The Judas Pair (12 page)

‘Eh? Are you serious?’

‘Straight up.’

There was nothing more. Now, this smacked of some amateur sleuthing on somebody’s part. No dealer would tackle A about B’s intentions so directly. I cast about for Margaret on the way out of the arcade but didn’t see her. Her small den across the shopping arcade was unlit and carried its closed sign. I don’t know what I’d done wrong.

We pushed down the High Street among buses and cars towards Adrian’s. It’s a cut above the arcade. He has a spruce display, tickets on everything. Today’s offerings included a series of Adam style chairs, good copies, a lush mahogany Pembroke table by Gillows – a great name – of Lancaster about 1820, and a run of Byzantine ikons on the walls among English watercolours. Incidentally, remember that the watercolour game is a characteristically English art. Continental light is too brilliant. It’s the curious shifting lights in our countryside that imparted a spontaneity and skill to the art that made it a feature of this land as opposed to others. Praise where it’s due. Adrian had a Rowbotham (moderate value, great skill), a Samuel Palmer (much value, brilliant skill) and a minute Turner that must have taken less than a minute to do. I touched the frame just to say I’d done so, not kneeling; and recoiled stunned by bells. Huge value plus the skill of genius.

‘Now, dear boy,’ Adrian was saying when I could concentrate. ‘You’re not going to tell me it’s phoney. Don’t you dare.’

‘It’s perfect, Adrian.’

‘Isn’t he sweet?’ he cooed at Sheila. She concurred, while I looked daggers.

‘You wouldn’t by any chance have popped into one of the local auctions, Adrian?’

I waited, but he stayed cool.

‘All the time, sweetie.’

‘Seddon’s.’

Still not a flicker.

‘Fortnightly.’ He smiled. ‘To remind myself how low one can sink, dear boy. They have rubbish and rubbishy rubbish, just those two sorts.’

‘You wouldn’t have bought some gadgets about maybe a year ago? A collection of card cases, early nineteenth-century . . .?’ My lies flowed with their usual serenity.

‘No luck, love.’ He sat and thought. ‘Not heard of them either.’

‘Started out from a box job, so word is.’

‘Not even a whisper.’ He was sympathetic. ‘Ask Jane Felsham. It’s more in her line. Got a buyer for them?’

I gave a rueful shrug. ‘I would have if I could find them.’

‘How many?’

‘Ten – some mother of pearl, black lacquer, engraved silver, one silver filigree and a couple chatelained.’

He whistled. ‘I can understand your concern. Shall I ask about?’

‘If you would, Adrian. Many thanks.’

He cooed a farewell waving a spotted cravat from his doorway as we went back to the car. I’d got a ticket from a cheerful traffic warden and grumbled at Sheila for not having reminded me about putting up my infallible ‘delivering’ notice.

Seddon’s is one of those barn-like ground-floor places full of old furniture, mangles, mattresses, rotting wardrobes and chairs. The public come to see these priceless articles auctioned. Dealers and collectors come to buy the odd Staffordshire piece, an occasional Bingham pot or set of old soldier’s medals. The trouble is, the trade’s nonseasonal at this level. To spot the public’s deliberate mistake, as it were, you must go every week and never let up. Sooner or later, there it’ll be – a small precious item going for a song. It’s not easy. To see how difficult it is, go to the auction near where you live. Go several times and you’ll see what dross is offered for sale and
gets bought!
Now, in your half-dozen visits by the law of averages you could have bought for a few coppers at least one item worth a hundred times its auctioned price. The people who actually
did
buy it weren’t simply lucky. They study, read, record, assemble information and a store of knowledge. It’s that which pays off eventually. That, and flair – if you have any.

I stress ‘nonseasonal’ because almost all of the antique business at the posher end is seasonal. It’s too complex and full of idiosyncrasies to give it my full rip here, but in case you ever want to buy or sell anything even vaguely resembling an antique, follow Lovejoy’s Law: All things being adjusted equally, sell in October or November to get the best auction price; buy between May and early September for the lowest prices.

It was viewing day, when you go round the day before the auction and moan at how terrible the junk is, and how there’s cheaper and better stuff in the local market. That way, innocents hear your despair and go away never to return. Result: one less potential buyer. Also, it provides the auctioneer’s assistants with an opportunity for lifting choice items out of the sale and flogging them in secret for a private undisclosed fee. We call it ‘melting down’, and deplore it – unless
we
can get our hands on the stuff, in which case we keep quiet.

