The Rich And The Profane

by Jonathan Gash

  Then the wind changed. He raised both hands in surrender, wearily waved me down. I reversed to the mansion. We were at the front door before he came puffing up. Rosa was in mortal anguish at such carryings-on, especially when I entered without knocking. She kept trying to pull me to a standstill.

  ‘Lovejoy,’ she hissed. ‘For goodness’ sake. I haven’t got my best—’

  ‘Rosa,’ I said wearily. ‘Will you shut it? I’m in enough trouble.’

  ‘Trouble?’ she squeaked. ‘You’re in ... ?’ She was almost in tears, ‘I don’t know what’s happening, Lovejoy.’

  ‘It’s the antiques game. Nobody ever does.’

  ‘I’ve got no hat.’

  We stood waiting in a hall the size of Crystal Palace. Martin followed, slammed the door. I asked Rosa conversationally, ‘Did you count the locks on that display cabinet at the hotel, like I asked?’

  ‘No.’ She looked stricken. ‘I thought you were joking.’ ‘There’s no jokes in the antiques game either.’ It wasn’t her fault she was honest. A misspent childhood. I looked at Martin. ‘Which way, b’wana?’

  ‘The withdrawing room.’ He ushered us in. The room wore Edwardian wallpaper, guinea an inch, had great bay windows and a wealth of antique furniture so beautiful I groaned aloud.

  Jocina Crucifex turned her glare on us. Unhappiness reigned.

  ‘In future, Lovejoy,’ she said, voice a blizzard, ‘you will comply—’

  ‘Oh, aye. Much good compliance has done you.’ ‘Silence!’ she screeched, so loud that Rosa jumped a mile. ‘I will not have you coming here with some cleaning woman and—’

  ‘Lover,’ I said calmly. Rosa gasped. ‘Not cleaning woman, please. Mrs Vidamour and I are lovers.’

  ‘Lovejoy!’ Rosa bleated. ‘This will be all over the island!’ She couldn’t quite make outrage, and settled for annoyance. ‘It’s no good, love. Mrs Crucifex knows everything here and on the mainland as well. Please respect her superior position.’

  ‘But it’s not—’

  ‘True?’ I said gently, looking at Jocina. ‘If you say so, Rosa. Mrs Crucifex will respect our confidence. She’s a lady.’ I could have throttled Rosa. Had I or had I not told her to agree with everything I said? Talk to the wall. Women and infants never take a blind bit of notice of me. ‘I brought Rosa to prove I’m concealing nothing, Jocina. Mrs Vidamour will help unconditionally. I need her.’

  Mrs Crucifex took her time lighting a cigarette from an onyx skull on the Sheraton table, her very movements silent music. The way I felt, looking at her, my letter wasn’t far wrong. I stood like a kid caught scrumping.

  She finally spoke. ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s essential for the con trick.’ Rosa started yet another denial. I quelled her with a raised finger. ‘I’ve had enough from you.’ My voice was tight. ‘Give my plan away, I’ll do you. Not another word.’

  Martin’s voice cut in. ‘Lovejoy’s prevaricating, Jocina. He has no plan.’

  ‘Then why am I here, nerk?’ I shot back. ‘You’re desperate to raise money for the prior’s religious order. So here’s what we do. We pull our con trick, and make a king’s ransom. You keep ninety per cent, to help ...’ I heard their intake of breath, and relented. ‘To help anyone you care to.’

  ‘Impossible!’ Martin for once ignored his wife. ‘You’re as secret as a parade, Lovejoy. A confidence trick needs subterfuge.’

  I smiled at his error. ‘The best con tricks are the ones with the biggest publicity. Remember the brilliantly successful Beraha? He forged gold sovereigns, each containing 124.64 grains of measured gold, 1.37 grains more than England’s official coin. He got away with it, by simply thinking big and bigger!’

  ‘It’s gold, then?’ Jocina demanded, quick on her toes.

  ‘No. It’s an antique. It’s the commonest trick in the book. Everybody who ever buys something for herself, some trinket to wear, falls for it every single time.’ I turned to Martin. ‘We advertise it. Nonstop, every TV channel, every newspaper.’

  He gaped. Jocina stared, judging and guessing, angry at knowing that she was missing some obvious thing by a mile.

  ‘Will you bear the cost, Lovejoy?’ she said after a few throbs.

  ‘No.’ I tried to look like Big John Sheehan does, restful but lethal. I couldn’t. ‘But I’ll arrange it - free. Will that do?’

