PearlHanger 09

by Jonathan Gash

  190 .

  of Tierney's office key. I cut the key myself from sheet brass, taking great care.

  My faked massive baroque pearl was finished. A couple of the trial pieces even looked great. The rest were manky. Before I let Herbie have the best I would give it one

  last coat, then touch it up on Fingers' big night.

  »

  Three weeks gone. Still no news of Deamer's sending his pendant into Tierney's auction. But why worry?

  Tierney's had type-set the sale catalogs. Olivia let me see the proofs. I booked Fingers to do the swap, sixty quid down and a percentage.

  Thursday of that week I had a blazing row with Mel, who'd taken the lid off a silver wax-jack. It's a cylindrical cuplike thing with a waxy taper uncoiling through the conical lid. "Ignorant bloody fools like you give idiocy a bad name," I yelled at him. How I didn't hit him I'll never know. "Just to stretch the lid into a small dish? You frigging nerk. Any goon can detect a stretcher case." Especially when the silversmith's mark is the famous tall rectangle of the Hennells, 1802. Sandy frantically tried to calm me but I told him to get that ugly daubed scrapheap of a car out of my bloody way, and drove off leaving him sobbing and Mel with one of his heads.

  All in all, the usual scene of Lovejoy waiting patiently. »

  Fourth week. No news. I was broke, on edge. Tierney's had sent out the sale catalogs. I couldn't concentrate. Tinker moaned that we were missing bargains right, left, and center. I owed everybody for everything.

  Friday night I walked past a genuine Valenciennes lace sampler—you wear out two sets of eyes to make those lace edgings. Only a yard long and not two inches wide, but skilled lacemakers did one inch slogging nonstop 4:00 a.m. to dusk.

  Saturday I stared unseeing in the Arcade while Vera Spelman and her new bloke Trevor bought a collection of six Victorian miniature baptismal fonts, replicas in stone copied from Lincolnshire churches, the sort collectors search a lifetime for. I tell you I was really on form.

  Herbie Belcher finished the last of the mounts, a lovely job. The best was brilliant.

  »

  Fifth week. A week to go. And no news from Olivia. I was seeing her nightly now, ratty as hell, still pretending I was somebody called James Chester but with my stories about Lord Eskott's dippy family more confused than ever. And she was wearing me out. They now expected us as a routine at her bloody motel. Lydia was becoming suspicious. East Anglia was agog about the forthcoming auction at Montwell. Tierney's had taken massive double spread adverts locally and quarter boxes in the London dailies. Syndicates were forming, breaking, recoalescing. All known antique dealers were everywhere, up to everything.

  Word came of two London mobs preparing to lam in on auction day. The Cambridge dealers were already arriving. The Brixton and Southend mobs were in the two major hotels, snooker and gin till all hours. The Norwich dealers would arrive on the day, their sly habit. Rumor spread wider, faster. A Birmingham ring's lawyer was seen lunching with the senior Tierney. Big John Sheehan was coming.

  192 .

  Christ. I couldn't sleep. When I wasn't with Olivia I was in my workshed checking and rechecking my fake pendant.

  Herbie Belcher presented me with his bill. I nearly infarcted. Great. I'd now ruined myself having had seven fakes made for nothing.

  »

  Two days left. No news but multo rumor.

  Debts everywhere, and a pocketful of fakes. Big John S. was lodged in Colchester, ready for the grand drive to Montwell on the day. His Rolls puddle-splashed me by the war memorial. Lydia gave me a stern lecture on morality. Olivia lectured me mistily on togetherness. I'd have given anything for a kip.

  »

  One day left. I was done for. Display day, when all items go on show. Fingers, my cracksman swap-merchant, was drinking at the George, poised.

  Disconsolately I drove over to Montwell on my own and just about made the hundred-yard walk to Tierney's auction rooms. I'd never felt so washed out. It was the usual sordid scene, antiques crammed higgledy-piggledy into the aroma of must, age, and cheap new wood. Normally I'd be thrilled at the turmoil. Today it was a throng about my scaffold.

  The main display cabinet was surrounded by a mass of dealers, Big John Sheehan's red head showing tallest. I sat wearily on a small oak monk's chest, depressed and exhausted by the whole thing. Olivia was at her desk listing postal bidders. She tried to give me a secret loving smile but I was too done and pretended not to see.

  Then Ledger, bless him, made my day. Never say our policemen aren't wonderful, because this angel was suddenly beside me.

  "Outside, Lovejoy," he said.

