The Lies of Fair Ladies Read online

"Don't give it another thought, old boy." He smiled in reminiscence. "We play a Wall Game, sort of rugby. I scored a hat trick. I was pretty famous."

  "Great. Wish I’d been there. Cheers."

  "Chin chin, Lovejoy. I advertise in the Personals, you need anything."

  Honor indeed. "Ta, Delia."

  The folder was under the table. I collected it and left, feeling ashamed. Delia was class. So what, he pretended he'd been to Eton. I'll bet Eton wished he had.

  "Mayor Carstairs?" I phoned from the bus station among throngs. Everybody seemed to be noshing enormous flat hamburgers. The place stank of fried onions. What did you call a mayor, for God's sake? "Lovejoy. Er, I need to contact Mrs. Carstairs urgently—"

  "You need to contact me urgently, Lovejoy." In the permafrost, another angry bloke. I sighed. What is everybody always so narked about? I mean, have they nothing else to do? "We have to discuss the degree of interaction which you and Mrs. Carstairs have established—"

  Well, once an administrator. "I'll call, sir," I intoned gravely, trying to disentangle my legs from some corgi yapping in pursuit of its minder, a little girl of six laughing her head off. "I too see the necessity for analytical interim negotiation—"

  "Are you being frivolous, Lovejoy?"

  The frigging hound was back, barking deliriously. "Her next antiques lesson is vital. Starts in half an hour."

  "Very well. I'll motor phone her. Where is this lecture?"

  "I've arranged transport, sir. So if Mrs. Carstairs could be at the post office in twenty minutes . . ." Et phony cetera.

  She came in a tearing hurry, eagerly hoping she wasn't late. I warmed, then quelled the feeling. I'd been as good as warned off Luna, and we hadn't yet made a single smile.

  'I had to stop off for a notebook, Lovejoy! You should have said! I tried to catch you at the cottage, but you'd gone!" That explained all that knocking. "I'm so looking forward to the lecture, Lovejoy. Should I have brought a lens thing? Only, the chemist's shuts for lunch and—"

  A bus came. I drew her out of earshot.

  "Luna. Take this folder. I had it stolen. Don't lose it, or we're sunk. I need a load of money. Now, to pay him."

  "You . . . ?" She gaped, except her sort doesn't really gape. They raise eyebrows, look round vaguely then back to stare some more. But it does pretty well, as gapes go.

  "There's no lecture, love. We're going to produce a load of antiques. Very speedily."

  "We are?" She did the gape. "No lecture? We are?"

  "Once you get the money to pay Delia, yes. To save somebody from being murdered."

  "Like that poor old—?"

  "Very similar, love. Ouch." She'd put her hand on my arm. "Watch it, Lune. I, er, fell."

  She stepped back to appraise me, slowly nodded. "Are you being blackmailed, Lovejoy?"

  "No," I said impatiently. "Silly cow. You need a reputation to be blackmailed." I would have glanced at the post office clock but there's only this red-glow digital kidding that the world is permanently fixed at 09:37 a.m. and 68 Celsius. "The bank, love."

  "Have you had anything to eat, Lovejoy?"

  "We had such a big supper last night."

  She went and got the gelt. She drove us down East Hill and I shoved it through Sandy's letter box in good time, so relieved I almost stopped groaning. Sitting in a motor when you've been kicked silly's even more painful than a bus ride.

  "Are you all right, Lovejoy?"

  "Fine, ta. Take us somewhere we can read Delia's loot, eh? Then the swimming baths. Then Calamity Jenny's."

  "Should you be going swimming if you're so stiff? Only—"

  "Lune," I said wearily. "Just drive."

  She was frightened, or she'd have told me off. She hated being called Lune, but that was her fault, not mine.

  We'd almost started to pull away from the curb when a police car slowed, blocking us in. Cradhead got out and approached at funereal pace.

  I smiled and waved. He leant down, quite affable.

  "Sorry I can't stop. Chief Superintendent. But I've a valuation for our Lady Mayoress. Perhaps some other time, eh?"

  "Now, Lovejoy. You know I’m only a corporal." He opened the door. "Forgive me, Mrs. Carstairs."

  He stayed there, holding the door wide. Cars crawled past, faces peering, the swine. I could be being kidnapped for all the action they took. They wear the same expression when having a nice drive out to ogle some shambles of a motorway accident.

