The Tartan Ringers (22 page)

Predictably, the porcelain was anything. The retainers had clearly preserved what impressed them most. They’d gone for knobs and colours, hoarding with knobs on, so to speak. A few times they’d guessed right. A royal blue Doulton vase, marked ‘FB 1884’, indicated that factory’s famous deaf creator whose wares Queen Victoria herself so admired. It might not bring much, but it’d ‘thicken’ the rest. A lone Chelsea red anchor plate in the Kakiemon style – here vaguely parrot-looking birds, brown and blue figures on white and flowers – would bring half the price of a car, properly auctioned. I loved it, and said hello, smiling at the thrilling little bong it made in my chest. The stilt marks were there, and those pretty telltale speckles in the painting. The rest were mundane. Sadly, sober George the Fifth stuff. Not one Art Deco piece among them. That set me thinking.

The paintings were ridiculous recent portrait travesties, some modern body’s really bad idea of what a gen-yoo-wine Highland chief would have been wearing. Talk about fancy dress. These daft-posh portraits are so toffee-nosed they become pantomime. The one painting I did take note of was a little scene of Tachnadray, done with skill in, of all things, milk casein paint. These rarities give themselves away by their very matt foreground. (Be careful with them; they watersplash easily.) You let skim milk go sour, and dry the curd out to a powder. Then you make a paste of it with dilute ammonia (the eleventh-century monks used urine) and it’s this which you mix with powder paint. ‘Pity you’re very new, though,’ I told it. The painter had varnished it to make it resemble an oil painting. This is quite needless, because casein is tough old stuff. You can even polish the final work to give it a marvellous lightness. It’s brittle, though, so you paint on rigid board . . . I found myself frowning at the painting. Two figures were seated on the lawn, quite like statues. Modern dress, so there was no intent to antiquize.

A wheelchair’s tyres whispered. ‘What now, Ian?’

‘I think some painters must have frigging good eyesight, love. This casein-painting’s too minute for words.’ Casually I replaced it. ‘Pity it’s practically new.’

‘Is it any good?’ She was oh so detached.

‘High quality. The artist still about?’

‘Me.’

I nodded, not surprised. Now I knew it all. ‘You’re a natural, love. Who taught you about casein paint?’ No answer, so under her steady stare I decided to swim with the tide. ‘Your dad? Or Michelle?’

‘Yes. Michelle.’

And egg tempera? You’ve a great career ahead of you, love. Copy a few medieval manuscripts for me and—’

‘Stop that!’ Michelle came in. ‘I’ll not have you inveigling Miss Elaine into your deceitful ways!’

With Elaine laughing, really honestly falling about, I escaped into Duncan’s workshop for my stint with the panelling. Michelle had come a fraction too late.

Later that day Mrs Buchan brought up two candidates to help Michelle in the office. One was a plump lass, fawnish hair, beneath a ton of trendy bangles and earrings, lovely eyes. The other was Mrs Moncreiffe, an elderly twig scented with lavender and mothballs.

Michelle chose the twig.

About ten o’clock I was working my way through a bottle of white wine in my garret, racking my two neurones to see if I’d forgotten anything, when the stairs creaked. Michelle came in with a woman’s purposeful complicity, placing her back to the door edge and closing it with hands behind her. This manoeuvre keeps the woman’s face towards the occupant. They have these natural skills.

‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Have a seat.’

‘I . . . I just wanted to say that the catalogue’s up to date.’ She made to perch on the bed, rose quickly at the implications. I gave her my chair and flopped horizontal. ‘We only have this evening’s list to do. Mrs Moncreiffe has proved a godsend.’

‘I’m glad. Out with it, love.’

‘How many more days before . . . ?’

‘Soon.’ I didn’t want to be tied. ‘Michelle. Your son Joseph sent down an original antique, didn’t he? Shona sent Robert after it in the Mawdslay, Tachnadray’s one car.’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was a whisper.

‘I don’t know quite what happened, but Joseph was fetched back. He’s hidden at
Shooters
, because he’s supposed to have killed that driver. Dispute over the money, was it?’

Michelle nodded bravely. ‘They . . . assumed so.’ I watched admiringly. Women lie with such conviction.

‘Tough for you, love. Torn loyalty and all that.’

‘You’re . . . you’re really nothing to do with that London college, are you?’

‘No.’ I pretended anger. ‘Have you been phoning people?’

‘No, no. I just . . . surmise, that’s all.’ She regarded her twisting hands for a moment. ‘You’re not police. And you talk to things. You’re a bit mad, yet . . .’

‘Thank God for that “yet”.’ I gave her a sincere smile. ‘Don’t worry, love. I’m on Elaine’s side. I’ll honestly do the best I can when the time comes.’

