It fitted fairly well into the back of Troy’s Bullnose Morris but he knew it would fit less well into his parlour. He would be forever tripping over it. And whilst part of him yearned to have a cellist to play alongside—but that Voytek was now a fugitive and had always been in a different musical league, he would have loved her company—no part of him yearned to learn the instrument himself.
Still, he had been invited to spend the evening at his brother’s house—and that had possibilities. Risks, too, but principally possibilities.
His sister-in-law answered the door.
“Er . . . Freddie, what’s that?”
“A cello.”
“You weren’t planning on abandoning it here, were you?”
“As a matter of fact, I was.”
“Oh, God, not more sodding junk. This house is full of junk; these islands are full of junk. You’d think if there were one thing the Luftwaffe could have done for us, it was to blow away all the sodding junk!”
“Are you going to let me in?”
“I suppose so. Stick it in the study, perhaps no one will notice it among all that tat of your dad’s that I am not allowed to throw away.”
Downstairs, he took the cello out of its case and propped it up against the bookshelves. He’d have to buy a proper stand or the neck would warp, but for now it looked pretty good.
Rod came in—full postparliamentary rigging, wind in his sails, three sheets to the wind, no shoes, odd socks, red braces, tie at half-mast, a gin-and-it in hand, and not his first of the evening.
“Wossat you got there?”
Troy stated the obvious.
“Good one, is it?”
“Not bad,” said Troy. “I’ll take it out to Mother’s when I get the chance. It can go in the study there.”
“Mmm . . . where d’ya get it?”
Troy said nothing. Wondered if a half-truth might suffice along the lines of, “I found it in a pawnshop.”
Rod played the violin—not that you would have known it from the idle way he plucked at a string of the cello. Then he was peering down at it, trying to see through the ƒ-holes.
“I say, there’s a label in here.”
If Rod could read the label, read the words “Mattio Goffriler,” there’d be no way Troy could ever pretend he’d picked it up cheap in a junk shop. There’d be questions.
“You don’t say?” said Troy, sounding to his own ears like Bertie Wooster, midfib, but trying to sound a better liar than Bertie Wooster ever made.
But the booze already had Rod in thrall. He straightened up with no apparent further interest in the cello.
“Got a decanter breathing nicely,” he said. “An 1870 Cos d’Estournel.”
This really was the good stuff. Troy doubted he’d open two bottles at that vintage but if he did, Troy would let him get stewed and try not to join him—God knows that was easy enough once Rod hit drink-and-natter mode. It seemed to him now that he had spent a summer steeped in booze, since the day Angus first took him on a pub crawl. His hand forever wrapped around a corkscrew . . .
“Fine,” he said “I’ll be up in a jiffy. Just one or two things to do down here.”
Rod bumbled off.
Troy took a small package from his inside pocket, unwrapped the Fabergé gun with its sole remaining ruby, wiped it clean with his handkerchief, and laid it on his father’s desk next to the three-piece cigar kit. It wasn’t a perfect match but it was close. With any luck, Rod would never notice and if he did, Troy was prepared to swear blind it had been there all along, that he’d played with it as a boy . . . or something. And if Rod ever looked inside the cello again, well . . . he’d eat his hat . . . or something.