‘Where?’ My mouth dried.
‘Part-exchange, though.’ This was Tinker creating tension. ‘Not a straight sale.’
‘What the hell does that matter?’ I snarled. ‘Who the hell does a straight sale for the good stuff these days anyway? Get on with it.’
‘Keep your hair on.’
We chatted airily about mutual friends while an innocent housewife racked herself over a chest of drawers before marking it carefully on a list and pushed off, steeling herself for tomorrow’s auction.
Tinker drew me close. ‘You know that boatbuilder?’
‘Used to buy off Brad down the creek?’
‘Him. Going to sell a pair of Mortimers, cased.’
‘I don’t believe it, Tinker.’
‘Cross my heart,’ he swore. ‘But he wants a revolving rifle in part-exchange. Must be English.’
I cursed in fury. Tinker maintained a respectful silence till I was worn out.
‘Where the hell can I get one of those?’ I muttered. ‘I’ve not seen one for years.’
I actually happened to have one in my priest’s hole, by Adams of London Bridge, a five-chambered percussion longarm. There’s bother with a spring I’ve never dared touch but otherwise it’s perfect. I cursed the boatbuilder and his parents and any possible off-spring he might hope to have. Why can’t people take the feelings of antiques dealers into account before they indulge in their stupid bloody whimsies? Isn’t that what all these useless sociologists are for? I came manfully out of my sulk. Tinker was waiting patiently.
‘All right, Lovejoy?’
‘Yes. Thanks, Tinker.’ I gave him a couple of notes. ‘When?’
‘Any time,’ he answered. ‘It’ll be first come first served, Lovejoy, so get your skates on. They say Brad’s going down the waterside early tomorrow. Does he know –’
‘The whole bloody world knows it’s me that’s after flinters,’ I said with anguish.
When a punter puts money on a horse at 2–1 odds, as you will know, nothing happens at first. Then, as more and more punters back it, the odds will fall to maybe evens, which means you must risk two quid to win only two, instead of risking two to win four as formerly. In practically the same way, the more people want to buy a thing, the dearer it becomes. Naturally, merchants will explain that costs and heaven-knows-what factors have pushed the price up, but in fact that’s a load of cobblers. Their prices go up because more people want a thing. They are simply more certain of selling, and who blames them for wanting to make a fortune?
Gambling is a massive industry. Selling spuds is, too. Buying flintlocks or Geneva-cased chain-transmission Wikelman watches is not a great spectator sport, so the field is smaller. A whisper at one end therefore reverberates through the entire collecting world in a couple of weeks, with the effect that those already in possession of the desired item quickly learn they are in a position to call the tune. They can more or less name their terms. Hence the indispensable need of a cunning barker.
‘I’ll go and see him,’ I said. Nothing makes humanity more morose than an opportunity coming closer and closer as the risks of failure simultaneously grow larger.
A toddler gripped my calf, crying, ‘Dadda! Dadda!’ delightedly. I tried unsuccessfully to shake the little psychopath off and had to wait red-faced until its breathless mother arrived all apologetic to rescue me. The little maniac complained bitterly at having lost its new find as it was dragged back to its pushchair. Sheila was helpless with laughter at the scene. The fact that I was embarrassed as hell of course proved even more highly diverting.
‘Oh, Lovejoy!’ she said, falling about.
‘You can go off people, you know,’ I snarled. ‘Very funny. A spiffing jape.’
‘Oh, Lovejoy!’
‘Mind that apothecary box!’ I pushed her away just before she knocked it off a side table.
This gave her the opportunity to ask about it. I saw through her placatory manoeuvre, but for the life of me I couldn’t resist. It gave me an excuse to fondle the box, a poor example it was true, but they are becoming fairly uncommon and you have to keep on the lookout.
Watch your words – not an ‘apothecary’s’ box. It wasn’t his, in the sense that he carried it about full of rectangular bottles and lovely nooky felt-lined compartments for pills and Galenical ‘simples’, as his preparations were called. It belonged usually to a household, and was made to stand on a bureau, a medicine cabinet if you like. You dosed yourself from it, or else hired an apothecary, forerunner of the general practitioner, to give advice on what to use from it. The current cheapness of these elegant little cabinets never ceases to amaze me. I wish they would really soar to a hundred times their present give away price, then maybe the morons who buy them and convert them into mini-cocktail cabinets would leave well alone and get lost.
