PearlHanger 09 (10 page)

and uses after-dinner speakers' tricks—patting pockets, ahemming—to slow up conversations and give his lonesome neurons time to synapse. I have a theory that he's really a publicity still from the 1950s.

"Lovejoy," Ledger was saying, ex cathedra. "You're coming down to the station to make a statement as to the extent of your involvement."

I stared, incredulous. "As to the extent of my involvement? It must be these bloody courses they keep sending you peelers on. You all come back talking like the Home Secretary. You ignorant burke. I wouldn't go to church with you, let alone your neffie clink."

He was tough, but law-bound. The mortuary technician was looking in, wanting to close up. Jock had finished his report. He'd made two carbon copies in his alphabet- soup scrawl. I wanted one. Distraction was called for.

"Did you know that Confucius was a police inspector, Ledger?" I walked across, giving the morose technician a shove into Jock. "And Ghandi was a stretcher-bearer like you burke. Standards are falling."

"Here, nark it." The technician and Jock were in a heap.

"Right, Lovejoy," Ledger was saying, but I'd scrambled across them and out of the door. Nobody chased me. I made the hospital car park unhindered and drove sedately out along the road to our village. It's not far. I made it just as the night's pitch was weakening. Old Kate's cottage light was on. Today she would take her joint to be cooked in our village baker's oven, after the first bread batch was drawn at four o'clock. They still do this in country villages, get the baker's oven to do roasts and dry the bedsheets on rainy washdays.

A quick brew up, and I read Owd Maggie's BID DOA
80 .. .

police report, which Constable Ellis had typed. It had been no bother to nick a carbon copy while the technician and he tumbled. Brought In Dead-Dead On Arrival. Nothing I didn't already know. But by the phone in Lydia's writing were notes I needed.

Lovejoy,

Chatto and Vernon run Spendlate Antiques, Nazeivell, specializing in antique jewelry, mainly pearls. Remember the Siren rumor. They dried about ten weeks ago; some deals are in abeyance. Take care.

Lydia

About five I set off to Lowestoft deep in thought. My mind went: Donna Vernon's husband Sid embarks on an antique sweep. Off he goes, and is now long overdue. Donna collars me; off we chase. Fortunately we have a list of where he's supposed to have gone. Partner Chatto seems to have joined him, and this upsets Donna. And she'd pretended ignorance of Chatto. For my benefit, or Chandler's? And why? Chatto is Sid Vernon's partner in Spendlate Antiques. Chandler pulls me and Donna to suss out what relationships exist between the four of us, if any. I had this odd feeling that everything—Chandler's interview as well—was part of a play.

Flaw One: if Sid's trying to escape Donna, why is he leaving such a well-marked track? Flaw Two: Sid is even thicker than your average antique dealer, the world's greatest known epsilon-minus nerks. His performance so far had been pathetic: not caring about a genuine aigrette, not spotting Reverend Cunliffe's pricey box of genuine cards, dismissing Ellen Smith's brilliant gedanite rosary when he could have wheedled it off her for a song. Flaw Three: Owd

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Maggie is killed. Maybe somebody had overheard me phoning Lydia in the Lowestoft pub last night, and actually believed Owd Maggie had received some urgent spiritual telecast? I certainly didn't number Donna among the believers, so she was clear. Funny how that pale thin geezer kept coining to mind. Maybe he'd overheard in the taproom, hurtled south
and ...
I shivered.

Following my headlights northwards on the A12, I thought of Spendlate Antiques. To everybody else they'd look a decent little wandering syndicate of buyers who exported to the continent, cash on the nail for good stuff.

But from now on they spelled pearls.

*

You've got to hand it to oysters and other molluscs. When you think of it, they live a pretty grotty life stuck in the mud until somebody slices through their valve muscle and eats them alive (sorry about this gruesome bit). Not only that, but the whole world hopes they're diseased, by a speck of a parasite or sand working under the shell or into the mollusc's body. Why? Because the desperate little creature tries to cure itself by secreting conchiolin and calcium carbonate as tiny prisms of calcite or aragonite. This nacre forms in thin onionskin layers and looks shiny. The entire blob of disease is a pearl. And the poor mollusc never complains. Not that if s got much to complain with, just a lot to complain about. Seems to me that animal-rights societies should care for the downtrodden mollusc, if only they'd bother.

Lydia's list of Spendlate's activities included a lot of Victorian jewelry. Pretty low value, nothing tremendous, yet always there in local auction records. Lydia'd done a good job.

82...

