The Grail Tree Page 17

  I came to with a tired houseman examing me.

  ‘You’re not too bad. We’ll sort you out in Casualty,’ he said. ‘Come with us.’

  ‘No,’ Lydia said suddenly, and added uncertainly when the doctor looked, ‘if it’s all right I’ll bring him. We have a car.’

  As Lydia drove, I watched her face in the early street lights of the encroaching evening. She said nothing and I wasn’t up to talking much. Anyway, I was thinking of what to do now I knew. Trust Jimmo. A precious, glowing, delectable antique throbbing and singing in his own back yard, and there’s him trying to compete with an educated clever murderer like Dr Thomas Haverro. Don’t people get on your nerves?

  Chapter 18

  THAT NIGHT, LYDIA made my divan bed up and went to fetch a hot meal in from town. We had it before the fire, by which time I’d made up my mind. You can’t muck about with killers.

  ‘Greed undid it, Lydia.’ I told her what Sarah had said about the Grail. ‘Only an antique pewter cup. A reputation as a local religious relic. Sarah’s husband was loyal to the idea of preserving it by having generations of gold- and silversmiths add to it. Old Henry protected it, too. Wires to the bedroom and everything.’

  ‘It must have been a terrible temptation,’ Lydia said. ‘Almost as if it was a genuine Chippendale.’ Her eyes glowed with relish.

  ‘Er, quite.’ I tried to distract her from furniture. ‘Thomas Haverro just couldn’t restrain himself. When he realized Henry was consulting a divvie –’

  ‘You.’

  ‘– it was too much. Maybe he worried about Henry selling it on the quiet.’ I had to smile ruefully at the very idea of Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. offering enough to get it photographed, let alone buy it.

  ‘Shouldn’t you tell that nasty inspector?’

  ‘Yes.’ But I’d hesitated too long.

  ‘I suppose that means you’re not going to.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She slammed the dishes down and marched across to face me. ‘Then you’re wrong, you stupid man.’

  ‘Am I?’ I tried to speak gently, without rancour or anger but only succeeded in sounding tired.

  ‘Have him arrested. They’ll put him in prison.’

  ‘For a week or two –’

  ‘Life.’ She walked about holding her elbows, the picture of any woman wanting a serious issue avoided whatever the cost.

  ‘If convicted, Lydia. Any lawyer will make our evidence look fraudulent. And the Grail. Think of that.’

  ‘It won’t vanish. It’ll still be . . . well, somewhere around.’

  ‘In the hands of Dr Thomas Haverro. He’ll be out in a couple of years at most, and pick it up from where he’s put it. And then?’

  ‘Don’t, Lovejoy. Please.’

  ‘I want the Grail Tree off him.’

  ‘Lovejoy.’ She sat with me and almost made as if to take my hand for an instant. ‘Don’t. I know what you want to happen.’

  ‘I don’t want to kill anybody,’ I said. ‘Honest.’

  ‘Then tell Maslow.’

  ‘No.’

  It was almost midnight when I phoned Haverro. He sounded as if I’d got him out of bed. I was nervous.

  ‘Lovejoy here.’

  ‘Oh, hello! How –’

  ‘Cut it, Thomas, you bastard.’ I let the hatred sink into his ear long enough. ‘You killed Henry.’

  ‘Killed? Don’t be absurd! What an extraordinary –’

  ‘The Satsumas were cover to pay Jimmo, Thomas. To keep him quiet. He saw you.’ I added a bit more, about Hal in Drabhanger and the Grail Tree, to show him it was all up.

  ‘A . . . a mad tale you crooked antiques dealers have cooked up, Lovejoy.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that, Thomas. It’s not a bad defence.’

  ‘So why ring me?’

  ‘Because I want the Grail Tree.’

  A pause. ‘I haven’t got it.’

  ‘Liar. You want me to call Maslow?’

  ‘Very well,’ he said, cool as you please.

  ‘Okay, Thomas.’ I was as smooth as him. ‘And when Maslow gets a search warrant to see if you’ve anything hidden anywhere . . .’ We waited some more. This is killing my phone bill, Thomas.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then.’ He sounded strangled. ‘We can leave it till tomorrow.’

  ‘Tinker’s already watching your place with three others,’ I lied confidently. ‘We don’t want you sneaking off to hide it, do we?’ A long, long think.

