The Judas Pair l-1 Page 12

  One odd thing is that rooms which you'd think unduly cluttered become much more acceptable by natural light. You've seen mock-ups of Victorian drawing rooms in museums beautifully lit by bright inert-gas strip lights, and probably been dismayed by seeing practically every inch of wall space covered by pictures, every surface littered by ornaments and clocks, and the furniture draped with hangings so you wonder how they could stand it. The reason you're put off by all that congestion is that the museum's got the lighting wrong. Tell them to switch everything off and put a single oil lamp on the bureau and draw the curtains. What a difference! Those ornaments which should glow by natural light do so, while the rest merely set each other off in an easy, comfortable pattern of cozy acquaintanceship. Beautiful, really beautiful. The clutter becomes friendly and spaced out. Don't ridicule the Victorians when it's us that's being stupid and insensitive.

  Sheila wouldn't rub my neck any more. No cheese would suddenly be pushed absent-mindedly into my mouth. No more fights. No more sex with her. No more being watched by her smile.

  The fire kept in till dawn. Twice I put the radio on. A stupid woman was trying to be crisply incisive about domestic problems that really needed a kick up the backside instead of a psychiatrist. I told her my opinion in no uncertain terms and switched her off. Later I heard the television news about some Middle East catastrophe and switched that off as well. I managed half a cup of tea about midnight. My coal ran out about five-ish the next morning.

  I cut up a piece of bread and some Wensleydale cheese to feed the robin. It was down to me within seconds, shooing competitors away from the door. You can't help waiting to see if they do different things from what you expect, or if they'll do exactly the same as they've done for years. In either case you're never disappointed.

  "Sheila used to say I was too soft with you, Rob," I said to the robin. He came on my arm for his cheese. "You'll forget how to go marauding, she says-said." But that can't be bad, was my standard reply to her when she said that. If that's the worst we got up to, the world wouldn't be in such a mess. She'd insist the robin ought to go hunting worms to mangle them in the most unspeakable way because it was naturally what they did in searching for food. My cheese-feeding policy must pay off eventually, though, if you think about it. If you're crammed full of cake and cheese you can't fancy too many worms for at least an hour or two, can you? "Anyway, cheese is good for teeth and bones," I said to her. "You're foolish, Lovejoy," she used to say, falling about laughing. "Robins don't have a tooth between them." I used to say, So what, they'd got bones. It was a stupid argument, but she would never see sense.

  Any sort of hunting is only very rarely necessary, it's always seemed to me. When the robin had surely eaten enough I scattered the remainder about on the path near the Armstrong for the sparrows and the big browny-black birds to share. Even so the robin wouldn't have any peace. He flew at them, making stabs with his beak and generally defending the crumbs against all comers. You can't help admiring a bird like that. I wondered if he was more of a hunter than I thought, but decided to stick to my pacification policy anyway. You have to stand by your theories because they're for that, otherwise there's no sense in making them up.

  I left them all to it and rang Geoffrey.

  "For God's sake," he said dozily. "Look at the time."

  "Did Sheila's handbag turn up?" I asked him as he strove to orient himself. He didn't know. I said to find out and let me know or I'd pester the life out of him. It took twenty minutes for him to ring back.

  "She didn't have a handbag with her, your young lady," he reported.

  "Then how," I asked evenly, "did they know to get in touch with me?"

  "The station police. They asked… other passengers to try to recognize…"

  I suppressed the terrible desire to imagine rush-hour queues being invited to file past.

  "I suppose one of her workmates—"

  "Eventually." Geoffrey was not enjoying this. "They went to her home. Your address was on the back of your photograph."

  "Ta." I rang off, but he was back on the blower instantly.

  "Lovejoy, anything up as well as this?"

  "Clever old bobbies should mind their own business," I said, clicking him off.

  I knew exactly what he would do. He'd sniff about the village uneasily for a day, then come around to pop the question, What was I up to? and warning me not to do anything silly. The answer he'd get would be a sort of mystified innocence: "But what on earth do you mean, Constable?" straight out of amateur rep, which would gall him still further.

