ELEVEN

‘Griff always puts a drop of whisky in,’ X said, peering doubtfully at the mug of tea I’d made him.

I obliged.

‘I never thought I’d get to meet you,’ I said, passing the biscuits too. ‘And at this time of day – you’re usually such an early bird.’

‘So long as you pass me message on to Griff,’ he said, which didn’t seem to be a reply to anything. He scoffed half the biscuits. With luck he’d finish the lot. I certainly wouldn’t fancy eating anything he’d touched.

‘I can get him on the phone for you if you like.’ I picked up the handset and held it out to him.

I might have been offering a dead hedgehog.

‘Word of mouth, that’s how I deal. Got this little item for him. Tell him it’s the usual terms.’

‘Cash and say nothing to anyone,’ I said. ‘And a cheese sandwich?’

His eyes lit up. ‘Don’t usually get one of them.’

‘And a drop of cider?’

‘Now you’re talking.’

I not only talked, I opened the kitchen door and propped it wide. X might be more forthcoming than I’d ever expected but his preparations for the visit hadn’t included much in the way of personal hygiene.

‘I could make you some ham sarnies to take with you too if you liked.’

‘No mustard.’

‘Right.’

‘Titus said you were OK. Said you’d got spunk. True you’re a divvy?’

My turn to hold back. That was one thing I didn’t like spoken of, though I suppose most folk in our line of business must know. Then I smiled. ‘Try me out.’

‘Only meant to show Griff. Hang on.’ He turned away from the table and dug in an inside pocket of his foul coat. Whatever he came up with was easily hidden under his hand as he laid it on the table.

This was the table Griff kneaded bread on, for goodness’ sake. We’d need one of those surface sprays that kills ninety-nine per cent of all known germs.

‘Don’t do guessing games,’ I said. ‘I have to see whatever it is.’

‘Not what I heard. Heard you could pick something out at fifty paces.’

‘Maybe I did. That’s why I let you in.’ Probably, I’d picked out the smell and registered it certainly wasn’t latex and cosmetics. I must have been off my head otherwise. But I wasn’t getting anything in the way of vibes.

‘Said you were pretty fly, Titus. OK, if I show you, means you got to buy it. And I won’t take less than a tenner.’

My nod was meant to be offhand. Griff had dinned into me I mustn’t worry that he never paid X anything like enough for the things he brought along to what were usually pre-breakfast meetings. If he gave the true value, Griff argued, then X would just go off and drink himself to death. Would ten pounds be dangerous? Was I meant to haggle? Was that part of X’s game?

‘Depends what I make of it,’ I said coolly. ‘Maybe just a fiver and an extra sarnie.’

It looked as if we had a deal. He removed his paw to reveal a poor battered piece of metal, which might have been the twin of the one everyone seemed to want. Bloody hell, it might well have been the twin. Forcing myself to be casual, I picked it up and looked at it, inside and out. ‘I’d need my eyeglass.’

‘As seen or no deal. And you got to divvy it for me.’

‘A very old silver snuffbox. Probably late seventeenth century,’ I said blithely, remembering the 1697 start date for hallmarks and not divvying at all. All I was doing was quoting an imaginary text book somewhere in my head.

Maybe I was befuddled by his fumes.

‘Worth a tenner.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘Eight and extra sarnies.’ Making sure it was nowhere near any surface he could have touched, I fished out the loaf, one of Griff’s best efforts, then the proper fresh-sliced ham the village deli prided itself on. ‘No mustard, right, but a bit of Griff’s chutney?’ I waved the jar in the direction of his nose.

The poor bugger actually started to dribble.

Slicing as fast as I could, I made a mound of food. As he wolfed down the first round – cheese and chutney, this one – I said casually, ‘Get this down Bossingham way?’

Mistake. Huge mistake. His hand covered it again.

‘Griff never asks.’

