by George Sims
Balfour shook his head. ‘Sorry, Leo. There wasn’t a thing in the sale I needed. I just wanted to see you.’
‘Never mind,’ Spiegl said. ‘I’ll still buy you a sandwich. Your credit is good. There’s this other deal. So big it’s terrifying! In Ireland I’m on the verge of a goldmine!’
Balfour not only knew ‘the inimitable Leo’ but liked him better than most of the more conventional dealers. Spiegl had the American virtues of generosity, enthusiasm and being outward-going; he had the Jewish ones of quick-wittedness and humour. He did not know that class barriers existed. Balfour had also been exposed to his faults, had suffered in various deals from his unreliability and tendency to bend the truth, but found him, on balance, very congenial. From long experience he knew he would have to wait till Leo’s quips and stories were expended before asking him about Sam Weiss and ‘Knowl Green’, otherwise the question would be brushed aside. ‘You can’t have the goods if you won’t listen to the sales talk’ was Spiegl’s explanation of his habitual practice in business.
‘I’ll level with you. In Ireland there’s this great archive of manuscripts—literary—just your cup of tea. And I can put the deal through but I must have a library or collector lined up. In other words the owner wants to know where the stuff is going. And the bank roll must be big. I tried to see Mr Leonard Cato—everywhere I hear his name, Cato’s bought this, Cato’s interested in that—so I make to phone him. The phonemanship at Toller, Cato has to be experienced to be believed! Then I went round there, a miniature skyscraper in the City. Three men fell on me in the hall to undress me and take away my raincoat. One went up with me in the lift to carry my briefcase. Finally I’m in a vast board-room talking to this silver-haired geezer underneath a big clock with a red second hand whizzing round, and there’s someone in the corner taking notes. Like I was trying to con the Crown Jewels out of the Tower. I’m really sweating trying to get this deal off the ground. All I wanted for Chrissake was to know whether Mr Leonard Cato was at all interested. Suddenly I discover I’m not even talking to him. It’s his “personal assistant”. So I’m not big enough to talk to Mr Leonard Cato…’
Spiegl broke off to hold up four fingers at the counter: ‘Smoked salmon sandwiches. Salmon and butter extra thick. The expense is immaterial. My friend here is a millionaire. One black and one very strong coffee.’ He looked gloomily round the room. The effervescence of his Sotheby’s mood was gradually being dissipated.
‘So I give up on trying to sell this fantastic collection to his bumship Cato. Who the hell does he think he is? You know I heard that Cato isn’t even his real name—it’s really something like Brown or Smith. He’s a phoney all through. Then I think of your client. Mrs Phillips isn’t it? From what I hear she has all the money there is and her collection has the necessary prestige. What it is—these people in Ireland don’t want to sell the stuff to a dealer and think it may be floating round for years yet on the market. But if I can go to them and promise it will disappear without any publicity into the famous Mrs Phillips collection, they’ll be ready and willing. How about it, Ned?’
‘Could be,’ Balfour said thoughtfully. ‘I’d want to see a list—she’s mainly interested in poetry. But you could use her name to the extent of saying it was a possibility.’
‘That’s good enough at this stage,’ Spiegl said quickly. ‘She buys on your say so—I know that. And when you see the haul you’ll be keen. And,’ he went down on one knee and sang, in a very good imitation of Al Jolson, ‘and I’m happy. So-o ha-appy.’
The sandwiches had been brought by a rather pale girl who was obviously impressed by Spiegl’s extemporizations—she hovered near by, taking a long time to collect empty cups and plates. Spiegl took a jumbo-sized bite at a sandwich which left only the crust, and winked hugely at the girl. He had an enviable amount of energy, enthusiasm and ambition. In a few minutes he would be out on the street again, ‘getting things moving’, telling stories, making trans-Atlantic phone calls from other dealers’ offices and paying for them in odd mixtures of foreign currencies, shouting, laughing. Balfour always enjoyed listening to him but found it difficult to know what he really felt about life. In particular he had never been able to understand Spiegl’s attitude to the Jewish religion—unlike Sammy Weiss Leo paid attention to the observances of the Shulchan Aruch, kept strictly to a kosher diet but sometimes seemed to treat the whole business as a joke. Once, in a rare serious mood, he had confided ‘Heaven is not in the hereafter’. He said it with great authority, as if the definitive message had just come through. ‘There’s nothing in the Bible’ (by which he meant the Old Testament) ‘to make you think otherwise. How are you treating people? Do they like you? Do you love somebody, are you loved in turn? Are you happy? That’s your heaven. You make it here.’
