The Rich And The Profane Read online

  JONATHAN GASH

  The Rich and the Profane

  A Lovejoy Novel

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  To the Chinese God Wei DTo, protector of books from the ungodly, this hook is humbly dedicated. Lovejoy.

  For

  Jackie and Bill

  Thanks

  Susan

  1

  Seeing a woman get arrested makes you relieved it’s not you. Except this time I’d really relied on Irma for today’s dinner. The antiques game is the pits.

  Irma had found me feeding my robin, a creature of psychotic jealousy. It flirted its beak, its tail, stood truculently four-square and made its kick-kick-kick sound. I told it to shut up. It took no notice, which is typical. Women, infants and animals treat me like a serf.

  ‘Are you Lovejoy?’ She gave me a photo of a necklace. ‘I need your help.’

  She looked beautiful and rich. I’d never seen her before. ‘You want me to find an antique necklace like this? Easy. They’re pretty common. Late Edwardian, semi-precious stones. Tourmaline’s bonny, but these small malachite greens are horrible.’ I pointed to them. ‘A lady’s beautiful swan neck can only take so many absolute primary colours.’ But you couldn’t tell the Edwardians that.

  A cool lass, dressed for visiting a maiden aunt. Celtic, my old Gran would have said, black hair, radiant blue eyes, pale skin. Twenty, give or take.

  ‘I don’t want to buy, Lovejoy. I want to steal it.’

  ‘Why steal something so ordinary?’

  ‘This necklace is mine.’ She said it with fervour, caught herself and read my tatty sign, lovejoy antiques, inc. ‘I expected you to be quite grand.’

  I admit I don’t impress. Crumbling thatched cottage, rickety porch, windows partly boarded from recent bailiff trouble, my old Austin Ruby rusting among weeds, and a workshop with rotting doors agape.

  ‘It’s in Gimbert’s Auction. My aunt won’t give it back.’ ‘Tomorrow’s sale?’ I tried to judge her. ‘Why not bid for it? It’ll only be a few quid.’

  Angrily she erupted, ‘And give her the satisfaction? They said at the Antiques Arcade that you knew how to steal things.’

  I sighed. East Anglia’s famed reticence was in action. What with that and this girl’s hate, they’d have the TV news cameras waiting. I felt uncomfortable.

  ‘Look, love. Once upon a time, a bloke in our next village got left his grandad’s old motorbike. It was a 1954 AJS Porcupine - banned in its day for being too fast. He sold it for quarter of a million. Same day, a vicar in the next county sold a Thackeray chamber pot and went on a Mediterranean holiday from the proceeds. That famed author criticized the city of Cork, whose Victorian citizens put his face in their utensils. See? There’s legit money in antiques, if you only look. But not with necklaces like this.’ ‘Teach - me - to - steal,’ she said, as if to an infant. Three things exist in the world of antiques, and only three. They’re antiques, women and money. The trouble is, everybody knows - they say - everything about all three, when they know nothing. In fact, knowledge is pretty useless. Give you an instance:

  Last year, a famous university (Southampton; don’t tell) spent up psychoanalysing dogs. Their project: which dog is man’s best pal? Their conclusion was (1) greyhound, (2) whippet, (3) the basset hound. So let’s all rush to friendly neighbourhood kennels and buy, because now we know. Except there’s one hitch. What if you prefer Buster, your lovable spaniel, instead? See what I mean? All that magnificent research can take a running jump. Knowledge is useful, up to a point. But it’s what you want that matters. That dog info, so expensively bought, is on a par with all sorts of other ‘essential facts’. Like, the Indian elephant has a hell of a temper in the morning. So? And, the world’s first recorded tornado occurred, guess when, in ad 1410, in -guess where? - Venice. So? And intrepid polar flyer Commander Richard E. Byrd, first human to fly over the North Pole, er, faked it. Didn’t get within a hundred miles of the Pole. The Norwegian Amundsen really did it in an airship less than a week later. I explained all this.

  ‘Knowledge only goes so far, love.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ she said, lips tight.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me, OK?’ I couldn’t afford another brush with the law. I’d not long squared Dunko for my last bail.

  ‘Thank you, Lovejoy. I’ll pay.’ She held out a hand. ‘Irma Dominick.’ We shook politely. ‘One thing, please.’ She hesitated. ‘Is it true? And can you tell from a photo?’

  They all ask this.