I held up a hand. ‘Sorry. No names, no pack drill. Right?’ His jaw remained tight. ‘And I’d better make it that tenner, hadn’t I? More tea?’

His eyes went to the whisky.

I did the obvious. But it was the smallest splash.

The spare food wrapped in greaseproof paper, I dug for some cash in the old tea-caddy Griff kept specially – it was only tin, but in the shape of a bureau, with tiny gilded knobs and painted wood graining. Rust damage meant it was worth a big round zero, but it had belonged to Griff’s grandmother and would never get thrown away. The fivers looked as battered as the poor caddy. But, eyes alight, he grabbed them, and the food parcel.

‘Here, have these,’ I said, giving him the remains of the packet of biscuits.

For the first time he smiled. ‘Thought you were as tough as Griff. Now I can see you’re a soft touch. I’ll leave the back way, if it’s all the same to you. Don’t like front doors.’ He paused. ‘And don’t forget to wipe them photos like Griff always does.’

Wipe photos? I knew I’d have to clean the kitchen from top to bottom, but that seemed a bit extreme even to me. And then, as I locked him out, it dawned on me what he meant: he wanted the footage of his arrival and departure deleted from our CCTV system.

The little snuffbox, washed carefully but very thoroughly in warm soapy water and then dried with a soft duster, was not the twin, but at least a close relative of the one now in Morris’s hands. It was in much better condition, presumably because it hadn’t been thrown across a churchyard. On its embossed lid, raised little figures, quite crude, and not as well finished as you’d expect, apparently shot birds. And it left me with a huge problem – not one I could discuss with Robin or with Morris, either. I wasn’t even sure how much I could tell Griff, because although he bought a lot of stuff from X, he’d always told me he’d never, ever risked asking questions, simply because knowledge could be dangerous. If you thought something was stolen, for instance, you couldn’t keep it or sell it, could you?

Or if . . . No, I didn’t want to go there just yet. Except I did wish he hadn’t said I was a soft touch. I thought he’d referred to my loading him with food.

Provenance or not, I tucked it into the hidden safe; at least I could bet that no one else knew where it was. And that was about all I could bet on. Except that it might have come from Bossingham, which set more alarm bells ringing in my head. If Bugger Bridger hadn’t recognized the first snuffbox, which had definitely been tucked into one of his boxes, did it mean someone had put it in there – in the old stables, adjoining the farm – in order to keep it away from prying eyes? Only for it to be accidentally donated and then sold? And if that one had, did it mean that X had stolen this one from a similar hiding place? My thought processes were never good – now they tangled and knotted and I couldn’t unpick them.

So what could I do to free them up? Obvious answer: clean the kitchen. Maybe if I didn’t think, answers would just appear in my head.

Since we hadn’t actually got one of those germ-killer sprays, it was time for bleach. I scrubbed the kitchen table, twice, and wiped all the other surfaces X might have accidentally touched. All my clothes into the machine. Another shower, involving particular attention to my hair. What if Griff came home to find I’d got nits? And then it dawned on me that I’d pretty well used up what I meant to give Robin for lunch. Even though the shops were only a five minute walk away, by the time everyone had asked after Griff and after me, and talked about Mrs Walker’s forthcoming wedding, it was clear the Chelsea figure would have to wait.

If Robin noticed that the bread wasn’t home-made, he didn’t say anything. In fact, I might just as well have fed him some of my father’s Pot Noodles instead of all the good fresh produce I’d organized for our lunch. Perhaps he was miffed with me for having brought him all the way out here. Certainly, he was preoccupied with something. I let him be: Griff always said it was a pre-something or other . . . prerequ . . . ah, the prerogative of a friend to be silent when he didn’t want to talk.

Eventually, as I put a mug of coffee in front of him – forget the usual elegant little antique china cans! – he took a deep breath. ‘Would you mind if we drank this in the garden? Only, I’m gasping for a fag.’

