Aware that he had dropped something of a bombshell, he lowered himself on to a vacant chair and clasped his hands around the handle of his walking-stick, studying Duggan with amusement from beneath a pair of exuberant white eyebrows. "Bit of a shock, eh?" he said. Even from the other side of the desk, the smell of whiskey on his breath was powerful.
The younger man examined the passport carefully, then placed it on the blotting-pad in front of him. "Unexpected, certainly," he said dryly. "I had assumed Mrs. Gillespie was a widow. She never mentioned a husband or," he laid a careful stress upon the next syllable, "ex-husband still living."
"Husband," grunted the other forcefully. "She wouldn't. It suited her better to be thought a widow."
"Why did you never divorce?"
"Never saw the need."
"This passport was issued in Hong Kong."
"Naturally. Out there forty years. Worked in various banks. Came back when I realized it was no place to end my days. Too much fear now. Peking's unpredictable. Uncomfortable for a man of my age." He spoke in clipped staccato sentences like someone in a hurry or someone impatient with social niceties.
"So why have you come to see me?" Duggan watched him curiously. He was striking to look at, certainly, with a mane of white hair and an olive complexion, etched with deep lines around his eyes and mouth, but closer examination revealed an underlying poverty beneath the superficial air of prosperity. His clothes had once been good, but time and usage had taken their toll and both the suit and the camel-hair coat were wearing thin.
"Should have thought it was obvious. Now she's dead-reclaiming what's mine."
"How did you know she was dead?"
"Ways and means," said the other.
"How did you know I was her executor?"
"Ways and means," said the other again.
Duggan's curiosity was intense. "And what is it that you wish to reclaim?"
The old man took a wallet from his inside pocket, removed some folded sheets of very thin paper and spread them on the desk. "This is an inventory of my father's estate. It was divided equally amongst his three children on his death forty-seven years ago. My share was those items marked with the initials JG. You will find, I think, that at least seven of them appear on your inventory of Mathilda's estate. They are not hers. They never were hers. I now wish to recover them."
Thoughtfully, Duggan read through the documents. "Precisely which seven items are you referring to, Mr. Gillespie?"
The huge white eyebrows came together in a ferocious scowl. "Don't trifle with me, Mr. Duggan. I refer, of course, to the clocks. The two Thomas Tompions, the Knibbs, the seventeenth-century mahogany long case, the Louis XVI Lyre clock, the eighteenth-century 'pendule d'officer' and the crucifix clock. My father and grandfather were collectors."
Duggan steepled his hands over the inventory. "May I ask why you think any of these things appear on the inventory of Mrs. Gillespie's estate?"
"Are you telling me they don't?"
The solicitor avoided a direct answer. "If I understood you correctly you've been absent from this country for forty years. How could you possibly know what might or might not have been in your wife's possession the day she died?"
The old man snorted. "Those clocks were the only things of value I had, and Mathilda went to a great deal of trouble to steal them from me. She certainly wouldn't have sold them."
"How could your wife steal them if you were still married?"
"Tricked me out of them, then, but it was still theft."
"I'm afraid I don't understand."
Gillespie removed an airmail letter from his wallet and handed it across the desk. "Self-explanatory, I think."
Duggan unfolded the letter and read the terse lines. The address was Cedar House and the date was April 1961.
Dear James,
I am sorry to have to tell you that during a burglary here over Christmas much of value was stolen, including your collection of clocks. I have today received a cheque in settlement from the insurance company and I enclose their invoice, showing that they sent me a total of Ł23,500.I also enclose a cheque for Ł12,000 which was the insured value of your seven clocks. You bought my silence by leaving the clocks with me, and I am reimbursing you only because I fear you might return one day to claim them. You would be very angry, I think, to discover I'd cheated you a second time. I trust this means we will not need to communicate again.
Yours, Mathilda.
Duggan's amiable face looked up in bewilderment. "I still don't understand."
"They weren't stolen, were they?"
"But she gave you twelve thousand pounds for them. That was a small fortune in 1961."
"It was fraud. She told me the clocks were stolen when they weren't. I accepted the money in good faith. Never occurred to me she was lying." He tapped his walking-stick angrily on the floor. "Two ways of looking at it. One, she stole the clocks herself and defrauded the insurance company. A crime, in my book. Two other things were stolen to the value of twenty-three and a half thousand and she saw an opportunity to take the clocks off me. Also a crime. They were my property." His ancient mouth turned down at the corners. "She knew their value, knew they'd be the best asset she had. Been to Sotheby's myself. Rough estimate, of course, with only descriptions in the inventory to go by, but we're talking over a hundred thousand at auction, probably a great deal more. I want them back, sir."
Duggan considered for a moment. "I don't think the situation is quite as clear-cut as you seem to think, Mr. Gillespie. There's a burden of proof here. First, you have to show that Mrs. Gillespie deliberately defrauded you; second, you have to show that the clocks in Mrs. Gillespie's estate are the precise clocks that were left to you by your father."
"You've read both inventories. What else could they be?"
For the moment, Duggan avoided the question of how James Gillespie knew there was an inventory of Mathilda's estate or what was on it. Once broached, it was going to be a very unpleasant can of worms. "Similar clocks," he said bluntly. "Maybe even the same clocks, but you will have to prove she didn't buy them back at a later stage. Let's say the collection was stolen, and she passed on the compensation to you as she was supposed to. Let's say, then, that she set out to replace the collection because she had developed an interest in horology. She could quite legitimately have used her own money to buy similar clocks at auction. In those circumstances, you would have no claim on them at all. There is also the undeniable fact that you had a duty, encumbent on you as the owner, to establish to your satisfaction that the money you were paid in 1961 represented a full and fair settlement by the insurance company for the theft of your goods. In accepting twelve thousand pounds, Mr. Gillespie, you effectively did that. You abandoned the clocks to sail to Hong Kong, accepted handsome compensation for them without a murmur, and only wish to reclaim them now because after forty years you believe they might have been worth hanging on to. I will admit that this is a grey area, which will require Counsel's opinion, but off the top of my head, I'd say you haven't a leg to stand on. It's an old saying, but a true one. Possession is nine tenths of the law."