The Gondola Scam Read online

  "How lovely!" Connie cried. "He gave Mr. Cramphom a lift, Lovejoy."

  "Shut up."

  I too had glimpsed two figures in the car. Narked at being reminded yet again of my stupendous failure at the ring auction, I trundled us out clattering into the slipstream.

  So Crampie was working his antique scam on Mr. Malleson. I wished him luck. The rate my old Ruby trundles, it would be a good hour before I reached my cottage, where Connie would raise me to paradise and send the memory of this catastrophic day into an oblivion it richly deserved. It was to be a lot longer.

  2

  "Stop, Lovejoy! Please!"

  "What for?"

  "It's Mr. Malleson's car! With the police!"

  East Anglia becomes a desert of country darkness after dusk. Those roadside cafes are oases of light in the pitch night, because we lack those natty road lamps which make towns so wonderful.

  "No."

  "Please! You must, Lovejoy! Your friends are in trouble."

  Nothing's so poisonous as a woman bent on Doing Good. These days nobody in their right mind stops at these lonely road nosh bars. And you especially don't when those irritable blue lamps are blinking ghoulishly from ambulances and police cars. I tried explaining that yobbos had probably nicked some dealer's antiques from his car—par for the course, really—but Connie turned ugly.

  "No love then, Lovejoy."

  She didn't really mean it, couldn't in fact, and she knew it. But what she did know was that her threat would make me dispirited. I tend to lose heart easily. Teachers at school used to call me spineless but never taught me out of it. I applied the brake—note that singular—and my Ruby contemplated itself to a dawdling stop, drifting sideways as its one block persuasively caressed its feeble motive power into clattering idleness.

  "Come on!" Connie was already out and trotting back towards the lights. Miserably I followed, cursing. My instincts were to drive on with every erg my rusty old zoomster could generate.

  Two ambulances hurtled out in tandem, nearly flattening Connie and me. Several bored police constables were hanging about. A few lorry drivers chatted and exchanged cigarettes, eyeing Connie as we entered the ring of lights on the forecourt.

  It was a typical roadside caff. Low hut, depleted neon sign, a few multicolored bulbs on trailed flex, dark trees crowding in beyond. A few parked lorries, one or two ordinary cars. Mr. Malleson's car was prominently agape nearby. Connie, with all the tact of a Stuka, rushed into the fray squealing questions. By the time I came up, the whole world knew that Mr. Malleson and Crampie had been rushed to hospital. Connie has a habit of repeating in a shrill cry any answers she gets.

  "Before you start, Mr. Ledger," I said to the older of the two CID men, "I must caution you that anything you say will be taken down and flatly contradicted by my alibi."

  "Lovejoy." He's not a bad old nerk, as cretins go, but we've never gotten on. Not because he has this unshakable belief that I'm a villain, but because I have this unshakable belief that he's a bigger one. "Where were you?"

  I walked on past while Connie squealed yet more questions. The lorry drivers, six or seven, were being questioned in turn by a constable with a tape recorder. The space age. I selected a squat, canny little bloke who'd obviously got fed up and was sitting on his lorry's running board.

  "One of them was my mate," I said, sitting by him.

  "Oh, aye?" Rossendale accent, clean-shaven, tidy. A family man keen on simply polishing off his congealed egg-and-chips and roaring off northwards.

  "See much?"

  "Not really. There were four or so. Three heavies and a girlish bloke in a bright suit. Sports car, but I didn't see it. Only heard it go beyond the hedge. Stocking masks. A little van." He spat expertly. "They drove it across the frigging intersection."

  Smart that. It was illegal, so nobody could legally give chase.

  "Were they bad?"

  "Sorry, mate." He shook his head. "They both looked poorly, especially the scruff who came in to phone." He meant Crampie, doing his road trick. 'The city gent was waiting in the car. We heard the hullabaloo. Me and my mate come running and chucked stones, but the buggers were gone. Yon bobby says they pinched a picture."

  "A painting?"

  "God knows." He looked at me, offering a cigarette. I lit up as politeness, though I don't smoke them. I’m in enough trouble. "Here, lad. If you're going after them I'd watch yon pansy bloke. He clobbered both your mates after his mob had emptied the car. A wrench."