‘You? Smoke? I’ve never heard you so much as mention cigarettes, except to moan when visitors leave nub ends in your church yards.’ But I got up and fished out the nasty Bakelite ashtray with a deep burned scar in the middle we kept for emergencies like this and led the way into the garden.

What was up? Had he and Freya had a falling out? I wasn’t sure I could deal with broken hearts except to suggest a friendly no strings bonk, and I was certainly wasn’t going to offer that sort of consolation to Robin.

I knew from my therapist that when someone had problems you weren’t supposed to jump in feet first and ask what the trouble was. Robin’s couldn’t have been anything like mine, but I presumed that the rules still held, so I sat and sipped and waited. He’d sucked hard through two cigarettes and a huge sigh before he said, ‘Poor old St Jude’s – living up to its name, I suppose.’

My education hadn’t got that far, had it? But I knew about Jude the Obscure, because it was a novel that Griff and I had started reading together, until the scene where the children were hanged made me cry so much that Griff had closed the book and said he wouldn’t open it again till I asked him to. And so far I hadn’t.

‘In what way?’ That sounded better than plain old how. Less ignorant, at least.

‘All that effort – and it seems to be a lost cause.’

St Jude. Patron saint of lost causes. Of course! I managed not to smile.

‘We’ve had three estimates for the work we simply can’t manage without, and they’re eye-watering.’

‘Which means?’

‘If we can’t raise the money, we can go to the diocese and negotiate handing over the building to the Churches Preservation Society. This means we can retain an option to worship there about four times a year but have no financial responsibility.’

‘Sounds ideal.’

Wrong.

‘Their priority isn’t worship! It’s purely the conservation of the building. Their idea is that the building should be used by the community. That’s fine in a city, or even a suburb, where you could make it a homeless centre or something – but out here, Lina? A community? A few hens and a lot of middle-class ponies trapped behind electric fencing and never apparently ridden! I want it to be a living church; anything else is like shoving a dear aunt into a retirement home and abandoning her to strangers.’

‘In that case, we have to raise the money to do the repairs, and you have to encourage more people on to the pews.’

‘Interesting use of pronouns, Lina. We and you,’ he explained, when I looked puzzled.

‘Of course I know what pronouns are,’ I said crossly. ‘What’s interesting about the way I used them?’

‘The way you seemed to assume some responsibility for a building with which you haven’t the remotest connection.’

That’s what Griff had done for me, wasn’t it? He’d taken me on without payment or official thanks. What a risk. If you’re given a gift like that you have to pass it on. But it would have sounded a bit pompous to say it even to Robin, so I made a sort of sideways rock of the head, as if to say, make what you like of it.

He lit another cigarette. This way he wouldn’t live to see what happened to St Jude’s.

‘The way people are chasing after that snuffbox means it’s got to be worth something,’ I mused. ‘For something, read a lot. If it’s not dodgy, and I hope Morris is checking even as we speak that it’s kosher, then a specialist repair and an even more specialist sale should help.’ I didn’t mention X’s snuffbox. Strictly speaking it wasn’t mine but the firm’s, which meant Griff had to decide what to do with it. With a bit of help from me.

‘What about that IKEA catalogue? Any hopes of that?’ I’d never heard Robin in scrounge-mode before.

‘The only reason I bought it was to give it away,’ I said flatly. I continued, hoping to sound more positive, ‘You mentioned a safe in St Jude’s as a possible hidey-hole for the snuffbox. Is there anything in there that could be sold?’

‘We’d have to get a faculty. That’s Anglican-ese for the culmination of a long consultation procedure to make sure no rogue vicar or churchwarden gets his fingers in the till.’

‘Ah. That seems to sum up in a dozen words what a guy I was talking to at the drinkies thing took about ten minutes to explain—’

‘Which guy?’