  "What for now, Ledger?" I didn't move. I was too tired from losing. Usually only women make me feel like this.

  "Because I said, that's what for."

  I looked toward the crowd of dealers. Then I looked up at Ledger. This important peeler had made a special trip to Montwell to warn me off. A faint glow began to spread through me. My memory searched and doubtfully diagnosed the glow as optimism, the stuff I once felt every single day. Would Ledger go to all that trouble, unless . . .?

  "Can't I have just one look at it, Ledgie?" I cringed.

  "No," he said. "Up. Out."

  My spirits rose. I'd said "it." He knew I meant Deamer's fake, the Siren ringer. It was here.

  "Very well," I said, smiling beatifically and heading for the street. I walked for the sake of appearances but I could have flown.

  Suspicious at my good humor he stood watching at the exit. "Lovejoy, you don't come near this place. Hear me?"

  "I promise, Ledgie," I told him. My heart was singing, because my scam was on. "Oh, will you pass Chandler a message, please? Tell him no hard feelings."

  That ended his satisfaction. I went off whistling the difficult bit in Purcell's "Rejoice," the slow-rising crescendo bit

  that everybody in our choir gets wrong except me.

  *

  That same night I was in paradise. My forgery was beautiful. Old Herbie deserved a peerage, and my fake baroque pearl that formed the mermaid's torso would fool anybody—at first. The small dangling baroque pearls were

  194 .

  Lydia's genuine scotchers, so no worry there. The gold chains and the Siren's body were Herbie's gold. Herbie had copied the medieval Italian goldsmith's VD mark with loving care. The whole piece dazzled. The other six were marred by slight defects here and there, which was only to be expected for trials. Once the scam was over I'd sell them to some bone-headed roving dealers as they passed through.

  Those small cardboard boxes that they sell digital watches in are the only really useful things you can buy from watchmakers nowadays. I'd had a nice one ready some time. Covered in imitation blue velvet, these cost about fivepence, wholesale. I'd lined it with felt over recessed polystyrene to hold the pendant tight but not rigid. Finally the whole lot was wrapped in a piece of black slub silk for ease of handling during the dark hours. I left the rest of the pendants in a safe floor-hole.

  Fingers would need cash for tonight's work. Early that evening I drove to Dragonsdale and offered to sell Liz Sand- well two precious antiques I hadn't got.

  "Tomorrow's jewelry auction at Montwell?" she guessed, smiling. She's a luscious bird, but her bloke's one of these rugby maniacs the size of our church. She also has that special woman's smile that eggs a man to try it on. "The whole world'll be competing."

  "Mind your own business, wench," I rebuked. "I've a coconut chalice made in a debtors' prison, 1830, bone- rimmed and inlaid, with a coconut ladle. That's one." She gasped gratifyingly, knowing the rarity of these Dickensian artifacts. "And I've a Queen Anne period kitchen spoon rack, eighteen inches tall."

  "What about. . . ?"

  "My fingerstocks?" She'd only been about to ask if I'd any spoons to go with the rack, but I chose to misunderstand. "You heard of them, eh? Those children's fin- gerstocks are all I'd have left, Liz."

  Our dear great-grandparents must have been hell- raisers as infants. Their
Victorian schoolteachers carved flat wood into bean-shaped pieces, each four-inch crescent with four holes and a thong. You used the leather thongs to tie troublesome pupils' hands, fingers rammed into the holes, thereby creating more disturbed personalities to educate the next generation. I knew Liz was specially interested in infant welfare. "No deal, Liz. I'll give them as a christening present for your first."

  We bantered lightly over prices. I got a good deposit out of her for all three, fingerstocks included, and a guarantee of the balance payable at the Swan in Montwell immediately Tierney's auction was over. I said my thanks and drove off. God knows where I'd find antiques that rare, but that was tomorrow's problem. Maybe Sandy and Mel would help. Finding such genuine rarities was a long shot. I'd only ever seen one set of children's fingerstocks, in York years ago.

  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.

  198 . .

  #

  26

  Dying embers crinkle. While I watched from the rug the fireglow faded from red to black, then black to gray powder, tiny gunshots and distant tinkling 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

  ... 299

  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 disceroonis, 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: 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 behavior. Moral upbringing isn't anybody's fault. Please.

  Lovejoy

  Then I set the alarm clock for two-thirty, 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 meowed in the street outside. A milk float rattled. A postman called a greeting to somebody.

  Dawn.

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

  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 toward 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 dialed 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. Sheehan 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.