  “Ta, mate." I rose. "Regards to the Duchy."

  His face lit in a smile. "Go careful."

  More common sense in two minutes than you'd get in a thousand years at university. If only I'd listened to the man.

  "Come on, love," I said to Connie, not pausing. "'Night, Ledger."

  "Lovejoy. Where were you when—?"

  Connie trotted after, holding her coat round herself as tightly as she could in the night wind. "That was very rude of you, Lovejoy."

  "Darlin'," I said. "It's very rude of Ledger to let Cram-pie and Mr. Malleson get done in a crash-wallop. So criticize me second, not first."

  "Some men stole all Mr. Malleson's things! Did you hear? And Inspector Ledger's police cars are already searching for the culprits!" She was in raptures at how wonderful our police were.

  "Cheapest way of getting antiques,” I said cruelly. "And the safest. Get in."

  We got to the hospital in Black Notley a few minutes too late, though I don't suppose Crampie would have been able to tell us anything. He was unconscious for his last moments. When I came out after seeing the house surgeon, Connie said the police cars had just pulled away.

  Connie pulled her overcoat tight round her lovely knees. "It's freezing. Did you see Crampie?"

  "Crampie just died, love. Mr. Malleson was dead when they got here."

  "Darling. I'm so sorry. That Little man we didn't even give a lift . . .?" Tears filled her and she wept.

  It wasn't any use explaining that Crampie'd not even have accepted a lift from me even if I'd offered him one. Anyway, I was becoming exhausted explaining every little problem to hangers-on. I sat listening to her sniffing, watching the nurses and sisters move beyond the Casualty glass and the third young house surgeon slumping over the desk writing up case notes. All their training, all their labor over Mr. Malleson and Crampie, had been a gigantic waste.

  "Help me, Connie, love."

  My voice must have given something away. She blotted herself dry and nodded.

  "Ready."

  Connie may have cold blood, but she sees things I don't. I drove us back to my cottage, talking all the while and explaining my slight problem. Why would certain dealers bid themselves almost into poverty for a fake, and antique thieves pull a raid for that same fake? Worse, at least one of them had found a sadistic glee in needlessly making murder.

  Hours later we were still going over the lorry driver's story, the pansified bloke in the lemon-tinted suit, the events at the auction.

  Getting on for seven, we were lying in bed at my cottage.

  To feed us, Connie had knocked a soup thing in my little kitchen alcove, and did something called goulash. It had been good, but I was narked with her for throwing my last pastie out. She claimed it wasn't fresh, bloody cheek. Apart from these visits from enthusiasts like Connie, pasties are my staple fare, and seeing my last pastie get the sailor's elbow was disheartening. It was a sign that my days of wine and roses were over. Locusts would soon settle on the land of Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. I was about to be spring-cleaned.

  "You should have taken Mr. Malleson's money." Connie was propped on one elbow, her lovely skin glowing and her smooth breast cool against my face. "You earned it."

  "Accepting payment means I'd be responsible for him, the goon."

  "You shouldn't speak ill of the . . ." She shivered and caped the bedclothes round her shoulders. She hadn't understood the mysticism of the secret auction ring of the antique dealers, so I had to explain.

  Aucti
ons have been around a long time but have changed very little. Oh, we don't any longer do like in ancient Rome—stick a spear, the famous hasta publica, upright in the market square to show one's about to begin—but we do more or less the same as in Pliny the Elder's day. But be careful. There are different kinds.

  Everybody knows the common or "English" auction, where the bidders' prices start off low and simply go up a notch with each bid. However, there's also a "Dutch" auction, where the auctioneer starts at a high price, and then calls out ever lower prices, until a bidder stutters out that he's willing to pay that much. And there's the so-called market auction, where you bid merrily, English-style, but for one representative sample of a particular lot, and where you needn't accept more than that one at the price you've successfully bid. Market-style auctions are pretty rare in antiques, except where there's a whole batch of stuff which the auctioneer's willing to split, say a load of old desks, plates, chairs, cutlery, and so on. Then there's a "time" auction, where you get a length of time to complete (not start, note) your bidding. The most famous example of this is that French wine auction business, where anybody can carry on bidding anything—for as long as the auctioneer's candle stub stays lit. It's a real cliff-hanger, because the bidding ends the exact instant the guttering candle snuffs. And there's the famous "paper" auction, where the auctioneer announces a price below which he won't go, and the bidders have numbered or named cards. You simply write down your bid, and the slips are collected by minions. Antique dealers hate this, because it calls for frankness and honesty, probably why it's going out of fashion.

