Troy’s last call of the day was to Orange Street, which snakes its way from the Haymarket to the Charing Cross Road, hidden on the one side from Leicester Square and on the other from the National Gallery. It’s one of those streets best described as “you’d never know it’s there.” It is so narrow that cars cannot pass one another at the eastern end. Troy left his Bullnose Morris in Whitcomb street and walked the last few yards to the premises of Robert Churchill, gunsmith.
Mr. Chewter answered his ring. Chewter had been Churchill’s factotum, his everything, since time immemorial. Troy knew full well his Christian name was Jim, but had never heard anyone address him as anything but “Mister.”
“Mr. Troy. What a pleasant surprise.”
“Not too much of one I hope. I’ve no appointment.”
Chewter looked at his pocket watch, dropped it back into his waistcoat pocket, and said, “I’m sure we can fit you in, sir. You go up in the lift. I’ll call up and let the guv’ner know you’re here.”
As the coffin-sized cage wound up to the top floor, Troy was struck by an annoying thought. Angus had made him petty, because all he could think of for fifteen seconds was that this was a service for which the Yard would not pay, and that Angus would add it to his list of claims. Troy realized that accountancy, chartered or otherwise, could infect the soul.
Bob met him at the lift gate.
“Freddie! How nice to see you again. Is this what I think it is? The body on the Northern Line?”
“Am I so predictable?”
“No . . . but you’d not come to me if you hadn’t found the gun.”
“I have found it. It’s a real oddity.”
“Let’s go to the desk, shall we?”
Churchill led him into the inner office. He bore a more than passing resemblance to his distant cousin Winston, the same round face, the same ready wit—and as he followed, Troy found himself pondering the common girth of the two men. A large arse in voluminous trousers preceded him.
“Are you practicing regularly?” Churchill asked.
The same question Rosen had put to him only hours before. Rosen taught him the piano, Churchill how to shoot, and so the same lie served.
“Of course,” Troy lied.
Churchill flicked on a desk lamp, rolled out a clean sheet of white paper. Troy handed over the three packages Kolankiewicz had given him. The gun, the bullet, and the ruby.
“My oh my,” said Churchill. “What have we here?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, and nor has Kolankiewicz.”
Churchill held the gun under the light, turned it this way and that.
“So light. So . . . delicate.”
“There is one other thing,” Troy said. “We think a potato was used as a silencer.”
Churchill raised one eyebrow at this but said nothing. Lowering said eyebrow, he put a jeweller’s lens to his eye and continued to examine the gun. Then he removed the eyeglass and began to strip down the gun.
He laid the pieces out in a neat line across the paper. Put the eyeglass back in.
“Well . . . ,” he said after a minute or two of silence in which all Troy had heard was the ticking of the clock and the rumbling of Churchill’s stomach. “All I can tell you right now is that the mechanism is Swiss. There is a maker’s mark. Gebrüder Altmann. As I recall they were based in Zurich, packed up shop just after the Great War. They did make small guns, but I’d no idea they’d ever made anything as small as this.”
“It’s .15,” said Troy.
“Amazing. They probably had to make the ammunition as well. However, the casing, and the . . . whatdeyecallit . . . ornamentation, is another thing entirely. Indeed, before somebody knocked it about it must have been beautiful. The engraving, the leaves, the ferns. So . . . I say again, delicate. Puts one in mind of a Fabergé egg.”
Troy kicked himself inside. He’d seen all sorts of things in the engraving on the gun but the similarity to a Fabergé egg had not once occurred to him.
“But of course,” Churchill went on, as though reading Troy’s mind and trying to soften the blow, “there could be dozens of people who did that sort of thing at the time. And I’ve never heard that Fabergé worked on guns. But it does look very Fabergé.”
“What time would that be, Bob?”
“Well, this century I think. But only just. Say 1905. 1910. Not later than 1917 . . . if my Russian hunch has anything more to it than a style of jewellery. Fabergé fled west that year. The name survives but he made nothing after the revolution. Three hands at work here. The Altmanns made the gubbins, somebody else made the body, and someone else did the decoration. Look there, I think these blips held jewels at one time.”
Troy pushed the ruby across the paper to him. It looked like the packet of salt at the bottom of a bag of crisps, wrapped in a twist of blue paper.
Churchill unwrapped it.
“My,” he said. “Just the one?”
“Whoever prised them out missed one. It’s all I have.”
Churchill put back his eyeglass.
“It’s beautiful, simply beautiful. Of course, there’s nothing to say they were all rubies.”
“There might have been diamonds.”
“Exactly. Who knows? A gun like this would be unique—a one-off. Made to order.”
Troy knew what this meant.
“That doesn’t help, does it?”
Churchill sighed a little.
“In a country that kept records it would be a positive advantage. In Russia, after all it’s been through these last thirty years, quite the opposite. I shall do what I can do, but if you’re relying solely on the gun as your lead to the killer I’ll disappoint you now. This could take weeks. I can’t just phone anyone up. I shall have to write letters, and I shall have to be very discreet. And when I get replies, if I get replies, I shall in all probability have to write more letters.”
“Then I’ll leave it with you.”
Troy got up, pushed the last package across the paper to Churchill, and headed for the lift. Over his shoulder, he said, “It’s the bullet, Bob. Many thanks.”
He’d just got the lift door closed, when it was wrenched open. There stood Churchill, something between glee and astonishment lighting up his face and quivering his jowls.
“It’s silver, Freddie. The bullet is made of silver!”