‘One of the guests I turned to speak to snubbed me so hard that a nice clergyman had to rescue me. And then I really landed the poor vicar or whatever in it because I asked him about – well, I must have sounded like Sarah Montague on Today because I kept firing questions about the relative values of the church treasures down there in the museum and local churches’ fabric needing repairs. The poor man couldn’t get away. But he’s not the interesting one, actually. The one who interested me was the rude guy.’

He ground his nub end into the paving. ‘Have I missed something here? I thought we were talking about fund-raising and St Jude’s.’

Wow. Not the time to raise all those worries about the other snuffbox, then. ‘OK. Check out your safe and raise a faculty. It all starts with a form, that nice clergyman was saying. Get your form.’

Now it was his turn to go off at a tangent. ‘Do you know who it was? The man you were talking to, of course.’

‘The clergyman? One with a lilac shirt. Tubby, though he’d probably consider himself well-built. About fifty.’

‘Sums up half a dozen churchmen I know.’ Hunching away from me, he lit another cigarette. I had half a mind to bum one for myself, only I knew from bitter experience just how hard it was to give them up. He lit another from the stub. Any moment he’d have to nip down to the shop for some more.

When he said nothing, I said, ‘I met him again, actually. Not the lilac clergyman, the man who had been so horrified to see me. He was in M and S in Maidstone. And he really did not seem pleased to see me. One scrap. Didn’t even approach “charming” on the scale of “hostile to delighted”. So I challenged him.’ When he said nothing, I yakked on, ‘I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, but such loathing . . .’

As if he hadn’t heard a word, he searched for another cigarette, took it, and crumpled the packet, dropping it on the table, as if some underpaid waitress would suddenly appear to tidy it away. ‘Shall we go and look at what’s in the safe?’

I thought of my workroom and the queue of silent, broken antiques, and said, ‘I really don’t know anything about silver. Especially eccles . . . excel . . . especially church silver. Anything at all.’

‘But you might know someone who does?’

‘There are specialist firms – I’m sure Lilac Shirt would know, since he talked so knowledgeably about the whole thing. Actually,’ I continued, hesitantly, ‘he mentioned it being the churchwardens’ responsibility. Maybe you should talk to them first?’

‘St Jude’s has only got one. Fi.’

‘She’ll know someone!’

‘I really thought I could depend on you.’

‘The other day you said you had a benefice to run. I’ve got a business to run.’

As if to prove the point, the office phone rang. Without looking back, I got up to take the call.

‘I thought you were never coming back,’ Robin grumbled.

I didn’t sit beside him, but gathered up the coffee things and his fag packet. I’d seen Griff ease visitors away like this without them even knowing they’d had the old heave-ho. ‘There’s some museum with a bit of a panic on. In the cuts they had to shed their expert conservation staff, and now something important needs a repair. So they’ve asked me. They’re couriering the item down tomorrow, so I have to shift the rest of today’s work as fast as I can. Look, if you really need me, I could see you at St Jude’s about eight?’

He went bright scarlet. ‘I’m afraid I’m booked this evening.’

Was he indeed?

‘At least phone Fi. And see if you can identify Lilac Shirt. Actually, he might be able to identify my Mr Nasty. I’d be really grateful if he could.’ I turned as if to head back into the house.

He didn’t move.

Picking up his fag end, I walked away anyway.

Despite the intense lights and the almost clinical state of my workroom, it was hard to concentrate on the Chelsea figure. Robin clearly thought I’d let him down big time, but as I’d told him for the nth time, waving him off, I really knew absolutely zero about ecclesiastical plate. At least the word had come back. But he was really huffy, and I wasn’t sure how to repair the rift, bar phoning up and offering to see the stuff later in the afternoon, which I really couldn’t afford the time for.

At last I got into the right rhythm, and the hand began to look like a hand again. Yes.

When the phone rang, I was surprised to see how dark the outside world was. And to find how stiff my back and legs were. I’d obviously broken my own rule, which was to get up and walk round every half hour or so.

Eight thirty. Well, at least I was ready for tomorrow’s delivery.

And the phone was still ringing.