  ‘Here’s the catch, Jocina,’ Martin said, all satisfaction.

  ‘I have proof I can do it.’ I felt cool for once. Simple theft always creates an impression. ‘Your lounge display of porcelain at the Roi de Normandie Hotel. Those locks were picked today. One of your pieces was stolen.’

  ‘That’s impossible!’ Martin almost shouted. ‘It’s thief-proof. And it’s electronically tagged.’

  Jocina was close to a smile. She wasn’t as bad at guessing as I’d thought. She held out her hand. I nodded to Rosa, who passed her the shopping bag.

  ‘You felt lovely while you lasted,’ I said sadly to the decanter in farewell. Carefully Jocina placed it on the table. She signed her husband to keep quiet.

  ‘Where does Mrs Vidamour come in, exactly?’

  ‘Rosa will run the floor show,’ I lied. ‘She has already booked seven of the music hall acts we’ll need. I’m banking on twelve. The first arrives tomorrow.’

  Rosa quavered, ‘But I haven’t!’

  ‘Rosa thinks we’ll only need ten,’ I thundered to shut the gabby cow up. ‘She’s wrong. You can’t stint a con trick in antiques. Not with the amount of money I’m going to bring you.’

  ‘Jocina—’ Martin began, but got nowhere. His wife sank on to the couch and motioned us to be seated.

  ‘Martin, be a dear. Ring for tea. Lovejoy marches to a different drum. Let us listen. Maybe we shan’t make the same errors this time.’

  He winced and obeyed. I began speaking. I too was eager to hear me, to find out exactly what I planned. I’m at my best out-guessing my own lies, if nowt else.

  As I talked and talked, I couldn’t help looking about, feeling the loveliness of the antiques around me. Women really have the knack of positioning furniture. Men can’t do it. People call it style, but they’re wrong. It’s character. I once knew a woman in Bloomsbury. She kept a young bloke - her methods I won’t go into - in a flat overlooking Queens Square. I brought her a small Victorian twiggie, a wicker basket chair folk still call a twiggen in Lancashire. It was free of that hideous varnish that dealers forever spoil such treasures with. I was really worried, carrying it up the lady’s stairs, because twiggies are notorious for ruining a room’s look.

  She belonged to the University of London, very august. She always looked lost, scatterbrained, and smoked like a Battersea chimney. No ‘style’ as women’s magazines define it, no. But she seized that twiggie with a yelp of glee, got me to shift a genuine Earl of Pembroke table - made by George Kemp of Cornhill about 1760, nowadays worth a street - then moved a small Richard Wright oil painting. It blended like a dream! I looked at the room in the early hours the following day and marvelled. Move this a few inches, balance that, and harmony reigns. See what I mean? No style as such, but character by the busload. I still can’t figure it out. Chromosomes, I shouldn’t wonder.

  Jocina had it too, but with style in abundance. Talking and inventing - note the absence of explanation in there -I wondered if you could make a general rule for women. Style plus character equals class, like that?

  ‘How do we—?’ Martin interrupted.

  He’d poured the tea, brought by some minion. I wondered if I’d glimpsed the serf before somewhere. Albansham Priory, perhaps? She went out before I could place her.

  ‘Let me finish, Martin.’ I’d only just got going. ‘My display is on show. The public will be everywhere, grockles by the thousand.’ Grockles are tourists. ‘The climax is a raffle.’

  ‘Displays of what, Lovejoy?’ Martin practically bawled.

  Jocina raised her eyebrows, amused that resolve was such a rarity among her men.

  ‘A
fair question, really, Lovejoy,’ she ruled. ‘You’ve already proved you can steal an antique on public display from a hotel foyer. But can you provide one, if that’s your game?’

  ‘No.’ I saw her assurance flicker for just one anxious moment, TinkerbelPs wilting light before the audience applauds it back to life. ‘I’ll provide the dross. Someone else provides the genuine priceless one.’ I smiled. ‘Deal?’

  ‘Priceless? How much is priceless?’ Remember what I said, hearts and money?

  ‘Enough,’ I said, swigging my tea to the dregs and rising to go, ‘to buy a priory and five mansions, with a farm or two. At the very least. Look missus,’ I said as Rosa almost keeled over and the room went still in awe. ‘Please don’t think I’m a scavenger, but it wouldn’t have bankrupted you to dish out a slice of fruit cake, would it?’

