The Very Last Gambado Read online

  Lofty chuckled, nudged Nick. “Tell him.”

  “It’s a dog. A turkey. Sorry.” Nick was grinning. “The Yanks’d say it’s a bomb, Yankspeak for a flop.”

  "A flop?” I was mystified. “But Ray Meese is confident. And they’ve spent a fortune—”

  “F-l-o-p, Lovejoy. Dud. Smell them a mile off. Why they keep going beats me.”

  “Think of your mortgage, Nick,” Lofty said, getting a laugh. "Soon be dinner time.”

  One bright spot did occur. I was in the queue for nosh—a degrading business. Shirley, an assistant, showed me an antique cloth. It was a delight, well worth losing my place for. I was so happy. Civilization here, right here in a film studio of all places.

  "A darning sampler!” Imagine a piece of linen, eighteen inches square, with darning stitches in different colored cottons spaced separately all over it. Each colored area had a date and initials, E.J., 1780.

  “What’s it worth?” People’s cry since the dawn of man. “Not as much as you hope, love. The price of one good meal.” “Is that all?” Shirley was outraged.

  "Embroidery, lace, needlework are the orphan children of antiques. Hang onto it for a few years. It’s beautiful, Shirley.” Antiques come in convoys or not at all, like London buses. One sets off another. Quite an avalanche started, six asides in quick succession. I suppose an antique dealer’s like a doctor at a party—at risk of hearing about everybody’s operation. Two were gems, though, and made up for the disappointments. A camera crewman, Tel, brought a so-say Georgian black bracket clock, about sixteen inches high. He was dejected when I said it was only 1908 or so.

  “Not true Georgian, Tel. Listen to it—Cambridge chimers weren’t available in the eighteenth century.” We call them “revival” clocks. They’re skilled first-class replicas of the earlier Georgians, complete with gold finials and ebony case. “You’ll get a good secondhand car for it, though.” He perked up and made way for a plain lady from accounts carrying a long cardboard box full of a tissue-wrapped brown silk dress.

  “Lovely,” I told her in delight but grieving, knowing what was coming. “Bell sleeves, brocaded silk, concertina pleats, a shaped vee bodice, black-fringed peplum, black tassels. You’ve really got something here. About 1860.”

  “My great-grandmother’s,” she said, pleased at the crowd of girls coming to ogle.

  “And handworked silk buttons down the bodice! Superb.” It was mint. If there’d been anybody on the set with a slender enough waist they could have worn it to a ball instandy. Quietly I told her its value.

  “But I earn that much in a week, Lovejoy! Are you sure?”

  “Sorry, love." It’s heartbreaking when you think. So much skill, so much valuable silk, worth only the odd groat. It’ll change, as our so-called civilization loses ever more of its skills. But right now genuine antique garments are close to giveaways in the trade. This game breaks your heart.

  We began filming at two o’clock in the afternoon, having waited since nine. Five hours of inertia, yawnsville. The trouble was, it got worse.

  They’d built a series of dark paneled walls by then. Us baddies were to emerge from these doors—not quite the same as those to the museum’s exhibition room but it’d do in gloom and smoke I suppose. Vance came with six assistants. They pushed and pulled the three of us into position, and made us run, hunched, carrying these great black bin-bags. Lancelot Lake sat and watched us, in mufti.

  “The idea is you’ve stolen the entire collection,” somebody told me when I asked, a pretty lass called Tina. “The sacks are weighted.”

  “Run run, do run, say yeah?” Vance called.

  “Ready,” Tina called. “Good luck.”

  “Action!" somebody yelled. White smoke billowed. Lights glared.

  The three of us ran, hunched, carrying the bags. We held our pistols in a threatening manner. We made it into the clear space of the hangar. I pulled off my hood. I was drenched with sweat but grinning, pleased it was all over.

  "Cheers, Lofty, Nick,” I said. "See you around.” They just stood there, eyeholes aghast.

  “What the hell’s he doing?” Meese’s voice boomed, loud and electronic. I couldn’t see anything for white fog pouring everywhere.

  “Eh? I did it,” I called indignantly. Tina trotted through the fog.

  “Lovejoy. Where are you going? It was a rehearsal.”

  To run? To carry a sack? You rehearse? For King Lear, I could see rehearsals might help. "I’ve been running carrying sacks since I was seven, love.”

  "One more time.” Tina was exasperated.

  Actually she meant three more times. Plus three. Plus three more after a tea break. Then still more.