  "Very well. Commissioner.'' I got out, unable to suppress a groan. 'Please don't think this happens every day, Mrs. Carstairs. I do assure you. I am the most respected antiques expert in the Eastern Hundreds, for valuations, estimates, repairs—"

  He coaxed me away, which is being dragged with your heels trailing. I saw Luna's stricken face, mutely urging her to get the hell out of it, seeing we'd just paid off Delia for stolen materials now on her back seat.

  She called, "Shall I follow, Lovejoy? Your folder—"

  God Almighty. Wave it around, you silly bitch, I tried to radar, but she dithered on the pavement.

  "We'll go over your list later, Mrs. Carstairs."

  "My list?" she asked, baffled.

  My grin felt it weighed a ton. "Of your antiques. And thank Oliver. I'll call him soon as I've done with Superintendent Cradhead."

  That did it. Her expression wiped clean.

  "Oh. I see, Lovejoy!" she said brightly. "I'm to take the folder until you come for it!"

  Put it in neon lights, love, I raged. I'd throttle her. We went to the police car and got in, grunting.

  "Gardening aches," I said quickly. My ribs must be busted.

  "Sitting comfortably, Lovejoy? Then read on."

  "A telephone number?" I looked on the reverse. Blank.

  "It's yours."

  The other bloke in the motor chuckled, shaking his head. "He's a one-off, right enough."

  "Mine? Fancy that." I gave it back, waited. My heart was sneaking down nervously to my boots.

  "Written in the shaky old hand of one Godfrey S. Fairclough. He'd not long phoned you, Lovejoy. Left you a message."

  The other nerk snickered. All ears and nicotine teeth.

  "Here," I said, narked. "You had no right to break in and listen to my messages. It's against the law."

  Cradhead said, "Lovejoy. One Godfrey S. Fairclough was injured by intruders. Fortunately, the assailants were disturbed by a door-to-door charity collector."

  "Why didn't you catch them?"

  "How do you know we didn't?"

  "You wouldn't be working up to your daft question." He opened a palm, inviting it. ''Where was I on the night of the fifty-first? And did I do him?"

  "And?"

  "Daft, like I said." I stared back at the other ploddite, who was trying to give me the bent eye. A laugh, really. Witnesses all around. A couple of kids were staring in, noses pressed to the windows. Drinkwater might be a nerk, but this Cradhead seemed to possess a rudimentary cortex.

  "The collector almost caught a glimpse, but the foliage . . ."He hesitated. "You know this Fairclough?"

  He must be seriously injured, poor old bloke, or they'd be asking him instead of having to take my word for it. I shrugged.

  "Parker. Go for a walk, will you?"

  "You what?" Parker said, amazed. But he went.

  "One of your brightest?" I said.

  Cradhead sighed. "It's these frigging courses, Lovejoy. They're never on the job. Sociology."

  I warmed to him. Somebody who hates sociologists can't be all bad.

  "I don't know much, Craddie." I thought I'd better get in first. "Except that old bloke Godbolt who got topped was involved in some antiques thing. I've not heard for sure, but word is some shipment out to the U.S. is on, through the Midlands. It seems a bigger shipment of antiques than we're used to."

  "Is it out, Lovejoy? Or in?"

  In? This startled me, because it hadn't occurred to me. I decided I was wrong to warm to Cradhead. In fact, I wanted him on the next socio
logy course, preferably in Aberdeen.

  "In?" I would have shrugged if I could have done it without a screech. "We don't import antiques much, Craddie. Don't you know the local scene? We export them, for coin of the realm."

  "Just a thought." He patted my shoulder, harder than he needed. "That was some gardening you did, Lovejoy. No hard climbing, no clobbering old gentlemen?"

  "Del Vervain." I had to admit it, or he'd turn as nasty as his gaffer. "He got some thugs to do me over last night."

  He took the news calmly. "Not going to Monte Carlo then?" He let me go, smiling and shaking his head. "Time you settled down, Lovejoy. Oh, Drinkwater wants to see you. About a whole series of burglaries."

  "Series?" I said like a fool, startled.

  "Sorry. Only two, weren't there? Ta-ta, Lovejoy."

  Delia's break-ins had been sussed, which was fine by me. Good old Delia, in the clear. I wished I was.

  By the time I found Luna again, I’d almost worked out how much I owed her. It made me pale around the gills. No wonder hubby Oliver was having doubts about his wife's behavior. But could I help it if she liked antiques? One thing: If Drinkwater wanted to see me, why did Cradhead let me go?

  Poor old Fairclough.

