Faces in the Pool

by Jonathan Gash

  By tradition, the eldest Whorwood girl is always named Jane, the younger girl Eunice. Historians will spot the reason: King Charles the First, imprisoned on the Isle of Wight before his execution in 1649, was minded by one Mrs Jane Whorwood. She gave the ‘martyr king’ provisions and, rumour has it, certain extra comforts. Royal letters survive in Eunice’s family, ’tis said. Romantics speculate. I say let them be. If Eunice’s great-great-whatever grannie gave Charles One passionate solace, good for her.

  ‘Ha ha. What’s worth nicking, Eunice?’

  She’s a bonny lass with flaming red hair (another clue: red hair). Seats all faced the organiser, Eunice’s dad, Charles (nudge-nudge). A couple of antiques vibrated at me with such intensity I had to sit down, Eunice shoving me quickly into a seat and tutting the way women show exasperation, like I go whoozy just to annoy.

  The little statue of Minerva was prominent on a plant stand. This Roman Goddess of Crafts and Arts eventually made the top-of-the-pop charts of Rome’s soldiery. She became Goddess of War. Her statuette stood no taller than a hand. It was muddy grey, owing to its excavation on North Hill, only three hundred yards from where we were. Archæologists bragged about finding it to TV cameras. Local forgers were soon turning out fakes like Ford cars, claiming cast-iron authenticity for them all.

  ‘Exquisite, love. Isn’t that the original?’ (Me, playing dim.)

  ‘The one and only. It’ll go for a fortune.’

  ‘Always to the undeserving, love.’

  She laughed. I scanned about for the other antique that made me feel queasy. The tea auction is virtually ye olde open-skies market auction. Buy something in ‘market overt’ and pay on the nail, then it stays yours wherever it came from. Even if nicked. By market overt rules original owners have no claim. Think of Statute of Limitations joyously reduced to zero, and that’s it. So, sell an antique in a street market that you nicked the night before, and you’re in the clear.

  The tea auction perpetuates the ancient market overt. Tea auctions are nowadays highly illegal. But has anyone ever heard of attenders, auctioneers, organisers, vendors at any tea auction being arrested, tried, charged, found guilty? Neither have I. Once you’ve bought your stolen ancient British gold torc from 100 BC found last week in a farmer’s field on the north bank of the River Deben (and I’m not making these up) you’re the legit owner. Is that what the High Court says? Not exactly. Law says it’s illegal and practised by utter cads. But the tea auctions of Merrie England believe honesty only operates down among us scavengers where old rules apply. The law doesn’t understand.

  There are risks, sure. The vendor must bring his antique to the tea auction, or describe it accurately. You may get arrested while carrying your stolen Rembrandt down Norfolk’s leafy lanes. Priceless items from Baghdad’s stunning museums turn up in Home Counties’ tea auctions, and they were looted to the floorboards in April, 2003. Only the Kingdom of Jordan behaved honourably – their vigilant Customs and Excise men traced forty-three looted paintings from that shambles. The rest of the world’s antiques hunters simply raked the money in.

  Heaven knows why police antiques squads don’t just visit tea auctions. Unless, of course, they know all about tea auctions anyway and quietly ignore what really goes on. Though I do believe in the total honesty of our police. I mean that most sincerely.

  My divvy gift lacks direction so I had to look. The second antique was silently pulsing away on a small footstool – odd choice – by the auctioneer’s chair. A genuine early decanter.

  Eunice gave me an anxious look. ‘It really is genuine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Genuine, yes.’ I put my tea down.

  Decanters came in during the end of the seventeenth century. Early American ones are lovely, but you hardly ever see them. English and Irish are hunted most. This poor thing was tapered, like trying to resemble a lady in a crinoline dress. It was about 1820, English, with the sort of milled neck rings crystal collectors lust after. Its original stopper quadrupled the price.

  ‘It’s described as mint,’ Eunice told me, nervous. ‘Is it?’

  Stooping to glance obliquely at the metal – as dealers call glass – I tilted the decanter. A vague flicker of light showed. Somebody, worried by a corroded rim round the interior, had cleaned it with hydrofluoric acid. This dangerous stuff completely removes corrosion. Trouble is, it leaves a strange effect French crystal experts call the peau d’orange, ‘orange-peel skin’.

  My rule is this: hydrofluoric acid ruins antique glass. Walk away and go for a quiet drink instead.

  ‘Price now? Getting on for nil.’

