Shakespeare's Sword

by Alan Judd

  Praise for Alan Judd

  ‘Plotting in the best le Carré tradition’

  Mail on Sunday

  ‘Belongs to the classic tradition of spy writing’

  Guardian

  ‘Judd infuses his writing with insider knowledge’

  New Statesman

  ‘Wonderful. One of the best spy novels ever’

  Peter Hennessy on Legacy

  ‘Entertaining and compulsively readable’

  Melvyn Bragg on A Breed of Heroes

  ‘John le Carré has no peer among contemporary spy novelists, but Judd is beginning to run the master close . . .’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Judd is a masterful storyteller, with an intricate knowledge of his subject and a sure command of suspense’

  Daily Telegraph

  ‘Rivetingly accurate’

  Observer

  ‘Alan Judd writes exceedingly well’

  Evening Standard

  ‘Judd keeps plot and action centre-stage . . . he has written a novel perfect for brightening up a drizzly winter Sunday’

  Mail on Sunday

  ‘This is undoubtedly Judd’s best spy novel yet – both as a thriller and in terms of its plot construction’

  Spectator

  ‘He knows that world backwards and writes with an understanding of human frailty that is rare’

  Sunday Express

  To David Crane

  and Honor Clerk

  Chapter One

  I was not, I assured her, an obsessive. Nothing like it. I have come across many obsessives during decades in the antiques trade and know what to look for: unobtrusiveness, immunity to distraction, a furtive wariness of competition. And, of course, knowledge so detailed that once they open the sluice gates you are swept away by the torrent. But she never believed me, not really, and you could argue that events proved her right.

  I have a seventeenth-century lantern clock that was here in the shop when I bought the lease. It has never worked (it is ‘awaiting restoration’ – which means I won’t spend money on it until there is a prospective buyer) and has gradually retreated from the front window, to the display case beneath the counter, to one of the wall display cases and finally to the upper back shelf where it has stood, ignored or forgotten, through generations of other stock.

  Then one day a man came in and asked to see it. He was middle-aged, bald and shabbily dressed. His face hadn’t felt a razor for some time and he wore dirty jeans with worn-out trainers and no socks. He wanted to see the clock and showed no more interest in anything else in the shop than in his own appearance. His voice was confident and educated. I had to get the stepladder to bring the clock down, telling him that, as ticketed by the previous owner, it was probably made in the 1690s by Richard Savage of Much Wenlock. He took it from me without a word, turned it to the light and within thirty seconds had told me that it was not a Savage but probably the work of an apprentice or imitator. The top and bottom plates were iron rather than the more expensive brass Savage used. He was known to have made only two lantern clocks using iron in this way, of which this man owned one. My clock, he told me after further study, was an interesting but crude effort, probably the work of another rural clockmaker at the beginning of a career that never developed. There was an inappropriate twentieth-century replacement hammer spring which, he was sure, I would wish to replace before selling. The clock was not worthless – far from it – but it was of no interest to him. I learned later that he was a very wealthy former pop singer who lived about twenty miles away and had learned to make clocks himself.

  That was the man I had in mind when I assured her I was nothing like an obsessive. I am more a magpie, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, knowing a little about a lot but not very much about anything. That is how I learned to survive in business. Deep knowledge would never have paid the lease but a quick eye and a facility for sensing what people wanted, nimbleness rather than real expertise, is why I am still here and the two other serious dealers in this town have closed.

  What provoked her accusation was that I had thrice corrected her on the attribution of some porcelain pieces in one of the display cases. They were Sèvres, not Meissen, I told her. Probably early Sèvres. Her manner was playful when she accused me of being an obsessive but it was still an unusually provocative – even flirtatious – remark to make to someone you’d first met about a minute and a half before. I think I must have overdone my response – too earnest, perhaps, or maybe I stood too close – because she stepped back.