  Yes, it pays to suss out the rules governing the particular auction you wish to attend. It might prevent you going broke. But auction risks don't end there. There's the newfangled check trick (bid high, pay the 10 percent deposit immediately by check, try to sell the item for a fast profit that day—and, if you can't, just stop the check, claiming all sorts of false catalogue descriptions.) There's the "knockout," where antique dealers resort to any trick to impede or con the public out of bids. There's even evil in some auctioneers themselves (Lord save us!), their assistants, vannies, valuers, clerks, experts, and, last and most, the public. We don't have state-owned auction rooms like the Dorotheum in Vienna, and I'm quite glad about that. "At least in our system roguery is predictable and perennial," I told Connie. "I'd hate it to be legal too."

  Connie thought the ring auction a lot of pointless trouble. "Why auction things among yourselves if you've just already bought them?"

  "The dealers all agree not to bid at the public auction. Only one dealer bids. So the price is lower, right? Then the dealers gather in a pub and have their private little auction. The difference in Gimbert's price and the ring's price is the profit, and is shared out. See?"

  Connie was outraged. "But that's not fair!" she cried.

  I pulled her down and inevitably her perishing cola feet climbed inchwise up my legs.

  "I know that. But the first ever successful prosecution for an illicit auction ring was in 1981. It's hopeless."

  She forgot the drafts long enough to raise her head off my chest and peer at me. "But why were you there, darling?"

  "I was made to go," I lied, putting on my noble face. "Wanted to buy you a present."

  Her eyes filled with tears. "Darling," she said, all misty. "And you risked being caught, put in prison for life, just for me?" Even I felt quite moved by my story, and I'd just made it up.

  "Well, love," I said brokenly, "I don't give you much. And this cottage isn't much of a place to bring you—"

  "It's absolutely beautiful!" she cried defiantly. "I just love the village and your lovely little home!"

  If she'd agreed it was crummy I'd have thumped her there and then. Hastily, I told her how wonderful she was, with inevitable consequences. Also inevitably, she briefly halted the romance for meteorological reasons.

  "Darling, couldn't we make love the other way round, then we can stay under the bedclothes?"

  "For you, anything," I said. She said I was so sweet, which is true, though when I came to afterwards I was still narked with her about my last pastie. A single pastie can keep you going a whole day sometimes, which is more than can be said for almost anything else you can think of.

  I saw Connie off about ten to eight. She helped me to fold the bed away (it's really a divan thing) and lent me some money for tomorrow's grub. She also sprang a present on me, a pair of shoes obviously nicked from one of husband Ken's shops.

  'They're expensive, darling," she said. "Real handmade leather."

  "Thanks, love."

  "They look marvelous." She was thrilled because they fit. Two days before, she had measured me with a complicated sextant-looking gadget. I could tell she was worried in case she got the width wrong. "Now wear them. Don't let me find them in a cupboard weeks from now. Cross your heart?"

  "Let me cross yours instead."

  "Oh, you,” she said.

  We went to the porch arm in arm. The porch light doesn't work. I'll mend it when I get a minute, but for the moment it was usefully dark. Still, nobody could see us, because the people across the lane are always out sailing or racing motors round Silverstone and that, and our lane leads nowhere in particular.

  "Got your car keys, love?"

  "Yes, darling. See you soon. I'll come early."

  I groaned inwardly. A morning tryst meant she had designs on my dust. She usually brings a vacuum cleaner and blizzards through the cottage till I'm demented.

  "'Night, love."

  She clung shivering for a minute to show the cold night breeze that she knew it was out there, then ran with a squeal of hatred into the pitch dark. She leaves her grand coupe on my gravel path so customers won't spot her car parked in some leafy layby and go prattling gossip.