  You can't trust the law. Anybody in business will tell you that. As for me, the law is a consideration to be strictly avoided. Never mingle with it. If it's there in force, bow your head, agree like you meant it, and scarper. Then when it's gone for the moment, carry on as normal. It's not for people. I wonder where it all comes from sometimes. Think of it like weather; keep an eye on it and take sensible precautions when it proves intrusive.

  The dawn had come. I stood at the door smoking a cigar. Red sky, streaks of crimson against blue and white. It was really average. You get the same blue-on-cream in those Portuguese vases, quite nice. I couldn't finish my smoke. The robin was singing, rolling up his feathery sleeves for the day's battles.

  Indoors I ran a bath, thinking, This is where I clouted Sheila that time Tinker rang up about Field. I would do my favorite breakfast, fried cheese in margarine and an apple cut into three and fried in the same pan. Three slices of bread. Tea. Heaven knows how, but I managed to eat it all, with the radio going on about politics and me trying to sing with the interlude music like a fool. I banged the dishes with a spoon, pretending I was a drummer in a band. Don't people do daft things?

  I'd never forget my alarm again. The doors locked, I repaired the window. Outside I ran some meshwire around the edge and put new bolts on the inside of all the windows. The day promised fine with a watery sun.

  The bath water had cooled enough by the time that job was done. I soaked, working out my chain of suppositions.

  Suppose somebody had killed Eric Field for the Judas pair. Suppose then he had learned that I'd managed to pick up the one possible gadget missing from the most costly unique set of Sinters the antique world could ever dream of—a small case-hardened instrument with all the features of a Durs accessory. It had after all been probably chucked into the apothecary box from ignorance to up that particular crummy article's price, so it was definitely a hangover from Seddon's sale of Eric Field's effects. Continuing the idea, suppose then he'd seen me come from Seddon's, followed me here to the cottage. He'd have seen me give Sheila the instrument by the war memorial, seen her put it in her handbag. And the town war memorial's as private as Eros in Piccadilly. Adrian and Jane had passed, Muriel and her tame priest were there. It could be anybody, he or she, seen or unseen.

  Maybe he'd waited outside all night.

  Then, seeing us depart, he'd broken in, searching, failed to find the Durs instrument, taken the carriage clock as a blind, and, seeing Sheila's letters, guessed wrongly that she still had the instrument in her handbag. Perhaps he'd assumed I realized its importance and was too worried to have it about. So he'd sprinted off to London after her and pushed her under the train when perhaps she'd suddenly realized he was stealing her handbag. Or he'd just pushed her, and in the subsequent uproar picked up her handbag, escaping because of our splendid public's tradition of keeping out of trouble. Now she was dead. I had to say it, dead.

  It was heavy in my hand, bulbous in my palm. It could have been a straight screwdriver except that it bent at right angles about the middle of the shaft. Two additional flanges served to catch on some projection, perhaps near a sear spring in the flintlock. I got the impression it slotted into rather than onto something, but it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Despite my ignorance, I was certain it was the object for which Sheila had been killed.

  I was dried and in my priest hole by nine o'clock. I was nervous, because I was going to kill somebo
dy.

  Who, I didn't know. Nor where, nor when, nor in what circumstances.

  But I knew how.

  He would get nothing but the best, the very best Lovejoy could manage. Price no object.

  I had a small amount of black powder—smoky gunpowder— in a pistol flask belonging to the Barratt guns. They wouldn't do. Percussion, after all. Let's do it properly. I began to go over the contents of the shelves.

  Now, Lovejoy's no killer. I love these flinters the way I love Bilston enamels and jades, as examples of supreme craftsmanship. I don't like weapons because they're weapons. Only maniacs love them because they kill. During one of these tiresome wars we used to have I was conscripted and put into uniform. We were stationed on a snowy hillside in the East and given some field guns to shoot. The trouble was, an army on the opposite hillside had guns of their own and kept trying to kill us by shooting back. For me, I'd just as soon we all kept quiet, but the general feeling was that we ought to keep firing. I couldn't see what it was all about. Our hillside had nothing but a few trees, and from what little I could see of their hillside they were just as badly off. It was a waste of time, in addition to which I was frightened to death. But now I began to wish I'd taken more notice of the bare essentials during training.

