Chapter 5: The inspector of weights came seven months early

The spice merchant's scale stands at the front of her stall like a small brass church. Two shallow pans hang from a beam, and beside it, in a wooden block, sits a family of brass weights that nest inside one another like cups, from the big kilo down to a weight no larger than a thimble. Her grandfather bought them when the market opened.

Each cup has an old seal pressed into its rim, a tiny stamp for every autumn it was tested and found true. There are dozens of them. The newest ones are all from October. That is the answer to the man you saw in March.

There is no March inspector. Inspectors of weights come to the Old Market in October, as they have done since before anyone now working there was born.

When you passed, Dorn had a prisoner at her elbow and could only frown. By the time she had handed the coat thief to the constable at the station and walked back with you to the Long Hall, at two, the peaked cap was gone. So was the family of brass cups.

First: A seal pressed into the wrong month

You find Hilda Achard still at her stall, among her sacks of cinnamon and pepper, with her arms still folded. The inspector, she says, came at a quarter past one. He wore a grey dustcoat and a peaked cap pulled low, and his spectacles were misted from the cold. He laid his own test weight on her scale and told her that her grandfather's weights were untrue.

He fined her on the spot. He took the whole nest of brass cups away “for testing at the office,” wrote her a receipt signed “B. Dalby, Inspector,” pressed a seal into the scale's beam, and was gone by a quarter to two, so fast that he left his test weight behind on the counter.

You telephone the weights office from the café while Dorn stands at your shoulder. Nobody named Dalby works there. Nobody from the office has been near the Old Market since last October. The seal on the beam is a blob of wax with nothing much pressed into it.

“Those weights,” Hilda says, “are worth more than my stall. A man upstairs has wanted them for years.”

Second: A peaked cap missing from its hook

For thirty years the real inspector at the Old Market was Basil Cobb. He retired three autumns ago and now keeps a stall of old tools at the far end of the Long Hall, where he sells chisels and planes and chalks every price on a little blackboard. He has never in his life stuck a ticket on anything, he says. Tickets fall off.

His old peaked cap used to hang on a nail at the back of his stall, a souvenir. Yesterday afternoon it vanished. He shows you the empty nail, and you look at the dust around it and at the crowd flowing past the stall a yard away. Anyone walking by could have lifted it without breaking step.

Third: Little white tickets in the Clock Gallery

You climb the gallery stairs behind Dorn to meet the man upstairs. He is Cuthbert Garside, who sells antiques two doors along from the clockmender's. His shop is a magpie's nest of lamps, inkwells, keys and brass, and every object, even the smallest, wears a little round white ticket on a string or stuck to its base, with a price in tiny writing.

You notice that even the brass handle of his door has a ticket hanging from it. He admits at once that he twice offered to buy Hilda's weights. “She turned me down,” he says, smiling. “That is the game. You lose a point, you wait for the next serve.”

He was in his shop all afternoon, he says, with the door locked, doing his accounts. He even shows you the sales book, every sale written down to the last key. “Brass weights don't sell,” he sighs, running a finger down the pages. “Not one since Christmas.”

Back downstairs you meet Dudley Ames, the knife-grinder, who wears a grey dustcoat every day of the year and wheels his grinding wheel from stall to stall. A grey dustcoat, Hilda says, looks like every other grey dustcoat when the man inside it keeps his head down.

Fourth: Where everyone was at half past one

You and Dorn passed the spice stall at half past one, on your way to the station with the coat thief. At that moment, from the Fish Hall behind you, came the long rising whine of a grinding wheel. The fishmongers say Dudley sharpened their knives from one o'clock until two without a break, and their knives prove it.

Basil spent the same hour in Mrs. Odile Fenn's café, playing dominoes with two porters from the Fish Hall, as he does every Saturday. Mrs. Fenn brought them two pots of tea and remembers both.

Pim remembers something else. He tells it to you slowly, between sips, because he likes to be asked. At ten past one he climbed to the Clock Gallery with the post.

Cuthbert Garside's door was shut, the light was off, and a card hung on the handle: “Back in ten minutes.” Pim knocked anyway. Nobody answered. At ten to two he passed again on his way to the dominoes, late, and the card was gone and the lamp was on. Then he lost four games of dominoes in a row and blamed the tea.

Fifth: What a borrowed uniform forgets

Dorn stands with the abandoned test weight in her hand, turning it over and over like a darts player feeling the balance of a new dart.

Check what was left behind. A thief in a hurry drops more than he takes, and what he drops comes from his own pocket.

Check every alibi for a witness who has no reason to lie: a sound, a game, a pot of tea.

Check the motive, but never stop at it. Wanting something is not the same as taking it.

Check the uniform. A cap and a coat can be borrowed; everything else the man brought with him is his own.

She hands it to you. Turn the weight over yourself, as you do now, and feel what she felt. On its flat base, around the stamped mark, there is a neat pale ring, slightly sticky to the touch, the size of a small round ticket that has been peeled off in a hurry. Now decide who wore Basil's cap.

Sixth: The first way, by the weight he left behind

The test weight came from the false inspector's own pocket. On its base is the sticky ring of a round ticket, freshly peeled.

Who in this market puts round tickets on old brass? Not Basil: he chalks his prices and has never stuck a ticket on anything. Not Dudley: he sells nothing at all, he sharpens. Cuthbert Garside's shop is full of them, on lamps, on keys, on brass of every kind.

So the weight began the day as one of Garside's stock, with his ticket on its base, and somebody tore the ticket off in a hurry so that it would look like an official's tool. Could a customer have bought it from him that morning? His own sales book says no brass weight has left his shop since Christmas. That somebody had the run of Garside's shelves.

Seventh: The second way, by the card on the shop door

Forget the weight. Look at the clock instead, like a referee checking his watch.

The false inspector was at the spice stall from a quarter past one until a quarter to two. Dudley's wheel was singing in the Fish Hall the whole hour, with a row of fishmongers watching him. Basil was at the domino table in the café with the porters, and Mrs. Fenn was pouring their tea.

Garside says he was in his shop all afternoon, door locked, doing accounts. Wrong.

At ten past one his lamp was off, his door was shut and his card said he would be back in ten minutes, and nobody answered Pim's knock. He came back at ten to two, five minutes after the inspector vanished. His story has a hole exactly the shape of the false inspector's visit.

Two ways, the ticket and the timetable, and they arrive at the same door in the Clock Gallery. In Garside's back room, in a drawer under a cloth, the nest of brass cups sits polished and ready, already wearing a small round ticket and a very large price.

Hilda gets her grandfather's weights back the same afternoon, and counts the cups twice, the way a goalkeeper counts the players in a wall.

Basil gets back his cap, which Garside had stuffed behind a lamp, and hangs it on its nail again, a little more crushed than before. When October comes, the real inspector will come too, as inspectors always have, and he will test Hilda's weights cup by cup, and they will be true, as they were for her grandfather.

Only one small thing from that Saturday stays with you.

At half past eight, on your way to the café, you had been with Dorn when she bought eggs at the stall on the corner of the Long Hall. The egg woman in the blue headscarf called, “Morning, Inspector!” and slipped an extra egg into the bag.

Just after noon Dorn went back for more, and the same woman in the same blue headscarf looked at her as if she had never seen her in her life. And why did the egg seller who knew Dorn at half past eight not know her at all just after noon?