PearlHanger 09 (3 page)

that a man can't stand another bird, even if it's only one of those telly newsreaders with disastrous hairdos.

"Lovejoy's under contract to me and's trying to default." Mrs. Vernon rose to do battle. I was happy to see she was now furious at Lydia instead of me. I edged out of the door. Women, especially real ones like Lydia, have this knack of quelling opposition by simple turns of phrase. It's a gift. God really knew His stuff with spare ribs.

Jeb Spencer and Chris were closer to the glass partition than they needed be, and moved aside with studied casualness.
The sods had been trying to listen.

"A rich London buyer," I lied casually.

They tried to nod disbelief but I could see they were unsure. Pleased, I saw Margaret leave carrying a bag. Tinker must have nobbled the job lot with the Arita dish. That meant ten percent, say, a week's living expenses from the
VOC
plate alone after the split. I'd see Margaret got her favorite reward. Now to con the near-Constable oil sketch out of Gwen Pritchard before husband Bernard pleasured it off her and gambled it on some lame nag, and I'd be laughing.

There was a commotion by the door. Algernon was arriving in his Martian-style bike rig. Algernon's my other apprentice, buck teeth, clumsy and mindbendingly slow, for whom I'm paid a pittance to teach antiques. He has the brains of a rocking horse. He was looking pleased with himself as he blundered through the door and fell over a small escritoire with a crash. The dealers laughed. He's never done anything right yet, so why change the habit of a lifetime?

"Lovejoy!" he yelped, grinning delightedly as an old dear hauled him to his feet. "That pewter!"

Disbelievingly I thought, I'll cripple him. It was sup-

posed to be a secret deal, the nerk. Subtle as the blitz. This was obviously turning out to be one of those days.
I darted through the mob at a breathless run into the safety of Gimbert's yard.

Fourteen pubs within a stone's throw. One gulp of the town's exhilarating smog and I headed toward the Three Cups and perdition.

*

Ten minutes later I was pulling Owd Maggie's leg about being a witch. She drinks foul black stout until the pub closes.

"Madame Blavatsky, I presume," I joshed. "What'll Cardew have? Pint?"

She spoke without animosity, contentedly hunched in the inglenook. "You can scoff, Cockalorum. But he's as real as you or me."

I pretended to be impressed. "Is Cardew always right?"

"Never wrong, dear." She rattled her glass. I scraped together the odd groat and fetched her a bottle. "He was right about you," she pointed out. "Told that lady straight, Cardew did. Said
you
were not to be trusted."

"Then Cardew's a cheeky sod. Anyhow, he got it wrong. I'm not going."

"Lovejoy." Breathlessly Lydia slid into the seat beside me as I spoke.

"Got rid of her, eh?" I was really pleased, though surprised Lydia had entered the tavern alone. She usually knocks at the door and waits to be brought in, going red and keeping her eyes on the floor. This time she was ignoring our tawdry surroundings. If anything she was a bit pale around the gills. My heart sank.

"You've sold me to white slavers," I accused.

18 ...

"No, Lovejoy. Please listen. Good afternoon, Madame Blavatsky."

"Hello, love," said Owd Maggie, smiling at me. I could have throttled her, batty old know-all.

"There's been a prediction. In a dream. Mrs. Vernon received a warning. You must go with her, Lovejoy."

I tried to push off but Lydia was penning me in. Luscious women are a right pest. "For crying out loud. This isn't the frigging Dark Ages, Lydia. Everybody knows superstition's all crap."

"Kindly moderate your language, Lovejoy," Lydia said. "No situation's too horrible for good manners."

"You tell him, dear," from Maggie. "He can't go against the guidance."

"Shut your gums, you silly old crab. You've caused enough trouble."

"Lovejoy! Apologize this instant!"

I mumbled something to mollify Lydia but I could tell her heart wasn't in all this.

"You
see,
Lovejoy. You are our only dealer who has the inner eye."

"I
divvie
antiques, not people."

"Cardew knows," from Owd Maggie.

