like they’d begun to melt and droop in folds. There was a large and weird glass canopy over the front door. I just walked up to it. There was no front gate, and the weeds in the thin gravel drive were two feet high and dead. Last summer’s. Or the summer before that. Not a sign of a car, or any other sign of life. The ground-floor windows were opaque with sawdust and cobwebs. A large plywood sign, starting to peel back into its separate layers, announced that the ground floor had once housed Abbeywalk Fine Fitted Kitchens, but the sawdust was grey and old, and there was no sound of industry within.
There was, however, a row of faded red plastic buttons on a black-speckled brass box screwed to the door-jamb. With names behind strips of plastic. Sometimes crossed out, with another name squeezed in above; all faded to a greater or lesser degree. And one of the most faded crossed-out ones was A. Tanner; neatly typed, but a ghost on the verge of extinction.
Tanner had been there; Tanner was gone. For some reason, it angered me greatly, that he should have escaped me. Now the wrecked destroyer would hang around my workshop gathering dust for ever, and with me not daring to do a damned thing about it.
So, reluctant to quite let go, I walked round the back of the house. The back door was as solidly bolted and unmoving as the front. All the windows had that coating of sawdust. But there was a little brick building, about the size of a garage, and the green blistering door of that was slightly ajar. I went over and pushed at it. It gave, but only a little. I pushed harder; very hard indeed in my anger. There was the sound of something like cardboard splitting, and now the door gave way enough for me to poke my head through, into the dim glimmer that came from yet another dusty window.
The place, once whitewashed, was piled high with suitcases. Old, bulging suitcases, with straps round them. Cardboard boxes, full of what looked like jumble; a battered electric kettle, two dusty floral cushions, a scarf trailing down the outside of a box. One box had burst open, spilling out woolly bobble-hats and gloves.
And among all this worthless tat lay askew a lovely scale model of a paddle-steamer; the sort that used to ply round the Kent coast to Margate and Ramsgate. It had been roughly tossed in upside-down, and the foremast was broken off short, sticking out at me like an accusing finger. The name on the bow was Royal Daffodil.
It could only have belonged to the man who made the wrecked destroyer . . . and then I realized what the jumble really was. The detritus of bed-sitters. Stuff left behind and never sent for. Chucked out here by a landlord whose patience was obviously exhausted, if its battered and knocked-about appearance was anything to go by.
I wanted to plunge in and rescue the Royal Daffodil there and then. But it was impossible. The bursting of boxes that had let me push my head round the door had released an avalanche of stale, damp-smelling worldly goods that ensured the door would open not another quarter of an inch. And I certainly wasn’t going in for burglary in broad daylight, or carrying a three-foot paddle-steamer home under my arm.
So, with reluctance, I let the door swing to, and managed at least to get the sneck on, so it was not obviously ajar.
I walked back, wildly lusting after the Royal Daffodil and wondering, just a little, what had happened to its late owner.
As I passed the public bar entrance to the Duke of Portland I hesitated, hovered. A feeling was coming over me that I knew all too well. A temptation to do something dodgy. I fought against it for a minute, but I knew I was going to give in. The paddle-steamer had been slowly growing bigger and bigger in my mind. Lying there unloved, defenceless in that old out-house.
You might think that thieves do a lot of harm in the world of antiques; but they don’t really. I mean, they don’t harm the antiques. I mean, what’s the point of stealing something if you’re not going to look after it? Every bit of damage drops the price . . . no, the people who do harm to antiques are the nutters and vandals who smash them up. I mean, somebody