Solomons Seal Read online

  Solomons Seal

  Hammond Innes

  Contents

  1 The Die Proofs

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  2 Cargo

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  3 Island of Insurrection

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  4 The Buka Passage

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  5 Solomons Seal

  Author’s Note

  A Note on the Author

  Part One

  The Die Proofs

  Chapter One

  It all began so quietly, so very ordinarily – a routine job, something any junior in an estate agent’s office could have handled. The only difference that morning was that my mood did not match the brightness of the day. I was, in fact, in an odd frame of mind when I arrived at the house, the girl I had been living with married to a farmer, myself turned forty, and now the very real prospect of being out of a job.

  The instructions to sell the contents of The Passage, River Road, Aldeburgh, had come from Rose, Walker & Chandler, a London firm of solicitors based in Chelmsford. They also wanted an indication of the market value of the house itself. I had glanced at their letter briefly, lying on the beach after a swim. The contents of the house were the property of a Mr Timothy Holland, whose family they had acted for over many years. He was now seriously ill and had been moved into a nursing home. During his illness he had apparently been looked after by an unmarried sister, so that I was expecting to be greeted by a faded spinster as I stood there on the doorstep in the blazing sun.

  It was four years since I had started working for Browne, Baker & Browne, always with a partnership in mind, and now that one of them had died suddenly the vacancy had gone to Sam Baker’s nephew. Maybe he did have a better education and London auction room experience, but it was still plain bloody nepotism, and that’s what I had told the senior partner when I had stormed in to see him the night before. It hadn’t exactly helped, my temper getting the better of me and the old man sitting there like a half-poisoned owl, peering at me over his glasses and informing me, very coldly, that a partnership was out of the question, I hadn’t the right temperament.

  Half my life gone and nothing to show for it – just an old car, an older boat, a few nice pieces of furniture and some stamps. No education, no qualifications, no bloody future, and now this piddling little contents sale thrust on me because Packer was in hospital, a listing and valuation job any junior clerk in the office could have done. I jabbed my finger on the bell, feeling hot and sticky with salt after my bathe. There was no passage anywhere to explain the name on the brick porch, and the house itself was little more than a glorified bungalow, much like its neighbours except that the paint was peeling from the window frames and there was a general air of neglect. This did not extend to the front garden, however, which was full of roses and carefully tended.

  The door opened, and a woman’s voice said, ‘Mr Packer?’

  ‘No, my name’s Roy Slingsby.’ And when I explained that Packer was in hospital and I had come in his place, she thanked me for keeping the appointment. ‘Come in, please.’ I couldn’t see her very clearly, the hallway dark after the glare of the sun. In any case, it was the contents I had come to catalogue, and my eyes went immediately to a wooden carving on a rather ornate mahogany side table. I couldn’t place the design of it, which annoyed me, for I was certain I had seen something like it quite recently on a commemorative issue.

  ‘Where would you like to begin?’

  ‘Oh, here will do,’ I said, putting my briefcase down on the table. ‘This figure—’ I bent forward to examine it. ‘African?’

  ‘No. South West Pacific’ She had one of those gentle, implacable voices, a slight huskiness in it, and I thought I detected a certain hostility, as though she hadn’t yet come to terms with her brother’s absence, the protective instinct still strong. ‘I think it’s from the Mortlocks, or maybe New Britain – I can’t remember. Does it say on the bottom?’

  I picked it up and turned it over. A small square of paper had been gummed to the base, and in tiny, spidery writing, the ink faded and slightly smudged, I could just make out the words: Gift from Rev. G. Robinson, Rabaul 1908. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said as I read it out to her. ‘New Britain – Rabaul is in New Britain.’ She sounded ill at ease, as though conscious that her resentment of my intrusion was uncalled for. ‘They belonged to my grandfather. I’m afraid they’re – well, a little crude, if you see what I mean. But exciting.’ She gave a quick, nervous laugh. ‘I wouldn’t like to have to sell them. They’re all I’ve got left … ’ Her voice trailed away on a note of sadness, or was it something else? The atmosphere of the house was strangely oppressive.

  The carving was in some black heavy wood not unlike ebony, but rougher, perhaps ironwood, and it was certainly crude, the frightening features elongated to what was almost a beak and an exaggerated phallus equally long. ‘This isn’t the only one you have, then?’

  ‘No.’

  I hesitated, looking down at it and wondering at the primitive mind that had carved this travesty of the human figure. I both repelled and fascinated, so that I guessed it was good of its kind, and now that I knew where it had come from, I could remember seeing similar carvings in the junk shops of Singapore.

  She must have sensed my reaction, for she said hesitantly, ‘You think it’s valuable, do you?’

  I looked at her then, seeing her eyes staring at me, dark-ringed and very large in the gloom of the hallway, her face framed in a frizzy cap of golden-red hair that was almost orange and matched the freckles on her clear skin. She wore no make-up, her mouth a tight defensive line and her nose oddly flattened as though it had been broken at some time. ‘Look, Miss Holland,’ I said, feeling the need to reassure her, ‘it’s entirely up to you what you sell and what you keep. You say it’s not to go on the list and it won’t.’ And then, out of curiosity, I asked her how many of them she had.

