A Trap for the Mould

At six o'clock on Saturday evening Police Constable Percy Doyle walked into the Crown, ordered a pint of bitter, sat down at the bar on his usual stool, and for the first time in eight years of service told a lie — deliberately, diligently, and with enormous pleasure.

"Well, that's that," he told Rowley the barman, loudly enough to be heard at the three nearest tables. "Monday morning the inspector takes Renwick's box off to Bristol. To the laboratory. They've got gadgets there — they can lift fingerprints off old clay even if it's thirty years old. And on that mould, they say, the prints are standing right out." He took a pull at his beer and dropped his voice to that theatrical whisper which carries better in a pub than a shout. "And till Monday the box stays in the back room. Mr Hale's hung the door again today and put his lock back on. Says nobody but him can open it. The inspector reckons the station's less safe, see — no bars on the window."

Rowley nodded, polishing a glass. At the table by the fire two farmers exchanged a look. By the window Mrs Turner, who had slipped in for a bottle of sherry, stopped with her purse in her hand.

Within an hour half of Marlow Cross knew about the box. Within two, everyone did.

* * *

"You're sure he'll come?" asked Grimshaw.

It was eleven at night. They were sitting in the dark in the front of the shop — the inspector in Oscar's chair behind the counter, Doyle on the floor behind the Chinese vase, Gwendolyn in the corner by old Jan, wrapped in the plaid rug. Edwin stood at the entrance to the passage, from where he could see the oak door of the back room, hung on its hinges once more.

She had insisted on staying. Grimshaw had said no. Edwin had said no. Gwendolyn had said, "It's my shop and my uncle," and sat down in the corner. No one argued with her after that.

"He'll come," said Edwin. "He has a ticket for Monday. He has no choice. If the box goes to Bristol, he won't even get as far as Southampton."

"And if he simply runs for it sooner?"

"Then we lose him, and he loses everything he owns: the shop, the collection, his name. Tobias Lane isn't the kind who leaves things behind. He's the kind who takes them."

The clocks ticked out of step. Old Jan, whom Edwin had wound and set going that afternoon, softly counted the seconds, and the moon on his dial winked at the sun in the dark.

Edwin had spent the whole day rehanging the back door. He had changed two of the pins in his lock — only two — and now any key cut from the old impression would turn in the cylinder exactly a quarter of a turn and stick there, gripped by a spring he had fitted in place of the usual one. And under the pawl of the counter he had fixed a thin steel strip on a spring, like a mousetrap for a very small mouse. If anyone pushed a probe into the gap and pressed on the pawl, the strip would snap shut and grip the tip of the probe so that it could only be pulled out along with half the lock.

"For forty years I've made locks that won't let people in," he had said, showing it to Grimshaw. "Today, for the first time, I've made one that won't let go."

Midnight passed. One o'clock. Twice Doyle began to nod off and twice jerked awake, knocking his head against the vase. Grimshaw sat as still as a statue. Gwendolyn did not sleep — Edwin could see her eyes glinting in the dark.

At twenty to two, out in the yard, the gate creaked softly, almost inaudibly.

All four of them froze.

Footsteps. Cautious, slow. They stopped at the scullery door. A faint chink of metal on metal — a key feeling for the hole. Finding it. A turn. The scullery door opened with a barely audible groan of its hinges, and a narrow beam from a pocket torch fell along the passage.

Edwin drew back into the shadow behind the doorframe. He could see only a silhouette — a dark coat, a hat, a small leather bag in the left hand. The right shoulder a little lower than the left. A walk with a roll to it.

The silhouette stopped in front of the oak door. Set the bag down on the floor. Shone the torch on the counter. Then on the keyhole. And took a key from the inside pocket of the coat.

Edwin heard the key slide into the cylinder — smoothly, confidently, as if it belonged there. Heard it turn. A quarter of a turn.

Click.

The key stopped. The silhouette jerked at it — once, twice. The key would go neither forward nor back. A soft, angry hiss through the teeth. The torch beam trembled. The silhouette stooped to the bag, searching for something, and straightened up holding between its fingers a thin, gleaming object with a double bend at the tip.

He pushed it into the gap between the door and the frame. Felt for it. Pressed.

Click.

The second click was louder. Dry and short, like the shot of a toy pistol. The silhouette wrenched its hand back — and the probe held fast. Wrenched again, harder, with its whole body — and for the first time in his life Tobias Lane, master of copies, the man who could make anything new again, stood before a door that had hold of him by both hands.

