PearlHanger 09

by Jonathan Gash

  Lovejoy

  Pearl Hanger

  Jonathan Gash

  People are stupid: women with money, men with motorbikes, and everybody with pearls. To prove I'm in it too, this story starts in a seance.

  »

  It was a clear fraud (not me, the seance). The whole works, blackout, eight of us, palms outspread, and Owd Maggie in a shawl trying to disguise her Suffolk accent chattering to somebody called Cardew who wasn't there. I'm an antique dealer; this isn't my scene.

  "Who's Cardew?" I asked Mrs. Vernon, the woman I'd come with. Donna Vernon was blond, intense, thirtyish, with a polyurethane prettiness, and had met me by arrangement that morning. I wasn't sure why. She had a faint transatlantic accent, almost completely concealed. I was intrigued. You don't get Yanks in East Anglia for the same reason we don't have Ethiopians.

  "Shhh," everybody went.

  "Cardew Gaythorne," Mrs. Vernon whispered. "Eighth-century squire from Lincoln."

  "Can't be," I whispered back. "The name's duff. Anyway, isn't he dead by now?"

  "Lovejoy," she ground out.

  "Sorry, sorry."

  Why are women always so narked with me? Grumpily I shushed while the charade continued and the fat old bird prattled mystically on. I'd had enough of this, but Mrs. Vernon was hanging on to every gasp. Also, she'd said she was hiring me. I wasn't banking on it because I'm used to failure. But missing the antiques auction down East Hill was getting me mad, bad news if you're penniless.

  Antiques are all we have. They're all we can depend on and the only things mankind can look forward to. They deserve protection. I sighed the sigh of the antique dealer excluded from his rightful lust.

  "You have a question, dear?" The seance fuhrer had returned to earth with her normal harsh rasping voice.

  Great. My chance. I brightened. "Ta, Maggie. How come this Cardew bloke ..."

  "Lovejoy-Ill-not-tell-you-again," from Mrs. Vernon. Me silenced, she put honey into her faintly American voice. "Madame Blavatsky. We have a question for Cardew."

  Madame Blavatsky? That was a scream. Owd Maggie Hollohan used to keep the little health food shop by the war memorial selling skimmed milk and nuts, all those non- grub foods that make you hunger for the real thing. Nice old stick, but off her rocker. This seance business proved that. I've known her years. She was always fond of me, even gave me a pet nickname, Cockalorum.

  "Please," Mrs. Vernon asked. "Where is Sidney?"

  "Cardew," old Maggie intoned nasally. "Where is Sidney?"

  2.. .

  We waited a beat or two, some more breathlessly than others. I yawned.

  "Well and happy," Cardew said. I was disappointed. Cardew's voice was only Owd Maggie's voice pitched falsetto. Talk about phony. She switched to her business voice again, presumably for speed. "Sidney seeks great wealth." I pricked up my ears. My boredom bottomed out and happiness seeped in. "He will stay between the salt water and the seashore."

  "How will I find him?" Mrs. Vernon asked, quivering with eagerness.

  "A man will be your guide," Owd Maggie grated. She should have stuck to selling celery. As a medium she'd starve.

  Undeterred, my trembling heroine drew breath for the biggie and demanded, "Is Lovejoy the guide?"

  "Here, nark it," I said. "Asking a ghost for a job's frigging ridiculous."

  "Shhh," an elderly geezer croaked, fixing me through the gloaming with a specky stare. I don't really mind these phony games, but being discussed with a phantom was bloody cheek. I let my attention wander.

  Next to a dozing crone was a pleasant plumpish woman with that hint of succulence you always get in the overripe forties. Twice she'd looked away in the nick of time as I'd managed to raise my eyes from her lovely shape. The others were dried prunes, except for a bloke about thirty. Fair curly hair, weak face, casually dressed but uptight and looking very, very apprehensive. Funny how this rubbish gets to people. Maybe he was here to contact some ghost about an inheritance. Never once looked at me,

  ... 3

  though I had this odd feeling he was sussing me out in some way. I wish now I'd been more awake that morning.

  "Cardew says it is him you do not trust."