  ‘What do you suggest, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Give it to me, Thomas. Sarah told me about it in detail. It’s too precious for the likes of you.’

  ‘So Sarah’s sided with you. The stupid bitch.’

  It took another five minutes, round and round the same sentences. The threat of Tinker’s mythical arrival at the nick to tell Maslow finally did it. He agreed.

  ‘Call Tinker off, Lovejoy.’

  ‘No. Just in case.’

  He wouldn’t dare taking any risks, in case I actually had Tinker’s mob scattered in his bushes. I swear I heard his thoughts. Actually heard them, felt their very substance. He would agree to meet me, but it wouldn’t be to give me any precious antique. He had a different intention in mind.

  ‘I’ll meet you, Lovejoy. Your cottage?’

  ‘Not likely,’ I said cockily. ‘Too lonely out here, Thomas.’

  ‘Then . . . in town?’

  I’d already thought it out ahead of him. ‘The Castle Park. Tomorrow. And no funny stuff. I’ll have a bird for witness.’ I was meeting Lisa there.

  ‘You’re off your head, Lovejoy. The fireworks. There’ll be thousands there.’

  ‘Not in the Castle there won’t.’

  ‘Inside? But the attendants –’

  ‘At dusk, Thomas.’

  ‘It’ll be shut.’

  ‘Try just the same,’ I said cheerfully. ‘There’s only one way in. Across the old drawbridge to the main keep door.’

  ‘Will it be guarded?’

  I sighed with relief. He was beaten and I had him. In the palm of my hand. Him, and the Grail Tree.

  ‘Let’s hope, shall we?’ I put the receiver down gently. ‘Lydia, love. Call a taxi. Go and tell Martha Cookson all about it. That’ll be one person less on our side to worry about.’

  Needless to say, Lydia’s mother rang just after Lydia left. I put on my voice to say of course I wouldn’t detain Lydia at the cottage on her own so late. I pleased myself by getting in a hint that anyway I preferred slightly older women. Only I said mature, not old. For once, we parted friends.

  Then, tired as hell, I turned in. It was going to be a hard day in the morning.

  Chapter 19

  FIRE DAY DAWNED clear and blue. I sang as I shaved, keyed up and wheezing from my scrap, but confident.

  The Castle is not quite a ruin. It’s a square, now covered in by a flat roof of ugly tarred concrete and lovely red pantiles capping the four corner towers. To save electricity they’ve put a central glass roof over the main bit. The stone is flint, like so much Norman building in East Anglia, with a crude mortar welding the stones. The Normans who were the builders of the keep – all that’s really left of the original castle – were fairly useless architects. Bishop Odo (a nasty piece of work who got his just deserts at the hands of Rufus) built it on the ruins of the Roman temple to Jupiter and made his builders pinch Roman tiles and bricks for corners and reinforce the walls in clumsy lines. These flashes and columns of deep ‘mandarin’ red give a warmth and character to what would otherwise be a formidable and excessively grisly keep. It’s a museum nowadays, with a main door reached by a fixed wooden bridge from a paved terrace mound constructed as a pleasant walk between rose gardens and flowerbeds. The rest of the ruins – Roman, Norman, practically everybody else you can think of – outcrops like a sea-washed cliff among the grass. Children and pigeons occasionally play there among the stone mounds, which pleases me.

  Every year our town has a huge firework festival. Nowadays we call it a ‘gala�
� day, or seek some local or national jubilee to justify it. Last year it was the Anniversary Firework Festival, but after weeks of arguing none of us was quite sure which anniversary we were commemorating. Not that it matters. The point is that, like the rest of Merrie Olde England’s festivals, it’s entirely pagan and likely to remain so no matter what we pretend.

  The Fire Night, as our locals call it, starts with a parade of torches and morris dancers into the plain below the Castle at dusk. There we build a great pile of wood and rubbish. The dancers and marchers as they arrive in turn sling their torches on to the heap, creating a massive bonfire which I’ve known burn for three days sometimes. Anybody can make a torch and simply join the procession, which makes a lovely sight winding from across the river or down the slopes to whirl in a slow circle round the bonfire. All this is done to a crescendo of fireworks. By then we’re all gathered on the Castle Keep’s huge soaring mound, sitting on the grass and watching the exploding colours and gushing fire fountains marvellously reflected in the river’s blackness. It’s a major spectacle, as you can imagine. I hate to wonder how it all began.