She nodded and stood, watching me. ‘I wish,’ she got out eventually, ‘we’d met in other circumstances. Better ones.’

‘We practically did.’ I shooed her out. ‘I’ve got to think. Do Tinker’s call on your own tonight, love.’

Eleven o’clock I went with a krypton hand lamp and a small jeweller’s loupe to look at the painting. It had gone. That told me as much as if I’d studied it for a fortnight in Agnew’s viewing room. One of the two figures gazing so soulfully in the painting had been Michelle. The other had been a man slightly older, but not Duncan. He’d looked in charge, attired in chieftain’s dress.

Which called for a long think to midnight. To one o’clock. To one-thirty. More deep thoughts for another hour.

Tinker was still swilling at the pub by the old flour mill. I told him to phone Trembler early tomorrow morning and just say, ‘Lovejoy.’

‘Right,’ he croaked, anxious. ‘Here, Lovejoy. When do we come? Antioch keeps asking. There’s frigging trucks everywhere—’

‘Now,’ I said, throat dry. ‘Roll it, Tinker.’ I lowered the receiver on his relieved cackle.

E
CONOMY’S ALWAYS SCARED
me. Or do I mean economics? Maybe both, if they’re not the same thing. I mean, when you hear that Brazil is a trillion zlotniks in the red the average bloke switches off. Mistakes which are beyond one man’s own redemption simply go off the scale, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe that was why I’d run from Sidoli’s rumble. Plus cowardice, of course.

The books I’d got from Inverness, paperback re-runs, showed Duncan a few more possibilities. He was hard to persuade.

‘This pedestal sideboard from Loudon’s
Encyclopaedia
of 1833,’ I told his disbelief. ‘Plain as anything, simple. Never mind that architects call it cabinetmaker Gothic—’

‘Make it? Out of new wood?’

‘Out of that.’ A wardrobe, slanted and damp-warped, leant tiredly in the workshop. ‘By suppertime.’

‘What about those great pedestals?’

‘The design’s only like a strut across two bricks,’ I pointed out. ‘So cut those old stairs Robert’s trying to mend in the east wing. The wood’s good. The pieces are almost the right size, for God’s sake.’

We settled that after argument. Two new lads had come to help Duncan, relatives of relatives. One was a motor mechanic, the other a school-leaver. That gave me the idea. Motors mean metal, which means brass rails, which with old stair wood means running sideboards.

‘Make a pair of running sideboards. They’re straight in period, Duncan. All it is, three shelves each with a brass rail surround, on a vertical support at each end. Put it on wooden feet instead of castors, French polish to show it’s original, and it’ll look straight 1830.’

Grumbling, I did a quick sketch. Sometimes I think it’d be quicker to do every frigging thing myself. ‘Finish all three of these by sevenish, then I can age them sharpish.’

‘All this haste’s not my usual behaviour,’ Duncan said.

‘Times,’ I said irritably, ‘are changing at Tachnadray.’

Honestly. You sweat blood trying to rescue people, and what thanks do you get?

Michelle’s first lesson in the perils of auctioneering. Explaining an auction’s difficult enough. Explaining a crooked one to an unsullied soul like Michelle was nearly impossible. We were in the Great Hall.

‘Auctioneers speak distinctly, slowly, in this country, love. It’s in America they talk speedy gibberish.’

For the purpose I was the auctioneer, she the tally girl with piles of paper. She listened so solemnly I started smiling. Older women are such good company.

‘There’s a word we use: stream. Always keep a catalogue in front of you clipped open, no matter what. The cards from which you compiled the catalogue are in your desk. Those two, the catalogue and cards are your stream. Right?’

‘Maybe I should have the cards on my desk,’ she mused.

‘You think so?’ Casually I leant my elbow over so one card pile fell to the floor. ‘See? A customer could accidentally do that, and steal a few cards while pretending to help as you picked them up. Then he’d know what we paid.’

‘But that’s unfair!’ she flamed.

‘Look, Michelle.’ I knelt to recover the scattered cards. ‘The people coming are all sorts. Some’ll be ordinary folk who’ve struggled to get a day off from the factory. Others will come in private planes. But they’ll all share one terrible, grim attribute: they will do anything for what we’ve got. They’ll beg, bribe, steal.’ God give me strength and protect me from innocence. I rose, dusted my knees. ‘Cards,’ I reminded her, ‘in the desk. Catalogue on top.’

‘Now I’m a customer.’ I swaggered up. She got herself settled, pencilled a note. ‘I ask, Where’ll the stream be at twelve-thirty, missus?’

She thought. ‘You’re asking what lot number the auction will have reached by then?’

‘Well done.’

