Moonspender

by Jonathan Gash

  She gazed rapturously at the house with that demented smile. Flames were gusting out of the upstairs window. The frames were spurting, blistering, sagging. I shook her hand off" and edged away. I hadn't realized fires were so noisy, the force so tremendous. The damned wall might fall on me. I moved further, faster. The firemen arrived as I reached the gate, bursting in with axes and grim intent.

  "Magister." Loony Enid was trotting alongside.

  "Anybody inside?" a yellow-helmeted officer man yelled at me.

  "Dunno," I said. "She'll tell you."

  "No one," Enid said.

  He gestured his men forward. "How'd it start?"

  Blame raised its ugly head. Blame, legal penalties, and menacing manila envelopes. I looked at Enid, and brightened. She was gazing devotedly at me. A way out. Enid'd get off scot free, being totally barmy, right?

  "It was her," I said, and commanded, "Tell him, Enid."

  "You?" The fire officer stepped over a trailing hose. It swelled obscenely as water rushed. I'd never seen so many people in a single yard before.

  "It was I," Enid said in a calm monotone.

  I was delighted. "Tell him it was your candle, Enid."

  "It was my candle."

  "Tell him how you knocked it over."

  Her worshiping eyes never left me. "I knocked my candle over."

  "She's in shock," the officer decided. "Who're you?"

  "Just passing," I said. A couple of women came up with blankets for Enid. None for me, note.

  "You help her to get out?" the officer said.

  I drew breath, but Enid was too quick. "He walked unscathed through the flames and brought me safe." She was quiet, adoring.

  "Good chap. How'd you get down?"

  "We flew," Enid said.

  Abruptly I decided to use the breath for muscular power instead, and quickly eeled out among the assembling spectators. The fire officer shouted but I kept going. Enid could manage on her bloody own from now on.

  Well, fair's fair. Women never take enough blame.

  This escapade I tell in detail because it has a bearing on forthcoming deaths and survivals, and was the cause of several new bills from Sir John. Winstanley delivered these to me in the Treble Tile late that evening. He was really apologetic that the next lot of subpoenas wouldn't be ready until the morning.

  "You're forgiven, Winstanley." I'm always kindly about delays of that kind. "Er, incidentally. . . ?" I was having a cough-splattered session with Tinker and Liz Sandwell. She was vastly amused at my sheaf of envelopes.

  "The reason for the invoices?" He stood there, neat with the menace of the subordinate who loves his niche. Among us mob of antique dealers he looked a right prat. "Your default. Don't you remember? You and Sir John were to have dinner. We incurred costs. You were reminded on five occasions ..."

  "I hope those expenses are included," I said severely.

  He frowned, actually checked. "Yes. Envelope seven."

  Liz said indignantly, "Why've I never thought of that? He's stood me up time and again!"

  "Shut it, Liz. Right, Winnie. Tell Sir John ta."

  A grave good evening, and off he trod through the taproom smoke. Isn't loyalty great?

  "And him an ex-dealer, too!" Liz patted my hand consolingly, rose to buy the next round.

  "Eh? Winstanley was an antique dealer?"

  "Mmmh. He used to partner some woman, frosty but quite a looker."

  "Name of Minter?"

  "That's it. They both went into business. Very wise."

  I lusted mildly after Liz's lovely haunches through the fug, thinking at last one piece of the puzzle was in place. I should have been more interested, but I had to phone Beryl at her museum. I plugged my free ear and told Beryl her problems were over.

  "Over?" she asked. "Lovejoy, are you drunk?"

  Mistrustful cow. "No, love. I'm not in a pub. Honest. I'm ringing from the, er, football match. Listen. You know the garments in your long gallery? Display Sixteen?" That was the wedding scenario. "Well, get them ready for people."

  She cried in panic, "Real people? It's impossible—"

  "Cheers, love." I rang off, hearing her cry my name despairingly. Anyway, I'd shot my bolt. She could either come along or I'd raid the bloody place and nick Display Sixteen myself Friends really nark me. They don't try. I slammed out, ignoring Liz's annoyed call. I had a horrible night ahead.

  21

  That night I stood alone in the wood. I honestly wasn't scared. No, I really wasn't. I'd arrived about eleven-thirty and positioned myself under some tree near the great earthwork. I'd no light. I wasn't cold, having fetched a thermos of hot tea and a couple of pasties, everything planned for once. I even wore a sheepskin thing I'd found at Manor Farm. I leaned against the tree trunk and watched the blackness. It watched me. We watched each other, through the minutes up to midnight. Then through that witching hour. Then one o'clock.

