The Eyeball Collector by F E Higgins Page B

share of well-off northsiders. Their sign might read ‘solicitors and auctioneers’, but everyone knew they had their greedy fingers in many pies. It was the place to go if you had a problem, legal or otherwise, and you didn’t want your neighbours to know what you were up to. They were happy too to act as middlemen in the buying and selling of goods they might serendipitously encounter in the course of their business.
    Frustrated that he hadn’t yet had a good look at the man, Hector went back round the corner, scaled the wall at the side and jumped down into a small yard behind the offices. He positioned himself on a discarded tea chest under the window. He could see the three men within and hear their loud, self-congratulatory conversation.
    ‘Ah, Baron de Vandolin,’ purred Badlesmire, a large man with fat fingers. ‘Mr Leavelund and I have been expecting you.’ Leavelund, quite the opposite in build to his partner, was standing just behind him, rubbing his bony hands and drawing his lips back over his long teeth as if trying to dislodge something stuck between them.
    ‘Is it ready?’ asked Bovrik in a slightly Germanic accent.
    ‘Yes, yes,’ said Leavelund. ‘All packed and ready to go. An excellent purchase, I must say. Shame about the owner, of course.’
    ‘There is no excuse for stupidity,’ remarked Bovrik coldly, his one eye glaring.
    ‘Well, it’s an ill wind . . .’ chipped in Badlesmire. ‘Mr Fitzbaudley’s troubles have kept us busy. It’s a complicated thing to wrap up a failing business, you understand. We have disposed of everything at this stage. But as soon as we heard you and Lady Mandible were interested in this –’ he glanced at a crate on the table –‘we set it aside.’
    Bovrik nodded with obvious satisfaction.
    ‘And you, Baron, do you have the other thing we discussed?’ continued Badlesmire.
    ‘I haf indeed,’ replied Bovrik, and he produced from under his cloak a gleaming white marble statuette of a Grecian water bearer. Both the solicitors smiled broadly and fussed noisily over it.
    For though Hector did not yet know it, Bovrik, true to form and in accordance with his plan, was making good money on the side selling various valuables from Withypitts Hall. Only ones that Lady Mandible wouldn’t miss, of course, and there were so many trinkets in the place it had to be impossible to keep track. Besides, she was always changing things around and getting rid of discrete items. He was merely taking advantage of her whims for once rather than pandering to them.
    As Leavelund put the statuette away, Hector watched Badlesmire take a bottle and three glasses from a cupboard.
    ‘We also had to clear Fitzbaudly’s cellar,’ he said conversationally. ‘Some very rare vintages down there. And of course the hours and hours of work we put in – well, there wasn’t even a penny left over after the bill was paid. Fitzbaudly himself is dead now of course. From shame, no doubt.’
    ‘I belief it’s Fitz badly ,’ said Bovrik dryly and the three of them shared a laugh and a glass of Chateau Huit du Pipe ’56.
    Outside Hector clenched his fists and tried vainly to suppress his growing fury. The scent in the doorway, the Fitzbadly joke, the eyepatch and the nose; now he knew for sure. Bovrik de Vandolin was Gulliver Truepin. Even his fake Germanic accent and his popinjay clothes couldn’t disguise him any longer. As for the crate, whatever was in it could only be something that had once belonged to his father, which fact only served to infuriate him further. He watched until the three men drained their glasses and shook hands then he returned to the street corner just in time to see the Baron emerge with flushed cheeks and a very self-satisfied look on his face. He tapped his cane impatiently on the pavement as the driver loaded his new crate awkwardly on to the carriage roof.
    ‘Careful, my man,’ he called irritably in his clipped voice. ‘There’s glass in there.’
    All