Five

At the bottom of High Street by the bridge over the River Great Stour stood Westgate, a turreted medieval gatehouse sixty feet high built of Kentish rag stone, the last of seven once posted around the city. Motorised traffic now passed in steady procession under the arch between its drum towers. On a weekday Rex imagined the road became rather congested.

The weather had continued mild, though cloudy, well into the afternoon, and he strolled up the semi-pedestrianised street among the Saturday shoppers and tourists, thinking how nice it would have been to be taking in the historic sites with Helen. A group of Americans had paused in front of the ornately fronted Caffè Nero where, the guide was explaining, Queen Elizabeth I had stayed in 1573 when it was the Crown Inn.

Minutes later, Rex came across a narrow shopfront with “Stamps & Collectibles” scrolled in black lettering on the glass. Chock-full of antiques and curios, it conjured up a distinctly Dickensian feel, an impression reinforced when he stepped inside and saw a diminutive man behind the counter dressed in a black waistcoat and jacket and bearing the sombre and solicitous air of an undertaker.

“Good day to you,” he greeted Rex, his grey face set in an expression of helpful enquiry, one immobile eye fixed at nothing in particular while the other regarded his visitor.

“You are Christopher Penn, the owner?” Rex enquired, towering over him.

The man nodded and smiled without parting his thin bloodless lips.

“I’m a colleague of the late Gordon Murgatroyd.” Rex placed his business card on the mahogany counter. “I believe you were acquainted with the judge?”

“Indeed, sir. And sympathies.” Elbows propped on the counter, Penn raised folded hands to his chin. “I’d not seen him in a long while. I sent his daughter a condolence card when I heard the sad news. I would have sent flowers, but they were expressly discouraged.” He smiled sorrowfully. “What can I do for you?”

Rex removed the stamp album from the canvas shopping bag lent him by Annie before he went out on his excursion. “His daughter, Mrs. Wells, is interested in a quick evaluation of his collection.” He set the album down on the counter. “I thought I’d bring it in and get your professional opinion, if you’d be so kind.”

Penn hummed and hawed as he turned the stamp-laden pages, occasionally peering through a magnifier, using his good eye. Rex could not help but observe that he had long, translucent fingers resembling tentacles. Rather than stare, compelling as the man’s appearance was, he looked about him at the wares crammed and stacked on shelves and cubby holes against the walls. A musty whiff of mildew pervaded the cluttered space, and he imagined years of accumulated dust lurking in every corner and crevice.

“None of these are mounted,” the dealer murmured, calling back Rex’s attention.

“Is there anything a layman like myself would miss, an imperfection that would increase the value of a stamp, perhaps?”

“Not that I can see.” Penn’s right eye looked downwards while the glass one gazed ahead disconcertingly at Rex’s midsection. “Judge Murgatroyd was an amateur philatelist.” He stressed the word “amateur” with mild disdain. “These Victorian ones are nicely preserved, but not all that rare. The collection is a bit of a hodgepodge, to be honest. We have here an almost complete floral set of Hungarians from the mid to late twentieth century, but almost is the operative word. Hmm … This one from India might conceivably sell for twenty euros shopped to the right buyer … ”

Nothing worth murdering for so far, it seemed. Rex waited while the dealer completed his inspection and mumbled the occasional observation, much of it lost upon him.

“It’s a nice collection,” Penn said at last, closing the album. “But I personally wouldn’t offer more than two hundred pounds for the lot. If Mrs. Wells has the time and inclination, she could try selling individual items on eBay, to someone, say, interested in expanding their Egyptian or Japanese collection. If you’d care to leave this with me, I could possibly select a few to buy on my clients’ account?”

“I’m not sure she wishes to sell the album or else break it up,” Rex demurred, not feeling at liberty to leave the un-inventoried collection in the dealer’s hands.

Penn nodded. “Quite. It may well hold sentimental value for her.”

“Mrs. Wells may also have wanted to know how much to insure it for, had it been worth doing. But thank you, Mr. Penn. I very much appreciate your time, and I’ll pass on your comments.”

The doorbell chimed, and a young couple entered the shop and began browsing among the oil lamps and hand-painted crockery and old silver spoons piled upon pine chests and sagging gateleg tables. Rex packed up the album and thanked the dealer again for his time.

On his way out, he stopped to examine a rack of gilt-framed engravings of the city. He decided to purchase one that highlighted the medieval grandeur of Canterbury Cathedral as a gift for his mother. He returned to the counter and discovered Mr. Penn to be a wealth of information on its history, distracting as his blind eye was as he was giving his fascinating discourse.

All the more inspired to see where Archbishop Thomas Becket had been slain by four of Henry II’s sword-wielding knights, Rex made his way to the cathedral, while pondering his own case of murder. It appeared the album held nothing of significant value, and the retired high court judge had pursued stamp collecting solely as a pastime, with no view to making money out of it. So why had the other been stolen?

All he had was Phoebe’s assertion that the album had in fact been stolen, along with the watch. A close look in the garden before he had left her house had revealed nothing suspicious around the old cast-iron drainpipe by the window or at the surmountable gate next to the garage. The judge, despite his phobia about draughts, might have simply taken it into his head to open the window that night, however inclement the weather, and forgotten to lock it.

And yet, another old man had been mugged in the same street. A strange sequence of events, perhaps, but did it amount to murder?