  Quietly I explained to her stricken look, ‘The white deposit is the giveaway, a snowy rust. Who was so desperate?’

  She looked stricken. ‘Sandy.’

  Normally I wouldn’t bother if they got in trouble. Now, I began to wish I hadn’t come.

  ‘What should I do, Lovejoy?’

  ‘God knows. Call him?’

  Eunice clicked at her mobile and returned, pale. ‘No answer.’

  No chance then, unless Sandy regretted his deception and came hotfoot to withdraw it.

  ‘Any collections in, Eunice?’

  ‘Everybody’s asking that. What’re you after?’

  ‘That Laura’s husband Ted is a collection nutter.’

  ‘No. Dealers are squirreling cash away ready for some big spend. They’re all at it. We start now.’

  Geraldo, the auctioneer, arrived on cue. He carries an empty brief case of Italian leather, pretending he’s about to unload vital documents. Then he scrutinises his watch, speaks to the tyler, counts the antiques. Then gets down to the serious business of polishing his spectacles.

  He’s a prematurely wizened, dapper gent so diminutive he would be lost in a school play. He closes his eyes and waits for the town clock to strike, then the game’s afoot.

  It crossed my mind that I could bid for the decanter and save Sandy’s skin, except I would abet Sandy’s deceit and incur his punishment. Sorry, pal, I thought, friendship ends here.

  The clock struck. Geraldo roused and began.

  ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Item One is a blue glass pendant of triangular shape just smaller than six centimetres, two-point-four inches. An Art Deco fish, but no letter R in the Lalique, France signature…’

  That showed it was after 1945, when the great designer died, so not antique. Those factories made over eight million pieces. Blue-Lalique anything is always more highly favoured – though a little of what you fancy does your wallet untold good. I listened as the lots were sold on a curt rap of Geraldo’s gavel. All twelve antiques were quickly sold. A portly bloke I didn’t know bought Sandy’s decanter for a giddy sum. His obvious delight made me cringe. Big Frank from Suffolk won a silver tray inscribed with golf engravings. He’s mad on silver, so he’d be the one to ask about collectors in that field. Big Frank also collects wives, and was soon to be married to his umpteenth. I hated being his best man, and helping bigamous unions becomes boring. He always says, ‘You’re always my best man, Lovejoy! It won’t seem a proper wedding…’ and so on. We were due to arrange it at the Welcome Sailor.

  The rest were big-gelt visitors from the north. The man who bought Sandy’s decanter asked after me, but Eunice said she’d not seen me.

  ‘Do you know Lovejoy’s address? I would be obliged.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve my father to see to. You might catch Lovejoy at The Ship taproom on East Hill.’

  ‘Thank you, miss.’ He paused. ‘How may I recognise him?’

  ‘Average everything,’ Eunice said sweetly, ‘except more down-at-heel.’

  He was as staid as any city gent, wearing George boots – made of one piece of leather.

  ‘Ta for the character reference, love,’ I told Eunice. ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Tea auctions are confidential, Lovejoy.’

  She told me on the way out, though. Mr Hennell, stock broker and antiques maniac, was known to wealthy private buyers in the Eastern Hundr
eds and had recently become Sandy’s backer in developing a marina. Mr Hennell’s purchase of Sandy’s decanter was nothing more than a private scam. I erased him from my mind. Mistake.

  CHAPTER NINE

  brown: dead (fr. Brown bread, Cockney rh. slang)

  Colo’s milk float got me into town. Something Paltry said was worrying me. Today he would be on the river footpath, collecting money at the Castle Green cricket. The rain had stopped, Dei gratia.

  Cricket takes three days, dawn to dusk. Crowds attract Paltry like marmalade draws wasps. Cars park on the greensward, throngs mill in, and Paltry trips about shaking his tin. He wears a label, For My Opration Plese Giv Genrussly (sic). Women want details. Blokes hurry on, desperate not to miss the game. Paltry swills the takings in the Marquis of Granby.

  Arriving motors were churning the grass, throngs heading in. An idyllic setting. Swans glide, boats float, flowerbeds show off, children splash in the pond. Distantly our village’s morris dancers downed their beers.

  ‘Hey, Lovejoy!’ Bosh yelled, our morris-master. ‘We’re one short. Straggo’s late. Play for us?’

  ‘Not me, Bosh,’ I shouted across the footbridge. ‘I’m still lame.’

