Pearlhanger

by Jonathan Gash

  Lydia arrived sevenish. One look at her face and I knew something was wrong. I’d sent her negotiating all day for some tallow-candle maker’s equipment, mid-Regency, from those Bury rogues.

  ‘What is it, sunshine?’

  Her gaze was on me, her eyes brimming with sorrow. She said, ‘Oh, Lovejoy,’ in that hopeless voice I really don’t like. ‘I had to come through Montwell.’

  ‘So?’

  I saw Chandler in a restaurant with Mr Tierney’s secretary.’ I said nothing. She went on, ‘The one you’ve been seeing so much of lately, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Look. I can explain—’

  ‘And can you explain why already there are policemen patrolling Tierney’s auction yard?’

  ‘Here,’ I said with sudden indignation. ‘You don’t come through Montwell from St Edmundsbury.’

  ‘All right, Lovejoy. I admit I was checking.’

  See what I mean about women and slyth? But it was really disturbing. I began questioning her, chapter and verse, and finished up telling all – well, nearly all.

  She heard me out.

  ‘So when Mr Sheehan had it rated for insurance,’ she reasoned, ‘he would blame Mr Deamer?’

  ‘Mmmmh,’ I said, thoughtless in my gloom.

  She said quietly, ‘Because Mr Sheehan is prominently antisocial, Lovejoy?’

  Too late I saw my mistake. ‘You surely don’t think—’

  Her hand was held out imperiously. ‘That pendant, Lovejoy.’

  She undid the box and lifted the pendant against the light. I tried dissuading but it’s hopeless when she’s like this. It took her two minutes of silent concentration with a hand lens before she spotted it. Her face was white. Hands on her lap, she observed me with eyes like stone.

  ‘Lovejoy. You’ve made a deliberate mistake.’

  I was amazed. ‘Me? Are you sure? Let’s see—’

  ‘You’ve deliberately hatched part of the epoxy base’s underlayer, to show that the pearl’s fraudulent.’ She wouldn’t give it me. ‘Lovejoy. Do you know what would happen? Mr Sheehan would have purchased your forgery, and wreaked vengeance on Mr Deamer, Mr Chatto and Mrs Vernon.’ Sounded all right to me, but her eyes were brimming with tears. ‘Oh, Lovejoy. How could you want such a—?’

  ‘Honestly.’ I was up and pacing agitatedly. ‘The things you say. Do you suppose for one minute that—’

  ‘Well, it shan’t happen.’ She rose with that poisonous purity women know and love.

  My vision darkened. I’d slogged bloody weeks, bankrupted myself and alienated a galaxy. ‘Oh no?’

  ‘Your evil designs will avail you nothing,’ she said straight out of a Corelli passion rouser. Then she chucked the pendant into the fire.

  Chapter 26

  DYING EMBERS CRINKLE. While I watched from the rug the fire glow faded from red to black, then black to grey powder, tiny gunshots and distant tingling cymbals sounding. The grate was an entire world. Miniature avalanches of white ash trembled, fell. Coke caverns tumbled and spat. Looking into cinders is a prelude to madness. Put as harshly as Lydia said, all right I admit it sounded pretty gothic and immoral. But what’s to be done when morality is helpless, and evil rides the land? I honestly do wish that sometimes women would make allowance for purity of conviction in a man, but they never do. It’s a weakness that makes me question their basic honesty.

  All finished now. Fingers would watch the pub clock, and go home. Deamer and Chatto would make a fortune by selling their replicas as genuine. It might never get detected, unless another divvie chanced upon it. And they could claim that Lovejoy the divvie had once been charged with murder while trying to possess it. No better authentication among dealers.

  Everything in antiques is time. That’s why this game’s so much like life itself, because all life is time. Normally I’m basically kind and unselfish. Everybody knows. I should have absorbed this disappointment with little more than a shrug. Not her fault of course that Lydia had so little sense, being a bird and therefore unable to see the main issues with my transparent clarity. But forgiving her didn’t help the scam, which was now extinguished like the fire ash. I’d lost.

