Who Saw the Mould

Edwin did not go to bed that night. He came home at three, laid the brass key with the square bit on the kitchen table beside the unfinished letter to his daughter, and sat down opposite it, the way one sits down opposite a chessboard when the game is almost lost, but not quite.

Lost wax. Bole. Gold leaf. The three words turned in his head like gears that would not mesh. Someone had taken his probe. Someone had pressed it into wax. That would have taken a few minutes — no more. A few minutes alone with his tools.

Who?

He closed his eyes and began where he always began when he could not find the broken part: he took the mechanism apart down to the last screw. For two years the shed had stood shut. Who in those two years had crossed its threshold? The postman — no, the postman left letters in the box on the gate. Young Bennett, who had mended his roof in the spring — but Bennett had never gone near the bench; Edwin had stood beside him the whole time. The vicar, collecting for the church roof fund — only as far as the porch. His daughter, when she came the summer before last — she had always hated that shed.

And then…

He opened his eyes.

July. A hot, sticky July day, when Mary's roses were out in the garden. The creak of the gate. A grey suit, a straw hat, a smile that didn't reach the eyes.

"Hale, old man! I hear you've given up the trade. A shame. A great shame. But look here, I've a proposition for you. I collect old craftsmen's tools — gravers, dividers, that sort of thing. And it suddenly struck me: I haven't a single locksmith's tool in the collection. Yours, I'm sure, are real masterpieces. I'll pay whatever you ask."

Edwin had refused. Tools are not sold, they are handed down — so his father had said, and so he had told Tobias. But Tobias had pressed him gently, in a friendly way: "Well, at least show me — I've never seen a real locksmith's workshop." And Edwin, embarrassed to refuse a second time, had opened the shed, taken the cover off the bench and unrolled both rolls.

And then Tobias had said: "Hot today, isn't it? I wouldn't say no to a glass of water." And Edwin had gone to the kitchen.

How long had he been gone? Pour water from the jug in the cellar. Find a clean glass. Hunt for a lemon, because Mary always gave visitors water with lemon, and out of habit he had too… Ten minutes. Perhaps twelve.

When he came back, Tobias was standing in the middle of the shed with his hands behind his back, looking at the old vice in the corner that had been Edwin's father's. The rolls lay on the bench. Exactly as Edwin had left them. He hadn't even glanced at them.

Edwin got up from the table so abruptly that he knocked the chair over.

Bell metal. Lost wax. A restoration workshop smelling of turpentine, varnish and warm wax, with a torch and crucibles on the table. And a collection of tools of every trade but one — because Tobias had never needed locksmith's tools for a collection.

He had needed them for a mould.

* * *

At that same hour before dawn, while Edwin stood in his kitchen beside the overturned chair, someone scratched softly at the door of the shop on Marlow Street.

Gwendolyn had never gone back to the boarding house. She had fallen asleep in the armchair behind the counter, wrapped in her uncle's old plaid rug, to the ticking of the clocks, and now she started up, not knowing where she was. Beyond the glass, in the grey light of dawn, a ginger head bobbed.

She opened the door. Tommy Beckett stood on the step, damp with fog, the canvas bag over his shoulder and his eyes red from crying.

"Miss Renwick," he whispered. "Miss Cobb… she always gave me apples. Fridays. Green ones, sour. I couldn't stand them, but I ate them, because she was watching." He sniffed. "And now she's gone. And it's my fault."

Gwendolyn crouched down in front of him and took his cold hands in hers.

"Tell me, Tommy."

And he told her. How on Wednesday, with the envelope in his bag, he had run round to William Street to give Mr Lane his evening paper, because Mr Lane always gave him twopence for it instead of a penny. How Mr Lane, taking the paper, had seen the envelope — it was sticking out of the bag a bit — and asked who it was for. And how Tommy, like a fool, had said, "Mr Hale, from Miss Cobb." And how Mr Lane had smiled and said, "Interesting stamp, let's have a look," — though there was no stamp on it at all — and taken the envelope into his back room. How Tommy had waited by the counter and heard the kettle whistling in there. For ages. Fifteen minutes. And then Mr Lane had come back and given him the envelope — sealed, as it had been, only a bit damp round the edges — and a whole shilling.