  She shook her head a little awkwardly. ‘I – can’t remember. I stored some of them away in a trunk in the loft. If you want to see them … it’s very dusty, I’m afraid. I haven’t had time to go up there for so long. But I suppose, if they’re valuable …’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they’re valuable, just interesting. If it was a case of insurance, or you did decide to include them in the sale, then I think I would advise an expert opinion. Primitive art of this sort is a specialised field, and I haven’t the faintest idea what they’re worth.’ I put the carved figure back in its place. ‘I’ll exclude them, shall I?’ I was certain that was what she wanted, though she was very hesitant, thinking it over a few moments before she finally gave a quick, decisive nod.

  ‘Yes. I wouldn’t want them to go for next to nothing at a local sale. It will be a local sale, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Ipswich probably. Or we may feel we could get a better price by putting the furniture into our Chelmsford auction room.’ I had already glanced through into the sitting room, my eyes, accustomed now to the gloom, taking in the worn chintz covers, the threadbare carpet, the rather sparse furniture and the absence of antiques. It was all down-market stuff, and I hoped she wasn’t relying on the sale to support her brother in the nursing home for long.

  ‘And those carvings, they would go to London?’

  ‘I would think so.’

  ‘Good, then I can always change my mind, if I have to.’

  ‘So long as you can find somebody to house them in the meantime.’ I said it jokingly, but her eyes remained large and serious, and she didn’t smile. I opened my briefcase and got out my clipboard. ‘Now, if you care to leave me to work steadily
through the house from room to room, I’ll make the inventory.’

  ‘And you’re valuing everything, aren’t you?’ When I told her it was only a rough valuation, she said, ‘So long as I have some idea what we can expect to get out of the sale.’ She stood there for a moment longer, staring past me into the sitting room, a withdrawn look on her face, so that I didn’t know whether she was regretting the need to part with treasured possessions, which is something one gets used to in this business, people feeling the accumulation of inanimate objects as somehow personal to themselves, or whether she was thinking of her brother and mentally trying to equate the sale proceeds to the nursing home charges. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to get on with it,’ she added, suddenly making an effort at brightness.

  ‘It won’t take me very long,’ I said. ‘Two hours, maybe.’

  She left me then, a slim figure in jeans, her movements quick and decisive. She was younger than I had expected and somehow disturbing, an impression that stayed with me as I got down to the job of listing the contents. Normally I dealt with the agricultural side, and it was some time since I had handled this sort of a sale. I had never liked it. Almost always there is some female member of the family hanging possessively around as you prepare the catalogue, and either they are emotionally upset at the loss of familiar things that have become dear to them over the years or else they are there as predators, trying to figure out just how much it is going to cost them to get their hands on old Aunt So-and-So’s cherished table, desk, commode, whatever it is. Here it was somewhat different in that, except for the carvings and some of the pictures, the contents were mostly functional and not items anyone could become greatly attached to. But all the time I was working on the inventory I was conscious of the presence of that young woman in the house, and it was a strangely disconcerting presence.

  She made hardly a sound, and yet all the time I was working steadily round the downstair rooms, I was aware of her being there in the house with me. And the house itself, it had an unpleasantly sombre atmosphere, so that I found myself thinking about the man who was the cause of the sale, the man who had been ill here and was now in a home. It was as though something of his personality still lingered, or else the pain of his suffering. This brooding presence, this sense of something hanging over the house – it was in such startling contrast to the happy brilliance of the day outside. And in every room there were those bizarre carvings.

  I was in the dining room when I heard the clatter of the loft ladder. I had the cutlery out on the table, all of it EPNS and badly worn, and I stood there wondering what it was she had hidden up there. But there was no sound of movement, everything very still, and I got back to the inventory, anxious only to get out of the house, back into the sunshine.

  By the time I started upstairs she was in the kitchen and the loft ladder was back in place. The larger of the two bedrooms had obviously been her brother’s. There was a swing table, and the bed had an invalid rest against the headboard. The hospital aroma of sickness and medicine still lingered. There were no wood carvings in that room, but the pictures on the wall attracted my attention. They were bright primitive paintings of palms and flat calm seas, also faded photographs of ships that looked like small trading schooners taken against towering jungle-covered mountains. The room seemed different then, my mood changing as I realised that the sick man belonged to a world I only knew in my imagination. The pictures, those carvings – the South West Pacific, she had said. Of course, the carvings were like the designs on some of the Papua New Guinea stamps. I no longer felt depressed, only curious that the family should have abandoned such a colourful world for England and this wretched little house, which now had an exotic feel to it, wild relics of a dead past cocooned in an almost suburban wrapping.

