The Corner House by Ruth Hamilton Read Free Book Online

stashed in the company of Dresden figurines, ornamentalscreens, paintings and valuable gems set into a variety of precious metals. Some had been sold to him by decent people whose times were suddenly hard; other items … well, it didn’t do to dwell too much. The point was that Maurice was paying money out and taking little in. Come the war’s end, he might be rich, but no-one would want to buy much while hostilities were still ongoing. He was comfortable enough, he supposed. He could afford to sit on his assets and wait, just about, if hostilities didn’t go on into the next decade.
    He swivelled. ‘Put some weight behind the cloth, woman.’
    The woman, a childless widow with a fractious mother, rubbed a little harder. She hated the Mole with a passion too deep to be immediately accessible. In his perennial black suit, he looked just like a burrowing, troublesome animal – alert, greedy, fat, oily, fussy. She finished the shelf and ran a chamois across one of the glass-topped counters. If and when Mam died, Pauline would be out of here like sugar off a shiny shovel.
    ‘I’m just going downstairs,’ said Maurice the Mole.
    ‘Yes, Mr Chorlton, no, Mr Chorlton, three bags full of horse manure, Mr Chorlton,’ she grumbled quietly as he left the room. He would be tunnelling again, she supposed, wandering within his catacombs and counting his assets, those valuable objects acquired by him via other people’s misery and deprivation. Well, he would get what was coming to him, Pauline mused inwardly. Anyone as self-engrossed as Mr Chorlton was bound to receive his comeuppance sooner or later.
    Down in the vaults, Maurice thought about better days when he had worked from dawn to dusk withgold, silver, palladium, rhodium. His mouth almost watered when he thought about gold. He hadn’t laid eyes or hands on a decent amount for ages. The war effort. Everything was blamed on this bloody war. The government hung on to its precious metals like a limpet sticking to the bottom of an old ship. The nearest Maurice had come of late to jewellery manufacture was when mending broken brooch fasteners or resetting loosened stones.
    As he stood near the bench, his hands itched to pick up the tools, while his dark, bulging eyes ached to suffer once more the pleasurable pain caused by sharp bolts of colour emanating from a naturally formed, white, preferably octahedral diamond. Cut, polish, polish again. Set it in platinum or gold, lay it on a pad of blue velvet, display it in his window. Whatever folk thought about him, he didn’t care. As a designer of jewellery, he had no equal outside London.
    Depressed beyond measure, he sank into his work seat. Bench brush, grinders, polishers, jewellers’ rouge and flex shafts lay like a row of idle soldiers mocking a general with no battle to fight. He picked up a ring clamp and a pin vice, wondered whether or when he would ever use them again. Twelve sets of pliers hung on a board alongside hammers and files. It was like looking at a graveyard, a place where humanity’s brief visits to the planet were marked by rows of dead, useless markers.
    Roy. He sat back and thought about the lad. Roy had done his best to stay out of the army, but his sight had been judged adequate for the mowing down of enemy gun-fodder. So he had gone to training camp. Mind, Roy wasn’t much when it came to jewellery. Maurice’s son was happiest when positioned behind a pint glass in the King’s Head.
    He took a gold hunter from his waistcoat, marked the time, glanced over his shoulder before turning the dial of a walk-in safe. Once inside, his spirits lifted. Glorious ornaments fought for space on high, cramped shelves. Flawless pearls, rubies, sapphires and diamonds nestled beneath thick plate glass, while linen-shrouded paintings stood guard around the walls. He dipped a hand into a box of sovereigns, let their silken surfaces pour through his fingers. ‘To hell with the war effort,’ he mumbled. ‘This lot’s