  There was more of Owd Maggie's gunge. I won't go on about it if you don't mind. It's boring, and anyway I can't see what the point of a seance actually is. I mean to say, unless you're somebody with a supernatural bee in your bonnet like Mrs. Vernon it's simply a weird fraud, right?

  We escaped this let's-pretend just as the pubs opened. I didn't manage to get the plumpish bird's name and address. The surly old bloke with the specs and waistcoat was her hubby, a waste of space if ever I saw one.

  Mrs. Vernon led the way aggressively into a posh little cafe in our High Street. I was obviously in for a miserable confrontation over a tablecloth crushed by modern cutlery, my idea of purgatory. I knock everything over, and anyway posh nosh always leaves me hungry.

  "Look, love," I said as we entered. "You've got it wrong. Spiritualism and me ..."

  "No, I haven't. You're to be my helper, Lovejoy. You heard madame." I'd explained it was only Owd Maggie shawled by candlelight but she wouldn't listen. Women are always dead certain about everything.

  She did an odd thing as we went in. A tall man with close-cropped hair stepped out of the restaurant. He was nearly as scruffy as me, and wore a disheveled anorak. I hadn't bumped into him or anything, yet Donna Vernon exclaimed, "Mind, Lovejoy." Curious. I'm clumsy, but not daft. "Sorry," I said to the bloke, whose eyes registered me, then Donna. "Not at all," he said in a BBC announcer's voice.

  "There's another problem," I confessed, sitting opposite her. The place was posh all right. Any minute and

  4...

  we'd be knee-deep in mulligatawny soup. "I'm a bit short just now."

  "I'll pay, Lovejoy."

  "I've a few good deals on, though," I lied briskly, feeling better.

  She said calmly, "You have one deal from now on. It's me. The rest are canceled." She smiled, quite a cold smile that announced my station in life: a serf. Here was a lady bent on getting her money's worth.

  My face reddened. Women always put me down, just when I think I'm not doing so bad. Canceling my costly deals was easy because I'd got none.

  "What about your husband? I'm an antique dealer. Sounds as if you want the Old Bill."

  She passed me a menu, looking hard. "Lovejoy, are you always shabby, or is today's outfit your tramp special?" Dead certain about everything and their voices carry. I reddened deeper as heads turned all across the restaurant.

  "Ask Cardew," I shot back.

  She consulted a complicated gold wristwatch. "I'm paying your salary from noon today, Lovejoy. You have one hour to finish sulking. Then we go."

  "To anywhere in particular?"

  A waitress was poised for orders. With the innate perception of her kind she ignored me and focused on Mrs. Vernon. I said, "Hello, Karen," but she decided she wasn't acknowledging the town's riffraff today and gazed over my head. Redderer and redderer. If it weren't for women my life would be tranquillity itself.

  "We'll start with soup ..." my paragon began. I sighed. Mulligatawny time. Quickly I ate both our rolls. I could tell she was a born slimmer.

  "I'll explain, Lovejoy. You are the only divvie in East Anglia. I need your services."

  A divvie's a bloke who can recognize antiques by a kind of clamorous sixth sense. It feels like a bell in my chest, bonging at the genuine article. People often deny these instincts exist, yet they believe in all kinds of daftness: astrology, faith-healing, insurance, ghosts, omens, witches, female intuition, politicians' promises—and fraudulent Madame Blavatskys. Being a divvie’s supposed to be a miraculous stroke of good fortune, but so far it's only ever brought me trouble�
��like good old Mulligatawny Vernon here.

  "My services? Let me guess." If the restaurant was any good they'd have brought some more rolls to keep us going till the grub arrived. "Your husband's replaced your family heirloom with a replica. What was it? Painting? Bureau?"

  "He has simply gone on a trip. I'm only interested in his welfare, and I'll not have you maligning my family, Lovejoy. Understand?"

  Well, no, because a divvie’s only good for antiques, not people. But the soup came just then, saving me from sweeping out in a hungry huff. She gave me a list of places where her husband had toured. Absently I stuffed it in my pocket. The quicker we got this dreadful meal and the journey done with, the quicker I could return to normality.

