“Horses!” Joe said, shaking his head. “The stupidest animals ever invented, I do believe.” He asked carefully, “Does Sir James still require a little dusting down?”

After a silence, an equally careful, “He finds me useful on occasion.”

“Your half-brother begins to sound like the perfect English gentleman. Yet you recommend, I remember, the use of a long spoon when supping with him …”

“I do. It was perfect English gentlemen who carved out our Empire, let’s not forget.”

Joe smiled. “And how many of those devils would you turn your back on?”

“James is ruthless. He gets what he wants. Because he’s able to ask for it with a charming smile, and thanks you with every appearance of heartfelt gratitude when he has it in his possession, doesn’t mean he ought to have it in the first place.”

“Hunnyton, this wouldn’t be, by any chance, a roundabout way of getting me to foul up Truelove’s bid for those portraits? I have worked out that they are your ancestors, too.”

Adam laughed. “Nothing so obvious! I’d have just put such a proposition to you straight out. And been ready to accept a refusal. Sweetening with strawberries, were you thinking? Corrupting by confidence? No! Not my style. I’m not seeking any favours. But I may be doing you one. It’s just a friendly warning I’m giving you. It may be all rubbish, the product of a suspicious copper’s mind, but I wanted to plant the notion in your head that he may have an undeclared reason for getting his hands on these pictures. A reason that might not please you.” He stirred uncomfortably in his seat. “Oh, I should learn to mind my own business. It’s just that I can’t sit back and watch him do another fellow down. I never could put up with a rigged fight. But suit yourself.”

Hunnyton bunched up his napkin and put it on the table. It was clear to Joe that he’d said as much as he was going to say. Perhaps even more.

It had been enough.

Joe sat on, sunk in thought, cursing himself for a fool. His back was rigid and his face set in the mask of dread and resolve that precedes a battle.

Hunnyton, disturbed by the intensity of the reaction to his warning shot and uncertain what to do, reached over and tidied away Joe’s napkin. He patted him on the shoulder. “Did I just hear the whistle blow? Time to go over the top, old man?” he murmured. “I’m right beside you.”

CHAPTER 6

The auctioneer raised his gavel and cast a last inviting glance around the small number of potential buyers remaining in the sale-room at the end of the afternoon’s proceedings. The sale had gone like a dream, faster than anyone might have expected, and now, in the dying moments, he could afford to relax and leave them all with an impression of unhurried professionalism. With a huge number to get through, it had been a good idea to mass most of them together into random lots—some more random than others. Baker’s dozens, some wag had rudely called them. But no one had seriously protested. The true collectors had secured what they’d come for at a fair price and gone off to Fortnum’s for tea. The good-natured crowd had been seemingly of one mind and mood: shift the stuff as fast as possible at the lowest price. An entertaining afternoon had been spent getting their hands on some precious works of art for a song. And the seller? Mr. J. J. McKinley would now have room in one of his mansions to accommodate his latest passion, whatever that was, and a few thousand pounds unrealised was neither here nor there to a man of his wealth. Everyone happy.

The auctioneer surveyed the crowd over his pince-nez and, with an all-embracing sweep of his ivory gavel, called them to attention. Belatedly, he would turn this bargain-basement rummage-hunt into a serious and possibly exciting piece of auctioneering theatre. The main players, he’d observed, were both still on stage. “Your last chance, gentlemen, to acquire a pair of betrothal portraits. Unsigned but undoubtedly the work of a master. And who would not wish to have this delightful lady available and constantly in the palm of his hand?” So near the finishing tape he could afford to be unstuffy, even playful. “I have an opening bid of fifty guineas from the discerning gentleman in the back row. Surely worth twice that amount! Any advance on fifty? Come now!”

Joe held his breath. Why didn’t the man just bring down his hammer? What the hell was he waiting for?

He knew perfectly well what the auctioneer was waiting for.

His attention, like Joe’s, was constantly, though surreptitiously, drawn to a balding, moustachioed man standing at the side of the room. Meticulously dressed in the style of a gentleman from a previous age, he could have just strolled in from the Champs-Élysées. Guy Despond looked at Joe, smiled with great civility and eased his bidding hand from his pocket.

Joe had studied his style through several bids. No raising of eyebrows, no twitch of a little finger signalled intent for this man. He wasn’t in the least concerned to hide his bids. He stood erect and motionless throughout the proceedings, only his eyes flicking back and forth, taking in the opposition. When he was ready to make his play, he took his right hand from his pocket and signalled clearly with an emphatic downward chop.

The auctioneer had not missed it. His eyes instantly focussed on Despond and his gavel hovered in space, waiting on the movement of the lilac-gloved right hand. “Going … Going …” he said, enjoying the suspense.

The hand went up to chest height and Guy Despond’s fingers fluttered outwards in Joe’s direction in a gesture of mock-Elizabethan elegance which he was meant to interpret as surrender and congratulation. In his relief, Joe considered for a moment blowing the fiend a kiss but decided that an acknowledging tilt of the head was all that was required. He’d blotted his copy book already in this auction house and didn’t want to worsen his situation with a show of music hall frivolity.

Quick to read the by-play, the auctioneer regretfully brought his hammer down. “Gone! Sold to the cognoscente on the back row. For the paltry sum of fifty guineas, the lady’s all yours, sir.”

Joe sighed with relief, relief quickly followed by suspicion. What was behind the overtly generous gesture? Despond had no intention of acquiring two pieces so effectively tainted by the Yard’s very public interest and he could mischievously have raised the price higher and higher only to pull out at the last moment. Cynically, Joe recognised that, by the concession, Truelove was now—as this tight-knit world would see it—in his debt. A favour was owed. The whole charade was becoming ever more distasteful to Joe and he hurried to extricate himself as fast as he could.

HE’D PREPARED A bag suitable to put the pictures in and he’d addressed it to Sir James Truelove. To be collected. As he left it with clear instructions for the hand-over with the duty sergeant at the desk in Scotland Yard, Joe paused, smiled and asked the officer for a sheet of paper.

Sir James, he wrote. Success! Despond out-foxed. These are yours for a meagre 50gns. A word of warning! ‘Betrothal portraits,’ as the auctioneer had it, can be a bit tricky. Anne of Cleves and Henry VIII? That all turned out badly on the first night, I recall, and the show folded. J.S.

As he attached his note to the bag, the sergeant spoke to him. “Glad you called by, sir. There was a phone call for you. From your landlord. Half an hour ago. He wants you to ring him back. You can do that from here if you like, Commissioner.” The sergeant handed over the telephone.

Joe grabbed it and asked the operator for a number in Chelsea. “Alfred? I’m here at the Yard. You wanted to speak to me?”

His landlord, a retired police inspector who lived on the ground floor of the ancient house that was Joe’s London base, only ever rang him at the Yard to announce tersely: “Under attack! Am launching whizz-bangs!” He was quick, on this occasion, to reassure Joe that his business was not official. “Nothing urgent,” he said. But, Joe reflected, his self-appointed guard dog would never ring him unless something was troubling him.