“Autographed?”
“Inspector, you are not being serious. When I tell you that the handcuffs used on Crippen, certificated by Dew, would fetch at least twenty thousand pounds at auction, you will realize I am not joking.”
Purbright said he would see what he could do for her. In the meantime, it was her expertise in quite another field that he hoped he might tap.
She would be delighted. Where did his interest lie?
“Sacred relics.”
The small, still rather pretty, nose wrinkled. “Oh, dear—not ikons?”
“No, not ikons.”
“You are wise. Most of them are quite spurious, you know. A friend of mine in Lon...no, that is to say, someone in the trade, of whom I have been warned, is reputed to mass-produce the things in glass beads and poster paint.”
“Good heavens,” said Purbright. Then, “No, I am thinking of a much more fundamental area. Fragments of the True Cross, no less.”
Miss Teatime arched her finely delineated brows. “Not, I am happy to say, inspector, an English-based industry. One would employ a Byzantine agent, I should say. Would you like me to make inquiries for you?”
Purbright said he thought not. “Let me put my problem in this way,” he said. “Suppose I had come across a collector—a well-informed and intelligent collector—who had acquired an article represented to be a piece of the Golgotha cross, and he had gone to considerable trouble and expense not only to safeguard it but actually to display the thing, what should I think about him?”
Miss Teatime regarded the inspector for several seconds. “The question, of course, is rhetorical?”
“I should appreciate an answer, nevertheless.”
“Very well. The man clearly is potty.”
“As it happens,” Purbright said, “he is dead.”
Miss Teatime smiled to herself, and rearranged a selection of Georgian toothpicks. “Now we are getting somewhere,” she remarked, softly.
“Have you made the acquaintance of the young woman who lives in the Manor House at Mumblesby?” Purbright asked.
Miss Teatime said she had met Mrs Loughbury on the day before her husband’s funeral. “My colleague, Mr Harrington, manages our little gallery in the village. We felt it would be appropriate to call and pay our respects.”
“I believe she calls herself Mrs Claypole-Loughbury.”
“Ah, does she? A singularly perspicacious young woman. With that name, and that address, she could get tick anywhere in London.”
“If she proves to be the beneficiary of Richard Loughbury, I doubt if she will need it.”
Miss Teatime sighed.
“Have you,” Purbright asked her, “seen anything of the contents of the house? I did wonder, in view of your professional interests.”
“I have not made an inventory, if that is what you mean.”
“Perish the thought.”
“But within the limits of courtesy and grief, I did manage to spy out some very nice stuff—the value of which, I hasten to add, the young woman seems fully to realize.” Miss Teatime paused. “I did not notice any holy relics.”
“No, you wouldn’t—unless you went upstairs.”
She regarded him sharply. “In a bedroom?”
“Yes...well, a dressing room, I suppose one would call it.”
“That is interesting. As you will know better than I, the owner of valuable objects will often cherish the notion that his prize possession is safer for being physically close, particularly at night. An extreme example is the person who hides things under the mattress.”
Purbright said he had heard of the practice.
Miss Teatime laughed. “I must sound like a burglar alarm salesman. No, the point is that if—as one would naturally suppose—Mr Loughbury had bought this so-called relic in order to amuse his friends, he would have displayed it prominently in his drawing room. His keeping it upstairs suggests he really did put a very high price on the thing. I did not know the gentleman; had he a streak of simple-mindedness?”
“On the contrary, he was generally considered to be devious.”
She shook her head. “In that case, Mr Purbright, it would appear that he was an eccentric as well. I can assure you that traffickers in saints’ kneecaps are no longer in the big money.”
They moved further into the shop. Purbright paused to examine a silver lemon-squeezer. It was tagged £130. He replaced it without remark, watched by Miss Teatime.
“You are thinking to yourself that the price is exorbitant.”
He pouted. “Steep-ish.”
“Provenance is all,” she said. “That was Oscar Wilde’s private lemon-squeezer. It was kept in the kitchens of the Café Royal until just after the First World War.”
“My Mr Love—whom I think you know...”—Miss Teatime said yes, of course she knew the sergeant—“...has a personal tankard reserved for him in the Roebuck Tap. I think it makes him feel like Francois Villon.”
Miss Teatime released as near a giggle as her customary niceness of behaviour allowed.
They passed on. Miss Teatime pointed to a small rectangular tin with a picture upon it of a man in the uniform of the Grenadier Guards, benevolently distributing Huntley & Palmers biscuits to a medley of half-size black, brown and yellow men, all somehow enveloped in a Union Jack.
“Provenance again,” she said. “On the face of it, just a biscuit tin: one of several hundred distributed to the school children of Flaxborough on Empire Day, 1907.” She handed it to Purbright. “But look underneath.”
He saw initials childishly scratched through the varnish. Miss Teatime’s delicate, pink forefinger delineated the letters. “T...E...L...you see? L for Lawrence, of course.”
“Of Arabia?” Purbright reverently turned the tin about until he could see the price ticket.
“The very same. Few people, I imagine,” said Miss Teatime, taking the tin back and replacing it, “can be aware that Lawrence of Arabia attended Spindle Lane Infants’ School, here in Flaxborough.” She glanced at Purbright s face, then away again. “For a short time,” she added.
Purbright picked up what appeared to be a pair of scissors with a small blue glass jar pendent from one blade. Miss Teatime told him that she would not identify the article because she had no wish to strain his credence, but its use was indelicate and the price correspondingly low at twenty-eight pounds.
He said he did not know how she managed to live.
They strolled towards an outcrop of pine furniture that appeared to have been assembled by mad axemen and priced by mad accountants.
A sidelong glance at her face told Purbright that Miss Teatime, looking pensive now, was nearing the moment when she would, with no sign either of concern or condescension, present him with some piece of relevant and perhaps even vital information. They looked at the pine for a few moments, then at a small but choice collection of road-repair lanterns.