  The misshapen gold mass was on the tile fender, long since cold. I’d got it out with the tongs from the fire tiger. The pearls were gone, the tiny genuine scotch baroques and my lovely fake massive one. Herbie’s lovely goldwork was heat mangled and scratched. Part of one of the little chains was missing. Sic transit gloria mundi. Tomorrow the auction would run its course. Deamer’s forgery would be successfully auctioned. Whatever ensued, Deamer could always claim he’d submitted an authentic antique, and that any skulduggery must have occurred subsequently. God knows, I thought bitterly, it’s happened often enough. Scams these days can be pulled even safer after an auction, when you think of the precautions auctioneers take beforehand. Back in the evil old days, when shops smelled of what they sold and grocers weighed tea and before gramophones turned into diskeroonis, people used to smile hello even to strangers on lonely streets. Remember? Now, you’re lucky to walk by unscathed. Hoping for a smile’s like begging a limb. Look what social advance has done to us all.

  Ashes settled with a crackle, making me jump. What was it that I had just thought? Scams these days can be pulled even safer, even safer after an auction . . .

  But Lydia had ruined my beautiful forgery. I now had nothing to pull a scam with. Doubtless Ledger’s peelers were now lurking around Tierney’s auction rooms and hungry for promotion. Montwell was ticker taped in warrant cards waiting for me to show. My six trial pieces were hopeless. The best would take a week at least to make perfect. No: but Olivia was evidently in police confidence, so Chandler was expecting me to show. Chandler had known I was coming – and in spite of Ledger’s warning.

  It was a trap, all for little me. But why would one peeler, Ledger, warn me off and another peeler, Chandler, bait the trap? Because Chandler was a rotten apple in the local constabulary, that’s why.

  Thinking, I actually felt myself coming out of my gloom. Since when have law, morality, police and propriety ever got in the way of honest living? Quietly I rose and stretched.

  Lydia was asleep, or pretending, so I wrote a message:

  Lydia,

  Immediately get hold of Michaela French, Lincoln. Talk a genuine antique Jewish marriage ring off her. Fetch it by a night lorry before morning. Enter the ring into Tierney’s auction by ten o’clock, and be carrying my marker loupe.

  I forgive you for that horrible behaviour. Moral upbringing isn’t anybody’s fault. Please.

  Lovejoy

  Then I set the alarm clock for 2.30, one hour’s time, and put it on the table with the note.

  Somehow in the scanty hours between dawn and high noon, I would sacrifice myself to Big John’s merry band and so punish morality for daring to lay down rules for us righteous folk.

  It was a long bicycle trek. Two trudged detours across farmland, one at least a mile, including a nasty encounter with a fool of a sheepdog with ideas of grandeur. A fitful kip in St Olave’s church in Montwell until the rain-soaked wind blew the night off the country. A cat miaowed in the street outside. A milk float rattled. A postman called a greeting to somebody.

  Dawn.

  I left the bicycle as a temporary loan in the vestry, and cleaned myself up in the baptismal font. Pity babies don’t shave or I’d have borrowed their razor.

  Chapter 27

  THERE’S ALWAYS A well-worn pub and sleazy nosh bar within spitting distance of an auction, as part of our basic training. I should be used to them by now, but it was agony, peering longingly towards the auction rooms from the pub’s nooky porch. The luscious antiques called to me with their sweet mystic chime and I couldn’t even cross the road. I was heartbroken. Man doth live on bread alone, if antiques are thrown in as well.

  Five minutes to go. I dialled from Montwell’s post office, feeling a nerk from having to doorway-dodge up the street of lovely tilted Elizabethan black-and-white houses. I asked for Mr Shee
han when the hotel switchboard answered. The bloke was even more threatening.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. No disguised voices now. ‘Warn John to be careful at today’s auction.’ It took me three goes to say my name. ‘Tell him Lovejoy rang.’ That’s done it, I thought. Sooner or later Sheehan’s lads would come for me, no matter what happened now. A bobby was sauntering past so I had to wait. I nearly missed seeing Lydia. She did one of those flickering I’m-not-looking searches as she parked my old Ruby and went in with the drift of dealers and other thieves. Her arrival meant she had the ring from Lincoln, or something very like it. I hoped she was keeping track of who owed what to whom. La French hadn’t exactly seemed full of charity.

  At 10.30 I nipped into the Lamb and Flag. It was almost empty. Morning’s too early for drinking so I gave symbolic sips to a pint in a window alcove. Dealers were still arriving in all sorts of cars. Ten minutes and here came Big John Sheehan. I thought: Oh Jesus.