  ‘Being a diwy? Yes.’ Before she could start I went on, ‘Genuine antiques - genuine, mind - make me feel odd. It’s a rare gift.’ That was a laugh. Gift? My ‘gift’ has caused me more trouble than any number of friends, police, fakers and dealers. ‘Forgeries don’t. And no, I can’t tell from photographs.’

  The answer seemed to be what she hoped for.

  ‘How much will the lesson be, please?’

  ‘I’ll teach you how to steal free of charge.’ I like to spread culture.

  In less than an hour I showed her how to confuse whif-flers - auctioneers’ grotty assisants. I explained how to obfuscate, distract, deflect, shuff - i.e. switch - items.

  ‘Whatever you do, never protest, hit, scratch,’ I warned. ‘Theft is simply nicking something. Robbery is different. Robbery is stealing with force or fear. Law hates both, but robbery most. Got it?’

  ‘No violence,’ she said.

  ‘And don’t carry a coat over your arm,’ I told her. ‘Everybody’ll just laugh at that old shoplifter’s trick.’

  ‘What’s the quickest?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s called the plop. Carry a plastic bag with shopping in it.’ I hadn’t got one, so pretended. ‘Hold it down, at arm’s length, but not with your elbow flexed - that’s another giveaway Examine some trinket. Check there’s nobody watching - pretend to tilt it, to scrutinize. Then you seem to replace it on the display trestle, but keep hold of it with your forefinger and middle fingers.’

  ‘And then leave?’

  ‘No.’ I struggled for patience. ‘You let it slide into your bag. The plop.’

  She was slow picking it up, but I drilled her.

  ‘If anybody challenges you, go all flustered and say it must have fallen in accidentally. Don’t, for God’s sake, try to look cool. Shed tears, apologize until they’re sick to death of you. They’ll let you go. Suspicions don’t count.’ ‘But then I’ll not have the necklace, Lovejoy, so then what’ll I do?’

  She had really bonny eyes. ‘Send for me, love, and I’ll do it.’

  I saw her into Gimbert’s - auctioneers of no renown - and went to look around the shops bordering the town square. Pleasant, with colourful stalls and barrows, a fountain, children playing, a little band parping away. I’d only been there five minutes when I heard the rumpus, the shouts, and saw a constable extending his stride - bobbies are taught never to run, in case we realize they ought to move about more often. My heart sank. I listened to the hubbub, the excited chatter of shoppers. She’d done it wrong and got caught.

  Sad, I sat at a cafe table.

  ‘No, ta, Ellie,’ I said when the waitress came pestering.

  ‘It looked like that Irma you were with, Lovejoy.’

  You have to put serfs down. ‘I don’t know the woman.’ No cocks crowed.

  ‘She shouted, “Tell Lovejoy.” She was wrestling to get away.’

  So much for my advice. ‘Mine’s a common name. Any tea?’

  She glanced about. Porridge, her stout boss, a man of calamitous greed, glared because I wasn’t throwing money at his dingy business.

  ‘Sorry, Lovejoy,’ she said, and went on her way. Ellie’s nice, but too mean to risk her livelihood for nothing, selfish cow.
>
  Freddy Foxheath found me. He was red-faced and flopped down breathless. The police van was just leaving, watched by gloaters rejoicing it wasn’t them.

  ‘Near thing, Lovejoy,’ he puffed, like he’d been under shellfire. ‘She’d almost got it in her handbag when that whiffler saw.’

  ‘Saw?’ I was appalled. She’d done the plop really quite well in my garden. ‘What was she playing at?’

  ‘Don’t start, Lovejoy. You sent her in, not me.’

  This is the thanks you get.

  ‘For God’s sake, Freddy, it was a tiny necklace, not a Rolls.’

  I seethed at my wasted effort. It’s not like shoplifting, when you can be in and out like a fiddler’s elbow. Antiques are different.

  ‘She shouted to get you to help her.’

  Thank you, Irma. ‘Ellie told me.’

  See what you get for being kind? Choosing Freddy Foxheath as Irma’s cullet had been no great stroke of genius. A cullet’s a lookout man while you’re thieving. But standards are falling. Once, cullets were ten a penny. Now, you search all morning and get a deadleg like Freddy Foxheath. He’s a horse-jawed dapper little bloke, lazy but with a knack of looking keen.

  ‘What’ll you do, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Me?’ I said, offended. ‘For her? Nowt. Why should I?’