I took Sheila in and we milled around with a dozen housewives on the prowl and a handful of barkers. Tinker was there and came over.

‘Any luck?’

‘Yes, Lovejoy. Hello, miss.’

Sheila said hello. We left her leafing through a shelf of drossy books and went among the furniture where nobody could listen in.

‘I’ve got a cracker, Lovejoy,’ Tinker said. ‘You won’t believe this, honest.’

‘You’re having quite a run,’ I commented.

He got the barb and shook it off.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said, ‘but it’s a whizzer. Listen. You’re after a mint pair for that Field I put on to you – right?’ I nodded. ‘I’ve found a cased set going.’

‘Where?’ My mouth dried.

‘Part-exchange, though.’ This was Tinker creating tension. ‘Not a straight sale.’

‘What the hell does that matter?’ I snarled. ‘Who the hell does a straight sale for the good stuff these days anyway? Get on with it.’

‘Keep your hair on.’

We chatted airily about mutual friends while an innocent housewife racked herself over a chest of drawers before marking it carefully on a list and pushed off, steeling herself for tomorrow’s auction.

Tinker drew me close. ‘You know that boatbuilder?’

‘Used to buy off Brad down the creek?’

‘Him. Going to sell a pair of Mortimers, cased.’

‘I don’t believe it, Tinker.’

‘Cross my heart,’ he swore. ‘But he wants a revolving rifle in part-exchange. Must be English.’

I cursed in fury. Tinker maintained a respectful silence till I was worn out.

‘Where the hell can I get one of those?’ I muttered. ‘I’ve not seen one for years.’

I actually happened to have one in my priest’s hole, by Adams of London Bridge, a five-chambered percussion longarm. There’s bother with a spring I’ve never dared touch but otherwise it’s perfect. I cursed the boatbuilder and his parents and any possible off-spring he might hope to have. Why can’t people take the feelings of antiques dealers into account before they indulge in their stupid bloody whimsies? Isn’t that what all these useless sociologists are for? I came manfully out of my sulk. Tinker was waiting patiently.

‘All right, Lovejoy?’

‘Yes. Thanks, Tinker.’ I gave him a couple of notes. ‘When?’

‘Any time,’ he answered. ‘It’ll be first come first served, Lovejoy, so get your skates on. They say Brad’s going down the waterside early tomorrow. Does he know –’

‘The whole bloody world knows it’s me that’s after flinters,’ I said with anguish.

When a punter puts money on a horse at 2–1 odds, as you will know, nothing happens at first. Then, as more and more punters back it, the odds will fall to maybe evens, which means you must risk two quid to win only two, instead of risking two to win four as formerly. In practically the same way, the more people want to buy a thing, the dearer it becomes. Naturally, merchants will explain that costs and heaven-knows-what factors have pushed the price up, but in fact that’s a load of cobblers. Their prices go up
because
more people want a thing. They are simply more certain of selling, and who blames them for wanting to make a fortune?

Gambling is a massive industry. Selling spuds is, too. Buying flintlocks or Geneva-cased chain-transmission Wikelman watches is not a great spectator sport, so the field is smaller. A whisper at one end therefore reverberates through the entire collecting world in a couple of weeks, with the effect that those already in possession of the desired item quickly learn they are in a position to call the tune. They can more or less name their terms. Hence the indispensable need of a cunning barker.

‘I’ll go and see him,’ I said. Nothing makes humanity more morose than an opportunity coming closer and closer as the risks of failure simultaneously grow larger.

A toddler gripped my calf, crying, ‘Dadda! Dadda!’ delightedly. I tried unsuccessfully to shake the little psychopath off and had to wait red-faced until its breathless mother arrived all apologetic to rescue me. The little maniac complained bitterly at having lost its new find as it was dragged back to its pushchair. Sheila was helpless with laughter at the scene. The fact that I was embarrassed as hell of course proved even more highly diverting.

‘Oh, Lovejoy!’ she said, falling about.

‘You can go off people, you know,’ I snarled. ‘Very funny. A spiffing jape.’

‘Oh, Lovejoy!’

‘Mind that apothecary box!’ I pushed her away just before she knocked it off a side table.