  The Barratts wouldn't do, so could the Nocks? Samuel Nock had made special holster and pocket flinters swan-necked in the French manner, but occasionally deviated into singles made in a special utilitarian style. I had a pair of double-barreled side-by-side flinters of his making. They really were precious to me, so I included them as possibles. A Brown Bess, heavy as hell, wouldn't do. The space might be too confined when I came to it, and forty-odd inches of massive barrel might prove cumbersome. Also, he was going to die slowly if the opportunity offered a choice; the Land Pattern might help him on his way too precipitately. We had matters to discuss. Reluctantly I put it aside.

  The Adams revolving long arm was gone to Dick. That left me with two Eastern jezail guns, flintlock of course, the Adams pocket weapon, an elegant gold-inlaid La Chaumette pinfire weapon with a folding trigger, a Durs air gun you have to pump up, a Cooper blunderbuss, an early Barbar flintlock brass-barreled blunderbuss good enough to eat, a lonely Henry Nock dueler I'd been trying to match with its missing partner for twelve years, and last but not least the beautiful Mortimer weapons acquired that terrible day from Dick's boatyard. The Mortimers it was.

  I melted a piece of lead bar over a spirit lamp and poured it from the pan into the bullet mold, crushing the brass handles firmly to avoid pocking the bullet surface with bubbles. Twelve attempts it took before I got two perfect spheres of dulled lead. After cooling them, I polished both in a leather cloth until they were almost shiny.

  The black powder I poured into the pistol flask. It was set correctly on the dispensing nozzle, so I cleaned inside the barrels with a swab of cloth screwed onto the wrong end of the ramrods. All this is easier said than done with white linen gloves on, but you must never leave fingerprints on a flinter. It ruins the browning after some years, and actually precipitates real rust even on the best Damascus barrel. The barrels cleaned, I poured the dose of powder into each, and forced the bullets in after tamping the powder down. It was hard work getting them to the bottom of the breech but I managed it. After that, a soft wad of cloth torn from a handkerchief down each barrel to keep the bullets in. Then a squirt of powder into each flashpan, bringing back the cocks to the half-cock position where the triggers wouldn't work them and clapping the steel closed, and all was lovely.

  I replaced them in their mahogany case, pulling the safety catch into the halt position and dusting them off. They looked priceless, stylish, graceful, wondrous in their red-felted boxwood recesses among the accessories. Every item fitted snugly. Even the case itself was brilliantly designed, a product of an age of skilled thinkers.

  There was one more thing they looked—lethal, maybe even murderous.

  And that really pleased me, because I was going to blow some fucking bastard's brains out.

  Chapter 11

  I'll be frank.

  Before this the business had been a bit unreallike. You know the sort of thing—income tax rebates or these insurance benefits you get if ever you reach ninety. My attitude I suppose was one of blissful pretense. Sheila always said I pretended too much; "romancing," she called it. The Judas affair had previously been somehow at a distance, even though I'd been involved in setting up a search for the pistols through the trade. I suppose there was some excuse, since you can't believe in a Martian in Bloomsbury in quite the same way you might believe in the Yeti or Nessie. I'd paid lip service of sorts to the Judas pair idea. If they were mythical, well, O.K., I would spend time chasing a myth. If the bloke that had killed two people for those precious things believed in their existence, so would I. Funny, but my mind began to work clearer now I believed.

  If he had searched and followed and then killed for a small accessory like my turnkey, it followed for certain that there could be no possible doubt about where the Judas pair were. He had them. I knew as sure as I breathed.