I wondered for a second if Cardew secretly told her what me and Lydia got up to, blow-by-blow accounts as it were.

"But Mrs. Vernon hates me. And she's going to sue."

"Not now I've negotiated a lucrative rate."

See what I mean about women? Sniffing heartbreak because I was in chancery, meanwhile briskly fixing percentages.

"Don't be cross, Lovejoy," she urged earnestly. "I have ensured that you will reside only in first-class accommoda-

tion, receive intermittent emoluments, and any antique purchases ..."

"Antiques?"
I perked up in spite of Lydia's Brortespeak.
Until now there'd only been talk of this tiresom husband.

Lydia's eyes opened wide. "Didn't you know?
Mrs.
Vernon's husband is an antique dealer on an antique sweep through East Anglia. The idea is you simply
find
him . . ."

"Through the antique shops he visited?" I yelped. M; spirits soared. I assumed a quiet courage. "Very well, er darling.
If ...
if it will please you."

"You're so sweet," she said. Because it was true I
let
her buy the next round. The search couldn't take long,
after
all. And if we already had a list of places where he'd gone it'd be simple.

Right?

3

Next morning dawned wet and gale force across the estuary. A strong turbulence was whistling up the valley, tumbling my apples onto the grass. Lydia had arrived early, shivering and complaining whenever the wind gave its chimney moan. Her feet are always perishing cold, worse than Dolly's and Connie's even in summer. She's unreal, a gentle little soul full of vitamins, Victorian manners, and bran flakes, and was packing for Armageddon.

"Your brown pullover if it's chilly, Lovejoy," she was saying, folding away. "Shirts and underpants. Shaver, Lovejoy. Look." *

To oblige I looked. Face screwed in solemn concentration, she deposited my electric razor with the deliberation of a stage magician trying to convince a skeptical audience he's not cheating. "Right," I said.

Lincoln. Lowestoft. Manningtree. Surely not in that order? I had drawn rings round the places on the map from the list Donna Vernon had given me in Jackson's restaurant. East Anglia's a big place; admittedly no Australia, but

... 21

more nooks. Purling Lock. Where the hell was Purling Lock? Barnthwaite I'd never heard of and couldn't find.

Surprisingly Donna Vernon appeared almost at ease and really rather presentable when finally she showed. I hadn't looked too hard at her yesterday. I vaguely remembered an assortment of modern stridey gear, the jeans and duffel sort, all buckles. Her hair now moved a bit instead of seeming clamped. Her coat was actually brightly colored. Today's mouth was an obvious red, whereas yesterday I'd only noticed the decibels.

"Good morning, Lovejoy," she said to me out of the car window. Lydia got a curt nod.

"A couple of last-minuters, Lydia." I humped my case in. "Tell Helen her price is too high for that Ming dynasty erotic print of that couple on the matting. Get Patrick to go halves with us for Gwen's
Landscape Noon
sketch that she got yesterday, and fend Jessica off over that Nabeshima porcelain. She can have our Lowestoft jug, but charge her the earth."

"Very well." Lydia stood there on the gravel outside my cottage door. "You have everything." Unquestioning statement, that. "Travel safely ..."

"Not be long."

"Let's get this show on the road for God's sake!" from dearest Donna.

As we slithered out into the lane scattering pebbles I saw Lydia's hand raised in the minutest flutter. It takes somebody as sensitive as me to realize what an effort that gross demonstration cost her. I cleared my throat. Women get to you. You have to take proper precautions because female means sly. I'd have to watch myself. Antiques is too grim a game for attachments.

Algernon had just got off the village bus by the chapel.

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He saw me and flagged us down, spooking a fat pony that was noshing the chapel hedge. He goggled in the car window.

"Lovejoy! There you are! How very fortunate . . ."

"Cut it. You got the pewter medallions?"

Mrs. Vernon drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.

He was astonished. "Lydia didn't inform you?"

"Of what?" Foul suspicions welled within my breast— see how catching fancy talk is?

He stepped back, smirking proudly. "I did what you continually instruct, Lovejoy. I
checked!
The Latin inscriptions were gibberish!"