  About two-ish it turned cold. The wind rose to whipping onshore gusts, yet stayed dank and seeming more an emanation from earth than movements of air. I stood there like a spare tool, not really knowing what I was doing. Me being me, I'd swigged the tea and noshed the pasties as soon as I'd got into position, which didn't help. Ten minutes and I was starving again. A few creatures shuffled, coughed, rustled. Badgers, I supposed. Or night birds? I'd heard of owls getting nasty with your eyes.

  Not that I was worried, even. I mean to say, a grown man in among a few trees, and a stone's throw from his own cottage?

  About three hours into my vigil I heard a short whine, as of an old man's hearing aid. It cut. I listened, having difficulty with the branches whooshing above. I thought I heard it once more, two short bleeps, but that was it. An electronic scanner. The moonspenders were about.

  Time passed. Then I heard a faint near-hiss, the sort children make learning to whistle through fingers, and I grinned into the witchwood. I almost laughed and called out, but thank God I didn't.

  Then the wood gathered itself back into silence, a lady who'd burped in company. And nothing. No lights, no engines. No eerie witches' covens frolicking round fires. If Enid's coven came to Pittsbury for woodland jollies they were being bloody quiet about it. No bonfire, no flying broomsticks. Nowt. If there'd been a crowd I could have sold some hankies if I'd had some hankies.

  The train line runs along our valley. From countless sleepless nights I knew that the Royal Mail about four o'clock gives a prolonged shriek to rouse young Cecil, Harry Bateman's lad who keeps the level crossing at Chitts Hill. That long whistle absolved me from my night guardianship. Dawn was upon us. I unstiffened and creaked off as quietly as I could, trying to move as I'd seen Boothie, in short drifty paces. The Ramparts Comer crossroads when I climbed the perimeter fence was scumbled by moonlight. Billiam was presumably resting his artist's muse in drunken snores. Over half a moon. From there it was easy. Safe home. Toffee was kipping in her basket. She didn't even notice me return, selfish sod. I wish all females were like her.

  "Nothing in the wood," I thought. It'd be different next time. When, say, the moon had stretched to fullness and the ancient world's great equinox reached completion. But by that witch night I hoped to have help.

  Silly me.

  Speaking of fakes, bronze is funny old stuff. Once I'd finished the plaster model of my Roman leopard in my workshop I was in the hands of experts—always dangerous. The model itself was no problem. Anyone with a tin of Plasticine or a bag of plaster of Paris is in business. When the object's tiny, like Cox's little leopard, simply slop a glug of plaster or Polyfilla, whatever's left over from some previous work of creative genius, into a rectangle between bricks. (Don't do it on your wife's best Doulton plate because plaster will fix it solid.) Let it dry. Then carve your plaster brick. You need no special tools. A nail file'll do if you've got time.

  Bronze casting's a lost art and likely to remain so. What, you cry, in this technological age? When every country on earth's firing old mangles into orbit cluttering up space? Yes, afra
id so. Look at Boy Praying in that Berlin museum, and ask yourself who can cast metal that thin. Answer: nobody. So why don't we struggle to relearn? Because there's a million polyresins and coldcasts we can use instead. Look-alikes, but not test-alikes.

  Brendan Fernoy's our local casting man. He'll do anything—engine parts, silverware, jewelry—for the right price, with a cheerful disregard of patent law. You have to run one terrible gauntlet, though. She's his wife Denise. She's addicted to flowers, and despairingly tries to grow them in her tiny garden. No problem? Well, actually, her tiny garden is the problem, because it's been converted into Bren's minifoundry. I arrived without warning, wise tactics.

  "Is that you, Lovejoy?" she yelled. She was upstairs doing the bedrooms. "Don't you dare make Brendan do stinkworks!"

  "Er, hello, Denise," I called up her staircase. "No, just these bulbs he wanted."

  "Bulbs? Flower bulbs?" She came clattering downstairs, lovely legs but no chest—worn out screaming at Bren, I expect.

