Pearlhanger Read online

  ‘If he does,’ I said to the old scholar, ‘we’ll be waiting for him at the tavern. All right?’

  Donna stirred with exasperation. ‘Have a look, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Eh? Oh.’ I had a casual glance, a nice piece of gold-smithing round a fair-sized baroque pearl. You have to grin sometimes. It wasn’t bad. The big baroque’s shape had been used to form the busty torso of a siren. Yet another phoney siren pendant. Oh, it was all there: small baroque pearls hanging from her fish-tailed body, a modern synthetic diamond for her mirror, two little seed pearls under her arm the way you carry a ball. It even had ‘VD’ stamped on, like the proper Siren. I handed it back. You see all sorts of copies once an antique gets its photo in the papers.

  ‘Great,’ I said absently.

  Deamer rang the bell pull. An aged crone came to walk us to the door. Donna hung back making unnecessarily effusive thanks, I thought, to Mr Deamer. I was plodding ahead with the housekeeper, asking her about the house, so took no notice.

  We drove down to the creek quite contentedly, me explaining as I drove the saga of the Canning Siren. ‘Lots of copies are made,’ I told Donna, but being careful. ‘Every famous jewel, antique, painting, has its phoneys. Why,’ I chuckled, not watching her face, ‘there was rumour of a Siren variant some idiots were trying to sell only a year or so back. A laugh, really.’ I thought Smethurst a plant, a deliberate ally of Sid Vernon and his elusive partner Chatto.

  She waited silently as I parked beside the inn’s green-sward. A few old geezers were taking the air in the watery sun, swilling ale.

  ‘Right. That’s it, then.’ I was poisonously hearty. ‘All done. Over and out. We’ve obviously overtaken him on the way.’

  Donna was still. ‘Thank you, then, Lovejoy.’

  ‘You’ll settle up with Lydia, right? I don’t like asking, but she’s a stickler for details. I can get a lift back.’

  ‘Lovejoy.’

  ‘Yes?’ I’d been getting out. Her voice made me sit for more.

  She spoke unlooking, in a low voice. ‘In all these days you’ve behaved abominably. That tarty bitch Michaela French. You were definitely crumpled returning from Mrs Sutton’s. That slatternly Mrs Smith, the one you tried to make do my hair. You’ve ogled and drooled over them all. Even that mare in the homemade caftan.’ She meant the yoghurt girl with the screen printer. ‘I could tell you were a chauvinist swine, with that Beatrice drunkard by the harbour. And your tame mousey apprentice.’

  ‘Hand on my heart, Donna,’ I tried. ‘I—’

  She was looking steadfastly out through the wind-screen. ‘What’s wrong with me, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘All this time. Staying in the same places, travelling together, everything shared. And you’ve never once . . . What’s wrong?’

  ‘Er, well,’ I said, thinking fast. ‘You’re, er . . .’ Telling her she seemed like an ironclad was probably more imperialism.

  She leant across and, in full view of the toothy old sods on the pub bench, she put her warm dry mouth on mine. She even began to stroke me. Broad daylight, among a yachting crowd. A cheer went up from a quartet of young suntanned arrivals crossing into the saloon bar.

  ‘Here, nark it.’ I pulled away, red faced. This must be how women feel.

  Eventually we went in, me sheepishly trying to avoid the old blokes’ wrinkled faces.

  What happened then was inevitable, really. We were discreet, didn’t make a lot of noise I don’t suppose, and Donna pulled the curtains even though it only overlooked upstream where the yachts never bother going. She was a fury, lovely and exhilarating. It’s always the same, naturally, but she seemed fuelled by that berserk wanton energy which is wonderful to experience at the time yet leaves you wondering what it was all about. Silly to dwell on it, I told myself while she knelt beside me afterwards and soaped me in the bath, because love’s love and not to be questioned. She was laughing, really laughing, with a delicious merriment I never thought she was capable of. I’ve always been convinced that love is its own self, that love is simply making love, no matter where or when. That afternoon Donna Vernon made it seem a delirious gallop.

  Love hunger takes a zillion forms. It can appear as plain honest greed, religious mysticism or bobby-dazzling creativity, but it’s bingo every time. No mistake. Pretend it’s bellyache for all you’re worth, but you know and she knows there’ll be no peace until you-know-what. Over the years I’ve evolved this philosophy to cope with it: give in. Surrender your honour and virtue. Let guilt go hang. People keep saying it’s wrong but I ask straight out: Why? and they’ve never any answer worth half an ear. This is why cynics have a hard time; longing and bitterness can’t last.