Spiegl beckoned to the girl, making eyes at her in a comic fashion, carefully masticating his last sandwich, then said: ‘Are you sure this is really Rye bread? Then two more of the same. All on his bill,’ indicating Balfour. ‘I’m flat broke,’ he admitted to the nonplussed girl. ‘A human derelict. I couldn’t pay for a glass of water. Why, if I break this plate you’ll have to sue me.’ He turned to Balfour: ‘Another Jewish tale for your collection. It’s the most sacred day in the Jewish Calendar, Yom Kippur, and everyone is in the synagogue beating his breast, atoning for his sins. The beadle sees a woman in the gallery, beating her groin instead. He rushes up to her, crying indignantly, “Don’t you know how to atone for your sins?” And the woman as indignantly retorts, “You’re telling me where I have sinned?”’
Balfour laughed and Spiegl grinned widely, moving his head vigorously from side to side in time with Balfour’s amusement, as if to encourage it. Then he said flatly: ‘So O.K. you’ve been patient. What’s your problem?’
‘About Sammy Weiss. You heard he was dead?’
‘I did. Someone told me. I never knew him well but he seemed a nice little man. He survives Belsen or some such, and then this. That devil Hitler, from his grave he’s still killing people…But what about him?’
‘Sammy was a great friend of mine,’ Balfour explained. ‘I knew him about as well as any one person can know another I think. I would have bet all the money there is that he wouldn’t kill himself. Yet this happened. I’m mystified. I was abroad at the time but I’ve been trying to find out if anyone knew what was wrong. The only thing I’ve come up with is a list he was brooding over. It had your name on it.’
‘My name?’ Spiegl protested. The joking manner vanished. ‘I hardly knew him. Five, six times I’ve seen him. Exchanged a few polite words. I could have passed him in the street! Why my name?’
‘Your name, linked with a place “Knowl Green” and two other names, Steiner and Quarry.’
‘I know some Steiners, who doesn’t? But “Knowl Green” and “Quarry” I’ve never heard of…I don’t like it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s simple. I just don’t like the idea—about Mr Weiss and this list. Spiegl—it’s not a proprietary brand. There are plenty other Spiegls.’
‘It was L. Spiegl on the list.’
‘No,’ Leo said firmly. ‘How can I be involved?’ he complained to the room at large. ‘What will happen to this list? Have the police got it? It’s not fair. The police get hold of this list and the next I know I’m being subpoenaed to attend an inquiry. Something like that. And I know nothing. Just now I can’t afford to be waiting around.’ He looked down at the calendar on his watch. ‘Six days from now I have to be in Dublin.’ He put his elbows on the table and held his face, waggling it from side to side, repeating ‘Weiss? Knowl Green?’
There was a long pregnant silence which emphasized his change of mood. Even the anaemic-looking girl at the counter appeared to have noticed and kept glancing at him as she made piles of sandwiches.
Balfour said, ‘Of course it won’t make trouble for you. Just a list…’ But Spiegl shook his
head to show that such comments were irritating as well as useless. It looked as if some of the air had been deflated from his face, and folds of skin in his neck were more noticeable. His expression was very serious and without his customary ebullience he looked years older. He said, under his breath, ‘But it takes two to Tango.’ He pulled open his sleek black leather briefcase, carelessly spilling a toothbrush, a Ritz Hotel towel, and a cream Cossack-style pyjama top on to the table. This kind of emergence always took place when Spiegl was selling something, so Balfour was prepared for any disclosures. From a confusion of toilet things, socks, and large manilla envelopes, a gold biro and some business cards were retrieved. The cards were impressively engraved ‘Leopold Spiegl & Associates Inc. International Dealers in Manuscripts, Rare Books, Objets d’Art. New York—London—Paris.’ Mumbling something in Yiddish he wrote the names Balfour had mentioned on the back of a card.