You find all sorts of junk put in by unscrupulous dealers and auctioneers besides the bottles. This one had a deformed old hatched screwdriver thing with a flanged blade and a pair of old guinea-scales imitating the original physick balance; I dropped them back in, snorting scornfully. Sheila heard my opinion with synthetic attention and nodded in all the right places.
‘If I catch somebody doing it, darling, I’ll smash it on his head,’ she promised as we strolled round.
‘You’ll do no such thing.’
‘No?’
‘Smash a brick on his head, and bring the apothecary box to me.’
‘For you, Lovejoy, anything.’
After an hour Sheila was protesting. Inspecting stuffs best done by osmosis. Don’t rush, stroll. Be casual. Saunter, wander, learn.
‘We keep going round and round, Lovejoy,’ she complained, sitting to take off a shoe to rub her foot like they do.
‘Shut up,’ I said, wandering off. Jim, one of the elderly attendants, guffawed.
‘Chivalrous as ever, eh, Lovejoy?’ he said, and I was in with an excuse.
‘This junk’s enough to make a saint swear,’ I groused. ‘Never seen so much rubbish since Field’s stuff came through.’ He was aggrieved at that. Nobody likes their own stuff being recognized for the rubbish it is.
‘We sold some good stuff that day,’ he said, quick as a flash. ‘If you hadn’t gone to Cumberland you’d know better.’
That explained why I’d missed it. I was beginning to feel, better as things clicked into place.
‘Nothing still around from it, is there?’ I asked casually.
He grinned. ‘Do leave orf, Lovejoy. It was donkey’s years back.’
‘Oh, you never know,’ I said, hinting like mad.
He shook his head. ‘No – we played that one straight,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘Practically all of it went the same week as we got it.’
‘Just a thought, Jim. Some things do get left behind occasionally.’
‘Pigs might fly,’ he said.
I played casual another minute then collected Sheila and we made it back to the car.
We pulled out, rolling against protesting traffic to get started.
‘We have one more call to make before home,’ I told her. ‘Game?’
She sighed. ‘These places always make me feel so grubby. I need a bath.’
‘Same here,’ I shrugged. The motor coughed into emphysematous life and we were under power. ‘What’s that to do with anything?’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Down the creek.’
‘Is it a tip from Tinker?’
‘You guessed, eh?’
‘It was pathetically obvious, Lovejoy.’
‘You’re making me uneasy.’
And she was. Tinker was loyal, wasn’t he? I paid him well by comparison with other dealers’ barkers. I never disclosed a confidence. Twice I’d bailed him out. Once I’d rescued him from Old Bill, and once saved him getting done over by the Brighton lads. But you could never tell. Was it this suspicion that was worrying me? Something niggled in my memory, something I had seen.
We were out of town and down on the e
stuary in no time. It’s not much of a place, four small boatbuilders in corrugated iron sheds, the usual paraphernalia of the pleasure-boating fraternity and a few boats hauled up on the mud by the wharf. Those big Essex barges used to ply between here and Harwich in the old days, crossing to the Blackwater and even London, but the two that are left are only used for showing tourists the Colne estuary and racing once a year, a put-up job.
I found Barton planing wood. The lights were on inside his boathouse, though outside was still broad daylight. You could see the town hall clock in the distance some five miles off. I waited until he stopped. Well, what he was making could be a valuable antique in years to come. Never interrupt a craftsman.
‘Hello, Lovejoy.’ He stopped eventually and nodded to Sheila as we sat on planks.
‘When are you going to give this boat lark up, Dick?’ I said. ‘You could go straight.’
It gave him a grin as he lit his pipe.
‘Dealing in antiques?’
‘Maybe,’ I offered. ‘I’d take you on as a substandard junior partner for a year’s salary.’
‘I like a proper job,’ he countered, winking at Sheila. She was quite taken with him.
‘On second thoughts, I couldn’t see you standing the pace.’
‘Of course,’ he yakked on, ‘I can see the attraction. Nothing really matters in antiques, does it? Right or wrong, you get along.’