  They laughed. Their uillean bagpipes were warming up. This is the English bagpipe. Morrismen use it because it’s the only reed pipe that sounds beautiful however drunk the musicians. You do it under-arm, no blowing.

  As I approached I could see Paltry among the cars, slithering on the wet grass, and decided to catch him.

  Because I let infant cricketers cross the footbridge ahead of me, I didn’t see Paltry die.

  ‘Good luck, pal,’ I was telling the last neophyte cricketer, when I realised something was horribly wrong. People were clustering where Paltry had been. I started to run.

  A woman was screaming, two quick-thinkers tapping mobiles. Slipping in puddles, I ran to the mêlée.

  By the time I shoved through, Paltry was dead. He was on the ground, his frock awry and his daft high-heeled shoes off. His wig was beside him, his collecting tin still in his hand. Two women and a little girl were staring white-faced at the carnage. Blood smeared the grass, men waving cars to stay away. A St John Ambulance man was calling to keep back, please.

  Paltry had been crushed between two motors. One was a silvery thing with a grinning radiator grille wearing fragments of flesh like a bloodied mouth. A gent was wringing his hands and explaining, ‘He jumped right out in front. I braked but…’

  Can you jump in high heels on muddy grass?

  He hid his face, overcome. I watched him. Thespians are never any different. They’re born to it. St Nicholas is patron saint of bad actors. He has a lot to answer for.

  ‘Use this.’ Gentry had a travelling rug. He looked bored.

  A kindly stranger covered Paltry’s body. I noticed stubble on Paltry’s chin. How pathetic is that? The overcome gent was still acting distraught. Melodramatic. Killers often are.

  Another man said, on cue, ‘You didn’t stand a chance.’

  Any chance of prosecution? No. Of justice? No. Of being done for Paltry’s murder? No. Of getting off scotage free, though? Sure, for murderers always depart laughing. Blood money fixes laws.

  Firemen arrived and shepherded cars. I stood closer to the killer, who was giving his lies to some policeman who had finally bothered to come. The whole sorry panto was a sham. The oh-so-handy witness was calm, like any man of straw. In olden days, men willing to sell their election votes lolled by tavern walls with a straw sticking from their boots – hence the term ‘straw man’. This witness didn’t swap glances with the murderer. They’re trained.

  Odd fact: straw men are always female in the north, male in the south. My cousin in Lancashire runs a list of straw men. He calls it his Girl Panel: forty-two housewives, alibis to order. He takes thirty per cent. (Sorry. This sounds like a commercial.)

  Liza, our town’s reporter, rushed up. I pointed out the gent who killed Paltry. ‘Got your photographer, Lize?’

  ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘My fucking luck.’ An Oxford sociologist, Liza thinks crudity is trendy.

  ‘Borrow a camera and snap the perpetrators. I’ll point.’

  ‘Fucking brilliant,’ she said, and did. She then looked. ‘Perps, Lovejoy?’

  Maybe Paltry knew something his killers wanted kept silent. ‘Aye. One day, I’ll send word. Promise you’ll come a-running, OK?’

  ‘Lovejoy?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Was it truly murder?’

  I nicked a pencil and listed car numbers, makes, colours of vehicles until I got moved on. An ambulance took Paltry. I’d never seen Paltry in normal clothes. Was he really serious about Florida and a sex change? Blue lights flashed, no sirens. The police collected Paltry’s tin. A constable asked, curious, ‘What operation was this?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Well, I didn’t.

  ‘Did you see it happen?’

  ‘No. I was too late. Like you.’ And went on my way.

  Hurrying down Long Wyre Street, I saw Big Frank.

  ‘Who backed the tea auction, Frank?’ I didn’t mention Paltry.

  Every tea auction needs an organiser, auctioneer, tyler – Eunice this time – and a wallet, as we call the hard man who funds any crime.

  ‘Tasker. Nice bloke, Tasker.’

  My heart reeled. ‘Aye, nice bloke.’

  Tasker is a quiet Irish geezer, smallish and thin. You couldn’t guess his age if you tried. His face looks used up. Blue of eye, never raises his voice, and wears the same overcoat summer and winter. An Ulsterman of unswerving loyalty who wears an orange rose, Tasker has a slow sigh worse than a death knell. I told Frank so-long and shakily turned into Eld Lane and headed for the music I could hear. If Tasker realised I’d spotted the marred decanter… Would Eunice tell Tasker?

  Ahead, I glimpsed Hennell, the stout gent who’d bought Sandy’s rotten glassware. In the town square Sandy was already performing his lunatic dance, hoping somebody would talent-spot him and put him on TV.

