A Hive of Glass

Book 19: Murder Room

by P.M. Hubbard

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Suspense

Synopsis

Johnnie Slade harbours an obsessive love for fine glass objects, so his interest is piqued when he sees photographs of the fabulous Verzelini tazza in a magazine. He follows its trail and finds that someone may already have committed murder to get their hands on it. If, indeed, it ever existed. And what is the relevance of the entry in the dead man's diary that reads 'Dunstreet'? Johnnie finds out what it means - and he also finds Claudia. But his pursuit of both the tazza and the girl are complicated not only by Claudia's blind and autocratic Aunt Elizabeth, but also by the dawning realisation that he is not alone in his quest. And death, of course, is just around the corner.

Release date: September 6, 2012

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 196

Sample

The paint was going, but you could just about read it. It said ‘Furniture & Antiques’. My foot eased on the accelerator as a simple reflex. You never know,
especially with these dingy little places. The big towns and the tourist places are hopeless. Practically nothing there, and speculative prices for what there is, well over honest London rates. But
this was a third-class manufacturing town, and the shop was pure junk in an outlying street.

I put the car round a left-hand corner in a small brick side street of unrelieved ugliness. I got out and put on an old macintosh. My speech was undisguisably southern, but at least I did not
look like a visitor. I might be in any sort of business.

I walked back past a window loaded with every sort of small stuff. I felt slightly sick, and knew that there was a vein throbbing on the right side of my temple. It is an odd business, this
collector’s passion. I have not read the psychologists on the subject, but I have no doubt it is a substitute for some more honest emotion. Not sex, I think. More likely the hunting instinct,
or something from the food-gathering mesolithic. It is certainly a disease of civilisation, and most civilisations formalise sex rather than overlay it.

Also, although I know it is easy for one collector to deride another, it surely makes some difference what you collect. I may be a bit silly at times, but the man who would do murder for a
cigarette card is obviously a case. I turned back, opened the door and went in.

The door rang an electric bell—this was not the industrial Midlands for nothing—but there was no one there. It was cluttered almost to the ceiling. I ignored the furniture and brass,
the rolled-up carpets and the folded stacks of dead men’s blankets. I peered through them, but there was nothing behind them. I made for the shelves at the back of the shop. There was some
china, one bit probably worth looking at for anyone interested in china, and behind it three rows of dusty glass.

The man appeared suddenly from behind a mahogany wardrobe. There must have been a door in the side wall. He was a bit withered, but not seedy. He would probably have a pension of sorts, and junk
was only a side-line. He had the Midlander’s expression of anticipated outrage. I said, ‘Good morning, sorry to bother you,’ because I felt he expected an apology for my coming in
at all. He grunted, but his suspicion was unallayed.

I said, ‘I wondered if there was anything one could put flowers in. Something small. Niece of mine likes old bits.’

He dragged his eyes away from mine reluctantly, as if he did not know what I might be looking at unless he held them. He looked disparagingly round the shop.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Sort of a vase?’

‘Yes, or an old jug, or a mug or something. Even an old glass. I don’t want anything big.’

He said, ‘Seen anything in the window?’ He still wanted to know why I had come in at all.

‘I didn’t look properly. Might be something.’ I picked up an Edwardian milk jug and turned it round in my hands, daring him to go to the window and leave me unwatched. He
hesitated and then went. He moved a table and a couple of folding picture frames collapsed in a small cloud of dust. He muttered and stooped to pick them up. I was already at the shelf of glass,
looking behind the chipped jugs and the uncouth moulded tumblers. My mouth was dry.

There is no mistaking the gleam of eighteenth-century glass. I still think it is a passion you need not be ashamed of, unless you let it get out of hand. It is a characteristic product of the
ultimate flowering of our civilisation, before industrialisation brought wealth and mechanisation, and they started to carbonado even a good quality glass till it looked like cheap paste. There was
just that hundred years or so, between the time they learnt to change the composition of George Ravenscroft’s glass so that it did not crizzle and the time they abandoned the natural magic of
the centrifuge for the artificial glitter of the sharp edge. Just that time when they could not put a hand wrong, whether it was a tavern ale glass or a tall beauty to contain the ebullience of the
wild early champagnes. Thousands and thousands of beautiful drinking glasses, all broken and buried now except for the odd ones that remain to shame and tantalise us. All what they call
collectors’ pieces, and fewer and fewer of them anywhere but in the collections.

I heard him coming back from the window and turned to meet him with an expression of mild interest. He had a pewter beer mug and a piece of Birmingham brass. ‘There’s these,’
he said.