  She looked at me, at Rosa. Martin she ignored. ‘I do apologize, Lovejoy. Could you find time to come to supper? On my boat in the marina.’

  ‘Not tomorrow,’ Martin began. ‘You have two appointments—’

  ‘Pleased to accept,’ I said, making for the door. ‘Incidentally, that hotel cabinet’s rubbish.’

  ‘Lovejoy!’ Rosa ground out in anguish.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Vidamour.’ Jocina, smiling, came as far as the main door. ‘I’m beginning to get the hang of this.’

  We drove away under Martin’s glare. I was worried. If Jocina really was following my plot, I was in deeper trouble now than when I’d arrived. I complained to Rosa about always feeling hungry in Guernsey. We stopped at a nosh bar in St Peter Port for fish and chips. Rosa asked me what was going on. I was a bit narked, because something was irking me. Naturally I blamed Rosa. I borrowed money from her to pay for the grub. Then, staring at the harbour, I remembered.

  Jocina’s serf. She’d looked into the motor at that point-to-point, before I’d scarpered to the woods away from the Plod, when I was being taken to watch Florida’s horses. It raised all sorts of questions. I couldn’t answer a single one, having a load of music hall acts to hire, with no gelt.

  Theft can be almost everything a woman is. Beautiful, bright, entertaining, really captivating. It can also be unbelievably vicious. My question for now, though, was how thieves get caught. My rule is this: thieves are close by. It works, with very few exceptions.

  Not long since, Christ Church library, Oxford, missed two books. Then over eighty precious volumes - manuscripts, texts - went absent, from Oxford University and London sources. What intrepid thieves, you might think, to raid such ivory towers! Who on earth could those thieves be? Cockney East End scoundrels? Bounders newly sprung from Dartmoor Prison and up to their old tricks? The books were dazzlingly valuable: Isaac Newton’s Principia, John Locke’s philosophies, Copernicus, Edmund Haley of comet fame. It was especially clever burglary, because the only people properly admitted were academics belonging to ancient colleges, who of course were above suspicion. When I heard the news, I smiled. Sure enough, an eminent academic - composer, lecturer, Oxford University don of Oriel and Queen’s, a BBC presenter no less - was arrested and slammed in clink, a further 113 counts of nicking and deception being included at Oxford’s grim Crown Court. The blighter even had boxes of them under his bed. See? Thieves are never far away. Murderers are different; they sometimes nip to Guernsey.

  I explained it to Rosa in her sitting room. ‘It’s a problem.’ ‘Why?’ She baked her own bread, a godsend because it toasts better than that sliced latex our shops sell nowadays. Her marmalade was too thin. I wondered if I ought to tell her, or if she’d go mental. ‘You told Mrs Crucifex it’d be public.’

  Some people. I begged mutely for more crumpets. ‘Rosa, love. Please remember that I lie.’

  ‘Then why tell me about that Oxford don?’

  ‘Because somebody will steal the antique I’m going to put on display. That’s what my scam will be; an exhibition of several identical paintings, with only one genuine. Then I’ll know it’ll be him.’

  She seated herself slowly. ‘I’m frightened when you speak like that.’ Then asked, ‘It’ll be who?’

  ‘The thief.’ I cleared my throat, quelling her question. ‘Actually there might be two robbers.’

  ‘You as well?’ She put her hand to her throat, her eyes roving everywhere over my face. ‘Stealing?’

  ‘No, Rosa. You.’ I looked at the plates. ‘And not stealing. Putting something in. Is that the only grub? I’m famished.’ She hurried to serve, but looking at me. I hoped her phone bill was paid up, because I had a couple of dozen calls to make as soon as she’d gone to bed.

  ‘Look, love.’ I tried hard to appear thoughtful, though what good have thoughts ever done for mankind? ‘Everybody cheats. Look at T. S. Eliot.’

  My mind went ‘Eh?’ even as Rosa said, ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, everybody nowadays pretends that T. S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land, that he didn’t nick it from whatsis-name - Madison Cawein, the assistant cashier in that Cincinnati snooker hall. But he did.’

  ‘What has that got to do with us?’ Rosa asked.

  ‘It proves it, see?’ Actually, I didn’t know. But somewhere in there was a vague truth. I felt it. ‘Defraud once - antiques, politics, even love - and it’s risky. The trick is to keep on tricking.’

  ‘How can we do that?’

  ‘We reveal only four-fifths.’

  ‘Of what?’