This gave her the opportunity to ask about it. I saw through her placatory manoeuvre, but for the life of me I couldn’t resist. It gave me an excuse to fondle the box, a poor example it was true, but they are becoming fairly uncommon and you have to keep on the lookout.

Watch your words – not an ‘apothecary’s’ box. It wasn’t his, in the sense that he carried it about full of rectangular bottles and lovely nooky felt-lined compartments for pills and Galenical ‘simples’, as his preparations were called. It belonged usually to a household, and was made to stand on a bureau, a medicine cabinet if you like. You dosed yourself from it, or else hired an apothecary, forerunner of the general practitioner, to give advice on what to use from it. The current cheapness of these elegant little cabinets never ceases to amaze me. I wish they would really soar to a hundred times their present give away price, then maybe the morons who buy them and convert them into mini-cocktail cabinets would leave well alone and get lost.

You find all sorts of junk put in by unscrupulous dealers and auctioneers besides the bottles. This one had a deformed old hatched screwdriver thing with a flanged blade and a pair of old guinea-scales imitating the original physick balance; I dropped them back in, snorting scornfully. Sheila heard my opinion with synthetic attention and nodded in all the right places.

‘If I catch somebody doing it, darling, I’ll smash it on his head,’ she promised as we strolled round.

‘You’ll do no such thing.’

‘No?’

‘Smash a
brick
on his head, and bring the apothecary box to me.’

‘For you, Lovejoy, anything.’

After an hour Sheila was protesting. Inspecting stuffs best done by osmosis. Don’t rush, stroll. Be casual. Saunter, wander, learn.

‘We keep going round and round, Lovejoy,’ she complained, sitting to take off a shoe to rub her foot like they do.

‘Shut up,’ I said, wandering off. Jim, one of the elderly attendants, guffawed.

‘Chivalrous as ever, eh, Lovejoy?’ he said, and I was in with an excuse.

‘This junk’s enough to make a saint swear,’ I groused. ‘Never seen so much rubbish since Field’s stuff came through.’ He was aggrieved at that. Nobody likes their own stuff being recognized for the rubbish it is.

‘We sold some good stuff that day,’ he said, quick as a flash. ‘If you hadn’t gone to Cumberland you’d know better.’

That explained why I’d missed it. I was beginning to feel, better as things clicked into place.

‘Nothing still around from it, is there?’ I asked casually.

He grinned. ‘Do leave orf, Lovejoy. It was donkey’s years back.’

‘Oh, you never know,’ I said, hinting like mad.

He shook his head. ‘No – we played that one straight,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘Practically all of it went the same week as we got it.’

‘Just a thought, Jim. Some things do get left behind occasionally.’

‘Pigs might fly,’ he said.

I played casual another minute then collected Sheila and we made it back to the car.

We pulled out, rolling against protesting traffic to get started.

‘We have one more call to make before home,’ I told her. ‘Game?’

She sighed. ‘These places always make me feel so grubby. I need a bath.’

‘Same here,’ I shrugged. The motor coughed into emphysematous life and we were under power. ‘What’s that to do with anything?’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Down the creek.’

‘Is it a tip from Tinker?’

‘You guessed, eh?’

‘It was pathetically obvious, Lovejoy.’

‘You’re making me uneasy.’

And she was. Tinker was loyal, wasn’t he? I paid him well by comparison with other dealers’ barkers. I never disclosed a confidence. Twice I’d bailed him out. Once I’d rescued him from Old Bill, and once saved him getting done over by the Brighton lads. But you could never tell. Was it this suspicion that was worrying me? Something niggled in my memory, something I had seen.

We were out of town and down on the estuary in no time. It’s not much of a place, four small boatbuilders in corrugated iron sheds, the usual paraphernalia of the pleasure-boating fraternity and a few boats hauled up on the mud by the wharf. Those big Essex barges used to ply between here and Harwich in the old days, crossing to the Blackwater and even London, but the two that are left are only used for showing tourists the Colne estuary and racing once a year, a put-up job.

I found Barton planing wood. The lights were on inside his boathouse, though outside was still broad daylight. You could see the town hall clock in the distance some five miles off. I waited until he stopped. Well, what he was making could be a valuable antique in years to come. Never interrupt a craftsman.

‘Hello, Lovejoy.’ He stopped eventually and nodded to Sheila as we sat on planks.

‘When are you going to give this boat lark up, Dick?’ I said. ‘You could go straight.’