I took the beer mug and looked at it with interest. I said, ‘That might do. A bit big, really, for what I want.’ I put it down on a small clear space of dusty table top. I put the
flowery china jug beside it. Then I turned to the glass shelf and took down the horrible tumbler from the front row. I could see more clearly now what stood behind it in the back row. I gave an
amused grunt and lifted it out, trying to make my hand look careless. ‘That’s a funny one,’ I said. My voice sounded wildly unnatural. It was an utterly filthy, quite faultless
Newcastle light baluster, all of ten inches high, the rounded perfect bowl perched on a breathless series of knops. I said, ‘I wonder where that came from?’

He looked at me pretty sharply. He did not know a thing, but like all his kind he was a natural businessman, and something of my excitement got through to him. He said, ‘That’d be an
old glass. Don’t see many like that.’

He took it from me and dusted it roughly with a slightly oily piece of rag. My hand went after the glass, but I controlled it. I watched it in his hands, licking my lips. At last he put it down
on the table with the other two. It was cleaner now. Surely no one could miss the quality of it.

I said, ‘Quaint, though, isn’t it?’ I still sounded mildly amused. He did not say anything. He never stopped looking at me.

I looked at the three of them sitting there, the solid inoffensive mug, the dreadful jug and the utterly perfect glass. I picked up the jug, looked at it all over and put it back on the shelf. I
said, ‘Suppose I take those two?’

He looked from me to the glass and back again. His common sense was battling with his dreadful businessman’s instinct, which told him something was up. He said, ‘That’d be ten
bob for the mug.’

I said, ‘What—’ My throat was completely dry and my voice stuck. I coughed and said, ‘What about the glass, then?’

He said again, ‘That’d be an old glass.’ He looked at me and took the plunge. ‘I’d have to charge you—’ His voice stopped, and I could see a wheel
turning in his head, clocking up figure after figure, while he tried to make up his mind where to stop it. He said, ‘—three pounds for the glass.’

This was the moment. I whistled and looked at him quizzically. I said, ‘That’s a bit steep, isn’t it? Not all that special, is it?’ Relief flooded into his eyes. He had
been afraid I would jump at it. He said again, ‘It’s an old glass, that.’

I said, ‘I rather like it, but three quid’s a bit steep, surely?’ He did not say anything, and I pretended to consider the matter. I said, ‘Let’s see—’
I took out my wallet and looked in it as if I was not sure what I had got and what I could spare. He still did not say anything.

I took out four pound notes and held them out to him. He was in a rage of uncertainty again, but he could not help taking them in his hand. I picked up the mug in my left hand, and the glass,
very carefully, in my right. We stood and looked at each other. I said, ‘If you can find me ten bob.’ My voice was hoarse now, and his eyes were aflame with resentment. He stood there,
holding the notes in his hand. Then he held out his other hand and said, ‘Don’t you want it wrapped?’ He said it, not them.

I shook my head, put my hands carefully in front of me and pushed past him to the door of the shop. He said, ‘Here—’ Then he came after me. ‘I’ve changed my
mind,’ he said. ‘I’m not selling.’

I said, ‘You have sold.’

He put his two hands out, one holding the notes and the other reaching for the glass.

I said again, ‘You have sold. You named a price. I accepted it and paid you. You’ve got the money. I’ve got the glass. The deal’s complete. You can’t go back on it
now.’

He said, ‘How do I know what it’s worth? Worth a mint of money, some of them old ones.’

‘This one’s worth three quid,’ I said. ‘That’s its market price. I’ve just bought it for that. What do you think I’m going to do? Sell it again and make
a profit?’

He suddenly reached out as if to grab me—me, standing there with that beautiful fragile thing unprotected in my hand. I felt choked with rage at his ignorance and blind greed, and my left
hand swung the heavy pewter mug up backhanded between his head and mine. He must still have been watching my eyes, because what he saw there set him back on his heels and he took his hand away
quick.

I was still breathless with rage, but the moment of pressure had passed. I was under control again. I said, ‘Are you going to call a policeman or am I? He’ll tell you the same.
I’ve bought it and paid for it, and it’s mine.’

The pewter mug clanked on the brass door handle as I opened the door left-handed. He came out after me, but keeping his distance. ‘It’s a bloody swindle,’ he said.
‘That’s what it is, a bloody swindle.’

I said, ‘Tell that to the police.’ I walked off along the pavement swinging the mug and holding the glass close in front of me. He came a little way after me, changed his mind and
darted back into the shop. I watched him in and then ran to the corner. There was no one in the sidestreet, and I went straight to the car. I wrapped the glass in successive sheets of The
Times, bundling the paper well round that precious vulnerable stem. There was still no one about. I put the whole package carefully in the boot, got into the driving seat and waited, watching
the mirror.

I had not been there fifteen seconds when he crossed the end of the street. He had two large young men with him. They hardly glanced at the back of the car as they went across. I did a copy-book
three-pointer, drove back to the main street and turned right. As I passed the shop I saw one of their wives in the doorway, awaiting the warriors’ return. She was a horror. She did not look
at me.

