The Gondola Scam

by Jonathan Gash

  The best way to think about crime is to work, preferably at something slightly less than legal.

  Connie was only able to stay with me the first afternoon, so I had a lot of solitude. We got up about teatime and put the divan away, with still a sizable chunk of the day left. At the moment I was making an "antique" papier-mâché chair. Don't laugh. In its time, papier-mâché’s been used to make bedsteads, tables, practically any sort of chair you can imagine, picture frames, boxes, vases, clock cases, even parts of coaches. Elderly Frenchwomen came into mid-Georgian London to chew (literally: chew) cutoffs from stationers into a gooey mash for pressing onto a metal framework. Varnished, pumice-stoned, and decorated, it can be beautiful as anything.

  In this cruel lying game of antiques, you take all stories with a pinch of salt. Respectable history's a pack of lies. I mean, an eighteenth-century bloke called Clay reckoned his papier-mâché hot-mold stoving process was new, but it's only the same old system speeded up. And that carver-gilder Duffour, who worked from a Berwick Street pub in Soho, even claimed he'd invented papier-mâché. That's rubbish, too; the Persians were making it donkeys' years before he got into bad company in The Golden Head Pub in 1760. You can forge anything from papier-mâché.

  There I was, in my workshop—actually a grotty shed deep in garden overgrowth—honing down the chair with pumice. It was to be a cane-seated drawing-room chair with a spoon-shaped back splat. Oh, I know quite well that this sort of chair's the favorite of the modem faker, but I have two secrets up my sleeve which can make a three-day-old fake look an original 1762 piece from Peter Babel's place down Long Acre.

  The robin had followed me in because it knows I like silent company. It stabbed its cheese on the workbench, cackling angrily to warn possible intruders off its patch. Very like women. I wear these leather gloves, or your hands wear off. You need many varnishings and honings. I intended to japan the whole thing because black lacquer's easiest to make antique-looking. You do it with an electric Sander, but for God's sake remember to replace the emery paper with a rectangle of buffing cloth. Buff the lacquer anywhere on the chair a human would normally touch, until the lacquer's worn thin. Then take a two-kilowatt hairdryer and from a distance of two feet blow hot air at every part of the chair a human wouldn't normally touch—underneath, the legs, the lot. My favorite bit is a touch of class: a spoonful of house dust at all the intersections before your hot-air bit gives an unnervingly authentic appearance under a hand lens. Then buff (shoeshine action) the seat edges and the splat's top until the undervarnish begins to hint through. All that's my first secret. The second's the way a fake's f)earl-shell inlays are dulled from their brilliant newness to a century-old opalescence—

  "Sceeeeech!"

  "Sorry, mate." I'd reached out for the red tin in which I keep my McArthur microscope and inadvertently got the robin. "Well, you're both red. Same size. No need to carry on like that." I put the disgruntled robin back on the bench. It stood dusting itself down, glowering. The red tin was almost exactly the same color as the robin. Not far from a Carpaccio red, actually.

  I stood looking. Red.

  The robin was the same size as the miniature microscope's tin can, which had luckily been just right to hold the instrument. But so what?

  "So the same holds good for picture frames, right?" I said to the robin. "Sizes count as well as colors."

  It cheeped in a rage and flicked onto my shoulder, so I got the message. Time for the idle little sod's biscuit. I sighed and turned to go in for one.

  "What does a robin know about picture frames. Lovejoy?"

  The light was draining fast from the day. Odd, though, that Caterina should be framed the way she was in the sun's last glim. Some women are enough to stop a man's breath without even trying. Things conspire. "Eh?" I said, cool.

  "What picture frame? You just told the bird."

  'That conversation was private."

  She came in and walked round the chair. "You're restoring it. Nice. Late Regency?"

  "Early Lovejoy." That shook her, made her think a minute. "Your killer's got a posh car, Caterina. I'll bet he earned it by doing fakes nearly as good, eh?"

  The robin cackled and flew off in a sulk. No biscuit. I shouted after it, "Give you two tomorrow," and explained to her, "He'll be in a hell of a temper all week now. That's your fault. Trouble is, he suspects blackbirds. One knows how to undo the catch on my breadbin, and the robin's not tall enough. Gets him mad."

  "Did you say my killer?" She'd gone all still.