  I had moved to the smaller bedroom and was staring at a large wooden mask hanging on the wall above the bed when her voice startled me: ‘I thought you might like some refreshment, Mr Slingsby.’ I turned to find her standing in the doorway, a tray of tea in her hands, some books under her arm, and for the first time I saw her clearly, illumined by the sunlight pouring through the window. The hair and the freckles really did match, and her eyes, which were large and brown and slightly prominent, were fixed on me in a most disturbing way. She was no longer dressed in jeans. She had changed into a cotton frock, green and quite plain, her small breasts thrusting at it in a very demanding way.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said quickly. ‘Some tea would be great.’ I was staring at her, conscious of her figure, everything about her. Conscious, too, of the effect she was having on me. It wasn’t just her youth, or even the protruding breasts, that extraordinary cap of brilliantly coloured hair now catching the sun. It was something much more powerful, a deep current passing between us, so that I just stood there watching her as she crossed to the dressing table, put down the tray and laid the books carefully beside it.

  ‘Milk?’ she asked, and I nodded, feeling overwhelmed and at the same time a little ridiculous at being dumbfounded by something I’d never experienced before.

  In an effort to pull myself together, I said, ‘This is your bedroom, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She had turned and was smiling at me, the full lips turned up at the corners, a glint of laughter in her eyes. ‘You’re wondering how I can go to bed with that dreadful face hanging over me.’ The smile broadened, a flash of long, very white teeth. ‘You must think my taste very odd, but I’ve lived with them all my life. They remind me of the world I used to know.’ She turned her head, staring out of the window towards the sea. ‘It made life more bearable.’ Her voice, intense and tinged with nostalgia, was husky, barely above a whisper. Then she seemed to collect herself, bending quickly to pour the tea. ‘Do sit down. It’s very hot and you haven’t stopped—’ She stood for a moment, the cup in her hand, staring out of the window. ‘You can see the sea up here. It’s the only room in the house that looks out to the sea. Sugar?’

  I shook my head, looking round for somewhere to sit other than the bed. There was nowhere except the dressing-table stool. She handed me my cup and, having poured her own, perched herself on the broad window ledge. Seeing her there against the light, she seemed like something caged in and on the verge of flight, her hair in the sunlight red-bronze, like a burnished helmet. There was a long silence as she sat there drinking her tea and staring out of the window.

  ‘I had a bathe before I came here,’ I said. ‘It must be nice living so close to the sea.’

  She nodded abstractedly. ‘I used to swim, once. But my father was a sick man, and then Tim came back. I never had time after that.’ And she added almost harshly, ‘My brother was paralysed, you see.’ There was another silence. Then she said very quickly, ‘It’s been a long time and now he’s dying.’

  I thought perhaps she wanted to talk about it, and almost without thinking I asked her what he was dying of.

  ‘Sorcery.’ She said it so quietly, so matter-of-factly, that I thought for a moment I must have misheard her. But then she added, still in the same tone of voice as though she were talking about something as common as cancer. ‘As a kiap – a patrol officer – he had a lot of experience of that sort of thing. Of course, the doctor says it’s the effect of the accident, some sort of stroke following the spinal injury. But I told him it wasn’t that.’ She gave a nervous little giggle. ‘It was really very funny, his face. Sorcery! Dammit, the silly little man thought I was out of my mind. He started prescribing sleeping pills, pain killers, all that rubbish. Not that it mattered, no doctor’s going to cure him of sorcery or enter that on a death certificate, is he? Not here in England. But that’s what it’ll be. Tim’s had a death wish put on him, and he knows it.’

  I stared down at my inventory, feeling confused and wondering to what extent she was suffering from shock. ‘He was a patrol officer, you say,’ I heard myself murmur. ‘Was he in the Army then?’

  ‘No, not the Army. Civil Administration. In the Goroka District. He was very badly injured and invalided
home.’ She hesitated, but before I could ask her where Goroka was, she said, ‘It’s been a long time, and now … ’ She shrugged. ‘With him gone, I feel a little lost.’ Again that effort to collect herself. ‘You’re just about through now, aren’t you? This is the last room.’

  ‘Unless there is anything of value in the loft that you want included in the sale?’

  She hesitated, then shook her head. ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘Any jewellery you want disposed of?’

  She laughed. ‘All that went long ago.’ She fell silent, as though recollecting; then she gave a little sigh. ‘Mother left me her things. They were beautiful, mostly native work. But they didn’t fetch much.’ Her eyes fell involuntarily to her hands, which were strongly formed and capable, the wrists slim and bare, no rings on the short, broad fingers. ‘I hated parting with them. But I kept the carvings.’ She said it almost defiantly. ‘My grandfather gave them to me, and I’ve nothing else to remember him by.’

  She sat there for a moment as though thinking about him. Then she said, ‘Do you have a safe in your office?’

  ‘Yes.’ I concentrated on my tea, wondering what was coming, still thinking about her brother and his mysterious illness.

  ‘I was hoping perhaps you’d have room for these two albums.’ She nodded to the books on the dressing table. They were old leather-bound volumes with metal clasps.

  ‘Yours?’ I asked, not quite certain on whose authority the sale was being made.

  There was a momentary hesitation; then she said, ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose they are now.’ She was staring towards the sea again. And then, as though conscious that she had been speaking as if her brother were already dead, she went on quickly, ‘They were among his things when he was sent home. He couldn’t speak at all then, but I knew they were important. We were very close, you see. And then Jona wrote – that’s my elder brother – he said if Tim ever recovered, he thought he’d want to make some enquiries about them. So I kept them here, hidden in the loft.’