  It’s more pretty than sinister now, of course. A little illuminated fairground brings roundabouts and catch-a-penny stalls near the bowling greens, which adds to the general gaiety and allows parents to come with the legitimate excuse that they’re only taking children to the festivities. Needless to say, Fire Night is always crowded. The town turns out en masse. Villages empty into Castle Park from as far as the Norfolk borders and the bigger fishing ports. Today they could have it all, from start to finish. I was only interested in one spectator. And he and I would have our own personal fireworks.

  I have this system each morning. Up, radio to see who we’re at war with, switch it off for sanity, bath, get mad because socks have gone missing again, breakfast from horrible powders and gruesome packets, and cut up some cheese for the robin. He’s a tough nut, waiting by my unfinished wall scattering competitors. I feed him on my arm because I’m interested in how he manages to make so much noise. It’s a really lovely sound, a thick mellow fluty singing made without effort. I mean, he never seems to breathe in or anything like that. Sounds just keep coming.

  ‘The benign Dr Thomas Haverro,’ I explained to his beady eye. ‘He’ll try to do for me tonight.’

  He gave me a tilted stare and bounced up and down my arm to keep a couple of intrusive sparrows off. You never expect their feet to be so cold.

  ‘The question is how. I’m younger than Haverro is, Rob. And fitter. And tougher.’ He patrolled my arm, singing. ‘He can’t bring a howitzer and blow me to blazes, or good old Maslow will come sniffing. So what will he do? There’ll be people everywhere. Picnics on the grass. And I’ve got to get into the Castle before he comes. Easy enough.’ I’d done that before, to weigh and do specific gravity tests on various Bronze Age artefacts on the Prehistory Gallery. Our curator had said no, but true love will find a way. ‘It’s got to be an accident, Rob,’ I explained. ‘He could push me off a gallery. There’s a Roman mosaic in the central area. I wouldn’t bounce much. Maybe an old club or a sword from a display case.’ But that would be useless. I’d hear him take it out, and then I’d be warned and could arm myself. He was stout, obviously slow. I could make rings round him. ‘None of the bows is in working order. No strings in the crossbows. The flintlocks are all in the barred case and can’t be lifted out even if you break the glass.’ It seemed just him and me. I said all this to the robin. He seemed unconvinced.

  ‘Anyway, the Grail Tree will be worth it, whatever he has planned.’ The point was, I told myself eagerly, he couldn’t leave fingerprints or other sorts of evidence that he’d attacked me with some weapon from the display case because Maslow would trace him. Then Haverro would have lost just the same. Guns were out, because you can trace any modern gun by ballistics easy as that. And powder burns on bodies. And minute flecks of powder on clothes and skin. Every kid who watched television knows these elementary facts.

  ‘Rob.’ I interrupted its effortless, windless song. ‘What weapons do we know which are neither prehistoric, Roman, Early English, Conquest, Renaissance, post-Elizabethan or modern which will finish me, and let Dr Haverro get away unscathed and unrecognized? Well? Any offers?

  He flew on to the grass to do battle with encroaching thrushes. An omen, I thought, pleased. Doing battle with only what he has. Like me and Thomas. A conquest with just ourselves. Still, I was certain I knew every inch of the museum. And Haverro didn’t. That was my main asset. But I knew he was going to try to finish me. And I already knew he was capable of trying very, very hard.

  Brenda was helping to shuffle the crowds into indescribable disorder when I arrived at the Park about two o’clock. Children ran about hoping to get themselves lost and dramatically re-found. Ice-cream sellers sounded their bells. The town’s main streets were one gigantic concourse of people drifting towards the colours and sounds of bands from the show grounds. Teams of morris dancers tinkled to and fro or sprawled on the grass for a quick ale before the great procession.

  ‘Still as big a shambles as ever,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t want any criticism from you, Lovejoy.’ She laughed, not a little distrait.

  I paused. She looked attractive even in that grotty traffic warden’s outfit. Why they don’t pension these uniform designers off I just don’t know. It would do us all a favour. ‘Is there anything you do want, though?’