  Two of his men stood with ominous patience on the pavement. Big John descended in a fawn-tan overcoat, shoes gleaming and hair slicked down just as I remembered him. He stared about. Go in, you bastard, I urged mentally. Get in and buy the bloody thing. He took a full statuesque minute sussing out the street, the peelers, the traffic. He even stared across directly at my leaded glass. He couldn’t see through, but his gaze shrank me. My mouth was dry. Some muscle quivered in my neck. Abruptly Big John decided, stepped inside. One of his goons waited outside facing the street. His Rolls-Royce wafted away.

  Action.

  There isn’t a lot you can do when you’re deprived of antiques. The worst pain in the world when gorgeous silver, antique jewellery, porcelain, and Sheraton and Hepplewhite and Chippendales are being whisked away before your very eyes by the undeserving.

  Eleven o’clock. Montwell isn’t much of a place, but it had mustered enough shoppers and cars for my purposes when I guessed the lot numbers must be nearing 150. Big John must have looked his fill at the jewellery by now. He’d be standing in that immobile pose I knew so well. Even expert bidders are sometimes daunted into silence when his rumbling voice begins to bid. He always calls the same, ‘Here, sir.’ No eyebrow-twitching theatricals from him. John Sheehan’s not a bad bloke, as homicidal psychopaths go, but I wouldn’t fancy being in the way when he’s moving. He isn’t as gigantic as all that. He actually gets his name from dealing in ‘biggies’, those high value one-offs which set our dark trade aglitter.

  Time to go and get caught. I rose. My half-empty pint fell. I didn’t even pause as the annoyed barmaid tutted. Out into the windy street. Cross between two slow cars hunting for parking space.

  To the right of the auction rooms runs a wall, with the big double gate carrying the legend J. & S. Tierney. A fresh-faced bobby stood in front of the postern gate as if it were a Victorian fireplace.

  ‘Morning. I’m due inside,’ I told him.

  ‘Not this way, sir. Through the auction-room entrance.’

  ‘I’m in the vendors’ list,’ I explained, beaming. ‘So I’m allowed. A last-minute lot. I have to see to the details. Late-listers never get documented up front once an auction’s begun.’

  The constable hesitated, pulled out a communicator and blurted crisp syllables. The postern door opened. I stepped inside with a smile and a word of thanks, and froze between two grinning constables.

  ‘Morning, Lovejoy,’ said Chandler. Nobody else in the yard but Tierney’s security man. ‘Stand still, Lovejoy. Lads, remove that forgery from his person.’ Why is it that happiness makes some people repellent? The bobbies set about me.

  ‘Forgery, Sergeant?’

  ‘Don’t play the goat, Lovejoy. Of a certain siren-design antique.’ He stood there, never moving his eyes. God, he was hateful. Thank heavens they’re not armed.

  They were very personal and increasingly discomfited as they found nothing and more nothing.

  ‘He’s got a dirty comb and two quid, Sarge.’

  ‘The lining, laddie.’

  One bobby slit the cloth and extracted a button and a penny among fluff. Chandler was puzzled. He’d been so certain I would be carrying a fake. While Chandler’s cortex tried to reactivate I said, ‘If I can have my shoes back. Ta.’ I said my say about a late entry, and shuffled towards the office steps. I dressed on the move with a clumsy attempt at dignity, but it’s difficult with your clobber trailing.

  ‘Lot 160,’ Tierney’s voice squawked. They have a tannoy.

  Chandler called, ‘Stay with him, Perry. Woolfson, go and join Keeling. Stick by that apprentice tart of his.’ The Keystone Kops were out in force all right. Burglars all over East Anglia must be thinking it was Christmas.

  ‘Knock, knock,’ I said, smiling up the stairs to the Tierney guard. ‘Late entry registered at ten o’clock. Name of Lovejoy.’ The guard opened the door without a glance at it, his gaze fixed on me, memorizing like mad.

  Olivia was staring as I crossed the office, an odd expression on her face. A portly whizzer stood guard by the door which opened into the crowded auction room. Constable Perry cleared his throat for a husky greeting and positioned himself to block my retreat.

  ‘Lot 161,’ Tierney squeaked. Here it came. The crowd hushed. Dealers focused alcohol-shot eyes on catalogues. ‘Antique Italian pearl and gold pendant, of genuine Siren pattern and by the same maker as the famous . . .’ tra-la, tra-la.

  ‘Showing here, sir!’ The whizzer’s traditional cry rose.

  ‘James!’ Olivia said in a strangled voice.