‘It’s time for his tablet,’ I apologized to Sheila. ‘This feverish air down on the waterside, you understand. His blood’s thin.’
‘I turn into a man after dark,’ he said solemnly to Sheila. ‘If ever you’re thinking of ditching this goon, give me a tinkle –’
‘Flinters, Dick,’ I said gently. There was silence. A water bird made a racket outside and something splashed with horrid brevity.
‘Ah, well,’ he said.
These pipe-smokers are one up on the rest of us. It might be worth taking up just for the social advantages. If you want a few moments’ peace, out it comes and you can spin out the whole ritual for as long as you feel inclined. The universe waited breathlessly until his pipe was chugging to his satisfaction.
‘Launched?’ I asked. ‘Better now?’
‘Flinters,’ he said. ‘They’re a problem, now, aren’t they?’
‘You are telling me?’
‘And rare.’
‘And desirable. Go on, Dick. And costly.’
‘Ah, yes.’ He stared down the short slipway. ‘About a month ago I decided which pair I’d keep. I have two Sandwells and the Mortimers. The Mortimers can go, but I want exchange. A revolving rifle, English.’ Sandwell was an early brass-barrel specialist, lovely stuff.
‘And cash adjustment.’
‘Something of the sort.’
‘And the Mortimers?’ I could feel that old delicious greed swelling in my chest. Magic.
‘Mint,’ he said.
‘Really mint?’
‘Not a blemish.’ He’d let his pipe doze. ‘Cased. Case-hardening. I don’t think,’ he said, winking at Sheila, ‘you’ll be disappointed.’ The understatement of all time. Case-hardening. Something scratched again at my memory, worrying me.
If you keep any metallic object in an unopened case for long enough, it acquires a curious characteristic. If the surface was originally made an acid-protected rust brown, it simply becomes shinier, almost oily in appearance. If previously made a fire-protected shiny blue (‘gunmetal’ blue), the surface develops an odd mother-of-pearl effect very like the sheen of petrol on water. This case-hardening is an especially desirable feature of anything metal having a protected surface, from coins to weapons. On no account clean it off; you will be doing posterity a cultural favour and yourself a financial one by leaving it intact.
‘Look, Dick.’ I drew breath and launched. ‘I can lay my hands on one.’
‘Good?’
‘A faulty spring I’ve not touched. Otherwise mint,’
‘Cased?’
‘Come off it.’
‘Who by?’
‘Adams, London Bridge. Five-chambered.’ I photographed it in my mind’s eye. ‘It’s beautiful.’
He thought a second in a cloud of smoke. ‘How would we adjust?’
‘Because you’re a close relative,’ I said, in agony, ‘I’ll pay the difference.’
‘Let’s settle it tomorrow,’ he said, and we shook hands.
Sheila rose. ‘Is that all that happens?’ She seemed peeved.
‘What do you want, blood?’ I demanded. I was drenched with sweat, as always. The excitement of the forthcoming deal was brewing in me. Tomorrow, with luck and good judgement and money, I would be in possession, of a pair of case-hardened flinters made by the most aristocraric and expensive of all the great London makers, Henry Walklate Mortimer.
‘Thanks for coming, Lovejoy.’ Dick came to the door of his boatshed to see us out. ‘Still got your steamer, I see.’
‘Any more jokes about my motor and the deal’s off,’ I shot back. ‘At least I’ve got a licence for it – have you, for that thing?’ I pointed to his pipe.
‘Bring your lovely lady again, Lovejoy,’ he called, and I replied with rudeness.
He was able to get his own back because my wretched banger refused to start despite all the cranking I could manage. Dick borrowed a trio of amused boatmen to push us off, to a chorus of catcalls and derision.
‘Why don’t you put an engine in, Lovejoy?’ was Dick’s final bellow as we pulled off the wharfside and escaped on to the road up from the village. I didn’t reply because I was white-faced and my teeth were chattering.
‘Love?’ Sheila asked. ‘Are you ill?’
‘Shut up,’ I hissed, foot flat on the accelerator. The needle flickered up to twenty and we pottered slowly upwards past the church. It was almost time for lights.