  "You know, the murderer you go about with." I was all affable. 'The DeLorean. Old lemon shirt." I spoke quite conversationally and started tidying up. "He owns the Eveline, does he?"

  Still and pale all of a sudden, so I'd struck oil. "I knew you'd be trouble, Lovejoy. How did you guess?"

  "The frame on that Webster seascape in your granddad's hallway. You tried to lend that Carpaccio fake some authenticity by putting it in an old frame before sending it to the auction. Then you realized your mistake. Granddad missed it, so you had to try to buy it back. Something like that?"

  "Nearly. But go on."

  "Feet." I began to sweep round the chair. She moved her feet obediently, watching, listening. "Mr. Malleson went bid-happy and got the fake against your bids. So you had him and Crampie killed by your tame murderer, naughty girl. You told him to make it look like a routine motorway cafe rumble." I emptied the workshop dust into the plastic bin and looked round for her verdict.

  "Almost, Lovejoy."

  "Only almost?" I was so bloody sure.

  There was a trace of bitterness when she spoke, but it was Crampie and Mr. Malleson got done, not her. "You obviously think the worst of me."

  "Almost, Caterina," I said evenly, and went past her to switch the outside light on.

  "You won't go to the police, Lovejoy." No question there, only the assured flat statement of a bird in charge of everything which intruded into her world. "They already suspect you of any antique crimes. They wouldn't listen to your wild suppositions."

  So she had changed my accurate logic into wild suppositions. I held the shed door for her to walk out, and locked up. We stood in the darkening garden, each waiting for the other to speak.

  "Your mistrust means you won't work for my grandfather, I suppose?"

  "Correct."

  Oddly, she drooped as if accepting a still heavier burden. "Then that's the end of it," she said resignedly. "Can you be trusted to take no further action?"

  "Where my skin's concerned, yes. But just remember, if my robin goes off his grub, it's your fault. And I can be very narked."

  "Are you never serious, Lovejoy?"

  "Lady," I said wearily, "I'm serious all the bloody time. It's everybody else that's jokers."

  Nowhere. I'd got nowhere. I knew more or less how, why, and who. And still I'd got nowhere, stymied in every direction. I was getting narked.

  7

  Speaking of sex, so many things puzzle me. Like a woman's all chat immediately afterwards, then she zonks out an hour later. But the man's off into a melancholy twilight doom-riddled world, a comatose grief from which he only slowly returns to remember the ecstasy and delight. In particular, the last thing he wants is his bird prattling gossip into his ear, like Connie was doing to mine. The fact that she was only reporting the gossip I'd told her to collect was no excuse.

  "Darling! It's so interesting! Mr. Pinder's daughter, Caterina's mother, passed away. Her stepmother, Lavinia—"

  "Who?" I reared blearily out of coma.

  "Lavinia married Geoffrey Norman. He's hopeless and she's a tramp."

  Rear and blear. "Who? Caterina?"

  "No, silly. Lavinia. I keep telling you, darling. Eventually she got so bad the village shunned her. Scandal, the lot. Lovely, darling! People are sorry for Caterina and Geoffrey Norman. . . . Old Mr. Pinder runs some sort of arts foundation ..." Her voice faded. My mind went into neutral, and the world went away.

  That old man had been on my mind half�
�if not all— the night. Clearly he was a nutter. Even if he and his syndicate were worth a king's ransom, a nutter's still off his rocker any way you look. What with Caterina's hatred and Granddad's whispery voice, his scam seemed more unreal.

  "The steps leading down to Venice's lovely canals were for a lady's descent to the gondolas," he'd said, eyes glistening. "But the bottom steps never emerge from the water now. And the Piazza San Marco itself is underwater in the great yearly tides from the Adriatic Sea. The ground floors are thirty inches above sea level. Oh, the tourists pour in and see the Queen of the Inland Seas resplendent there in all her ancient glory. But they go, and the sea again takes over. Only each year Venice is lower and the sea more rampant. Politicians promise. Engineers measure. But the duck-boards, the passerelle, are left out now, to disfigure the loveliest of cities.