  As I waded into my dainty grub praying it might at least fill a dental cavity, I saw that fair-haired bloke from the seance. He'd come into the restaurant and was ordering from our upper-class hopeful Karen. He didn't even nod, yet again there were strong vibes of awareness.

  "Here, missus. D'you know him over there?"

  She glanced with that studied slyness that women have perfected over the millennia. "No, Lovejoy. Why?"

  6. . .

  "He was at the seance." I gave a chuckle. "I'll pop back and ask Cardew about him, eh?" Donna Vernon said that wasn't funny. As it happens she was right, because I eventually did just that.

  *

  Like most smallish towns in East Anglia we have no proper hotels, though every so often some tavern in the High Street gets a rush of blood to the head and announces that henceforth it will be called something like the Great Golden Pinnacle Hotel. Such ambition never lasts because everybody knows that it's really only the Hole in the Wall pub, and has been since before the Normans landed. Eventually the "hotel" gives up pretending, lashes out on a tin of paint, and sheepishly reemerges as its old self. You can't change pubs any more than you can change people.

  I tell you this small fact because it caused a pavement argument outside the Red Lion, and that set the seal on our mutual distrust, though I still say that the deaths weren't my fault.

  "I have to check out of the hotel," said my blond.

  To me that meant she was staying in Ipswich. "Oh, right. See you tomorrow then, eh?"

  "Where do you think you're going, Lovejoy?" She sounded and looked outraged. I'd started off down the pub yard. It's a shortcut to Gimbert's auction rooms.

  "Eh?"

  She came at me blazing. "Now you just look-a here, Lovejoy." She honestly did say look-a. Her finger jabbed my chest. People stopped to listen and an infant in a pushchair applauded joyously. "I want none of your male chauvinist fascism with me, do you hear?"

  "Eh?" I thought, What the hell's she on about?

  "I'm already packed, and you've got one hour—repeat, one—to be back right here. No play, no money. Understand?"

  "Very well." God, but she was annoying.

  "And another thing." She was pretty, but even thinking that was probably imperialism or something. "Why did you steal that ashtray?"

  I went all innocent. "Ashtray?"

  "In your pocket. You stole it right off that table."

  "You pretended you hadn't noticed," I accused. It just shows how really sly women are deep down.

  Since the National Bakelite collectors formed up, prices have gone through the ceiling. Luckily people have been slow to realize. Everybody thinks early plastics are simply breakable rubbish. Wrong. Jackson's restaurant has some ashtrays—ever fewer—that are Bandalasta, an early and valuable trademark. Brittle, but costly. I could live half a week on the proceeds of my—well, Jackson's—ashtray.

  "Personal reasons," I said. I even bit my lip to show sincere remorse. It was my tenth stolen ashtray. I tried to look as though it was my first. "Look, missus," I said, going noble. "My grandfather founded that restaurant. He built it with his own hands." I showed her my own hands as proof. "This is simply a souvenir. If you insist, I'll go back and pay for it. It's only plastic." Neither of my granddads could boil an egg, let alone run a nosh bar.

  "All right," she said, slow but watchful. "One hour exactly?"

  "One hour," I promised, and hurried off. Even if the entire frigging morning was wasted I was now free of that female nutter. Cheerfully I cut down past St. Nicholas' churchyard and emerged into freedom near the Arcade. Alison Bannister beckoned from her antique shop—house-

  hold furniture, mostly Victoriana, and dress items. I tapped my watchless wrist twice, promising to be with her by two o'clock, and hurried on. She had a militia man's antique "housewife" I badly wanted—not a woman, but a tiny leather drawstring bag of threads, buttons, patches, and sewing needles. I'd heard that Mankie Holland, he of the phony catalogs and phonier eighteenth-century water- colors, had a buyer for one. Back to normality for that mighty antiques firm called Lovejoy Antiques Inc. The entire business is only me, but it's real honest-to-God living and that's more than you can say for any other form of existence. I trotted on to the auction, blissfully happy.

  Seance indeed.

