PearlHanger 09 Page 11

  "Shhh," he was saying desperately, glancing furtively into the house in case his wife heard.

  We'd done the second call by eleven. I'd got going again. If I hadn't been so conscientious we'd have been late

  . 115

  for the murder, but how was I to know I should have been thinking ahead? Anyway it too was a fake, though you could have guessed that from the Advertiser's description of a genuine set of fretwork mahogany wall shelves "by Chippendale." Old John Tansby makes these down in Colchester, and he's never forged a set right yet. I've told him a million times that Chippendale hated leaving round corners on his fret and insisted they be filed square, but you might as well talk to the wall. I ask you. What chance has an honest fake got?

  All the way to last call—Salcott—I chatted about antiques, fakes, twinned bureaus, crass "marry-ups" (posh books call them "marriages," but nobody living uses the word) made from two dissimilar chunks of genuine pieces. I didn't stop talking, even made Donna laugh. I felt great. She looked lovely, breeze blowing her bright hair and her pretty face free of that metallic look she'd once had. A pleasant ride.

  The motor halted of its own accord on a raised brow. We scanned over sea marshes, a few houseboats of all shapes and colors on the mudflats, colorful sails slowly sweeping the reedy bay. A low creek gleamed to our right with a few whitewashed cottages in a row marking the end of Salcott. A cluster of houses formed a small harbor. A pub's sign swung the sun's reflection at us, flash, flash.

  "End of the road, Donna." I consulted my list. "Antique brooch. A Mr. Deamer."

  "Pretty little place," she said, straight out of summer

  rep.

  "Isn't it?" I agreed, and decided to try it out. I'd been saving it up. "Pearlhanger, locals still call that end stretch."

  "Do they really?" she replied evenly.

  116 .

  We drove down and booked in at the one tavern. Tinker was getting pickled in the taproom. He saw us come but didn't call hello, as instructed. I carried our bags up to our rooms, thanking my lucky stars that something was going right at last.

  Pearlhanger. They'd be here.

  . 117

  14

  Deamer, when we finally reached his vast rambling house out on a small peninsula, was an angular warped old gentlemen scholar, all wheezes, with tufts of hair sprouting sideways from all round his head. The effect was monastic. He'd be sure to get credit from tradespeople.

  "Do come in," he gasped, shuffling ahead of us. "I don't get many visitors these days." So? We closed the door and followed. Tiled floors, echoes. A barn of a place with the old sprung bells still glimpsed down the servants' hallway for indicating which room had fallen into thirst.

  "We came," I said in procession to his rocking kyphosis, "on account of. . ."

  "The other gentleman's just deciding," Mr. Deamer quavered. We angled into a passageway lined one side by stained glass. A glassed-in cloister. You know, a Victorian house really has quality. The corridor's wooden panels were delectable, the lintels matured and the ceiling plaster could have been laid yesterday—correction: No it couldn't; modern stuff'd have fallen off. "In the withdrawing room. Do please enter."

  118 .

  We entered, and there stood a vaguely familiar man, lanky-tall, close-cropped hair, still that tatty anorak. We faced each other like scruffy bookends. He was examining a pendant.

  "Hello again," I said. "Lovejoy. Mrs. Donna Vernon."

  "Smethurst," he said. "Again? I don't recall. . ."

  "We bumped into you in Jackson's restaurant."

  "Oh. Sorry. Mmmmh." He turned to the old man. "I'll take it. At the price you asked."

  "Splendid, splendid."

  We all paused. Now, two small points. Antique dealers, collectors, nobody pays an asking price just like that. And my chest had not even clanged a single chime. If the brooch was any sort of antique I'd have felt at least a dong. Well, I wasn't going to argue over a crummy modern piece of jeweler's tat, valuable or not.

  "Look, dad," I said to break the deadlock. "Can I use your loo?"

  Gracious permission received, I roamed away from that strange tableau and sure enough was delighted to find a valuable collectible. Lavatory-collecting might sound a bit eclectic, but you can make fortunes from this prestigious art form. It was a real joy, an item to be used with respect. You yank on a handle to work the valve. To my delight it had the now renowned Looking Glass Bottom Valve. Pontifex made these during the 1890s in London's Shoe Lane, presumably for folk with complicated ailments. Not bad for five bob, which is what they cost then. Nice glaze, and three lots of floral decoration in blue, set in best carved beech wood.

  They had moved apart when I returned. "Great loo, dad," I told old Deamer. "If you want to sell it, let me know. Incidentally, has a Sid Vernon called?"

  "No," Donna said for him. "I've already asked."

  "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, Love- joy."

  "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 phony 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 phonies. Why," I chuckled, not watching her face, "there was rumor 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 greensward. 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 yogurt girl with the screen printer. "I could tell you were a chauvinist swine, with that Beatrice drunkard by the harbor. And your tame mousy apprentice."

  "Hand on my heart, Donna," I tried. "I . . ."

  She was looking steadfastly out through the windscreen. "What's wrong with me, Lovejoy?"

  "Eh?"

  "All this time. Staying in the same places, traveling 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 fueled by that berserk wanton energy that 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 afterward 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 philosopy to cope with it: Give in. Surrender your honor 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 signaled me. He shrugged and went back to his ale.

  122 .

  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 doss-houses by anybody as takes a fancy.

  Ten minutes, give or take a yard. I strolled into the tavern, called a cheery goodnight 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.

  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 that 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 seashore. His head was crumpled, looking like wrinkled crepe paper before it

  224 .

  gets pulled tight. An eel was coiled nearby, its disgusting tire-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. 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 plainclothes 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 life style. I was still feeling superior when they sat me opposite Ledger and four scribblers.

  Donna came in, so white she was almost transparent,

  . 125

  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.

  126 .

  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 pillarbox."

  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 three-thirty 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.