  As the tavern quietened in the afternoon lull, we slept. At six o’clock we went down and had our nosh in the dining room. We had a walk. You won’t believe this, but I even shook my head when Tinker signalled me. He shrugged and went back to his ale.

  All right, I admit I was besotted. Common sense and reason had left my thick skull. It came on coolish with a breeze about ten o’clock. Still no sign of Vernon. Donna, bless her thoughtful heart, suggested we go in separately so as to avoid scandal.

  ‘Give me ten minutes, darling,’ she said, and walked along the hard to the tavern. I waited before the old creek cottages for her footsteps to recede and watched the sea’s reflected lights.

  These cottages are mostly derelict now. They were once inhabited, eelers, fishermen, wherrymen, coastguards, those estuary folk. It’s becoming the fashion to buy them up as holiday homes, and a couple were showing signs of repair. The rest are used as dosshouses by anybody as takes a fancy.

  Ten minutes, give or take a yard. I strolled in to the tavern, called a cheery good-night to the landlord and went upstairs.

  She welcomed me in furnace heat. For an hour or so we made love with silent intensity and slept. Some time in the dark hours Donna woke me and said I’d best go back to my own room.

  One of the unwritten laws, I suppose, is that women have the final say in these matters. Another torrid session and I was creeping off across the corridor with all the stealth of which I am capable, which is a very great deal.

  Then I slept the sleep of the just. Do no harm to stay around a day or three with the delectable Donna. Vaguely I wondered if I was a tax-deductible expense.

  At six o’clock in the morning I was wakened by Ledger, who arrested me for the murder of Sidney Charles Vernon, antique dealer. He didn’t even bring a cup of tea, which was unfair. You get that even in jail.

  Chapter 15

  IT’S QUEER WHEN you think of it, what a crowd-puller murder is. I mean, there was Salcott, population a sparse 219 souls in the breeding season, suddenly disgorging a throng which covered every boggy nook and cranny of the estuary. They floated a flotilla of dinghies to get a better view. Normally this performance is reserved for Armadas.

  ‘What’s it about, Ledger?’ The bastard’d hardly given me time to dress.

  ‘You heard, lad. You’re for it.’

  ‘Murder? Straight up?’

  We were trudging along the hard ogled by the silent horde. Funny again, but there was that intense blond bloke in his mac among the mob. Ledger stopped suddenly. Followers dominoed up against us, bloody fools. People should watch where they’re going. A bloke could be pushed over the side and tumble down . . . down to lie on the pebbly mud below exactly where a bloke’s body lay right now. Between the salt water and the sea sand. His head was crumpled, looking like wrinkled crêpe paper before it gets pulled tight. An eel was coiled nearby, its disgusting tyre thickness fatter than eels have a right to be. I felt sick.

  We were outside the derelict cottages. A tired rivulet ran below a small hooped bridge under the footpath. It was where I’d waited last night before following Donna in for our last bout of fervid passion.

  ‘Smethurst,’ I said, craning my head round to align better on his face.

  ‘It’s nobody called Smethurst, Lovejoy. You’ve killed Sidney
Charles Vernon.’

  ‘That’s Smethurst. He told me so himself.’

  ‘We’ll ask the judge,’ Ledger said. ‘He’ll know. All right, lads,’ he called to sundry plain-clothes peelers and bobbies nodding off among the foliage. ‘Wrap it up. Where’s the local?’

  ‘Me, sir,’ offered a uniformed bloke. He was so deliriously happy all this was happening on his very own manor that I’d have tagged him for chief suspect. ‘I’ve already got statements from the kiddies who found him. I’ve sent for their parents.’

  Three white-faced lads about seven years old were being awestruck nearby. They had little spades and a bucket. Out early digging lugworms for fishing. No wonder there’s all this violence about when they start massacres that young.

  We made the nick in record time. Sirens and lights, bullying shouts, all the general hysteria of which only psychopaths are capable. You can easily see how warped personalities become addicted to the robber-baron lifestyle. I was still feeling superior when they sat me opposite Ledger and four scribblers.

  Donna came in, so white she was almost transparent, but calm. Why calm, for Christ’s sake? She didn’t look at me. And the publican and his girls from the Welcome Sailor where we’d stayed at Salcott. Last but not least, old Mr Deamer came in sounding like confetti with asthma.