  ‘You two want serving?’ Porridge’s bulbous belly ballooned a yard ahead of his glare.

  ‘Your coffee improved, has it?’

  So I went to see Michaelis Singleton, a lawyer who was nearly struck off for putting sex and greed ahead of legal principles. As if everybody doesn’t do that.

  2

  Needles caught me as I crossed near the Arcade. He was agog.

  ‘Did you see it, Lovejoy? A posh bird got done for nicking a bit of purple pottery! Can you imagine? Rich crumpet.’

  We common folk are in awe of the rich. Our fascination makes the rich become even more important than their millions, truth to tell. Clark Gable, driving home, once ran over some pedestrian and killed him stone dead. Studio executives quickly dragged C.G. out of the driving seat and replaced him with some other poor bloke before the cops arrived. The substitute got arrested and did a year in prison. He was very well paid, but Clark Gable was in the clear. See? We serfs know our place. We aid and abet the posh and the mighty. It’s the aura of money.

  ‘Ta, Needles.’ He’s called Needles because knitting is his pastime, not from anything more sinister. He carries messages between antique dealers.

  ‘It looked like that rich tart who’s been hanging about the Antiques Arcade asking after you.’

  ‘Aye,’ I growled. ‘She found me.’

  Wary, I entered the august chambers of Michaelis Singleton, lawyer. These are the cellars of Vaunce & Playfair, wine merchants, where Michaelis spends hours sampling the wares. When the Law Lords almost disbarred him, he bought this ancient family firm of wine importers. It’s now his niche.

  ‘Mikko?’ I kept my head low. ‘It’s me, Lovejoy.’

  ‘What now, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Charming.’ I’d done him favours in the past, and he speaks like I was nothing but trouble. The musty place was unlit but for one candle on an upturned barrel, amid racks of gleaming bottles.

  There he was, scion of a once-great family, swaying. It was a scene from Kidnapped.

  ‘You’re a metabolic miracle, Mikko. Do you never eat?’

  Chin to my chest, the vault scraping my head, cobwebs on my ears, I kept wafting my hands, scared of spiders. ‘How do I spring a bird? She’s been arrested.’

  ‘What’s she in for?’

  ‘She tried to steal from Gimbert’s Auction.’

  He darted me a shrewd look. ‘What’s your interest, Lovejoy?’

  Michaelis affects straggly hair, wispy beard, tatty long coat almost to the flagstones. What with his gear and the candle, he’d do Scrooge without make-up.

  Nothing for it but to come clean.

  ‘Irma Dominick’s her name. Her folks died, left her this ordinary necklace. She showed me a picture. It’s hardly old at all, barely Edwardian. Her auntie’s an old bitch, took it and wouldn’t give it back.’ I shrugged. ‘A women’s row. I showed her how to nick it, but some whiffler called the Plod.’

  ‘Who was the whiffler?’

  I was surprised I hadn’t thought of that. Michaelis had a point. Whifflers don’t usually scream blue murder. When spotting a thief, whifflers slide up and let on. If the thief has any sense he slips them a few zlotniks, whereupon the whiffler turns Nelson’s eye and lets the robbery go ahead. It’s a very ancient crime in itself, properly called theftboot, but only crooks know these points of law. Whifflers in antiques auctions will always help you steal this way, unless it’s an especially valuable antique, of course, in which case they take the bribe and then blow the whistle and call the Old Bill. That way, they convince the auctioneers of loyalty and honesty.

  ‘Dunno, but I saw Daffo smirking his head off as the Plod loaded Irma in.’

  ‘Daffo’s a wino,’ said this model of sobriety. He belched, poured a refill, offered me none. He hates friends who interrupt life.

  ‘Can you spring her, Mikko?’

  ‘Any flaw in the tale?’

  ‘No.’ Then I thought, hang on. Needles said it was a pot thing. But Inna had definitely gone in to steal a necklace. Discrepancy, or not? ‘Except Needles said she tried to nick some porcelain - “purple pottery”, is how he described it. She told me she wanted a necklace. Does it matter?’

  ‘Theft is theft,’ he said, sighing. ‘But I’ll tilt at your windmill, Lovejoy. It’ll cost you.’

  Which astonished me. Lawyers never do favours, but we were friends.

  I said, gingerly, ‘I thought you’d do it for friendship’s sake, Michaelis. You and me being pals.’