  ‘You mean you’re an opportunist?’ she said. Although she said it with a smile there was a fractional change in the skin tone on her cheeks, a slight tightening which deepened the crow’s feet around her eyes. She had – has – the most beautiful eyes, a deep impenetrable blue, almost misty in a way that makes you suspect she’s short-sighted, though she isn’t. She may have feared I was going to go on about myself, obsessively.

  I didn’t like being labelled an opportunist, either. No one in his right mind should ever really want to know what others think of him and the truer it is the more it rankles, even when said in jest or well meant. Early in our marriage my former wife told me that her mother had tried to warn her off me, saying I was a ‘drifter’. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant but it was a dart that struck home, true in a way I could sense but not see. I was indignant at the time, and still am. It was my wife who drifted.

  I smiled at my potential customer. ‘Just a survivor. So far.’

  ‘What do you think of this, darling?’ At the sound of her husband’s voice her expression changed, the playfulness hardening into a particular set of the mouth which I was to come to know well.

  ‘Coming, darling.’ They dear’d and darling’d each other frequently, as I would also come to know well.

  She joined him in the other half of the shop, the brown-furniture half, screened by two nineteenth-century Welsh oak dressers, identical twins made for a manor in Shropshire. Beautiful pieces which I’d been pleased to get because it’s so rare to find twins but, like most old brown furniture these days, increasingly difficult to move on. Unfashionable and too big for most modern houses, especially as a pair, they suffered the blight that has now extended even to Georgian furniture, for years a reliable seller.

  I’d seen her husband when they entered, a stout man of later middle-age who looked older than her, with heavy-framed glasses, blue blazer, white open-necked shirt, pressed khaki trousers, polished brown shoes. While she lingered by the small stuff he disappeared behind those two dressers, which I used as a false wall to compartmentalise the shop and make it seem bigger. I had the impression he had spotted something through the window.

  I returned to my desk while they whispered out of sight, mainly a deep rumble from him punctuated by her monosyllabic interjections. After a couple of minutes she reappeared from behind the dressers. ‘Could you please . . .?’

  I joined them. He was standing before an Edwardian mahogany roll-top desk, an unusually nice piece, unrestored and with its original key. ‘What can you tell me about this?’ he said.

  He played with it while we discussed it, opening and shutting everything that moved. It was clear that he didn’t know what he was looking at but equally clear that he felt he should look as if he did. She watched and said nothing. When he was on his knees peering underneath I caught her eye and nodded at the Louis XIV roll-top writing bureau nearer the window. It had a more feminine appeal, with intricate marquetry of floral motifs and arabesques. ‘That’s the competition,’ I said. ‘But more expensive.’

  She nodded and smiled, but took no step towards it. ‘Very elegant.’

  Her husband got to his feet, red in the face and breathing heavily. ‘Thing is, will it fi
t? Got a tape measure?’

  I began measuring it for him but then it transpired he hadn’t pen or paper.

  ‘I can note it on my phone,’ she said, opening her handbag.

  He shook his head. ‘That won’t do, I have to write it down.’ I handed him my pen and one of my cards. After noting the measurements he studied the card for a long time while holding out the pen for me to take, without looking at me.

  ‘The one in the window is smaller,’ his wife said, pointing to the Louis XIV piece. ‘Prettier, too.’

  He ignored her and turned to me. ‘I’ve another desk where this would go, if it fits. Would you be interested?’

  ‘Not normally, sir, no. But it’s possible. It depends on what it is.’

  ‘Just an old desk, nothing special. My father had it, like most of our stuff.’

  I looked at her. ‘Perhaps you could send me a photo of it?’

  ‘We’re not far,’ he continued. ‘Winchelsea. Come and see it if you like.’ He resumed his study of my card. ‘Not the same name as the shop. You’re not the owner?’

  ‘I am. The shop is long-established, well known under its founder’s name, so I kept it.’

  ‘Gold, Simon Gold, Mr Gold. Jewish, I suppose. Must be.’ He murmured as if to himself then looked me squarely in the face and laughed. His laugh was abrupt and humourless, like a dog’s bark. ‘Good name for an antique dealer, Gold.’