  ‘Why, yes,’ I said, smiling pleasantly. ‘I’m a late-lister. Jewish canopied marriage ring. Under the name Lovejoy.’ My admission shook her. She stared, nodded, worked on at the console. Michaela French’s Jewish ring lay on the office table, with three other last-minute entries. ‘Ah, there it is. Nice piece, isn’t it?’

  In the hall the bidding for Deamer’s fake began. Lydia was hovering, now so pale she looked transparent. And Donna. And Chatto. Birds of a feather, Chandler had said. Constable Woolfson joined another peeler, pushing through the mob. They muttered together, helmets nodding, glancing into the office with meaning.

  ‘Here, sir.’ That was Big John’s voice bidding. I experienced a new feeling twice as sinking, twice as fast.

  ‘Never seen such a big crowd at an auction,’ I said to Olivia. ‘Don’t let me interrupt.’

  She was busy with the printout, tapping the computer keys, by now completely thrown. Giving my real name had told her I knew I’d walked into Chandler’s trap. Her face was on fire. She didn’t look up at me.

  A buzz from the crowd. Deamer’s fake was sold. Some fool actually clapped, a high price. The hatch crashed and a tray came through. A tiny green point of reflection from the console screen caught my eye.

  Cameras. Four. One at each top corner of the office. All on me. Upstairs must be like Fighter Control. Clearly this was a police operation. They were going to get me no matter what.

  ‘Lot 162,’ the auctioneer bleated. I saw Big John Sheehan’s head turn. He’d won the bidding. One of his men would be coming to pay.

  ‘Here, Lyd.’ I beckoned to Lydia through the doorway. She turned in the crowd. ‘Our ring that you entered. Did you check the stone?’

  She got the message. ‘Er, yes. Just now.’

  The door guard stepped between Lydia and me. For a ghastly second whole wars struggled on her face. Sin battled truth. Morality assaulted loyalty.

  I looked at her. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Why, yes,’ Lydia decided, fumbled in her handbag. The two police moved to watch her. ‘It’s as described. Here.’

  ‘Quiet during the bidding,’ Tierney called.

  I reached over the guard’s shoulder and took the eyeglass from her. Not much bigger than a thimble, and transparent. I showed it casually to the guard on my palm, peered quickly at the ring, ‘Mmmh. I suppose it’s okay . . .’

  The hatch crashed open. A tray slid through on to Olivia’s desk. The hatch slammed.

  ‘This that famous pe
ndant?’ I said, and bent for a quick peer as Olivia exclaimed and boots clumped closer. They’d be breathing faster upstairs, Universal Studios on audit day.

  The pendant on the tray was bonny, even if it was fake. The forgers had done a great job for Deamer. It was held immovably under the grid. No chance of lifting it without permission. Like touching a woman’s knee through a hole in her stocking.

  ‘Watch me, Constable,’ I joked warningly. The mermaid’s golden body swam into my vision as I peered at her through the eyeglass, monocle style.

  ‘Please don’t touch,’ Olivia said.

  ‘I won’t. Hold on, though.’

  I murmured as if spotting something rather worrying, holding the rim of the eyeglass as if inspecting some minute flaw.

  Old Denny Jackson from Clacton had showed me how to deface stuff this slick one-handed way. Actually it isn’t a bad method of engraving. Once, jewellers used an engraver’s needle projecting from a microscope’s objective lens. Nowadays it’s easier to clip the point from a record-player’s stylus and Araldite it to an eyeglass. They’re small enough to go unnoticed. It’s not a well-known technique, and it’s certainly underrated. Except for me, I’ve only ever seen Denny do it properly, and he’s a rogue. ‘No-o-o,’ I said slowly, still apparently examining away. ‘I’m still unsure about it.’ I straightened up, pretending disappointment for the cameras’ sake. ‘Thanks, Lyd.’ I made to pass the eyeglass and dropped it. Nine out of ten times they fall on their cylindrical sides and get picked up by their edges. The whizzer warded me off with his arms. He too was waiting for the police to close in. He stooped, passing the loupe to Lydia.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lydia said faintly, and moved off.

  ‘About my Jewish marriage ring, Olivia. No reserve price, please.’ I placed myself in front of her desk and touched her hand on the computer keyboard. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. My apparent innocence was rattling her. I should have been arrested by now, and nothing had happened, yet still she kept up the act.