  Eighteen

  The swimming bath was heaving like a tin of maggots. Children of all ages screamed, plunged, had water fights. The echoing racket was deafening. Plasher was vigilant, never taking his eyes off the turmoil. He's the lifeguard, always in swimming trunks, never looks at you. He has a voice like thunder.

  "Wotcher, Plasher."

  "Wotcher, Lovejoy."

  A score of children ran past, leapt howling onto the seething mass in the water.

  Flasher bellowed, "Less of that!'' And unbelievably for a second the pandemonium faltered slightly before redoubling. I wish I could do that.

  Luna was all admiring, thrilled at the spectacle of a zillion infants wriggling in water.

  "Flasher, I want your brother to suss out some shipments. Big. Anywhere. Recent, within say a month. Back or front."

  "Okay." And in his foghorn voice, a yell, "Smithson— out!”

  "Ta, Flasher." I gave him the note with my phone number on and we left, almost deaf.

  "What a marvelous man!" Luna said through a cotton-wool tunnel, thrilled. "Controlling all those children! What did Mr. Cradhead want?"

  We drove out of town to Calamity Jenny's antique shop. I explained the way antiques were distributed by night lorrymen. “They accept illicit loads, from lay-bys. You pay on mileage, plus extra for each switch, one lorry to another.''

  "And that back or front business?"

  "We want to know what big shipments were made last month, or are booked by night lorries next month."

  "Aren't they ever caught, Lovejoy?"

  "The drivers? Their bosses know. If they stopped it, the drivers would walk out. So they condone."

  She drove without speaking until we were parked outside Jenny's. Here it comes, I thought. The big morality blip.

  "Lovejoy." She switched off. "Why should I continue? Your apprentice, everything."

  "Eh?" It wasn't at all what I'd expected. But then nothing ever is. Even retrospect usually lets me down.

  "It costs me a fortune. You don't pay me the money the National Employment pays for me. You don't tell me what we're doing. You are bad tempered. Then you do that."

  "Do what?" Women can't be stopped when they're gabbing like this. It's like verbal sweat, has to come out. Then you can get on.

  "You tell that hulk Plasher to do something, he agrees without question. You look so murderous sometimes. Then you picked up that little girl when she'd grazed her knee and was crying."

  See what I mean? There'd been this titchie girl with a leg that needed blotting. She'd shaken my trouser leg, so I'd sucked her knee pale to stop it blooding. Because I was nearest, you silly cow, I thought in exasperation. So?

  A girl—no more than nineteen—was peering out of the shop and beckoning. Jenny? Big Frank's wives were getting younger every single marriage.

  "There's Jenny!" I exclaimed, and escaped out.

  The welcomes over, I had a quick look about Calamity Jenny's place. Very affluent, very splendid buying. Not all true stuff, of course, but it surpassed Luna's feeble description of "Really quite nice, Lovejoy." And Jenny herself? "R.q.n., Lovejoy." That had been the sum of Luna's earlier exploration.

  She was beautiful. Pretty with that wicked winsomeness any man'd go for. I could see why Big Frank had placed her top of his next electoral roll, so to speak. Luna overdid the merry prattle, until I told her to nark it and come and look. She tried telling me she'd already seen most of Jenny's antiques. A laugh. She might have been in their presence, but hadn't seen one.

  Big Frank had succumbed to Jenny's beauty, yes. Another reason was that she had a ton of silver, some fake, some Belgian and north French and not hallmarked. And (watch out for this) plenty of the new silver they've been turning out like Ford cars in Lebanon and Egypt. The trick is to take a genuine piece of antique silver abroad on your holidays, complete with Customs and Excise stamps, all that "snow,'' as necessary documentation is called. Then in Alexandria, Cairo, Calcutta, you have the piece copied by their silversmiths of prodigious skills. Reimport them into Great Britain's frantic antiques silver markets, and sell them as genuine antiques. If you're going to try this, go only for "clean-line" styles. That means the earlier the better. In fact, I'd even say fake all silver before 1730.

  "Any of these Indian, love?"

  Luna smiled, clapped her hands. "I've checked the hallmarks of those sugar tongs, Lovejoy! They're Paul de Lamerie's marks, 1728." She was being all thrilled again. "You see, Lovejoy? I did what you said. I looked them up!"

  "The marks are fake, love." I explained as Jenny blushed fetchingly. "They're not sharp. If a silver mark looks sort of soft, blurred a bit, it's probably fake."