  I smiled, as always when people made that link. She looked away.

  He held out his hand. ‘Coombs, Gerald Coombs. Double-o, no e. We’ll ring when I’ve checked the measurements.’ His hand felt clammy and passive, like long-dead meat. As he turned away he added, ‘If you don’t want my desk, I imagine you can do something on the price?’

  That should be one of those moments for rapid mental calculation – what did I pay for it, how long have I had it, what are the chances of selling it to anyone else, is this buyer a one-off or might he become a regular customer? But feel and instinct also come into it – is price important to him, will it make the difference between buying and not buying or is haggling just routine, something he always does? Or is it point-scoring, intended to show that he’s a canny buyer and nobody’s pushover? Or is he showing off in front of his wife, though she had already walked away?

  Of course, one always can do something on price, always. That’s factored in and it’s surprising how few British buyers ever ask. But my hunch with Mr Coombs was that he might respect me for standing firm, that he might even like his desk better the more he paid for it.

  ‘Afraid not, sir,’ I said, ‘not with that one. It’s too special.’

  At that moment Stephanie returned carrying a loaf of bread wrapped in white paper which was coming off and trailing behind her. She swept past Mr and Mrs Coombs as if they were not there, obliging them to step aside as she made for the door that leads to our flat upstairs. That was normal for Stephanie when she has anything on her mind, her mind being so constructed as to entertain only one idea at a time. She is my sister and is what used to be called simple; she is a simpleton. Our parents, once they realised she was a few pence short of a shilling, took great trouble to get her diagnosed and to define her place on various spectra, as we now call them. Of course, it was a waste of time and money, not only because her condition never was defined – or rather, it was, several times but each time differently, according to what was fashionable – but because there was nothing to be done about it, whatever you called it. Stephanie is simply Stephanie, that’s how she is. Older, cruder terms for people like her are sometimes preferable, I think, not only because they describe behaviour rather than imply knowledge we don’t have, but because they imply acceptance. In calling Stephanie simple you are allowing her to be one of us, only less variously capable; but in attempting to pinpoint her on this or that spectrum, to define her by a fancy name, you make her sound different, not quite one of us.

  She is Stephanie, she is my sister, she is simple and we have lived together since my divorce. She ‘does’ for me – that is, she keeps house, to use another unfashionable term – in so far as she can.

  She really would not have noticed Mr and Mrs Coombs stepping smartly out of her way that day. I had sent her out with a shopping list which she had put in her pocket and forgotten. Puzzled as to what she should buy, she must have remembered that she often bought bread and so she bought another loaf (to go with the two we already had) and her mind would still have been preoccupied with that when she swept back into the shop. The Coombses must have thought she was rude.

  I did not expect to hear from them that day, perhaps not at all – it was Saturday, always busier in terms of footfall in the shop but with fewer serious buyers – and so was surprised when Mr Coombs rang just before I closed. ‘Yes? Yes? Who is it?’ he said.

  I had answered as the shop and had recognised his voice but he seemed to think I had just rung him. ‘It’s Simon Gold, sir, you—’

  ‘It will fit, that desk. Will fit. We’ve photographed the old one but we can’t – Charlotte can’t – seem to send it. We’re not very good with electronic contraptions.’ He barked his laugh again. ‘Couldn’t pop over and have a peek at it, could you? Just a peek. We’re only in Winchelsea, won’t take you five minutes. Have a drink.’

  Theirs was one of the white weather-boarded houses in that ancient hill town, set back from the junction of two quiet roads, with a spacious garden and a garage. Heels sounded on the parquet hall floor when I knocked and Mrs Coombs answered. She had changed from the jeans and jumper of the early afternoon to a dark skirt and white blouse, a solitary diamond on a fine gold chain around her neck, on one wrist a slim gold watch, on the other a slim gold bracelet. Her light-brown hair looked freshly washed and she wore make-up and pale lipstick.