  "Yes." I saw Brendan gaping from the parlor and pretended dismay. "Wasn't I supposed to say. . . ? Oh, hell!" I'd a little sack of double white daffodil bulbs, though I prefer yellow King Alfreds myself. I feigned exasperation, no difficulty. "Sorry, Bren. Was it meant to be a surprise?"

  "Surprise?" Denise said, still suspicious.

  "When you asked me to bring them," I told Bren. He was quite blank. God, the effort of duplicity. You'd think one he'd be simple, for God's sake.

  Denise looked at Bren. "You bought me some bulbs?" Her eyes filled.

  "Sorry, Bren," I said. "Clumsy me."

  Bren was still gasping as Denise said, "That's a beautiful thing to do, dear."

  She was so overcome that I had to blow my nose. I felt really romantic as I made my departure. Bren would be in clover—until he started up his foundry and wrecked Denise's struggling attempts at cultivation. The work I usually leave for him in a biscuit tin at the bottom of his neighbor's yard, with a quid for the neighbor's trouble. Now I'd have to keep out of Denise's way for a few months. If only women were more cooperative.

  22

  The compulsory supper turned out to be a banquet. Sir John and I dined in solitary regal splendor at the George in a private room. It wasn't boring, Sir John being a murder suspect times three, and a collector. Inevitably I was on my guard. Antique dealers and collectors are like Israel and Ireland, would-be opposites yet basically the same. I had no illusions. And now I knew Winstanley was an ex-dealer I wanted to judge him anew. Winstanley hovered—how did he do it? I was almost convinced the blighter actually floated—at the door, presumably sampling grub for poison like a Roman emperor's food-taster.

  Sir John was in diplomat attire. I wore my suit. We noshed in decorous silence, apart from platitudes. A faint din rose from the saloon bars.

  He'd thoughtfully crammed the room with a good two dozen antiques from his suite at Castor Chemical Industries. I recognized three small paintings, a mahogany whatnot, four Lancashire chairs with their lovely straight backs, even his display of twifflers—these are eight-inch plates; every pottery made them, but they're special to collectors. I really felt sympathy. I mean, the poor mites hadn't done anything wrong except be beautiful, and this rich cretin was trundling them out for inspection. Shameful. I feel the same at cattle shows. The silly sod even had a tiny veilleuse, Lambeth delft of 1760. He saw me looking during pudding and struck, the delicacy of a falling chimney.

  "You like my Lambeth footwarmer, Lovejoy?"

  "Mmmmh?" I said absently through a mouthful of some sweet amorphous gunge. "Oh, that." I gave the precious early piece a mental apology. I was in raptures. The word means night-lamp, but it's actually a pottery cylinder for keeping dishes warm. The godet, container for your floating wick, was missing. The veilleuse's delightful blue flowers and leaves on white were outlined in green, a trick no Dutchman ever used. Actually it was too small to be a proper dishwarmer. Veiller means to keep a night vigil, so we were being treated to that special rarity, a bedside drink-warmer, perhaps for an infant's nightly gruel. I could have strangled the avaricious old sod, humiliating a prize like that.

  "You hate me, Lovejoy," Sir John said calmly.

  "No. Collectors are the only criterion of civilization."

  He served brandy from a Rodney decanter. Well, he snapped his fingers and Winstanley sprinted over to pour. The name is Admiral Rodney's, the splayed base made so the decanters couldn't topple while riding out hurricanes at sea. This had the true concentric steps down its sloping sides, indicating that it was an officer's. True Rodneys are post-1782, the year of his great victory.

  "Hatred is based on envy, Lovejoy."

  Well, I laughed at that. These folk have no idea. Of course I want to own all antiques, but I'm not so barmy that I take myself seriously.

  "You've served your purpose tonight, Lovejoy," he said, smug. "You've proved that the antiques I brought are genuine. You're unable to conceal your elation at each."

  "Only a few hundred to go, then."

  Anger rippled to his brandy. "You'll divvie—that word's correct?— for me soon, Lovejoy."

  "All right. It's a deal."

  His financier's mind sent rapid signals to block his exclamation of joy. "At what price, Lovejoy? You have very little to bargain with. You're arraigned in a dozen courts at my behest."

  "Wrong, Sir John." Behest. Get that.

  To my admiration he waited before answering. Sundry serfs served sweets on late Regency muffin plates. I'd have settled for the porcelain and missed the toffees, but I started on them from politeness.

  "I fail to see, Lovejoy."