Grimshaw switched on the light.

* * *

Tobias spun round. The torch fell from his hand and rolled across the floor, lighting feet, skirting board, the dark stain on the carpet beyond the threshold of the back room. His face was grey and wet, his mouth open, and for the first time Edwin saw him without his smile — completely, utterly, without a trace of it. Without it his face turned out to be quite different: small, mean, frightened, with eyes darting like mice in a trap.

"Good evening, Mr Lane," said Grimshaw in his soft voice. "Please don't move. I'm arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Oscar Renwick and Maureen Cobb."

Tobias stared at him. Then at Edwin, stepping out from behind the doorframe. Then at Gwendolyn, rising in the corner by old Jan and throwing off the rug.

"Hale," he breathed. "You… It was you…"

"My lock," said Edwin. "Your key. Your probe. Let them have their conversation in front of a jury."

Tobias lunged. Not towards the yard door, where Doyle, springing out from behind the vase, was already standing — but the other way, down the passage, towards the shop, towards Gwendolyn, who was nearest. Something suddenly flashed in his hand — Edwin had no time to see what — and in two strides he was beside her.

Gwendolyn did not step back. She seized the first thing to hand — a heavy brass clock weight lying on the counter beside old Jan, because Edwin had taken it down that afternoon to mend the chain — and brought it down with all her strength on Tobias's arm.

Something clattered to the floor. A fine engraving tool. Tobias cried out and clutched his wrist — and at that instant Doyle, having hurtled the whole length of the passage like a rugby forward in a county final, brought him down. They rolled across the floor, overturning a chair. The Chinese vase, which Oscar wouldn't have sold for half the town, rocked on its stand… and stayed upright.

A minute later the handcuffs clicked shut on Tobias Lane's wrists. The third click of the night.

Gwendolyn stood by old Jan, still gripping the brass weight in both hands, and shaking so hard that the weight rattled against its chain.

"I hit him," she said in a thin, strange voice. "I've never hit anyone in my life."

Edwin went over, gently took the weight from her and put it on the counter.

"You hit him exactly as hard as was needed, Miss Renwick," he said. "Your uncle would have been proud of you. And your mother even more so."

She looked at him — and suddenly laughed through her tears, burying her face in his shoulder, the way his daughter used to when she had bad dreams.

* * *

Grimshaw opened the leather bag on the counter under the lamp.

A blowtorch. A small crucible, still warm. A bottle of paraffin. A box of matches. Tin snips. A stack of blank paper. And at the very bottom, a small notebook in a worn brown binding with a metal clasp.

Gwendolyn pressed her hand to her mouth.

"Oscar's notebook," she whispered. "The one Maureen had."

"He brought it here to burn along with the box," said Edwin. "All of it together. A fire in the back room, an old oak-framed house, antiques, papers. By morning there'd have been nothing left of the shop but the walls. And on Monday he'd have been on the boat."

Grimshaw carefully, with tweezers, picked up the notebook and slipped it into an envelope. Then he went to the oak door and for a long time studied the key stuck in the cylinder and the probe gripped by the steel strip under the counter. On the bronze of the probe, in the fold by the handle, a crumb of gold gleamed dully.

"The seventh key," he said quietly. "Cast from the impression taken at the bank. And a second copy of your probe, Mr Hale. He made two — in case he had to leave one behind." He shook his head. "No barrister in the kingdom will explain to a jury why a key cut from an impression taken at the bank and a probe with gold on its handle were stuck in this door at twenty to two in the morning together with Tobias Lane's hands."

Tobias sat on the floor of the passage, handcuffed to the radiator, staring at nothing. When Doyle hauled him up to take him to the station, he suddenly stopped beside Edwin.

"He laughed at me for forty years," he said hoarsely. "Oscar. Forty years he looked at me like a thief, and took my money. He was just like me, Hale. Only more of a coward."

"Perhaps," said Edwin. "But when he finally stopped being afraid, you killed him with a bronze horse to the back of the head. And Maureen Cobb, who never did anyone a moment's harm in her life — with her own chain." He looked Tobias in the eye. "You're nothing like Oscar, Lane. Oscar at least chose to be honest in the end. You chose fire."

Doyle led Tobias out into Marlow Street. Above the rooftops the sky was already turning grey. There was no fog — for the first time in a week. The night was clear and cold, and in the sky over St Michael's the last stars were still burning.