  My superior feelings fell away. Headache time. Plans were going wrong, all of them mine.

  They took my statement first. I gave them almost all of it: the seance, Donna’s hiring arrangement, Beatrice, the sweep – here I shakily produced my copy of the list, as if it made me saintly – and finally running into Smethurst at Mr Deamer’s old house. I included approximate details of Mel and Sandy, and Tinker.

  ‘You saw Vernon in possession of a valuable antique pendant, of a type similar to a more famous one?’

  ‘No. I saw Smethurst buy a Siren fake from Mr Deamer.’ I smiled encouragingly at Deamer and gave him a wink. Soon he’d scupper all this. ‘Vernon wasn’t there. Donna will tell you.’

  Donna said nothing. She looked at the floor, pale and interesting. During my statement she had asked for a glass of water which a policewoman brought her with a glare at me.

  ‘Then?’ Ledger said. His expression said, Got you!

  ‘Donna, er, Mrs Vernon and I went back to the tavern, had a rest, supper, and, er, retired.’

  He asked me details of times and whatnot. I signed the typescript with a wobbly flourish. We fell quiet.

  ‘This is what we think really happened, Lovejoy: yesterday you arrived at Mr Deamer’s house in company with Mrs Vernon. You’d finally caught up with Sidney Vernon. You made an offer for the antique pearl pendant, pretending it was a mere replica to deceive the elderly owner.’

  ‘Here. That’s the wrong way about—’

  ‘Shut it, Lovejoy. Once your clumsy purchase attempt failed, you waylaid Vernon outside the cottages in the darkness, demanding the pendant. And he died, Lovejoy.’

  I glanced from Donna to old Deamer. They were looking sober and old Deamer was nodding affirmatively at all this crap. ‘Here,’ I said. I was in one of those static sweats you get in a trap.

  ‘On the way out of Mr Deamer’s you closely questioned the elderly housekeeper as to the layout of the dwelling?’

  ‘Well, in a way, yes,’ I said weakly.

  ‘You arrived at the Welcome Sailor, where six old fishermen saw you forcing your attentions on Mrs Vernon in the car. During the evening you again accosted her. She returned to the tavern alone at ten o’clock. Having ascertained from her that the antique was still in Vernon’s possession, you assaulted Vernon, removed the desired object, put it in an envelope addressed to your own cottage, and posted it in the Salcott pillar box.’

  Ledger pulled out the gungey baroque-pearl pendant. Still fake. ‘This was recovered from such an envelope, Lovejoy. It bears your fingerprints.’

  ‘Police aren’t allowed to tamper with the Royal Mail, Ledger.’ Donna still said nothing. Lost, I quavered, ‘No. You see, Donna didn’t, er . . .’

  ‘Reject your unwelcome attentions, Lovejoy? Then why did she rouse the landlord and seek refuge with him and his family at 3.30 a.m.?’

  I piped, ‘Donna? For Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Your account is true, Sergeant,’ Donna said softly, and was assisted out of the room. Another exit line, I supposed. That summer rep feeling had been justified.

  ‘Look, Ledger. I wouldn’t do a bloke in for a dud.’

  ‘Real gold. Real pearls, Lovejoy.’ He made a gesture of levitation. ‘You can all go. Thank you for your cooperation.’ He smiled at me. ‘Not you, Lovejoy.’

  My new cell was same as always. Same niff. Same screw with a million jokes about bars, keys, magistrates and crimes. A real laugh. Same graffiti, same old hat, one witty line.

  Donna hadn’t wanted me to leave. Hence the torrid love. And Sid Vernon was in on her scam, hence all the deception at old Deamer’s house. And Mr Deamer himself was another accomplice, or he wouldn’t have lied in his gums just now. Dear God, who wasn’t?

  Chapter 16

  MAYBE I’D DOZED. There was a newspaper but I make up my own lies so I just lay there. Sometimes it seems that, however brightly a day begins, it ends with a choice of degradations. There was nothing going for me except innocence – good for a laugh, though they say it counts in heaven.

  You always get death on a coast. It doesn’t have to be a Bermuda Triangle. Accidents happen. But presumably Ledger had found some blunt instrument? It wasn’t much of a tumble for Vernon, the few feet down from the path, and mud’s soft. Add this to Donna’s bewildering behaviour and . . .

  ‘You’re sprung, Lovejoy. Out of it.’