‘Now you’ve got me worried. Frankly the day is spoilt. From out of the blue this mystery which I don’t need. Of course he must have had a reason for writing my name. But I’ve never heard of “Knowl Green”. Does it exist? One hundred per cent sure I’ve never been there. And there’s no connection in the past. Just a few years I’ve known him—slightly. And during the time he was in Belsen or wherever—all through the war years—I never left Crown Heights, Brooklyn.’
Chapter X
Balfour walked round Trafalgar Square in a particularly thoughtful mood, feeling rather unreal, like a ghost threading its way through the lively though slow-moving tourists. At his office Miss Bowyer had told him that Detective Superintendent Hanson would like to see him between three and four at the Commissioner’s Office, New Scotland Yard. His own feeble detective work now seemed completely pointless—all he had achieved was to upset Spiegl. At first he had been very surprised at that rather emotional disturbance, but on thinking the matter over remembered other occasions when a faintly pusillanimous streak had been suddenly revealed beneath the flamboyance and boasting. There was no doubt in his mind that Leo had been telling the truth in saying that the names on the list meant nothing to him—it seemed likely that what Garratt had seen was just some odd doodling which had nothing to do with Sammy Weiss’s brooding.
Balfour was dogged by unformulated apprehensiveness. He was oddly disconcerted as he walked down Whitehall to remember the two pairs of water-skis which he had left at the bottom of the cliff in Corsica. It was a matter of little importance which could be dealt with by a phone call to Roger du Cros, but in his present mood he felt incapable of handling such things. It was the imminent appointment at Scotland Yard that had put him on edge. He was anxious to know any facts that the police might give him, yet there were aspects of the interview which he dreaded. His mind shied away from learning the details—what actually happened to a human body when it was literally smashed against concrete. He had always been squeamish about such things and had to steel himself daily during the war when he had spent months in the skin ward at the Wellhouse Hospital, Barnet, and at East Grinstead, and had seen much worse cases of burns than his own.
As he went past the Cenotaph, knowing he was only minutes away from meeting Hanson, he felt like someone going to receive a long-dreaded verdict on an X-ray; but once he had turned down the short passage-way on his left leading into the Yard the procedure of explaining why he had come, filling in the form with his name and address and following the messenger along the corridor, dispelled his thoughts.
The ground-floor office he entered was a large one looking across the Thames to the London County Council buildings. A lithe man with heavy shoulders and a tanned face greeted him cordially: ‘Mr Balfour? My name’s Hanson. Take a pew. I’ve sent for some tea.’ The seat he indicated was positioned so that Balfour sat exactly opposite him. Despite the friendly welcome Balfour felt like a schoolboy up before the head-master guiltily searching his mind for any possible crimes. He glanced quickly above Hanson’s head at the only visible decoration, a photograph of a beefy rugby team.
The man who faced him was perhaps six or seven years younger than himself, but Balfour was doubtful whether he could handle his side of the interview. In this numb, dull-witted mood questions might have to be put to him twice. Hanson looked very fit and unconcerned, rather like a pro tennis player. He wore a thin grey tweed suit with a white shirt and an unusual tie showing a sword plunged through a golden globe on a maroon silk background. On his desk there were several things ranged in front of him, a small cardboard packet, some pieces of paper, a pocket diary and two books, one of which Balfour recognized as the Concise Oxford Dictionary. It was almost as though a conjuring show had been prepared for his benefit.
Hanson put a blunt fore-finger down on the dictionary and said cheerfully: ‘You caught me at my homework. I was just looking up the definition of “vertigo” which I understand Mr Weiss suffered from…Should have said of course that it was kind of you to come along. They told me at De Jong’s in the Burlington Arcade that you were Mr Weiss’s closest friend. And his executor I believe?’