  ‘Isn’t Sandy wonderful?’ Laura’s iron grip drew me under a coffee awning. I went with her, the weakest wimp in the Hundreds.

  ‘No. He’s a loon.’

  She ordered coffees with an imperious gesture. Serfs leapt to obey. It’s money. Laura seemed to be alone. For a tired moment I felt like telling her to leave me alone, but gave in and sat with her. Sandy was prancing round the fountain in a sequinned cape. His loony idea of fashion was red leather thigh boots, a copper breastplate and enough coloured sashes to sail the Cutty Sark. I saw little to admire.

  ‘Oh, come on! He’s divine! And he funded me when I needed it.’

  ‘You know Sandy well?’ So her Arcade meeting was a sham?

  ‘He was marvellous. We became friends when my…’ She was going to say husband, but cut out. ‘Sandy will be invaluable in our project.’

  Our project now? For the first time I saw her features clearly. Her cheeks showed that incipient Mach 3 drag, though it wasn’t quite the wind-tunnel effect so noticeable after a sixth facelift. OK, so she was deadly serious about her mission. For mere vengeance, though?

  ‘Sandy’s on my team. He’s vital.’

  My spirits rose. ‘Then why not marry Sandy instead?’

  ‘He’s no divvy, Lovejoy.’ The waitress served two coffees. ‘My husband would believe I’d marry a divvy – but Sandy?’

  Mr Hennell joined us, huffing slightly and fanning himself with his hat. He carried the decanter box.

  I said, ‘Odder things happen, missus.’

  Not often, but they do. I know Sally, a dealer from Argentina. She is crazy for Astro, an incompetent drunk. She’s offered to buy him out of penury, his addictions and debts, and pay his wife off. Even Isaac Newton couldn’t join those dots and make sense.

  ‘Isn’t Sandy magnificent?’ Hennell gasped. ‘Soon he’ll release streamers and be a Greek goddess rising from fiery waters.’

  Unbelievably, surrounding idlers actually applauded. I craved sanity.

  ‘Amazing!
’ Laura said adoringly.

  Sandy’s embarrassing shows always make me feel I’m watching the sea trials of the Titanic. I’d not touched her coffee. ‘See you later, missus.’

  ‘Stay,’ she commanded. ‘Mr Hennell.’

  Hennell parroted, ‘Lovejoy. Your illegitimate son Mortimer verified an antique for Sandy.’ He wiped his brow. ‘Warm, isn’t it?’

  Mortimer did? Responsibility weighs you down. I hate it.

  ‘I am the marriage lawyer you’ve no intention of visiting,’ Hennell explained. I should have known. You never see a thin priest, lawyer or politician. They’re all as fat as a butcher’s dog. Meanwhile Sandy was splashing to Handel’s Messiah music, the water gold-scarlet and Mel shovelling in colorant. More cleaning bills for ratepayers. People were yelling encouragement.

  Laura added sweetly, ‘Mortimer is therefore involved in the tea auction fraud. You may not care for Eunice, Lydia, Tinker Dill, Geraldo, Tasker, and the rest. Or even yourself. But you will save Mortimer.’

  ‘It’s called a set-up, Lovejoy,’ Hennell wheezed. ‘Sandy swapped his mint antique decanter for the faulty one.’

  Laura rolled in the aisles. ‘Isn’t Sandy gorgeous?’

  Gorgeous, was he, that idiot ponce who put Mortimer into danger? Now ice cold, I stared at Sandy’s finale, Yeomen of the Guard, with him transmogged into a strutting guardsman before admiring sycophants. Two council workmen wearily moved in to clear the mess.

  ‘Time for marriage talk, Lovejoy. Ready?’

  Hennell yanked out a watch that made me weak with longing. I’d assumed my malaise came from his decanter. It was a pair-cased watch by Antram of London. He clicked it open and examined the champlevé surface. (Incidentally, pair-cased: inner and outer cases.) Mesmerised, I gaped at the priceless thing. Joseph Antram never signed his Christian name, just surname, even in the watches he made for King George the First about 1715. Champlevé only means the surface pits are grooved and filled with enamel.

  ‘That isn’t nicked, Mr Hennell?’ I asked humbly.

  Two similar Antrams were lately stolen, but hadn’t yet reached the Art Loss Register. To date, the ALR lists 140,000 decent stolen items, which isn’t much considering the vast annual turnover.