  “They haven’t even got frigging cameras,” I complained to Lofty and Nick. They fell about. By then I was the butt of much leg-pulling. Assistants came with electricians and carpenters to stare at me and crack jokes at my expense. We ran slow, we ran fast, hunched, less hunched, very much more hunched, unhunched.

  Twenty-nine rehearsals—I ask you—then they started working a camera. Truly truly, we actually started filming.

  “They’ll go for a take soon,” Lofty predicted at four-thirty. By then I was gasping for air and worn out.

  “We’re doing no bloody different,” I grumbled.

  "One more time, please!” I now hated Tina’s cheery cry. More drifty white fog.

  “The smoke's the wrong color anyway,” I groused to Nick. “It should be thick brown grayish stuff.” They train the army with great thunderflashes and smoke canisters that fume out huge clouds of the stuff.

  “Cameras couldn’t film through that, Lovejoy. And everything’s for the cameras, pillock. Not us.”

  Let the record show that three of us were filmed forty-six times running ten yards through artificial smoke, and that it took thirty- five specialist staff nine hours to accomplish. Let it not show, though, that Three Wheel Archie came as instructed to find me during a break. He caused a commotion when he found I wasn’t yet ready to leave. In fact I was summoned to Meese’s position, a chair soldered somehow to cameras on a tall crane thing, to quieten Three Wheel.

  “Hello, Archie,” I said. “Three Wheel, please meet—” Archie really let me have it. “You said you’d be finished by now, Lovejoy!” He was blazing. Everybody was gaping at him, so tiny among the beautiful people. "I’ve been waiting two hours!” “Now, Archie,” I said reasonably. “They can’t do it right.” A few laughed. Others were furious. I was ballocked by Lorane and Vance’s crew for stepping out of position, and apologized to Archie, said to go on home if he couldn’t wait. Three Wheel marched off the set with a great show of indignation, and we returned to our cliffhanging.

  It wasn’t all waste. For as we reassembled I saw Lorane glance up at Ray on the gantry. He was looking after Archie’s retreating form. Then he swiveled, looking for Lorane. Their eyes met. Neither smiled, but they were both very, very glad. For them my part in their scam was complete.

  Worn out by doing nothing all day, I reached home at eleven. The phone rang at midnight on the dot.

  "All right, Lovejoy?”

  “Exact, Archie. You did great. Best acting they’ve ever seen.” "Thought I’d overdone it.”

  “No, Archie. Dead on. Cheers."

  Now it was all set up. Lorane and Ray Meese would believe that Three Wheel Archie was somehow involved. It took no intellect to match Archie’s diminutive size with a certain spacious hole in a Celtic cross’s granite base, as seen in a tatty sketch clumsily unconcealed in my cottage. I felt superb, for once ahead of the game.

  Well, I would have done, but for one nagging anxiety. I still for the life of me couldn’t understand why I was so necessary in all this. They could have done all they’d done so far without me. And probably done it better, faster, cheaper, less bother. Yet, when I'd threatened to duck out, Lorane steams over and rapes me into submission.

  That night I made a couple of phone calls. By next evening a local paper would carry details of the d
iscovery of a Celtic cross, embedded in solid granite. It would be found somewhere very rural; the location would be unnamed for security reasons.Its import would be a source of considerable dispute among archeologists and experts. I’d already seen to that.

  »

  A

  BOUT Woolwich.

  Woolwich isn't as simple as it looks. Down in that untidy corner of London there’s all sorts of buildings, areas, parks, waterways. It has quite a history, so is best approached by river. To find it, go down the Thames from Limehouse, with the Isle of Dogs on your left. Pass through that frightening futuristic Thames flood barrier, and look to your right. There, just before you cruise into Galleons Reach, sandwiched between Charlton’s dull tangle and Plumstead’s duller marshes, is Woolwich. If you’re in haste, as I always am, catch the Docklands Railway (don’t worry—it’s only the London tube poshed up). Or take the Woolwich Free Ferry. Or the Blackwell Tunnel, or the train from London Bridge. Listing them like this is an amazing history lesson. It teaches that all important roads once led to Woolwich and maybe, a little more secretly nowadays, still do. I zoomed there on the ferry.

  You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to detea Woolwich’s once and future function. Its train station is Woolwich Arsenal. Walk idly for a few minutes and you find Ordnance Road, Master

  Gunners Place, Shrapnel Close, Artillery Place, Gunner Lane. Got it? It’s the home of the gun.