  "Go in, darling!" she cried back. "You'll catch your death!"

  "Right, love." I didn't move. It was quite mild, really, but I've noticed women talk themselves into a shiver. Connie's headlights washed over my garden, shrinking it and fetching the trees comfortably closer. They struck a gleam off something beyond the hedge. I wondered idly what it was. Maybe I'd have a look when I could get round to it.

  Connie revved, ambitiously stirring the gears and frightening my garden voles by showering the countryside with flying gravel as she backed and veered. I counted her turns. Three, four, five, six. The horn pipped a triumphant pip and she was off, her rear reds flickering as she zoomed past the hawthorns. That was good, I thought approvingly. She usually takes seven goes to negotiate the gateway.

  Nothing can gleam in our lane except glow-worms and a parked car. I felt daft just standing there so I walked out. No engines roared, no yobbos bawled.

  "Good evening, Lovejoy. Caterina Norman." The blond bird showed faintly in the greenish dashboard illumination. "Your phone is disconnected."

  "Er, a slight misunderstanding about the bill."

  "You're to come with me," she said, dead cool. "Tomorrow. My grandfather wants to speak to you."

  That's all I wanted, another bird giving me orders. "I'm busy tomorrow."

  "Surely you can stop . . . work for a moment or two." Her tone was dry. She'd obviously seen more than she wanted when Connie departed. "It's not far."

  "Well, look. Can't we leave it?" I was knackered. What with the whole day in the auction aggro, the failure with Mr. Malleson, and Connie, I needed a restful day reading about beautiful antiques.

  "He's an antique collector, Lovejoy. And he has a task for you."

  That did it. Maybe Granddad was a potential buyer. Never mind that I hadn't a single antique in the place. Potential money's only heading one way, right? And that word: "task." Not "job," not "some work." Task. There's something indelibly medieval about it, isn't there? Beowulf and the Arthurian knights did tasks. Profitable things, tasks—or so I thought.

  3

  Next morning I was up as usual about seven, frying tomatoes. The robin came ficking along the hedge to the wall where it plays hell till I s
hut it up with diced cheese. Blue tits were tapping the side window, and the sparrows and blackbirds were all in round my feet. A right lorry load of chiselers. And soon the bloody hedgehog would be awake and come snuffling its saucer for pobs, greedy little swine. How Snow White kept so bloody cheerful with this menagerie I'll never know. I tell you I’m the easiest touch in East Anglia.

  It wasn't raining for once, so I took my breakfast—it's only bread and dip really—out and sat on a low wall I've nearly finished. I set my trannie to a trillion decibels to frighten off scrounging wildlife, but the robin only came and nonchalantly cleaned its feet on it with such pointed indifference that I had to share the brown bread.

  The robin cackled angrily and flew off, though I'd been stuffing it with grub. Somebody must be coming. Sure enough. Tinker came shuffling up the path, muttering and grumbling.

  "Morning, Tinker. Get a ride on Jacko's wagon?"

  "Aye, thieving old bleeder. Charged me a quid."

  Jacko's a senile villager who runs a van (summer) and a horse wagon (winter) between our village and the nearby town. The van's an elderly reject from the town market. The wagon's a superannuated coal cart pulled by Terence. Jacko sings to entertain his passengers, which is one way of lessening the load.

  'You didn't pay him?" I asked, alarmed.

  'Nar. Gave him your IOU."

  I sighed in relief. Great. One more debtor. Tinker absently took a chunk of bread in his filthy mittens and dipped in. Like I said, the easiest touch in East Anglia. Still, no good postponing the bad news.

  "Crampie and Mr. Malleson got done. Tinker."

  "Yeah. Rotten, eh?" I wasn't surprised that he knew. "That's what I come about, Lovejoy. Patrick see'd last night's rumble."

  I knew better than doubt his mental radar. "Patrick? Actually witnessed it? Anybody else?"

  "No. But some of the wallies was askin' at the hospital, like you."

  "Who?"

  "Patrick. Helen. Margaret Dainty. Linda who was in the ring. That Manchester bloke who comes after antique lacework and Queen Anne clothes. Big Frank from Suffolk."