  "And do you know what is the most shameful thing of all, Lovejoy?" he concluded, his cracked-flute voice embittered. "Our belief in our own permanence. We little know that what passes for permanence"—he paused a second, wondering whether to be pleased at a possible pun, waved it away—"is only a gift of constant endeavor. Man's priceless art treasures must be ceaselessly protected, or they vanish. Like Venice is emptying of treasures and people."

  "How can one man—" I'd interjected, but he washed out my objection derisorily.

  "There are many of us in my syndicate, Lovejoy. Finance is no problem. Let me tell you a story. Vivaldi's church stands on the Riva—the lagoon waterfront—and contains the most pathetic memento you could ever imagine. A marble rectangle set in the floor, inscribed that the church's Tiepolo painting was restored by American money." He paused to allow the world time to prepare for his next utterance. "Is that immortality? Lovejoy, the entire flooring, which records in immutable marble the generosity of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation of New York, U.S.A., will soon have settled forever beneath the waters of the Adriatic."

  "But it's a try," I found myself protesting. "Worthwhile."

  "Pointless patchwork, Lovejoy. Darning the cabin curtains on the Lusitania. Only success is worthwhile. Don't you see?"

  Eventually I did see. The love, the old man's conviction had swept me along. I almost forgot he was bonkers.

  Which was all very well. In the cold light of day.

  That same noon, Connie, Tinker, and me held a council in the White Hart.

  "You first. Tinker,” I told him to be quick about it, because Connie was supposed to be on her way back from a shoe-buying trip to Northampton.

  "Nowt, Lovejoy." He took a note and got another pint for himself. Connie leaned away as he shuffled back. Some days he's worse than others.

  "Eh? I told you anything Venetian, Tinker, you burke."

  "Don't blame me, Lovejoy. Worn my bleeding feet orf, I have." He slurped his pint dry and spoke with feeling. 'There's not a single frigging Venetian antique—real, fake, nicked, bent, or just passing through—in the whole frigging Eastern Hundreds."

  He rose to shamble off for another pint. "Ted," I called to the barman wearily, "keep one coming or we'll be here all day." I beamed a rather worried look at Connie, because she'd have to pay and I owed her a fortune already. By her reckoning, I possibly owed very, very much more. Quickly sensing she was one up, she immediately asked Ted to stop the drafts, which were positively whistling through the pub, and to please turn up the heating while he was at it and put more logs on the fire.

  I concentrated. "None? That's impossible. Tinker."

  "I know, Lovejoy. It's bleeding true. I went down Brad's, Ernie's, Jessica's on Mersea Island . . ."

  With Ted rolling his eyes in exasperation and Connie enjoying herself giving him anti-chill orders all over the saloon bar, I closed my ears to Tinker's mumbled list of negatives, and thought: One or two negatives, fine. A whole East Anglia of negatives is serious cause for concern.

  Mostly for me.

  There and then, my mind made itself up.

  Until hearing Tinker, I'd assumed that sooner or later Ledger would find the three blokes who did Crampie and Mr. Malleson. Now it was all too clear that things were beyond reach. It was too big. Think of the resources to clear out every special item from East Anglia. It took expertise, men, time, knowledge, and money, money, and more money. Old Pinder and his syndicate were not so daft after all, just wealthy and obsessed. I half listened to Tinker's boozy drone. ". . . then Liz at Dragonsdale, who reckoned she'd seen an early Venetian black-letter book eight weeks back, but ..."

  Which left the question of what the hell I was worrying about. Caterina's warning was crystal clear: Keep out of it, and Lovejoy will not be troubled in the slightest. Honestly, I wasn't feeling guilty. No, really honestly. It was nothing at all to do with me. Admitted, Mr. Malleson wouldn't be dead if I'd dissuaded him enough. And Crampie wouldn't be dead if I'd maybe stopped, insisted on giving him a lift. Or maybe I shouldn't have shouted all over the pub car park that the Carpaccio was a fake. I can shed guilt like snow off a duck. Anyway, I always find it belongs to somebody else. No, I was absolved.

  'Then I went to Jim Morris at frigging Goldhanger—"

  "Oooh, your poor thing! It must have been freezing!" From good old hot-blooded Connie. By now she'd got us all hunched over the pub fire. My mind was busily doling out absolution, mostly to myself. "I was freezing, too, in the library," she said.

  That reminded me, and I opened the book she'd brought. It was the wrong one.