  Women’s questions wear me out when I’ve no answers left.

  ‘Of our fraud, love.’

  ‘Must we tell the police, Lovejoy?’ she asked, out of the blue.

  We talked of shopping. I told her about a youngish bloke I’d once seen pushing a supermarket trolley. He asked a woman customer what he ought to buy to make a simple meal. His missus was in hospital, he was to cook for his two kiddies. The bird he asked was really pleased to help, told him about suet and cheeses. Another woman eagerly joined in. Then a third. Considerate, no? No, because acrimony broke out - cooking recipes, brands of butter, how you baste the carrots and God knows what. The blazing row finally engulfed the supermarket. The poor bloke silently ditched his wheelie and crept away unnoticed, probably took his children to their granny’s instead.

  ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth, Rosa,’ I concluded. ‘So no police.’

  ‘But we will tell them eventually, won’t we?’ said this gentle soul.

  I looked her squarely in the eye. ‘Hand on my heart, dwoorlink. Sincerely.’ I even squeezed her hand to show affection, in case she felt particularly kind towards a hungry guest. She coloured, shyly withdrew her hand. I felt cheated. I’d scrubbed my teeth like a maniac. Waste of time.

  Soon as she was abed I rang the police. Wrong.

  19

  Police?’ i faked confidence. ‘Can you tell me how to get in touch with a police officer? Name of Summer, in East

  Anglia.’

  They passed me about a few times, then I got some thick-voiced bloke who told me nothing, said to visit the cop shop in the morning. I said I couldn’t, I was busy putting on a show. He said to drop in anyway. I started phoning East Anglia, got mad when people were in bed, the unfeeling swine.

  Rosa’s phone bill took it on the chin. Three hours later I was done for. It was late, all Guernsey abed. With my last erg I phoned Gesso’s Desdemona. No, Gesso wasn’t back. Desdemona was now seriously worried, the police doing nothing, did I think something really could have happened. I said oh, Gesso’ll turn up. I was halfway up the stairs in my stockinged feet when there was a knock at the door. A pleasant sort of knock. Restrained.

  Her front door had a small vestibule. You could see into it through stained glass. I dithered. At this hour? Some guest off the late ferry, blundering around St Peter Port? I opened the door.

  The chap standing there was portly, but neatly dressed, collar, tie, overcoat, specs.

  ‘Your car’s double parked, sir,’ he said, all affable.

  ‘Sorry, mate. I’ve got no motor.’ Was he police?

  He consulted a
paper. His mufti, his geniality, a million other clues should have warned me, but I’m basically stupid. Did Mrs Vidamour have a motor she didn’t want me to know about? Or one of the other four guests, workaholics all, I hadn’t yet seen?

  ‘Could you come and look, sir?’

  I put my shoes on and followed him into the gloaming. He suddenly stopped. Hands grabbed, swung me round. I got clobbered. I’d been beaten by sticks before, truncheons even, and tried to make a run for it as two - two, I was sure - slammed blows across my shoulders, back, bum, thighs. I didn’t get a yard. They held me down, kept up the steady and silent battering. The polite bloke was silhouetted against a street light, watching. I tried to shout, but I’d got my arms up to shield my head and my yells were muffled. My mistake. They were too cool to bother with bits that might show, and ignored my face.

  Trying to run, I fell, scraping my knee hideously. Something ripped. I made another dash. The urbane bloke kneed me. Somebody chuckled, bastard, walking round me as I cowered, choosing spots to whack. I rolled about the pavement, conscious of the rising pain. It’s odd. In case it’s never happened to you, please observe that suffering doesn’t come in spurts, one with each thump. There is that, of course, but the hurt quickly becomes an independent entity. It engulfs you in a rapidly swelling tide quite as if you were drowning in a pain flood. You start retching and vomiting after, say, fifteen seconds. Done expertly, punishment doesn’t take long to reach this point.

  ‘Leave, Lovejoy. Understood?’

  ‘Mmmh.’ My repartee.

  ‘Tomorrow, no later. And I do mean go.’

  They left me lying against Rosa’s decorative hedge -boxwood? - of little bushes, no thorns, small leaves, actually not much use as plants go. I was sick for a while, drowning in my ocean of ache. It’s only then that the real stabs start, doubling you over and making you retch every time you move. Somewhere nearby a car started up. Rain was falling. Guernsey wetness that seemed to start a couple of feet above my head. It’s gentle stuff, not those forcible raps that clout your pate in East Anglia.