‘What is it?’ She tried to pull me round but I swore and jerked my face away.
‘I’ve just remembered something.’
‘For God’s sake, darling –’
‘This bloody stupid car!’ I almost screamed the words. ‘Why the hell don’t I get a new one? What’s the matter with it.’
‘Darling, pull over to the side and I’ll –’
‘Shut up, you stupid –’ My hands were ice-cold and my scalp prickled with fear.
‘Please, love. I’m frightened. What is it?’
‘That frigging box!’
‘What box?’
‘That apothecary box! There’s something in it – a – a –’ the words wouldn’t come.
‘The bottles? Drugs?’ I shook my head and strove to overtake the village bus to the driver’s annoyance. He hooted and pulled in as we crawled past towards the town. We were up to thirty. ‘Those little scales?’
‘That other thing.’
‘You said it was junk the auctioneers put in to make it look complete. Wasn’t it a screwdriver?’
‘It was case-hardened!’ I snarled. ‘Who the hell puts a screwdriver away in a felt-lined case to preserve it for a whole bloody century?’ I was practically demented, kicking and blaspheming at the decrepit motor, begging it for greater speed. ‘And its handle was hatched – hatched like a Durs gun. Oh, God Almighty, please let them still be open. Please, please, please.’
Sheila grabbed my arm. ‘Lovejoy, if we see a taxi, flag it down.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ I whimpered. ‘Please send a taxi. Please, please.’
‘What time do they close?’
‘Half five.’
‘It’s twenty past.’
‘The swine will go early. They always do, those bloody attendants, the idle sods.’
We reached the trunk road roundabout by the river bridge at twenty-five past five, and swung left away from the Ipswich road. Bast Hill was well into lighting-up time as we screeched to a graceful stop outside Seddon’s. It was closed and dark.
‘Knock,’ Sheila said, climbing out.
‘They’ve gone.’ I was lost, defeated by the calamity.
She remained resolute and banged on the main door. I stepped down to join her just as one of the stewards opened the partition. My relief almost made me faint.
‘What the hell –’
‘Jim,’ I said weakly. ‘It’s me. Lovejoy.’
‘Closed till tomorrow.’
‘Not for me you’re not.’ I pulled out a note. ‘A single question, Jim. Just one.’
He eyed it and nodded. I gave it him and asked, ‘The question is, will you let me find my nail-file? I dropped it in the showroom an hour or so back.’
‘Gawd.’ He hesitated. ‘Mr St John has the keys.’
‘And so have you, Jim.’
‘Well –’ he was saying, when Sheila came to the rescue.
‘It’s actually my nail-file,’ she broke in. ‘I was really careless. It’s one of a set, you see, in a case.’
‘Well, miss, dealers aren’t allowed –’
‘I know exactly where it is, Jim,’ I said, calmer now. ‘I’ll bet you five of those notes I could put my hand on it in three seconds flat.’ That was a mistake and scared him.
‘Here, Lovejoy,’ he began, starting to close the door, ‘I don’t want none of your fiddling –’
‘You stay here, Lovejoy,’ Sheila said chidingly. She stepped into the doorway and turned to push me back. ‘You’re always so abrupt. The gentleman said that dealers weren’t allowed in after fixed hours so you’ll have to wait here, that’s all.’ On a tide of feminine assurance she swept past Jim, who humbly put the door to. I heard their footsteps recede along the passageway and keys rattle in the showroom door.
I hung about the pavement getting in people’s way and generally prowling around for quite five minutes before Sheila reappeared. I was up with her in a flash.
‘Thank you so much,’ she was saying to old Jim, who was smirking at all his extra gallantry. ‘I’m so sorry we delayed you. You’ve been so kind. Good night.’
I honestly tried to grin at Jim, but he wasn’t having any from me and banged the door. Sheila walked to the car.
‘I’ve got it in my handbag,’ she said, swinging the strap to her shoulder. ‘Don’t grab, or Jim will see.’
She was really quite smart at that. Old Jim would no doubt be lusting after her as we left. You could see virtually the whole hill from the office. With quivering fingers I set the handle and cranked. We rumbled up the hill and I pulled in by the park railings in town.
The Judas Pair Page 10