  A map surprises you—so much open space? So many playing fields, parks, commons? Well, yes, but soldiers and artillery needed to play. The names clue you more pointedly as you walk from the ferry—Grand Depot Road, Repository Road—until they become terse, blunt: Rifle Range, Depot. That's what I wanted. It took me a couple of hours to stroll where Footer had sketched.

  For old time’s sake, I paid a visit to the museum. Though every planner in the kingdom's had a go renaming it, everybody calls it the Rotunda. Its superb collections, beautifully displayed, show the artistry of fright. Flintlock weapons of mindbending cleverness—repeaters, revolvers, automatic safety built in—were there, with every art style imaginable in every precious metal mined from earth, representing every known country. Too much security, though. Well, you can’t have everything. I made my way to the ferry.

  By then I’d followed the dotted lines on Footer’s map, grinning to myself that Woolwich Stadium was, naturally, more carefully drawn even than the Old Royal Military Academy and the Royal Artillery Barracks. Him and his football. It’s a wonder he hadn’t inked in the bloody goalposts.

  The times of the security van’s run from the library repository to the British Museum were given on a card, with probable variations for traffic density. Like I say, Footer’s a pro. Wise old head. Shame about the rash.

  I’m a master of indecision. Connoisseur of the dither, El Supremo of doubt. Uncertainty’s my soulmate. My trouble is, each haver breeds subtype after subtype, all spawned to crowd the original spawner. Vacillation Man, me.

  Sitting alone on my sleeping bag, staring at the empty grate, I realized I knew virtually zero. Nowt but doubt, my gran used to say of me, recognizing a true champ. I was no longer sure of the Clayton-Meese axis, though no other explanation would do for Ben

  C’s failure to send Seg on the vengeance trail after I’d burgled his exhibition. And Lorane had behaved predictably, returning to search my place—I hoped she had the sense to copy all my clues about the Celtic cross—after I’d speculated on doing an actual robbery.

  Which set me wondering if there was anything I knew that they didn’t. An hour’s agonizing ponder yielded only one thing, and it was this: I, alone with Lydia, knew Countess Natalia was no uncomprehending ancient. If it hadn’t been for the accident of my divvy sense I’d be like the others in thinking her a malleable old crone. I knew she was fluent, and a double shrewd clever, articulate lady behind her mask of incomprehension. Okay, she was committed to a cause. To me that’s a plus. It’s a sign of life. Did Lorane, Meese, Vance, Max, know I’d even returned and chatted with her so frankly that teatime? And if they did, would they care? Answer: no, especially if they thought her a dull octogenarian with hardly a word in her head. I still wasn’t sure of Agafia. A bonny bird, but bonny birds have unreliable loyalties.

  Another hour passed, me on the floor glaring at the grate. Bluetits hollered outside for me, cadging swine, but for once I let them get on with it. In fact I might actually have nodded off, because when I woke the light had begun to draw in and I was perished and peckish. I stayed where I was, though, because something important had occurred to me in that half-dozing state.

  It was my People game.

  Odd, really, because I’d won, hadn’t I? Q: What will she do next? A: Sleep with Parson Brown. But suppose I hadn’t really won at all. Suppose Mrs. Shrouder’s love for Parson, missing believed dead, was merely a gambit? As meaningless as Lorane’s torrid passion with me. A device to an end, no puns intended. Was the motive something far deeper? Maybe to keep Parson involved so that some greater scam could be enacted? Were Lorane the game’s subject, it would be easy. She’d slept with me to hook me in. Okay, so I was needed for the final filming in the museum. But why? I’d not dug deep enough.

  I phoned the countess. They were in, and I was informed I could be received in an hour. I hurriedly collared Lydia’s car and got on the outside of a couple of emergency pasties on the way. Couldn’t expect a sumptuous ounce of Genoa cake every time I called, could I?

  “Lovejoy! How delightful to see you! I wondered where you’d got to.” Countess Natalia was in the observatory. It had seen better days. The plants were sprightly. “Where’s your lovely young lady? I like her.”

  She didn’t have to endure Lydia’s criticisms. “Everybody does, countess. She’s got a job on.”

  “Is she too a divvy, Lovejoy?”

  “A bit, for furniture.” They bade me sit down as Agafia rang for tea. A maid brought a ton of stuff on a tray, eats from here to eternity. I glowed. Only on Home Stores pots, but grub’s grub. I kept trying not to look at Agafia, lovely in the subdued light. The countess’s conversation kept deflecting my attention. I was positioned by a handy table, to my relief. That genteel knee-balancing can ruin your appetite, especially when you’re as clumsy as I am.