  Harder to wake up into daytime than night, and relief is hard any old time. The constable thumbed me down the corridor. They’re not allowed to touch you – another guffaw – so he could only glower hatred as I emerged, blinking.

  ‘Good morning, Lovejoy.’ Lydia stood there. High-throated lace blouse, smart blue suit, seamed stockings and strap heels. A goddess to the rescue. ‘Constable,’ she was saying severely to the desk sergeant, ‘I want to complain. Lovejoy hasn’t shaved.’

  Tinker was snoring on the bench. A young couple huddled like kipping hamsters.

  ‘Er, look,’ I said in a panic, thinking: Christ. This just wasn’t the time.

  The sergeant had had enough. Rolling his eyes at me, he made me sign that I’d got all my things.

  ‘Is this why we pay our taxes?’ Lydia was demanding as I bundled her out, hauling Tinker as I went. ‘This behoves a letter to our Member of Parliament—’

  We didn’t stop until I reached the corner by the old flax house. Lydia was still seething and behoving. The pub wasn’t open so we sat on the memorial bench, safe among noise and shoppers and traffic. Bliss. I put my head back. You know that feeling when you’ve been through the mangle?

  Lydia told me how Tinker had seen me and Donna talking by the creek cottages. ‘I went down earlier to visit Tinker because he seemed so lonely on his own. I took him some things, made him comfortable.’

  ‘Ledger took Tinker’s word that I’d left there without seeing Vernon?’

  ‘No, Lovejoy. Tinker’d actually let part of the cottage off to two young campers. Very reprehensible – it isn’t his property – but fortunate in the circumstances. They also saw you and were able to corroborate—’

  By a whisker. ‘Good old Tinker.’

  ‘But furthermore, Lovejoy,’ she said portentously through Tinker’s snores as the traffic hurtled and surviving pedestrians shuffled. ‘I have something to say.’

  Dear God no, I thought. Not now. She’s going to say this is all too much. Laying about with Donna, murder charges. I wanted to crawl into a hole. What a frigging world. Everybody corrupt with rotten self-seeking.

  ‘Go on,’ I said dully.

  ‘It’s . . . it’s money.’

  That really made me rouse and stare. ‘Eh?’

  She faced me on the bench. Peo
ple milled by. Tinker snored.

  ‘Do you know how much I paid yesterday for mushrooms, Lovejoy?’ She clasped her hands on her lap.

  ‘Er,’ I said, fascinated in spite of myself.

  ‘They’ve gone up five pence, Lovejoy. Now, as you well know, I’m not one to complain, but . . .’

  She’d made a list of commodities, foods and what-nots, to prove Lovejoy Antiques Inc. wasn’t making enough gelt. It came from her handbag like a roll of wallpaper, endless and wide. I closed my eyes, suddenly weak. She rabbited on and on. That’s all it was, her bloody wage. I hadn’t paid her for months anyway.

  ‘Which is why,’ she explained, trying to be casual, ‘I’ve drawn out my savings.’ She delved and gave me a cheque. ‘Please regard it as a loan only. Until this terrible business is over.’

  The words blurred on the cheque for a minute. I looked away. Isn’t it a good world? People are really generous and far-seeing deep down. It’s only perceptive souls like me that recognize people’s true worth. Money can’t be bought.

  ‘And,’ Lydia said, ‘I’ve sent for the two, ah, boys. We need all the help—’

  Several motor horns sounded. A falsetto screeched, ‘Lovejoy!’ I prayed again, but it was. The Rover of many colours. Heaven knows what it is about me, but I’ve never had a prayer answered yet.

  ‘Lovejoy!’ Sandy marched – well, minced – across the crowded pavement and stood, hand on hip, fluorescent copper-blue handbag swinging. ‘Your sweep what an absolute tremenduloso I mean what a fiasco!’ He plumped on the seat and gazed ardently into his reflection. He has tiny gilt mirrors on his gloves. I suppose I must have been a rotter in some earlier existence.

  ‘Er, Sandy. Your motor . . .’ He’d parked it on the high street’s one pedestrian crossing. Mel sat stony faced in the passenger seat. Another row.

  ‘Oh, you noticed!’ Sandy rose, did a little skip and cried, ‘Mel, dear! Lovejoy adores the new wings.’ He whispered to me, ‘Tell him, Lovejoy! He’s in rather a mood.’

  ‘Er,’ I said nervously. ‘They’re, er, great, Mel.’