‘But how do we actually
sell
things?’

‘Say I’m the auctioneer. Tally girl’s on the left, always, except in Sotheby’s book sales, where they know no better. Not real gentlemen, see.’ I chuckled at the old trade slight. ‘I call out, Lot Fifty-One, Nailsea-type glass handbell—’

‘No. Fifty-One is a gentleman’s Wedgwood 1790 stock pin, blue-dip jasper with a George Stubbs horse in white relief—’

‘Michelle,’ I said, broken. ‘I’m
pretending
.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

‘The auctioneer calls out the catalogue number, Lot whatever, and then says, Who’ll start me off? or something. The bids commence, and finally Trembler calls, Going, going, gone! or Once, twice, gone! depending on how he feels. Once he bangs a hammer, that’s it. He’ll also say a name – Smith of Birmingham, say. It’s your job to instantly write out a call chit. It’s the bill, really. Lot Fifty-One, two hundred quid, Smith. So you get that chit across to Mr Smith quick as a flash. That entitles Smith to pay Mrs Moncreiffe. Her only job is to accept payment, stamp the call chit Paid In Full, and tick her list.’

‘Must I provide Mr Trembler with a hammer?’

‘No, love. Auctioneers always have their own. Trembler’s isn’t a real gavel. It’s only a decorated wooden reel his sister’s lad made him.’

‘How sweet.’ She smiled, scribbling like the clappers.

Apologetically I cleared my throat for the difficult bit. ‘Er, now, Michelle, love. There’s a few rules.’

‘Never issue a call chit unless I’m sure?’ she offered knowingly.

‘Eh? Oh yes. Good, good.’ This was going to be more difficult than I’d supposed. ‘Ahem, sometimes, love, you might not actually hear some of the bids. If so, you mustn’t mention it. Trembler will see them, because . . .’ I tried to find concealing words. Because he’d be making them up, ‘taking bids off the wall’. ‘Because, he’s had special training, see? Bidders have secret signs arranged with Trembler beforehand. It’s silly, but that’s how they like doing it. They’re all rivals.’

I ahemed again. ‘And there’s another thing. There’ll be two telephones against the windows. People will be telephoning bids in for particular lots. The, er, assistants bidding from the phones are treated as genuine —er, sorry, I meant as if bidders were genuinely here.’

‘Telephonists to receive call chits,’ Michelle mouthed, pencil flying.

‘I’ll draft call chits with you when Trembler arrives. One last thing, love. Never, never contradict Trembler. Never look doubtful. Never interrupt.’

‘What if I think he’s made a mistake?’

I took her face in my hands. ‘Especially not then, love.’

She moved back, looking. ‘All this is honest, isn’t it?’

‘Michelle,’ I said, offended. ‘Trembler’s a fellow of a royal institute. We’ve already certified that Sotheby’s and Christie’s rules govern every lot. We’ve certified compliance with Parliament’s published statutes.’ I gave a bitter laugh, almost overdoing it. ‘If our auction isn’t legal, it won’t be for want of trying.’

Michelle stood to embrace me, misty. ‘I didn’t mean anything, really I didn’t.’

‘Am I interrupting?’ Shona, silhouetted in the door light.

‘Sealing a bargain.’ I thought I was so smooth.

‘A . . . gentleman’s just arrived in Dubneath, calling himself Cheviot Yale. He told Mary he’s for Tachnadray. He’s just waiting, saying nothing.’ She was still being accusing. ‘His name sounds made up. Is it?’

‘No.’ I’d not felt so happy for a long time. ‘That’s the name he was born with. People call him Trembler.’

No way of stopping it now.

The Caithness National Bank manager was delighted with us. A big-eared man with a harf-harf laugh he made political use of during Trembler’s curt exposition. Trembler was doing the con with his episcopalian voice, always a winner.

‘In requesting a separate account,’ he intoned, ‘I don’t wish to impute criticism of the Mistress of Tachnadray.’

‘Of course not, sir.’ On the desk lay Trembler’s personal card and personal bank account number at the august Glyn Mills of Whitehall, London. Even when starving Trembler keeps that precious account in credit. It doesn’t have much in it, but the reputation of an eight-year solvency in Whitehall is worth its weight in gold. Trembler gave a cadaverous smile straight out of midwinter.

‘In my profession,’ he said grimly, ‘it falls to me sadly to participate in the demise of reputations of many noble families. Normally, it would be regarded as natural to use the lady’s own account. But international collectors and dealers from London—’ Trembler tutted; the banker shook his head at the notion of wicked money-grabbers – ‘are of a certain disposition. They demand,’ Trembler chanted reproachfully, ‘financial immediacy. The young Mistress’s authority would carry little weight.’