  ‘Look. Don’t bother me right now.’ She waved out a small decorated lorry which was trying to enter the main gates. A jubilant group of dancers cheered and whistled, booing as their vehicle rumbled off down a side street towards North Hill. Brenda looked over her shoulder as I moved on. ‘See you at the plinth, soon after dark, Lovejoy,’ she said, smiling. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I’ll be there, Beautiful,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’ And got away on to the moat walk as she was stung to a half-laughing retort I didn’t quite catch. The plinth is on the opposite side of the Castle to the entrance, a small monument where two dubious heroes were executed by Cromwell’s men. It’s something of a lovers’ trysting-place, lying as it does deep in the moated hollow. Her bloke would be around somewhere. I wondered who he was.

  The Castle has this system of closing in the afternoon on weekdays. I checked on the wooden notice. There it was, three o’clock close. My heart was banging. I had an hour. I drifted casually into the Castle among a horde of children and their parents. The eagle-eyed museum guardian sits in a small booth placed back from the entrance. He was safely nodding off as usual, which meant my unlikely prepared story about having to go back in at closing time for a lost niece need never be tested.

  The main central area was crowded. A Queen Anne coach stands to one side of a massive fireplace you could drive into, and a waxwork tableau had been arranged on the other side. It depicted the visit of Queen Bess to the town and showed how merrily she’d been received at the Castle on the selfsame spot. You have to smile. Not one of the notices mentioned the complaints Bess had made about how the Castle’s primitive latrines stank to high heaven.

  One of the children had ducked under the restraining rope and was trying to set the Galileo pendulum swinging. He got a cuff for his pains from the old uniformed attendant who creaked after him and returned him squawking to his indignant parents.

  ‘You’ve no right –’ they started up angrily.

  ‘Yes, he has,’ I intervened, pushing among the throng. ‘I’m Inspector Maslow, CID. Kindly keep your brat from damaging the exhibits.’ I turned grandly to pat the old sweat on the shoulder. ‘Well done, my man,’ I said. ‘Keep it up.’ He looked bemused, because he knew I was Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. Wise in the sudden moods of the public, he said nothing but gave me a creaky salute. ‘Carry on, Smith,’ I said, hoping on statistical grounds the name wasn’t far out. He’d remember I was in. With luck, he’d even be able to swear blind I left with all the others when closing time came.

  I strolled on upstairs to the Roman Galleries and tho
ught I’d have a look along the Georgian displays. Maybe they’d done something about them since my irate letter of complaint last month. The plan was to follow the main mob at closing time, ambling in stops and starts towards the main door where the attendants gather to check you out. They use a technique so as not to lose anyone. Rather like sheepdogs on the high fells, they move in crescents to and fro round the back of the crowd, sweeping us all towards the funnel which leads to the exit. If anyone shows a tendency to wait at an exhibit one attendant just stays politely by his side until he moves back into the crowd. That way you can’t lose anyone, and the entire crowd gets winkled from the honeycomb galleries and poured outside. It’s a well tried, almost foolproof system.

  But.

  There’s one serious flaw in it. Think of the sheepdog. The one lamb he loses and has to go back for after lights-out is invariably the one which is too scared to move. For some reason it stays put. Maybe it has a foot trapped or something. Anyhow, it’s immobile when it should be on the hoof. So the herd technique only works with those of the herd who are moving. Stay still and you’re free. Next time you’re in an art gallery or museum pay attention when the attendants call, ‘Time, Ladies and Gentlmen. Please proceed towards the exit!’ All visitors will at least turn a head, take a step, glance at a watch, look about for a coat or reach for a child’s hand prior to making their way. Get it? Movement. It’s what the attendants look for. After all, the rest of the things in the museum are pretty well static, aren’t they.

  The Temple of Jupiter lies under the main area. An entrance, made into a descending spiral staircase of lovely Georgian wrought-iron, is situated to one side of the main area’s bookstall. I’d chosen this because it’s well-lit, and because most of the foundation arches of the underground temple are visible from the main level. Some five or six dungeons are down there, constructed for William Penn and similar subversives in early Quaker days. I’ve seen the attendants do their check a hundred times. They switch on all the lights, clatter down the iron staircase, glance along the arches and open the one – first – dungeon door which is unlocked. They lean in, holding the grille-and-stud door, peer about for strays, then come out and step upwards on to the main level. The one who does this stays there until the main door closes. Inference: nobody can get down again unnoticed once the ancient temple has been declared empty. But a cunning Lovejoy can hide behind an arch, casually stockstill so as not to create any moving shadows which could hint at an interloper getting himself left behind for possibly nefarious purposes.