  2

  Bliss. I inhaled the grotty armpit-and-dust stench of your typical country auction. Except some days everything goes wrong.

  In the doorway somebody barged into me. I swung angrily, saw who it was and grinned weakly. Big John Sheehan, with four homicidals. "Wotcher, John," I said. "Sorry."

  "No harm done, Lovejoy," he pronounced forgivingly. His serfs shoved me aside. I was relieved. John's a hard man, and I'm not. Tell you more about him later.

  Worse, the flaming picture I wanted had gone—been sold, left me alone and palely loitering. Some rich undeserving swine had actually bid. I entered Gimbert's auction rooms furious with blonds, seances, auctions, and auctioneers. I stormed through the crowd to where Margaret stood waiting for the good porcelain to come up. (In country auctions the best wine is always last; remember that tip and it'll save you money. The first couple of items are usually giveaway cheapo, as come-ons.)

  "Who got it, Margaret?"

  10 every single time there's a Constable copy around East Anglia? We're knee-deep in the sodding things . . ."

  Doris trundled innocently back into the throng to report that I'd used that doom-word "copy." I breathed again. We were now in the space near the tea bar at the back. Margaret was curious, wondering what was going on. She's early middle-age, lovely, has a gammy leg from some marital campaign or other, and loves me. We've been intermittently close for years because of our unspoken agreement: I never ask after her husband, and she doesn't demand honesty from me. This is why older women are best by miles. I'd swap ten popsies for one thirty-plus any day of the week.

  "Get somebody to bid for two hundred and twenty- eight," I muttered, still pretending anger for Jeb Spencer's benefit.

  "Who?" Margaret knew better than glance back to where 228 lay. Idly I scanned the mob of dealers. God, but we look horrible in a group. Tinker was there, an old bloke milling about a cluster of overcoated dealers. He's my own barker, paid in solid blood to sniff out antiques, rumors of deals, any news at all, and sprint—well, totter—to me with the news. He's a filthy old soldier. His cough can waken the dead.

  "Flag Tinker down. Tell him to get one of his old mates in from the betting shop, sharpish. His mate can have the rest of the job lot, but keep the Arita dish."

  "Isn't it a bit Chinese for Arita?"

  The big dish had the Dutch East India Company "VOC" mark among its stylized pomegranate designs—the O and C each bestriding one limb of the V in a central circle—all in underglaze blue. The Dutch wanted replacements for the Chinese porcelains they couldn't get after

  12

  Margaret Dainty turned calm blue eyes on me. "First, good day to you, Lovejoy. Secondly, if you mean that Constable sketch, Gwen bought it. And she paid the earth. Where did you get to?"

  "Seance. Where's Gwen gone?"

  "Home to Bernard for her special reward." Bernard and Gwen run a sex-encounter group, our current scandal. "Did you say seance?"

  I picked up the ol
d dish Margaret had been inspecting and grumbled audibly, "You should have bought that oil sketch instead of tarting around this gunge." Saying those words broke my heart and mentally I whispered an apology to the dish, but casually I replaced it on its job-lot pile. Lot 228.

  "Silence during the bidding, Lovejoy," Wheatstone warbled from the rostrum. He's an import from Stortford, all chained spectacles and degrees in fine art, but at least he can read and write, which for an auctioneer is space-age stuff. He resembles all auctioneers the world over: pinstripe suit, slicked hair, and looks deep-fried.

  "Shut your teeth, Stonie." I didn't even glance. Amid laughter and catcalls I nudged Margaret. We edged from the mob compressed round the podium. Jeb Spencer—antique jewelry, Regency fashions—and others were keeping an eye on me to see if my irritation about the Constable oil sketch was genuine.

  "Silly bitch, Margaret. I told you to bid for it if I was delayed." I spoke loudly for Jeb's benefit. His barker— Doris, a rheumy old doxy with radar ears—was shuffling innocently nearby.

  Margaret looked harassed, not sure if I was pretending. "You never said definitely, Lovejoy."

  I kept up the gripe. "Bloody hell. Do I have to decide

  11

  every single time there's a Constable copy around East Anglia? We're knee-deep in the sodding things ..."