At last, Mr Simmonds came out through the door behind the counter, leaving it open. He was a small, thin man with white hair and a kind face. He looked nothing like his flamboyantly dressed daughter, though there was a similarity of gesture, Gina saw as he greeted her.

‘Good morning – although I see it isn’t with regard to the weather,’ he smiled. ‘How may I help this morning? Mrs Travers, if I’m not mistaken?’ he spoke quite loudly and gave her an old-fashioned little bow.

‘Yes. I’m surprised you remember. I’ve got summat I thought you might be interested in buying,’ said Gina. ‘Some dishes and a necklace.’

‘Just let me close this door, Mrs Travers, and I’ll have a look,’ he said, going to do it. ‘Well, let’s get the items on the counter and we can see them properly.’

Gina took the fruit dishes out of the shopping bag and put them on the glass counter top.

‘Now, they’d be easier to see against a good surface,’ he said. ‘I’ll just find the velvet …’ and he disappeared through the door in the back for a couple of minutes.

Gina glanced out at the teeming rain and decided she was in no hurry to leave anyway, which was just as well, as Mr Simmonds was taking his time.

‘There we are. Sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs Travers,’ he said, placing a black velvet mat on the counter. ‘Now let me see what we have here …’ He picked up each of the fruit dishes in turn, very slowly, and inspected it from all sides.

‘Mm, very interesting. These are sterling silver and finished inside with gilt. Very nice … very nice indeed. I remember seeing something similar in … oh, it must have been about 1935 … and they fetched quite a lot of money. I’d gone to an auction in Manchester …’

He was off on a long tale that didn’t really interest Gina, except that the dishes in question had been worth quite a bit.

‘I shall need to look very carefully at the hallmark,’ he said when he’d recounted the tale of the previous dishes at some length. ‘Now, what can I have done with my loupe …?’ He felt in his pockets, then searched the counter, then disappeared into the back again. Eventually he reappeared with the eyeglass and inspected the hallmark on each of the dishes, then declared he needed his callipers and had to go to look for those as well. After a while he came back with them and measured the dishes to see if they were a matched pair.

‘I’d better note it down,’ he said, as if this were a novel idea. ‘Now where can I have put the ledger, I wonder.’

‘Try under the counter,’ said Gina, a touch impatiently.

‘Yes … yes indeed. How observant of you, Mrs Travers.’