A year ago somebody put word around of a genuine variant of the Canning Siren for sale. The Siren's what we call a "oncer:" there's nothing else like it, though crude late Prussian and German derivatives abound. She's about 1585, Italian. I've never seen her though I know plenty who were at Sotheby's when she was sold for a fortune. It's a pendant made of gold, jewels, and enamel, arranged in the form of a siren, a lovely lady who hangs about rivers and oceans and sings you to your doom. This siren holds a diamond mirror and is doing her hair with a golden comb. Of course the workmanship is dazzling, and of course it's practically priceless. The point is that the Siren is a single baroque pearl. Baroque means rather bizarre in shape, "wrong" when compared with the spherical pearl that most people think the "right" shape. This one happens to be shaped like a woman's torso, breasts and all. The pendant's provenance is impressive, from the time it was given by a Medici duke to a Moghul emperor in 1648 right down to when Lord Canning bought it as first Viceroy of India after the King of Oudh got up to no good. You can guess what a splash the story of a Canning Siren variant created among us dealers. A variant's a genuine similar piece, made in the same materials by the same hands, and costing more or less the same. Think of another
Last Supper
by Da Vinci, and you have it.

This rumor, like all really interesting ones, died the death. It was always a long shot. The craftsmanship needed to adapt these baroque shapes into centaurs, dragons, and butterflies died out with the Renaissance jewelers of Italy and Spain. But for a few days, while that luscious rumor circulated, every antique dealer in East Anglia licked his chops and prayed that the Siren variant would come his way. Common sense sadly prevailed and we all sobbed into our ale, because huge high
-quality baroque pearls just simply

aren't found in these days of standardized conformity in the pearl farms of Japan and the Arabian Gulf. Too good to be true, in other words.

Now, the one name that kept cropping up when the

Siren rumor was doing the rounds was Spendlate Antiques.

·

By driving like the clappers I was in the tavern in Lowestoft in fair time. I had a three millisec bath, and was languidly noshing breakfast when Donna Vernon came down. She looked radiant, dazzling the few occupants of the breakfast room with her smile, glowing with health and beauty, dressed to kill.

"You look a rag, Lovejoy."

"What else is new?" I offered her toast to be going on with. If she wasn't an enemy I'd fall for her. "Actually, I thought all night of a certain person."

She pinked and shoved at her hair like they do. "None of that, Lovejoy. We have too much to do today."

"Exactly." Oh cunning, cunning Lovejoy. "We've dallied and dillied too long. I'll show you how a real antique sweep is done. Eat," I commanded, trying to sound like a granny, "and save the world trouble." My mind felt free-falling and white hot. The grub nearly choked me but I was behaving beautifully. Until now I'd meekly done as I'd been told. Hereon it'd be speed and light. Owd Maggie'd died because I'd dawdled. "I'll find Sid for you, love."

As God's my judge I'll find him, I thought with grim piety.

She eyed me with a doubtful smile.

"Nice pearls you had on last night," I added as the fried eggs arrived. "Time they were restrung. I noticed the nacre was going at their equator ..."

84.. .

1Q

My tiredness evaporated. I was actually grinning as Donna drove us out on the A146 toward Beccles, me urging speed and going demented when I mislaid her list. I'd got the antiques fever on me, that berserk craving that makes you certain of antique everything. Immediately. Yesterday an indolent drifter doubting your own name, today you bullet about in a mental ferment. You pull antiques by magnetism. I swear that luscious antique items catch the feeling too, and think: Thank God a proper divvie's arrived and will instantly spot that I'm a genuine 1790 Boule inkstand, and will stop me being used as a frigging button-jar in this neffie cupboard. And they leap into your arms with a squeak of joy. Don't laugh. I really believe that antiques feel this way. If you disagree, you don't deserve any and it's your own fault.

Not only that, but other dealers recognize it. And they bow to your unstoppable passion. It is utterly exhilarating. They fetch out of hiding their specials, their sleepers, their savers that they've been gloating over for years. Safes are opened. Dusty drawers unlock. Truth, believe it or not, is

85

told whereas normally antique dealers infarct at the first glimpse of sincerity. Divvying out-magics them all.

"Only three miles before we reach Barnby, Donna. Can't you go any faster?"

She gave that exasperated deposit of a laugh. "What is the matter with you today, Lovejoy? I want no chauvinist sexist moves from you," she said. It was meant as a slight mockery of her old style.

"You'll get none, love," I said. "And that's the truth." I beamed sickeningly into her puzzlement. I got her to park off the intersection while I walked down the unmade road.

The Barnby address was a newish semidetached house, three bedrooms, k&b, garage and garden, lvg rm, dng rm, and a wife with a flowery apron holding a paint brush heavenward. Seagull emulsion, not a bad color for a hallway. She looked fourteen, bless her heart, in enormous yellow household gloves. She was badly in need of another arm to keep her hair out of her eyes.

"Mrs. Sutton? I'm Mr. Vernon's partner," I said. Not that much of a lie. "I came about the antique. You advertised, I believe?"

"Yes. Mr. Vernon changed his mind, then?"