  "Fake?" Luna rummaged for a little paperback which listed silversmith marks. I'd come across her reading it. "But—"

  "Fakers are greedy, love. They think in shillings, pennies. And they're slovens, usually. They know they're duff workers. They make fake dies out of soft metal, see? Brass, copper, even tin. Not the hard metal required."

  "You mean . . . ?" Luna colored up, looked at Jenny, who was still being winsome. "Shouldn't we tell the . . . ?"

  God Almighty. Still thinking like a member of the public, and her an apprentice antique dealer.

  "Jenny had them made, Luna," I labored. Luna was proving heavy load. "She wasn't tricked into buying them. And they aren't sugar tongs. That's a tongue scraper."

  "For . . . ?" Luna felt at the sprung silver's spatulate ends.

  "A tongue scraper. For—forget it." I flapped my hands. I was talking a private language, no means of contact.

  "It's no good getting ratty, Lovejoy." Luna was now unthrilled. Deo gratias. "I'm doing my best. You never tell me what we're doing. You were cross yesterday because I couldn't remember how to tell a real chastity belt from a modern—"

  Et reproachful cetera. I'd told the silly cow ten times. Let her get on with it. I ignored her. "They Indian, Jenny?"

  "The silvers?'' She reached into a small decorative inglenook taken from an old cast-iron industrial fireplace range. "These were done in the Isle of Man. What d'you think?"

  The punches weren't too bad, but soft metal again. Possession is illegal. I interrupted Luna's deplorings to tell her this small fact. She silenced, stared in amaze at Jenny.

  "The silver-mounted meerschaum pipe bowls are Cairo," Jenny said proudly.

  She had a collection of pipes, all eroticas—mouths doing wonderful things, frank anatomical organs, and figures of couples busy, er, coupling. Very valuable now, if genuine mid-Victorian.

  Luna said, "I thought these looked almost ..." She paled. They looked almost because they were.

  "Erotica's in, love. Especially tobacciana, which is a dying thing. Forgive the pun."

  Luna gave up, settled fo
r wonder. As soon as we were driving away she'd tell me sternly that Jenny wanted a good smacking for being so, well, absolutely bold. . . .

  "Meerschaum means sea foam, Lune," I relented. "It's a sort of natural porous mineral, silicate of magnesium. You can carve it, work it even with a small file. Chosen because it keeps the tobacco smoke cool, see? Unsmoked and new, it isn't that meerschaum amber color. That's only the nicotine. But fakes—" I smiled fondly at Jenny. "Fakes come ready stained."

  "They're horrible, Lovejoy. They're people doing, well, things," Luna was so distressed, poor lass.

  "Any one'd buy a car, love. If really Viennese." Austria made them a national art in the nineteenth century.

  Yes, silver was one of Jenny's things. Her collection was incoherent, in spite of this. She must have vacuumed all that Big Frank had missed. And she'd imported fakes enough to sink a ship. Ship? Time I looked at the photographs and papers Delia had burgled for me. He'd mentioned some sunken vessel. But erotica was distracting, making me think of Jenny. Big Frank's Jenny. Not mine.

  "Jenny. Big Frank wanted me to call."

  "Yes, Lovejoy." She glanced at Luna, still being mesmerized by the meerschaums, and raised her eyebrows faintly. She was making the oldest offer. I brightened, then sombered. Big Frank was going to wed this lissome lass. Minimally I shook my head. Jenny gave a rueful smile, shrugged.

  "I want some things divvied. Imported. High-class. Soon."

  "Where?"

  "Hawkshead."

  "Okay.” I smiled, but with an effort. "Fix time with Luna." I bussed her. She moved her mouth more than is customary. I was still gulping when I waved at her shop window. Big Frank was in for multo hallelujah choruses, once he'd got rid of his wife and got wed.

  And in the motor it happened. Luna suddenly proved her worth. We were hardly onto the Lavenham road.

  "That young lady's up to no good," she said reprovingly. "She should still be at school. I mean, all those holidays to Cyprus! If she were my daughter I'd censure her."

  We'd gone miles before the penny dropped. What was that?

  "Pull in, love."

  "I can't just yet. That little tractor has right of way—"

  I yelled, "Pull in for Christ's sake can't you do a frigging single thing I tell you just for once instead of giving me frigging lip back everything I say?" Hardly the English of Milton. She pulled in, to a merry cacophony of motor horns and one bawled obscenity. Ignition off, and furious reproach.