  "But darling, the library was freezing—" "I distinctly said a history of Venice, you stupid—" "It's a book on Venice, isn't it? It's not my fault." Of course it never is with women. I tried to sulk as she drove all the way to the Colne estuary but got interested in the look in spite of myself. The index listed Ammiana, the name old Pinder had mentioned. It was an island, one of the many which make up the Most Serene Republic of Venice. A thriving center of culture, of religious activity, eight gracious antique-filled churches—until it had sunk beneath the waters, never to be seen again. There were others. Reading in a car makes me unwell, but it wasn't just that that made me feel prickly.

  "It's perishing in here, love," I said. "Put the heater on.

  She did so with delight. First time we'd ever seen eye to eye.

  8

  "I'm so frightened, Lovejoy."

  "Don't worry, love. Just do it."

  "When do I put the money in?"

  Connie and I were crammed in the phone box. One of her stockings was tight over the mouthpiece. We'd had a hell of a time getting it off her lovely leg in the confined space, pretending we were doing all sorts so people wouldn't stare. She was shaking from fear.

  "You don't need money for an emergency call."

  I dialed, pressing close. Connie whispered, "Darling, this is no time to—"

  "I'm only trying to listen!" I whisper-yelled, thinking, Swelp me. I'd do a million times better without help.

  "Police, please," Connie intoned. I'd tried training her to speak low and gruff, but she was hopeless—thought that pursing her mouth into a succulent tube made her into a baritone.

  "Mr. Ledger, please. Constable," Connie boomed falsetto into the mouthpiece.

  "And don't keep saying please! You're supposed to be a criminal!" I spread the crumpled paper for her to read from.

  "Hello?" She turned a pale face to me, eyes like saucers. "He's answered, darling!"

  "Read it! Read it!"

  "Erm . . . get this. Ledger, mate," Connie read in her tubular voice. I closed my eyes. It was like a bad dream. "I'll only say this once. Go down the estuary, please. Off the old Roman fort there's moored the seagoing yacht Eveline. She's full of fake antiques . . ." Her voice faded.

  "What is it? Keep reading!"

  She dropped the receiver in a panic. "Darling. He said to put you on."

  "Eh?" We stared at each other.

  "He said, 'Just put Lovejoy on the blower, lady."'

  Slowly I unwound Connie's stocking and listened at the receiver.

  "You there, Lovejoy?" Ledger aske
d wearily. "Stop tarting about."

  "This is a recording," I said, embarrassed.

  "So's this. You seem to think we do bugger all here. We've checked out everybody who was known to be at that auction, at the caff, on the trunk road—including your posh lady Caterina and her dad Colonel Norman, especially as you've been seeing so much of her these days. You still there?"

  "Aye." I felt a right twerp.

  "Then pay attention. I'll only say this once." He sniggered at nicking one of our lines. "You're meddling, lad. And I don't like it, because meddlers usually have a reason. And your reason is vengeance. Don't think I don't know. I can read you like a bloody book. Last warning. Understand?"

  "You can't arrest me. Ledger," I said weakly.

  "There's such a thing as protective custody. Just remember that if you're on my patch I've signed for you. Oh, one more thing. The Eveline has sailed. She was clean as a whistle. We looked."

  My heart sank. What a flaming mess.

  "I hear your lady is a cracker, Lovejoy," Ledger said pleasantly. "Funny voice, but I don't expect that worries you too much—as long as Ken Bridewell doesn't find out, eh? Cheers."

  Click. Burr.

  We left the phone box, me ashamed because the trick had failed, and Connie still shaking. She looked worried sick. We were near the football ground in town.

  "Darling," she quavered. "It's . . . it's become rather serious, hasn't it? All this, I mean."

  She must have caught Ledger's final threat. I sensed an incipient farewell, the state she was in.

  "No more serious than usual, love."

  She stood there drooping. "The police, Crampie, and the other man, the whole business. I'm frightened, darling."

  "Only temporary difficulties," I said like a cheery weather forecaster in an unexpected blizzard.

  "You're going to Venice to find them, aren't you, darling." Another lovely woman who could make a simple question into a flat accusation.

  "Of course not,” I said, beaming. "Honest." And I looked into her eyes with all my innocence.

  "Really honest, or Lovejoy honest?"