Free Steps to the Gallows by Edward Marston Page B

window when I happened to pass by yesterday. It was the work of Mr Paige, as it happens, and he’d drawn a good likeness of Sir Humphrey Coote.’
    ‘I remember the print well, Mr Yeomans.’
    ‘It’s no longer in the window, I see.’
    ‘No, that’s true. It’s not for sale.’
    ‘There were other copies, surely?’
    ‘They were all sold. It was one of Virgo’s most successful prints.’
    Yeomans goggled. Having hoped to buy up her entire stock of the drawing that lampooned him, he had the discomfort of knowing that several people had already purchased copies and would be sniggering happily at both Coote and him. He was shaken to the core. Yet he could not bring himself to blame Diane Mandrake because she still held a strange fascination for him. She was merely a conduit between Paige and his admirers. One hope remained for him.
    ‘You say that the last print is not for sale, Mrs Mandrake.’
    ‘It will be given as a gift to someone.’
    ‘You’ll get no payment for it, then?’
    ‘I wish for none, sir.’
    ‘What if someone offered you double the price?’
    ‘My answer would be the same. I would not sell.’
    ‘Even you would part for it if I was prepared to give you three times its original value,’ said Yeomans, squirming inwardly at his financial recklessness. ‘Nobody who runs a business could refuse such a bargain.’
    ‘It smacks of desperation to me,’ she said, crisply. ‘Why are you impelled to spend so much on a single print?’
    ‘It … aroused my interest, that’s all.’
    What he didn’t tell her was that, in buying it, he would at least take one print out of circulation. Had he been able to buy every copy, he felt, he could silence the crude jeers that would come his way. Another possibility nudged him.
    ‘Might the person who receives it from you be tempted to part with it on very favourable terms?’
    She was shocked. ‘That’s a monstrous idea, Mr Yeomans.’
    ‘Why is that?’
    ‘Are you married, sir?’ He nodded dolefully. ‘Imagine how you would feel if you bestowed a gift on your wife and she sold it forthree times the cost? I can’t think that that would be conducive to marital harmony. Do you agree?’
    ‘I do,’ he confessed.
    She fixed her gaze on him. ‘Ah, of course,’ she went on as realisation dawned. ‘I have it now. That’s where I must have seen you before. In that self-same print, Sir Humphrey Coote occupies the foreground but someone looking remarkably like you is in the background.’
    ‘I never noticed that,’ he lied.
    ‘Then why show such an interest in the print?’
    He smiled weakly. ‘It … caught my imagination, that’s all.’
    ‘It did the same to someone else,’ she told him. ‘When he was here yesterday, he rhapsodised about the Parliament of Foibles . That’s why I’m presenting him with the last copy of that print. He loved it for its wit and ruthlessness.’
    ‘Those were not the qualities that I detected.’
    ‘Yet you are two of a kind, Mr Yeomans.’
    ‘In what way, may I ask?’
    ‘Like you, he came in search of information about Leo Paige.’
    ‘Really,’ he said, stiffening. ‘What would his name be?’
    ‘Peter Skillen.’
    His mortification was complete.
     
    On the previous evening, they’d gone to the White Hart in search of him but – though he’d left strong aromatic memories of his visit – the fishmonger was no longer there. Since they had no idea where he lived, they had to bide their time until the following morning. Gully Ackford had to stay at the gallery so Paul Skillen walked down to the river alone. The early morning catch was being unloaded and Simon Quint was haggling over prices with some fishermen. He was a short, bustling, round-shouldered man in hisfifties. Paul knew him by sight and had often eaten fish bought from him. With the record book under his arm, he approached the man.
    ‘I’d like a minute of your time,’ he began.
    ‘My time is money, sir,’ said Quint, eyeing him