  "I've pieced it together. I know what happened. Everything. Ledger'!! go berserk. And there'!! be trouble in the antiques mobs. In fact," I added nastily, "I'll be bloody glad to be out of it. Safe in jail." I let that sink in and added piously, "Deo gratias."

  Seeing that formidable intellect suddenly zoom into ultradrive was an experience. He froze. His gaze rayed me. I shivered. No wonder he'd made more money than religion.

  "You know everything? Who's been preventing me from buying the archeological finds? And how they did it?"

  "Oh, aye."

  "Who? How? And why?" He was scarcely audible. I'd hate to be his banker on a wet Monday. "There's simply no means . . ." The outrage finally got to him and he sipped through cyanotic lips from a Stuart glass.

  You can't help being sorry. It's people, isn't it. I mean, here was a man at the pinnacle of achievement—knighthood for services to industry, serfs leaping on every whim, rich as whatsisname. Yet too thick to comprehend anything outside a bank balance. Sadly, I told him.

  "You thought you'd got it sewn up by offering to fund Ben Cox, by bribing George Prentiss to inform on the moonspenders. Both ends neatly tied—the legitimates and skulduggers."

  He whispered, "I promised them a fortune, Lovejoy." He looked paper mashey he was so white.

  "There's forces bigger than money," I said, feeling pity. "Ben loved the art. George used your pay to buy a rare kind word from a woman he loved." He flinched, literally flinched in his lovely slab-back chair as if I'd lashed him. Pain's painful. "Dogmas die. Sir John."

  "Impossible, Lovejoy." A whisper. He roused to do battle for the one true faith. "If that were true, Lovejoy, exterminators would merely procreate their victims."

  "Don't they?" I went innocent. "In 1794 the Jesuits fled the holy continent to safety—in the sinful stews of Regency London." I'm delighted about this, because they brought the delectable Stonyhurst Gospel. History's nothing but similar examples.

  "But money is power," he pleaded.

  "True," I admitted, kindly now I really knew he couldn't hurt a fly. "As long as subordinates believe it."

  "They have to!" It was an anguished cry. The poor man said, "Nothing on earth can destroy faith in money."

  I got up. "Ta for the grub, Sir John."

  "Wait!" He struggled, motionless, then finally managed, "What forces, Lovejoy?"

  "T
wo," I said. "One's love." I hadn't known of the other until recently. "The other's belief in anything a human being damned well wants to beUeve in. Romance, mysticism, witchcraft, anything."

  "Please," he called piteously. I didn't pause.

  "Am I right, Winstanley?" I said pleasantly, stepping past him into a corridor thronged with trolleys and waitresses.

  "If you say so, sir," Winstanley murmured.

  Get that. A "please" from Sir John, a "sir" from Winstanley. Funny how nightmares affect people.

  On the way downstairs I was accosted by Mr. Pitlochry. He's a twerp, the George's manager. Out he came like a Byzantine knifer from the hangings.

  "Ah, Lovejoy," he said, smiling a smile in which malice figured large. "This Saturday wedding arrangement."

  I remembered Big Frank. "Yes?"

  "It's off"

  Which actually did make me pause. Had Big Frank seen the light? Or Rowena the dark?

  "I'm canceling it, Lovejoy." He shot his cuffs. "I won't have this establishment used by your ilk. This is a respectable hotel. You and your sordid acquaintances—"

  Hate always brings out the facts in me. I said loudly, "This building was a brothel in the thirteenth century. It was a plague-house in the black death. It's been a charnel-house, a haunt of footpads. It's been a smuggler's exchange, a prison, headquarters of traitors, a penny alehouse, a chapel, and a mortuary." Passing guests paused aghast on the landing.

  Pitlochry's assurance faded. "Enough of that, Lovejoy."

  "It's been a public lavatory, a fever hospital, a military whorehouse." I raised my voice. "I wouldn't hold my friend's wedding reception here if you paid me. Avaunt, scoundrel."

  Ledger was drinking at the bar as I passed. "Nice one, Lovejoy," he called.

  "How do, Ledger." I felt sheepish.

  "Good supper with Sir John?" That turned a few more heads.

  "Dunno. It was all in French. I told him about Saturday, though."

  "Saturday? What about Saturday?" He was enjoying the attention until I gave him my parting line.

  "We settle up then. You, me. And the poor dead souls you let die, Ledger. 'Night."