"And you didn't fetch them," I registered brokenly.

"True!" Algernon exclaimed in triumph.

"Drive on, missus." I wound the window shut.

The motor moved out on to the main road, leaving the nerk babbling inanities in the exhaust fumes.

"You're a chauvinist bastard, Lovejoy."

"What
is
that?" I was honestly interested.

"Shakespeare's daughter wasn't even taught to write.
That's
chauvinism!"

"You mean she never learned." I thought, clever old Judith Shakespeare. Sounded to me as if Big Bill's offspring had her head screwed on. Everybody'd expect her to produce
Hamlet Rides Again
the first rainy weekend. I went on the attack to suss Donna out. "Where do you Yanks stable your horses if you've got no old cathedrals, love?"

She checked the rear-view mirror. "That young man saved you a fortune, and you treat him like dirt."

I stared. People just can't be this dim. "Those medallions were Billie and Charlie fakes, eighteenth century, rare, and pricey. A lunatic caftan-wearing lentil-eating

...23

clock collector called Mannie down at Wivenhoe had three of them and had agreed to let me have them on split commission. Now Algernon's ballsed it up."

Mrs. Vernon's glance raked me briefly. "I get it, Lovejoy. Everybody else is always wrong, except you. That it? You're great, the rest morons?"

"You're brighter than I thought." I was surprised. She was coming on.

"What are you about, Lovejoy?" Time for the yap-and-guess interlude, evidently. "Me? Antiques."

"A person can't only be about antiques." I gave her one of my force eight glances so she'd know I meant it. "If I'd claimed to love money, rape, or Olympic yachting you'd believe me. Or," I added drily, "ghosts."

She was too angry to contradict my misuse of the term. "You're a put-down pig," she said, her face pale with fury. "Drop me at the next corner, please." Interestedly I watched the fascinating inward struggle. Women are always like this to some degree, aching to belt you one yet simultaneously wanting to use you in their designs. I'd been clocked by better women than her, so that was nowt new. The real question was, what was her particular design? The plot thickened around us as she pulled in to the pavement opposite a toffee shop and cut the engine. Her breathing showed no sign of returning to normal. She finally started without it.

"Lovejoy. You're an antifeminist pig. But I'm stuck with you."

"Not necessarily." I was all reason. She commanded, "You listen. I've a husband to find. You're hired to . . ."

"Shhh, Donna." I talked on into her astonished rage.

24 .. .

"Difficult for a woman to be a frigging bore, but you made it. Just look at you. Your coat's imitation Shetland. Your buttons are imitation bone. Your cotton's faked cotton. Your cardigan's imitation lamb's wool. Your shoes are imitation leather. Ditto for your handbag, purse, that Aran of yesterday, knickers too, I shouldn't wonder. Your plastic bloody bangle's even fake plastic." And would you believe she still didn't throw me out? Her endurance fascinated me more and more. "The real question is what Donna Vernon's about, isn't it?"

Her lips were a pale mauve set among white lines. One of those Venetian carnival masks, grotesque stasis but with a lot going on behind if you risk a look in the eyes. Her silent lips moved, presumably a command to explain. I'd made a right friend here. Yet again. "I can't quite decide, Donna," I concluded with a winning smile. "You're a scream. All that spiritualism gunge to convince me you were so unsure about hiring me. You'd decided on me long before you crossed Owd Maggie's mitt with silver. And. . ."

"And?" Furiously whispered, just audible.

"And what's the game, Donna? T.T.S.? Treasure Tax Shelter?" She looked puzzled. "A row with hubby hoovering up the antiques for himself? He nicked your favorite sports car? Taken the next-door blond as footwarmer? Which is it?"

The Treasure Tax Shelter began in her own back yard. It's usually based on investors clubbing together to finance Caribbean galleon-hunters, but any old priceless treasure will do as long as your own particular Inland Revenue Service agree on that elusive definition of "treasure." It's finders keepers. If your spade turns up nothing all year, your investment is written off as expenses. If you find a
Mary

25