Balfour spoke quickly, as if he was blurting out a confession: ‘Yes. But mainly because he wanted me to see that his possessions such as books and pictures should be sold to the best advantage. I don’t really know anything about his financial position. You’ve contacted Holland & Marshall in New Square? They’re the solicitors.’
‘We have. Only one living relative, we’re told, his sister Rebecca Weiss, now living in Tel Aviv?’
Balfour nodded: ‘I believe half of anything Sam…Mr Weiss left will go to her, and half to the “Save the Children” fund.’
Hanson smiled tolerantly as if he didn’t mind how much superfluous information he received. He turned the packet round on the desk so that Balfour could read the lettering ‘Aventyl’. ‘Funny thing but we haven’t been able to find out who Mr Weiss’s doctor was, but then nobody at De Jong’s seems to have known much about his personal life.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Balfour explained, ‘his only real friend in the firm is the boss in Amsterdam, old Mr Henk De Jong. I know the staff in the Arcade are all much younger men, a different generation. But oddly enough I can’t say that I know his doctor either. I don’t remember him ever mentioning the name.’
‘Well, we must keep digging for that. In these National Health days surely everyone…? Wasn’t he ever ill?’
‘Minor things—if you call migraine headaches minor. But not anything really serious that I know about.’
‘You see we found this packet near the body. Needn’t be his of course. Aventyl. Nortriptyline Hydrochloride, to blind you with science. An antidepressant to relieve anxiety with minimal side effects I’m told. Good stuff, but you have to get it on a prescription from a doctor. I had a word, by the way, with our medico, and he said that vertigo has been explained by some psychologists as the tension between the desire to fall and the dread of falling.’ Hanson said this in a tone that suspended belief in the opinions of psychologists. He put his elbows on his desk and steepled his hands, then expelled air in and out of his nostrils noisily inside the little tent so that he sounded as if he was breathing in an iron lung.
Two cups of tea were brought in by a uniformed messenger and Hanson produced some digestive biscuits and then munched one up very quickly. His blue eyes were cold and he had a very calm expression—Balfour could not imagine an event which would surprise or disconcert him much. Suddenly he pushed the tin out of reach as if reminding himself of some regimen of dieting and said: ‘Normally D Div. would have handled this. But they’re very busy. So they asked me. And then there are one or two things…We’ve had a post mortem. There will definitely be an inquest. Mr Weiss died from multiple injuries resulting from the fall—broken neck, heart pierced by a fractured rib—either of those could have killed him.’ He casually added an afterthought: ‘I had a case once in Coventry where a woman fell from about the same height and had much the same injuries. In fact she was mashed up m
ore because she fell over a corrugated iron fence. The body was fully clothed. I ordered a P.M. Found that she’d been stabbed while naked, dressed again with corset, the lot, and then tossed out…’
Balfour remained silent, not knowing exactly what his response should be, or even in which direction the conversation was heading.
Hanson turned two of the pieces of paper round so that these too could be read from the other side of the desk. ‘We locked up the house and I took a few things away. This cheque, the diary and this typed note. By the way, the house. A house like that in Paley Street off Cheyne Walk, now, surely that would cost a packet?’
‘It would today. He thought it was worth perhaps twenty thousand or more but he didn’t pay much for it. He snapped it up in ’46, badly bomb damaged, at a low figure.’
‘I see,’ Hanson said reflectively and made a note on a tiny pad. ‘He was abroad quite a lot, I take it?’
‘Fairly often. Amsterdam every month usually.’
‘As much as that?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this cheque.’ Hanson handed it to Balfour who saw that it was from the Overseas Department of Lloyds Bank in Eastcheap, double the size of an ordinary one, with the top half, above a perforated line, bearing information about the sender. ‘You see it’s dated 25th July, a week before…Left lying about on his desk. A thousand pounds—a largish sum—well to me at least.’
Balfour looked at it carefully. The left-hand side of the top half bore Sammy’s typed name and address and the date—the right hand showed that it had been sent from the Swiss Trade Credit Bank in Zurich by order of External Account Ref. 400990.