I drove a couple of miles back the way I had come and turned off into the lanes. It was green, rather heavy country, never quite clear of the smell of the towns. The next turning might have been
for Ambridge. I stopped and walked down through a field to a stream, carrying my package.

I knelt by the water, dropped The Times sheet by sheet behind me and washed the glass gingerly with my finger tips in the clear water, easing off the old grime and the taint of my
vendor’s oily rag. The thing came to life startlingly under my caressing fingers, and when at last I held it up, I fairly caught my breath.

The man said, ‘What’s it, then, something you’ve just found?’

‘Bought,’ I said. I recognised him at once. It was Jack Archer.

He nodded. ‘Pretty,’ he said. He really meant it. Your countryman is still essentially civilised. ‘Worth a bit, is it?’

I said, ‘Difficult to say now. Prices change so. Thirty quid, perhaps.’

He whistled appreciatively. ‘What did you pay for it, then?’

‘Three,’ I said. ‘No, three ten.’ I never got my change.

He nodded cheerfully. ‘Nice to pick up a thing like that. You a dealer?’

‘Not me,’ I said. ‘This is for myself.’

‘Ah, that’s right. Glad you had it so cheap.’ He nodded and went off soft-footed in the squelchy grass. I loved him as much as I had hated the man in the shop. I wrapped the
glass up again, turning the clean side of the paper inwards, and went back to the car. I wanted to sing.

When I got home I washed it again in warm soft water and a mild detergent. Then I put it on a table by itself in the middle of the room and sat and looked at it. Then I got the books out.

This is one of the big moments. However much you think you know, there are always things you cannot carry in your head, or things you want confirmed. But above all you are, as it were, showing
it to somebody for the first time, seeing whether your passionate conviction will stand up to the cold light of expert judgment. It is a frightening business, and hardly ever quite decisive,
because no two glasses are ever quite alike. One man’s description covers it, but is not quite comprehensive or explicit. Another has a picture of something very like it, but disagrees with
the first man’s date or origin. What you have got was made by a particular craftsman at a particular place and time, and may have been one of several dozen almost exactly similar. But now the
name has gone, and the place and time are matters of inference and expert opinion: and all its companion pieces were long since smashed and thrown away. It is perfect in itself, this thing that
has come into your hands after two hundred years of precarious existence, but you can never know the whole truth about it.

Finally I did what I always do. I filled it, after God knows how many years of drought and emptiness, with a good claret and drank it solemnly, wondering who had last drunk from it and what.
Then I washed it and put it in its place.

As soon as he heard my voice on the phone, David groaned. He said, ‘Oh God, what is it now? Can I bear it?’

I said, ‘Newcastle. Nearly ten inches. A blade, then two drop knots, then a sort of baluster with tears, and a cushion over a high domed foot. No flaw.’

There was a pause, and he said, ‘Say that again.’ I told him again.

‘Where the hell did you find that?’

‘Junk shop.’

‘Blast you,’ he said, ‘blast you. I’ll come in tomorrow. All right?’

‘All right.’

‘Have you seen the July Old Glass?’

‘No. It’s here. I haven’t looked at it yet. Why?’

‘Levinson,’ he said. ‘Guess what.’

‘Tell me.’

‘A tazza by Verzelini. Dedicatory inscription. Out of this world.’

I said, ‘There isn’t one. They say he made them.’

David said, ‘There is now. Levinson’s got it. Dedicated to the Queen.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘There are photos. And Levinson knows. Unless it’s a hoax on his part.’

‘Not Levinson,’ I said.

‘No—well, there you are. You’d better look at it.’

‘I will,’ I said. I rang off, pulled the magazine to me over the table and ripped off the cover. There was a headline right across the cover. It said, ‘A Verzelini
Tazza’.

Old Glass was one of the most beautifully produced quarterlies in the world. To anyone of civilised tastes it was a delight to look at, and even to handle. To the
addict it combined this aesthetic perfection with something of the sanctity of holy writ, as a thing like the Luttrell Psalter must have done in a less sophisticated and more religious age. Not
that Old Glass laid any claim to final authority. Its editorial line, so far as it had one, was confined to the less expert aspects of its subject. But its contributors were all men of
authority, and it was the forum of choice for anyone who had anything to say about antique glass. It must have been over-contributed and under-subscribed.

The subscription was twenty guineas a year. The circulation was known only to Peter Sarrett, who owned it, edited it and apparently lived solely for it. But it must have run at a steady loss. It
is dead now, and so is Peter. It ran for six years altogether, and the twenty-four numbers, especially a complete run, are already worth a great deal more than their original price. Peter was
supposed to have a private income, and indeed must have. Wherever his money came from, it did not come from Old Glass. That was where it went.

I opened the July number—there was in fact only one more—at the astonishing first article. I was immediately struck by the comparative poverty of the illust. . .