‘I did hear about that. Yes.’
‘And you didn’t put two and two together?’
Whitehead drew a breath. ‘A lot of people come into my shop. I buy a lot of things. I bought a set of Worcester coffee mugs off Mrs Reeve and a brass carriage clock off the Finches – and that was just last week. Do you think I asked them where they got them? If I went round treating everyone in Saxby like criminals, I’d be out of business in a week.’
Chubb drew a breath. ‘But you are a criminal, Mr Whitehead. You did three years in prison for receiving stolen goods.’
‘You promised me!’ Gemma muttered. ‘You promised you weren’t going back to all that.’
‘Stay out of it, love. They’re just trying to wind me up.’ Whitehead glanced balefully at Chubb. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, Mr Chubb. Yes. I bought a silver belt buckle off Brent. Yes. I knew there’s been a break in at Pye Hall. But did I put two and two together? No. I didn’t. Call me stupid if you like, but there’s no crime in stupidity – and for all I know he could have had it in his family for twenty years. If you’re saying it was stolen from Sir Magnus, then your argument is with Brent, not with me.’
‘Where is the belt buckle now?’
‘I sold it to a friend in London.’
‘And for rather more than five pounds, I’ll be bound.’
‘That’s my business, Mr Chubb. That’s what I do.’
Atticus Pünd had been listening to all this in silence. Now he adjusted his glasses and observed, quietly: ‘Mrs Blakiston visited you before the break-in at Pye Hall. It was the theft of the medal that interested her. Did she threaten you?’
‘She was a nosey cow – asking questions about things that had nothing to do with her.’
‘Did you purchase any other items from Brent?’
‘No. That’s all he had. If you want to find the rest of Sir Magnus’s treasure trove, maybe you should be searching his place instead of wasting your time with me.’
Pünd and Chubb exchanged a glance. There was clearly nothing more to be gained from the interview. Even so, the detective inspector was determined to have the last word. ‘There have been a number of petty thefts in Saxby-on-Avon since you arrived,’ he said. ‘Windows broken, antiques and jewellery gone missing. I can promise you we’ll be looking into every one of them. And I’m going to want a record of everything you’ve bought and sold in the past three years too.’
‘I don’t keep records.’
‘The tax office may take a dim view of that. I hope you’re not planning on going anywhere in the next few weeks, Mr Whitehead. We’ll be in touch again.’
The antique dealer and his wife got up and left the room, showing themselves out. Ahead of them, there was an upper landing and then a staircase leading down. They continued in silence but the moment they were in the open air, Gemma burst out: ‘Oh Johnny! How could you lie to me?’
‘I didn’t lie to you,’ Johnny replied, miserably.
‘After everything we talked about. All the plans we had!’ It was as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘Who did you see when you were in London? This silver belt buckle of yours – who did you sell it to?’
‘I told you.’
‘You mean Derek and Colin. Did you tell them about Mary? Did you tell them she was on to you?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know what I mean. In the old days, when you were part of the gang, if people stepped out of line, things happened. We never mentioned it and I know you weren’t part of it, but we both know what I’m talking about. People disappeared.’
‘What? You think I took out a contract on Mary Blakiston to get her off my back?’
‘Well, did you?’
Johnny Whitehead didn’t answer. They walked to their car in silence.
2
A search of Brent’s house had produced nothing that related either to the murder or the stolen treasure trove.
Brent lived on his own in a row of terraced houses in Daphne Road, a simple two-up, two-down that shared a porch with its neighbour, the two front doors meeting at an angle. From the outside, the building had a certain chocolate-box charm. The roof was thatched, the wisteria and the flower beds well cared for. The interior told another story. Everything had a sense of neglect, from the unwashed dishes in the sink to the unmade bed and the clothes thrown carelessly on the floor. A certain smell lingered in the air, one that Chubb had come upon many times before and which always made him frown. It was the smell of a man living alone.
There was nothing in the house that was new or luxurious and everything had a make-do-and-mend quality, years after those words had gone out of fashion. Plates were chipped, chairs held together by string. Brent’s parents had once lived here and he had done nothing to the place since they had died. He even slept in the same, single bed with the same blanket and eiderdown that must have been his as a boy. There were comics on the bedroom floor, too. And Scout magazines. It was as if Brent had never fully grown up and if he had stolen the entire hoard of Sir Magnus’s Roman silver, he clearly hadn’t sold it yet. He had just a hundred pounds in his bank account. There was nothing hidden in the house: not under the floorboards, in the attic, up the chimney. The police had done a thorough search.
‘I didn’t take it. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.’ Brent had been brought home in a police car from Pye Hall and was sitting with a look of shock on his face, surrounded by policemen who had invaded the shabby sanctity of his home. Atticus Pünd and James Fraser were among them.
‘Then how did you come upon the silver belt buckle that you sold to John Whitehead?’ Chubb asked.
‘I found it!’ Brent continued hurriedly as the detective inspector’s eyes glazed in disbelief. ‘It’s the truth. It was the day after the funeral. A Sunday. I don’t work the weekend, not as a rule. But Sir Magnus and Lady Pye, they’d only just got back from their holiday and I thought they might need me. So I went down the hall just to show willing. And I was in the garden when I saw it, shining, on the lawn. I didn’t have any idea what it was but it looked old and there was a picture of a man carved into it, standing there with no clothes.’ He smirked briefly as if sharing a rude joke. ‘I popped it into my pocket and then on the Monday I took it into Mr Whitehead and he gave me a fiver for it. It was twice what I was expecting.’
Yes. And half what it was worth, Chubb thought. ‘There were police called into Pye Hall that day,’ he said. ‘Sir Magnus reported a burglary. What do you have to say about that?’