LITMIR.BIZ

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I’m sorry to have troubled, you Tim.”

      “No, I didn’t say I couldn’t do it,” protested Salmon. “How much did you say?”

      Eddington opened his mouth to answer but Ruddock was ahead of him.

      “£20,” he said.

      “Alright, I’ll just get my tool-kit,” grumbled Salmon.

      “Thought you said £50 minimum,” said Eddington as they finally drove away.

      “I did,” snorted Ruddock. “Until he started trying to keep it overnight, the bastard wanted to get at what was inside it without any interruptions.”

      “So he lost £30 doing that.”

      “Probably more, I was considering upping the ante to £75, then he lost me.”

      “Will you be going through it now?”

      “No, Mr Pelham wants to be present,” said Ruddock as they drew into the yard of the police building. “I’ll take it back to the city with me.”

      “Be ironic if all we find is dirty washing,” grinned Eddington.

      “Somehow I think not,” Ruddock gave a smile. “There’s certainly something moving around in there.”

      “Maybe rolls of banknotes,” commented Eddington. “What do you reckon?”

      “If Tim Salmon thought it sounded like that he’d have got an axe to it!” Ruddock responded and Eddington gave a snort of amusement.

      Chapter 4

      “Has that Salmon woman been inside it?” asked Pelham as he eyed the chest that stood against the far wall of his office where it had been manhandled earlier that morning.

      “No!” replied Ruddock. “At least, not as far as we know. And neither have Detective Sergeant Eddington nor myself. After it was unlocked we loaded it straight into the back seat of my car and I drove it straight back here.”

      “And they made another key to the front door and started to clean the place out, did they? Can’t say I’m surprised,” snorted Pelham. “I’ve met that damned woman once or twice, bloody dragon!”

      Ruddock grinned broadly.

      “An accurate assessment,” he commented.

      “More than that, a bloody thieving dragon, I’m in two minds whether to sue the bastards,” snapped Pelham. “But I agree with you, it would be a waste of time and energy, and we don’t have too much of either. I gather the police sergeant wasn’t too bothered once he’d got the stuff back.”

      “No!” Ruddock shook his head. “He has to spend much time in that village socially, I gather. I believe he’s a vice president of the cricket club and Salmon is one of the groundsmen.”

      “I hope they nail down the club equipment,” snorted Pelham. ” OK, let’s see what we have here.”

      They opened the lid and looked inside. On one side of the box there was a row of small drawers, none of them had any locks on them. Pelham reached inside and manipulated the top one, it opened easily. There were some old newspapers on the base of the box as a lining, and there was also a deed box.

      Ruddock reached inside and drew out an old cricket cap with an insignia on the front and turned it over in his hand. There was a tag inside it at the front behind the peak, there had been some purple writing on it but this was now so smudged as to be illegible.

      “Can you read the name?” asked Pelham.

      “Not a hope,” Ruddock shook his head. “Looks as if it was done with one of those old copying ink pencils, they were alright until you got any water near them.”

      “Yes, you’re right,” agreed Pelham, tossing the cap onto his coffee table. “Dreadful things, if you weren’t careful you picked up purplish stains over all your fingers and clothing. What else is there?”

      They extracted all the contents of the box and lined them up on the coffee table. Apart from the deed box and the cap, there was an old penknife - quite a sophisticated item as it possessed many blades and had some insignia on it.

      “My God! What’s this?’

      “I’ve never seen one of these before, I didn’t think they’d ever been issued.”

      Pelham took the item from Ruddock and turned it over in his hands. It was a piece of Doulton ware, a coronation mug.

      “What do you mean?” asked Ruddock

      “Take a look at this, the monarch is Edward VIII, he ruled for less than a year and then he abdicated in 1936, or was it 1937. He was never crowned and the Coronation never took place. So these, which must have been produced en masse ready for the event, were never generally issued.”

      “What happened to them?”

      “God knows, maybe they were all junked and replaced by George VI mugs.”

      “Could be worth a bit then,” hazarded Ruddock. “There can’t be too many of these around.”

      Pelham placed it on the coffee table, replacing it in the small cardboard box and tissue wrapping. Then he held aloft a fob watch.

      “There’s a date on this - look - 1831.”

      “Does it work?”

      Pelham gave the knob on the top a few turns, the second hand began to slowly go round the dial.

      “What’s in the drawers?”

      They opened up the top drawer and found some old newspaper cuttings. There was no indication of the newspaper itself, merely cuttings. They dealt with details of the firm founded by John Accrington and Kenneth Bilston, and there were some with articles dealing with the Enigma coding machine used by German U-Boats during the war.

      “Wonder what his interest was in that?” mused Ruddock.

      “Probably to do with the early days of primitive computers,” grunted Pelham. “Cracking that code was a process of mathematics, logic, a lack of logic in some cases, pure luck and dedication. My father was in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War, he knew a lot about this. Many of the decoders were mathematicians, crossword puzzle solvers, university professors in addition to technicians in the embryo computer industry.”

      “What’s in the next drawer?”

      “There’s a picture of a house, a photograph. Here’s another one of a farm house.”

      “What’s in the third drawer?” asked Pelham

      “Looks like a tie, what do you reckon? Regimental?”

      “Difficult to say, but I’d say it represents something. I don’t think it looks like a casual design.”

      Ruddock held it in his hand and it unravelled until it hung down. They both looked at it quizzically.

      “Hmmm!” Pelham grunted again, “OK, let’s have a look in the deed box.”

      But it was locked.

      “Damnation!!” ejaculated Pelham.

      “Hold on, there’s a key in the last drawer, will this fit?”

      They tried it, it fitted.

      “Good!” said Ruddock. “I wouldn’t fancy contacting Mrs Salmon again.”

      Pelham grinned and shook his head.

      “Amen to that!” he said. “OK, let’s have a look.”

      “Now we’re getting somewhere,” announced Pelham as he drew a birth certificate out from a dusty envelope. “This is his alright, there’s the name - John Arthur Accrington, and there are the names of his parents, where he was born and the date. He was born 24^th February

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