  “You’d better start, Lovejoy. I feel we rather underestimated your appetite during your last visit.” She was civil, not laughing.

  “No, no,” I protested. I wasn’t clemmed, after the pasties, but hunger means any port in a storm.

  “How is our grand design, Lovejoy?”

  "The film? Oh, coming on, countess.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. “They said they’ve already done most. They’ve to film the balloon, and shenanigans in some hotels, then it’s the big finale.” “Which is . . . ?”

  "Don’t they tell you? The robbery. In the museum. The last scene of the whole picture. After that it’s ...” I brought out my one movie slang word with pride "... a wrap.”

  “Ah. What have they decided on?”

  “An entire exhibition. Armenian stuff.”

  She looked slightly pained. “Is there nothing better?” she said something in Russian to Agafia, who was already narked by my news. “I’m displeased.”

  "Well, I did tell you. The British Museum hasn’t got much Russian heyday stuff, countess.”

  “For heaven’s sake.” She and Agafia exchanged glances.

  "I know where there’s a splendid gold tea service. Belonged to some czar. Haven’t seen it myself, but word is it’s stupendous.” The countess smiled. “My family has—had, perhaps I should now say—a milliard lovely things, Lovejoy.” A woman doesn’t have to be young to be pretty. Her sweet countenance grew dreamy. “You know what they said of Old Russia? That to be Russian was to carve wood. When Great Prince Vladimir of Kiev took on Orthodoxy in the year 989, all Russians became artists. We, as a great family, inherited some of that art.”

  Agafia reached and patted her hand to allay her sadness. “Don’t be sad, countess. This film migh
t lead to a renaissance." “Might? Must, my dear.”

  “What did you have, love?” I coughed. “You see, I’ve not had time to go along to the exhibition.”

  She smiled and was off, reminiscing. “In the coffee room we had that splendid iconostasis, not enormous you understand, but the length of the wall.” A wooden carved screen, to separate off part of a Greek Rite church. “The saints' figures were carved not quite in the round—statues as such are idolatrous to us Russians, you see, Lovejoy.”

  “Did you have a metal table?”

  “Not whole metal. A copper table top, yes. Long, for the dining room.” She laughed, slapped her hands. “Do you remember, Agafia, how we used to play as children, gumming into our reflections after the servants had burnished . . . ?” She sobered. “No, Agafia. You weren't born. I forget.”

  Russian copperwork was once supreme and unique. Their hanging lamps are real specialties for collectors. Copper candlesticks are another must, especially those florid compound three- candle pairs with birds worked into the fret. The only pair I’ve ever seen in my life were chucked out on a street barrow—not machined, modern or fashionable, you see. The rag-and-bone man went on a Mediterranean cruise from it, six weeks in the sun. “We used to play with the silver bratinas.” Her old face was smiling again, but about to doze. Agafia moved but I caught her eye, sharply shook my head. This news was vital, life or death. Both, even.

  “Bratinas, countess?”

  “You know, loving cups. Silver. Papa had ten.” She smiled, indicated the far doorway. "Do take a look at your convenience, Lovejoy. They’re in the display case. Agafia?”

  “Yes, countess?”

  “I hate that great lumbering Prussian cabinet. Replace it with a proper Novgorod bureau.”

  Agafia looked tearful, despairing, said, "Yes, countess.” “Which did you like most, countess?”

  “Oh, the kovsh’s shape is so wonderful to a child! It’s a . . . a scoop! We played in the sandpit. I’d have my three favorites, and my sister Elizabeth had hers. We’d fill all papa’s gold charkas, using the housekeeper’s best silver cherpaks. Really naughty! Then we’d . . .” She faded, suddenly came to, abruptly lucid and brighteyed. "I do apologize. Have I monopolized the conversation?” "Not at all.” I managed to speak. A charka—a quaich, drinking vessel—was common, but gold ones weren’t. A cherpak’s a ladle, precious metal for posh. She’d already shown me the last kovsh, seemingly one of many. They were the czar’s traditional gift to some hero or favorite, as her ancestor’s was, from the inscription. Nowadays it’s fashionable among the county set to buy a bratina, and use that wondrous ornamental silver loving cup as a punchbowl—not antique collectors’ fault, really, since the Russians themselves started the ridiculous habit. I hate it. "Were you happy, countess?”