  As we shook hands I noticed hers were large and bony, quite out of keeping with the rest of her. It was as if someone else’s had been grafted on – her father’s, perhaps – and for one mad moment I almost commented on them. ‘I’m sorry, you must be going out. Should I come another time?’

  She pulled a face and smiled. ‘Golf club dinner. No rush. Gerald is expecting you. He’s very excited.’

  As before, I noticed how her smile deepened the lines and wrinkles around her lips and eyes. But these very marks of decay and the valiant, unavailing, daily struggle against them are to me endearing. The way women – it’s usually women – struggle to keep up appearances seems to me not only a matter of vanity but a courageous assertion of the human spirit against the inevitable. She had – has – a pretty face with small regular features and those misty blue eyes. I imagined her staring every morning in the mirror at the encroaching ruin, before bravely renewing the struggle. At least she had the good sense never to have a face-lift or anything like that; better a dignified, gradual acceptance.

  Yet those hands – she must have been conscious of them since childhood, wondering at them, regretting them, hiding them. I was already in love with her for her flaws, almost.

  She led me across the hall into a drawing room crowded with heavy old dark furniture, the sort that for years now has been hard to sell. The walls were cluttered with portraits of bewhiskered military gentlemen and ladies with long dresses who looked as if they worried about constipation. I followed her through a door at the far end into a study overlooking an immaculate back garden. The walls of this room were mostly lined with books, some with leather bindings, the rest old hardbacks. Mr Coombs was reading at a desk in an alcove to one side of the fireplace.

  ‘Darling, here’s Mr Gold.’

  ‘Ah, Mr Gold.’ He seemed well able to contain his excitement, barely turning his head and pushing his swivel chair back with his foot as he slowly got up. He wore a greenish tweed suit and the local golf club tie with a tie-pin. There was no handshaking and he looked at me as if struggling to remember who I was. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘He’s come to see the desk, darling.’

  ‘Of course, the desk.’ He stood back and po
inted at it. ‘This is where it will go, in this alcove, you see. The measurements fit and it won’t project so far into the room as this one. And I can pull the top down, shut away all my papers and what-have-you. Thing is, can you do anything with this one?’

  The existing desk did indeed project inconveniently into the room. It was a handsome pedestal piece, a partners’ desk. Yew, I guessed, with a fine grey-blue leather top.

  ‘Came from my father’s office when he retired. Solicitor in Ashford, senior partner. Too good to throw away but too big for this room. Too big for most rooms these days, I suppose you’ll tell me?’

  ‘Indeed, sir, but there’s a home for everything somewhere.’ I examined all I could see of it. It was a Bevan Funnell, one of their quality 1950s reproductions, and none the worse for that. It differed from others in having marquetry around the drawer handles. I had never seen that on a Bevan Funnell.

  ‘Any good to you?’ he asked. ‘Can you sell it?’

  It would have been easy to look sorrowful and point out that not only was it too large for most modern homes but that it was a fifties repro, thus not an original antique like the one he wanted to buy. I could offer to send my delivery chaps round to take it off his hands for a few hundred if he couldn’t find a home for it himself, then send it to auction and pocket the profit. I didn’t have to tell him that it was actually worth more than the Edwardian roll-top he was buying.

  His plump pink jowls, his curiously expressionless brown eyes and his ample stomach all contributed to his aura of bovine complacency; but there was something else, too, a kind of passivity that suggested something missing rather than a calm temperament. You couldn’t quite trust it, as if he might change at any moment.

  I could have taken the desk from him without compunction but it was not business I was thinking of as I regarded him. It was the thought of her having to climb into bed alongside him every night, of having to live with him all day, of feeling superfluous, frequently ignored and as frequently depended upon. Thus, instead of being businesslike, I said, ‘To be honest, Mr Coombs, although it’s a modern reproduction it was made by one of the best-known furniture makers of the last century and is not only very good but very unusual. I’ve never seen another like it. It could fetch more at auction than the one you’re buying and so it would be less than honest of me to quote you a part-exchange price. Your father had good taste.’