  And I understood his anguish. Imagine the distress of scientists as they search for that one missing-link creature whose existence will finally prove a million theories. Imagine the shepherd's grief as he finds his prize sheep's gone absent. Double all those sorrows, and it comes somewhere near the anguish of a collector with a stupendous possession that is one vital component short. I would have felt compassion in other circumstances, even shared part of his grief. Now I cackled with evil laughter as I emerged from my priest hole and went about letting the light into the cottage and unlocking doors and windows. Let him suffer. He'd come again; somehow and sometime he'd come because I had the instrument he wanted.

  From now on I would have to be ready every minute of every day. I therefore checked the garden from behind the curtains and decided to play the game to its fullest.

  I telephoned George Field. His wife answered. George was out.

  "I want a list from him, Mrs. Field," I explained. "Tell him I need urgently—within the day—the names of all those people his brother was friendly with, known collectors or not. Dealers included." She was all set to chat, but I cut it short and then rang Geoffrey.

  "Look, Lovejoy," he began wearily, but I wasn't being told off by any village bobby. I was going to do his job for him and he was getting paid from taxes I provided.

  "Silence, Geoffrey old pal, and listen." He listened in astonishment while I said my piece. "I want the names, ranks, and stations of the people in charge of Sheila's… accident." Straightaway he began his spiel about not having the authority to divulge and all that. "Listen, Geoffrey, I'll say this once. You give me the names now, or I'll take your refusal as obfuscation and ring the Chief Constable, Scotland Yard, and my local M.P. I'll also ring the local newspaper, three London dailies, and the Prime Minister." I didn't know what obfuscation was, but it sounded good.

  "What if I don't have the information you want?" he asked, a guarded police gambit.

  "There you go again, obfuscating," I said pleasantly. "Goodbye, Geoffrey. You'll be hearing from the communications media and the politicians very shortly, if not sooner."

  "Hang on."

  They can be very helpful, these servants of our civic organizations, when they're persuaded in the right way. He gave me a number to ring and an address of a police station.

  "What's got into you, Lovejoy?" he said, very uneasy.

  "A rush of civic duty to the head," I explained.

  "I don't like all this, I'll tell you straight."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Meaning I want to know what you're up to, Lovejoy."

  "Geoffrey," I said sweetly.

  "Yes?"

  "Get stuffed, comrade," I cooed. "Go back to sleep."

  I felt better now I was on the move.

  Faith is a great prime mover. No wonder the distance to Jerusalem didn't daunt the early crusaders. With all that faith, the fact that they'd have
to walk every inch of the way would have appeared a mere incidental. Faith gives a clarity of vision as well as thought, and I was reaping the benefit of the new believer. It gave me freedom. Apart from the law, I could tell anybody the truth, what I was after, and even say why. I could show my Durs turnkey to every collector or dealer I'd ever met, knowing sooner or later I'd strike oil. Word would spread like fat in a hot pan. Then, one fine day, my visitor would arrive at the cottage for his big farewell scene. He wouldn't be able to help it. He'd come back again.

  I spent an hour on the blower. First to Adrian, explaining that a friend of mine, Eric Field, deceased, had had a pair of Durs flinters, now untraceable, and would he please keep an ear open for any whisper. I got derision back down the receiver but persevered. In the way of his kind, he sensed swiftly there was something seriously wrong and went along with me, saying he'd put the word about.

  No reply from Margaret Dainty, though I tried her number three times, and none from Dandy Jack either. He was probably sloshed still from last night, while Margaret was possibly up in the Smoke doing the street markets. Jane Felsham was in, coughing with the rasping breath of the morning smoker and asking what was the matter with me. She thought I was drunk.

  "It's on, Jane," I said. "Don't muck me about, love, because I'm tough and nasty today. Just take the essentials down and spread it about. Tell anyone, bring anyone to see me any time. And I'll travel. There's a bonus in it. Keep thinking of all those pots you could buy with a bit of taxfree."

  Harry was out too, also probably down on the market stalls the same as Margaret. I left a message at the White Hart for Tinker and Dandy Jack to contact me urgently. The barman was out on the village green with the pub's football team training for the Sunday League, but his wife Jenny was reliable.