  We did go back. Once, he’d been hired to defend Saint Floosie, a lady of sour fame. Saint Floosie - no saint, but definitely the latter - ran a ‘house of comfort’ in Frinton-on-Sea. Her main attractions were a dozen ladies in perfumed bedrooms and bathing pools. Her gimmick was a plaster saint that wept holy tears of blood, because the world will always flock to see a holy con. Floosie charged visitors to see it do its holy stuff. The council alleged deception, and Saint Floosie was had up. Michaelis called me as a witness. I saved his bacon. With 10 grams of calcium carbonate and a 25 gram solution of ferric chloride, dialysed, and 1.7 grams of salt chucked in, you get a gel. It’s not firm, but it doesn’t have to be. When vibrated or shaken it liquidizes and turns the colour of blood - as when folk make the floorboards quiver, parading past a holy alcove. In the witness box I learnt the word thixotropic. I’ve been dying to use it ever since, so there it is. The chemicals are common enough ingredients in plaster modelling, and for setting small objects - like doll’s eyes into plaster. So Floosie was sprung, back to being the holiest purveyor of sex in the Eastern Hundreds. Michaelis became my greatest fan, because he owned St Floosie’s bawdy house for services rendered. In return, he got me off two charges of burglary, by legal technicalities I still don’t comprehend.

  ‘Tit for tat, Lovejoy. Scan me a wine lake?’

  ‘Eh?’ He’d gone barmy, all alone swigging wine among the rodents and bottles in his ancient vaults. ‘You’re off your frigging . .. er, sure, Mikko,’ I ended lamely. ‘Anything for a pal.’

  And went my way rejoicing. But scan a lake} I scan antiques, more antiques, and nothing but antiques, so help me. Still, the thing about promises is they needn’t be kept. Any antiques dealer will tell you that.

  Putting on a grave face, I strolled into Gimbert’s Auction Rooms. It’s no good beating about the bush. I sought out Daffo. He looked shifty, tried to edge away.

  ‘How do, Daffo. All quiet since the Plod took that Irma girl?’

  ‘Excuse me, mate. I’ve a job on.’

  ‘For the moment, Daffo.’ My angelic smile would have lit lamps. I looked round. It seemed full of tat, clothes, wobbly furniture, trinkets, Old Masters turned out by forgers - wh
ich included me. It’s the usual dross that litters the Eastern Hundreds. Gimbert’s catalogue would describe the mounds of gunge in glowing terms, but beware. Auctioneers invent lies.

  A few people were in. I waved to Stylish, a new dealer in from the West Country with, it was said, heavy gelt, though we’d seen precious little evidence of it. Alisa was chatting to Gimbert. Gimbert’s a skeletal bald man who is ageless. He’s lately had Gimbert’s auction rooms estd 1739 painted in rococo lettering over his door. The lads joke that he’s certain of the date because he remembers that far back. He looks made of dry brown paper dressed in black, not quite an undertaker. Gimbert wears squinty specs, has flattened oily black hair and considers himself a cut above us hoi polloi. Incredibly, he has a son who is a sports broadcaster. The lads all speculate about Gimbert’s sexual ability. They say he got his son in a job lot. It’s a joke. Maybe not.

  Alisa rushed across, full of exciting news.

  ‘Oh, Lovejoy! You missed it! There’s been an arrest!’

  ‘No!’ I looked shocked.

  Daffo was talking urgently with a lady near the office, one wary eye on the aloof Gimbert. Reporting to her, doubtless about me. Why?

  ‘This woman tried to steal a porcelain!’ Alisa said.

  ‘Not a - not a mistake?’ Not a necklace?

  Alisa squeaked, thrilled. ‘It was there one minute and gone the next!’

  ‘So you reported her?’

  ‘Certainly not, Lovejoy!’ Alisa can be trusted. Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘Daffo did it. Told on her. I think he’s a rotten sneak!’

  Alisa is from some exotic young ladies’ finishing school, hence the 1880 vernacular. She has languages, and rides horses in pursuit of innocent creatures. Her husband owns motorbikes. In spite of all, I like Alisa. We made smiles once, but she took up with a Hatton Garden jeweller. I quickly shelved her fourth-form slang. I had to find out what Irma had done, as Michaelis sobered up to gallop to the rescue.

  ‘Funny,’ I ruminated. ‘Ellie at Porridge’s caff said Irma tried to steal a necklace. Which was it, necklace or porcelain?’