"Not really. I'm the expert, love. Here." I extracted her hairclip and clumsily shoved it back with her locks trapped in it. "Your hair's in a worse state than China."

"I know," she said, embarrassed but smiling. "This decorating. I've so much to do. Mind. Everything's wet paint."

"Does Mr. Sutton mind you selling, erm . . .?"

Into her face came that toxic scorn wives show. As if they realize that any man gullible enough to promise to clothe, feed, and provide for a woman for life deserves all

86 . . .

he gets. It's an expression you often see in cozy company before blood flows.

She showed me the rectangular glass plaque standing on a table, held in an ebony stand. "The engraving's supposed to have been done by somebody quite good," she said a little nervously. "The glass is old, though."

Aye, I thought sadly, but not as old as me. The faker's idea was good, because glass slabs were made even in Roman days for decoration. You get all sorts of engraved ones, mosaics, enameled ones even, opaque whitish plaques, painted scenes. Some look really very effective with scenic pictures on them. Early Egyptian and Roman and seventeenth-century Bohemian plaques are worth a fortune. This thing was dross, a pathetic new thing, ostentatiously dated 1804, showing some country house or other. I touched it to make sure, and not a vibe, not a single mental chime of authenticity. And, do you know, that glorious power was so absolute that I smiled, not disappointed in the least. Because I
felt
something here in the house. I was warm all over. Something was excitedly pealing
I'm here, I'm here.
Sounds daft, I know, but I went mesmerized into the lvg rm and laughed aloud to see it there on the wall.

"Hello, sweetheart," I said to the painting. "My name's Lovejoy."

It hung there all bashful, a small landscape painting. Most painters have a hundred percent individual style. See one, and you can spot Richard Wilson's work for life. Thirty years ago you could get a genuine painting for a fiver. God's truth. Richard Wilson painted with his own unmistakable hand no fewer than twenty-five variants of his landscape
The White Monk.
Even London dealers have let Wilsons go for peanuts because their textbooks tell them

... 87

that the "original" is in some posh gallery. And remember that the great Turner himself started as a humble apprentice copy-painter, so that non-Girtin Girtin copy your auntie's got might in fact have been painted by a greater genius still. I felt a right twerp when Mrs. Sutton brought me back to earth.

"You're talking to the painting!" she exclaimed.

"Ah." I came to. "Er, a print like it hung on my nursery wall when I was little. Nice to see it again."

I turned as if to go. She said, "Do you like it?"

In her voice was the housewife's concern for balanced budgetry.

"Well ..."
I said reluctantly. "You mean your plaque and the painting together? I might be able to stretch a
point ..."
The world's fate hung.

"Have you time for a cup of tea?" she said.

Mrs. Sutton looked instantly familiar, like one of those actresses who, wives of film producers, suffer relentless overexposure in afternoon features and telly adverts that doom them to a life brimful of unrealized potential. She deserved better. I liked her.

"Well, I shouldn't. . ."

»

Donna was fuming when finally I streaked—well, walked—up.

"Do you call that speed, Lovejoy?"

"Hasten, James. And don't spare the horses." I was desperately thinking, Where's Tinker now I need the old sod? I was mad with myself. I should have asked Mrs. Sutton if Vernon had asked about pearls.

We made Bungay by eleven o'clock.

Days like that stick in your mind.

88 ...

We tore among the villages and townships of the Broads. All day a dilute sun reflected from the long waters of East Anglia's inland stretches. Distant sails glided along the dikes and low ridges, triangles of browns, reds, blues, and white showing where the boats cut through waterways. More bridges than Venice and glimpses of white motorboats with girls atop front decks. Striped awnings from Mediterranean sunbeaches showing among reeds. Lads splashing near a remote village's wharf, and those little black ducks chugging jerkily across gleaming surfaces. These townships at holiday times seem full of brown limbs and weird yachting caps.

But within minutes of our next address I'd got the pattern, and found yet another flaw.

It turned out to be a houseboat moored at a patch of sudden tidiness in a small river camouflaging itself skillfully along a line of willows and tall reedy stuff. That's the trouble with East Anglia. You think these tangled strips are hedgerows till you splash.

The inhabitant was a young painter, bearded and biblical. When we arrived he was hard at it on the foredeck painting an orange triangle on an octagonal canvas. A cardboard cut-out bird was tacked to the railing. I helloed and paused respectfully on the bank, the way one waits when a magistrate goes to the loo. The houseboat looked on its last legs to me. I wasn't going on that thing at any price and whispered that to Donna when she impatiently ordered me to board. Its chimney had fallen and was stuck-rusted on to the cabin's railing. The mooring ropes had rotted, but the houseboat had remained in place. The bloody wreck couldn't even drift. The painter kept on painting.

"Money," I called out.

Magic. He dropped his brush. "Why didn't you say?"

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