"And he said," the boy's lips trembled, "that if I told anyone, he'd tell the constable he'd seen me pinching silver spoons out of his window. And I'd be sent to a reform school. And Mum would die of shame." Tommy sobbed. "I never pinched anything, Miss Renwick. Honest. Not one spoon."

"I believe you, Tommy," said Gwendolyn. Her voice was steady, but inside everything had clenched into a tight, icy knot. "And Constable Doyle will believe you too. Now let's go and see him together."

* * *

Tobias Lane received Constable Doyle at nine in the morning in his immaculate shop, among the Georgian silver and the Meissen porcelain, and heard him out with the expression of a man being told a very witty but slightly tasteless joke.

"A boy," he said, when Doyle had finished. "A ginger boy who delivers newspapers and whom I've caught twice, as it happens, stealing from my window. I didn't report him, naturally — I felt sorry for his mother. And this is the thanks I get." He sighed. "Children can be so cruel, Constable."

"And your moulds of Mr Hale's tools? July?"

"I did call on Hale in July. I wanted to buy his tools for my collection. He refused. I drank a glass of water with lemon in it and left." Tobias shrugged. "If that's a crime, then I'm guilty."

"Where were you on Wednesday between eight and ten in the evening, sir?"

"Visiting." Tobias's smile widened. "Mrs Frost. We were discussing terms for a loan to expand my business. Privately, at her house, because at the bank, you know, the walls have ears. I arrived at eight and left at half past ten. Ask her yourself."

Doyle asked.

Helen Frost received him at the bank without rising from her desk, heard him out, took off her spectacles and said, looking him straight in the eye:

"Yes. Mr Lane was at my house on Wednesday evening from eight until half past ten. We discussed business matters. I can let you have a copy of the draft agreement, if you wish."

Her voice did not waver. Only the fingers holding her spectacles gripped the arm a little harder than they needed to.

Doyle came out of the bank, sat down on a bench in the square in front of the Crown and sat there for a long time, staring at his notebook. The word of a child against the word of a bank manager. An old locksmith's memory of a glass of water against an alibi confirmed by the most respected woman in Marlow Cross. A crumb of gold on a bronze probe, which could have come from any gilt candlestick in the county.

He looked up as a black car with Bristol plates drove into the square, snorting and splashing through the puddles.

* * *

Inspector Grimshaw turned out to be nothing like what Doyle had imagined. Not loud, not red-faced, not impatient. Short, grey-haired, with a soft voice and very pale eyes that looked at everything around him as though they were photographing it. He listened to Doyle at the station for an hour and a quarter without interrupting. Read every page of the notebook. Examined both probes; held Maureen Cobb's note in his hand for a long time.

"You've done good work, Constable," he said at last. "Better than I expected." He put down the note. "And you, as far as I can see, very much want Mr Lane to be guilty."

Doyle went red to the ears.

"I want whoever's guilty to be guilty, sir."

"Commendable. So do I." Grimshaw stood up. "Now bring me Mr Hale. I'm detaining him for twenty-four hours for questioning. Not an arrest. Not yet."

* * *

They brought Edwin in at two. He did not resist. He walked along Marlow Street beside Doyle, and people came out on to their steps to watch. Jenkins the baker. Mrs Turner. The women by the post office. No one said anything. Only Gwendolyn, who ran out of the shop, walked beside him all the way to the station door, head held high, ignoring the stares, and on the step caught hold of his sleeve.

"I'll find it," she said quietly. "Do you hear? I'll find that box."

Edwin stopped. He looked at her — long and carefully, as if seeing her for the first time.

"The little square on the card, Miss Renwick," he said, just as quietly. "We all thought it was the shelf, because the horse stood on the shelf. But the shelf hangs on the wall. You don't draw it on a floor plan. On a floor plan you draw what stands on the floor." He squeezed her hand. "The filing cabinet. Where the horse stands — that is, where Oscar put it every morning when he took it down from the shelf to dust it, and set it on the cabinet. 'Only lower.' Under the cabinet."

The station door closed behind him with a dull, heavy thud that made the glass shiver.

Gwendolyn stood on the step, clutching in her pocket the brass key with the square bit that Edwin had slipped into her palm with that last handshake.