The Judas Pair Read online

  I’d tried, hadn’t I?

  Adrian brought Jane Felsham along. I handed him a cheque.

  ‘You’re flush,’ he exclaimed. ‘Come across a Barraud?’ Barraud, a London watchmaker, about 1815, made some delicious flat-looking watches. Only the central sun decoration and the astounding nineteen-line movement and the sexy gold and enamel surface and the beady surround (pearls) tell you it’s somewhat above average. The highest artistic imagination crystallized in a luscious context of brilliant science. I smiled, I think. People shouldn’t make jokes. I’d once missed a Barraud by five minutes, late for an auction.

  ‘Steady progress,’ I replied.

  ‘Will it bounce?’ He draped himself elegantly across a chair. Both he and Jane couldn’t help glancing sharply round in case any of my recent finds were on display.

  ‘Don’t you want it?’ I brewed up to show we were still friends.

  ‘I must confess little Janesy and I were discussing whether you’d have the wherewithal, dear boy.’

  ‘It was touch and go.’

  ‘Business going a bit slow, Lovejoy?’ Jane lit one of her long cigarettes and rotated her fagholder. ‘Not much about for the casual visitor to see.’

  ‘I have these two warehouses . . .’

  They laughed.

  ‘That chap last night,’ Jane pressed. ‘A client?’

  ‘Trying to be,’ I said casually.

  ‘After anything we could help with?’ from Adrian.

  ‘I doubt it.’ I rattled a few pieces of crockery to show I was being offhand.

  ‘A furniture man, I suppose.’ Jane waggled her fag-holder again. A psychiatrist I sold a warming-pan to once told me something odd about women who habitually sucked fagholders. For the life of me I can’t remember what it was.

  ‘Asking the impossible as usual.’ I hoped that would shut them up. ‘Wanting something for nothing.’

  ‘Don’t they all?’ Adrian groaned.

  ‘Did you risk him in your car?’ Jane was smiling.

  ‘Of course. Why not? I gave him a lift to the station.’

  ‘Did he survive?’ She’s always pulling my leg about my old bus.

  ‘He said it was unusual.’

  ‘A death trap,’ Adrian interposed. ‘All those switches for nothing. Trade it in for a little Morris.’

  This sort of talk offends me, not that I’m sentimental about a heap of old iron. After all, though it’s a common enough banger, it does give off a low-level bell or two.

  ‘He didn’t buy, then?’

  ‘Not even place an order.’ I carried in their cups and offered sugar. ‘I got a faint tickle, though. Bring in any tassies you find. We’ll split.’

  ‘I might have a few,’ Jane said, and they were satisfied.

  Tassies – intaglios, really – are the dealers’ nickname for an incarved stone, usually a semi-precious one. You know a cameo brooch? The figure – a bust silhouette or whatever – stands in relief above the brooch’s main surface. Imagine the same figure carved inwards, grooving out the design. That’s an intaglio. Mostly oval, about the size of a pea and as high, with a shallow carving. Watch for copies, modern ones you can’t even give away except to some mug who can’t tell bottle-glass from the Star of India, though the way things are going, by the time you read this . . .

  ‘Harry Bateman phoned in,’ Adrian said, pulling a face at my foul coffee.

  ‘On the cadge?’

  ‘Offering.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Wordsworth’s stuff. Genuine.’

  ‘Really?’ I was interested, but Harry Bateman didn’t know his bum from his elbow, which when you think of it is pretty vital information.

  ‘His original chair and a shaving case given to him by his daughter Dora, 1839.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Jane looked up sharply. It must have been how I said it.

  ‘Chair’s a straight Chippendale –’ Adrian was starting off, but I took pity.

  ‘– and he’s even got the date wrong as well. Trust Harry.’

  ‘No good?’

  ‘How come he doesn’t starve?’ I demanded. ‘He’ll catch it one day. For heaven’s sake tell him before he gets picked up – Wordsworth’s chair was always a diamond-seater because of his habit of sitting with a hand in his jacket, Napoleon-style. And the National Trust will be narked if he’s really got Dora’s case – it should still be at Dove Cottage, on show with the rest of his clobber.’

  ‘That’s what I like about Lovejoy,’ Adrian said to Jane. ‘He’s abusive without actually giving offence.’

  ‘I’m pretty good value,’ I retorted.

  We had a few similar rapier-like exchanges of witty repartee and then they left in Adrian’s new Jaguar. A shower of gravel clattered the Armstrong-Siddeley as he spun down my path. I could hear the stones pattering into my bushes all the way through the copse on to the road. Jane had blown me an apologetic kiss.

  I phoned Tinker to come over.

  I had all the Wallis and Wallis auction catalogues out, Knight Frank and Rutley’s, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Weller and Dufty’s of Birmingham, plus every reference book just as a check. My real filing system was below in the priest-hole. There wasn’t time to open up before Tinker showed, and he wasn’t that close a confidant. Nobody was, not even Sheila.

  ‘Watcha, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Come in, Tinker.’

  He was grinning. ‘Did a deal?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ I said, narked.

  ‘He told me to be sure and mention the money.’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  ‘Did he cough up?’ He brought out the Black Label from where I hid it and poured a glug.

  ‘No. All we’ve got is promises.’

  ‘Ah well.’ He smacked his lips. ‘You can’t have everything.’

  ‘I thought he was a nutter at first.’ I gave him a glare. ‘Especially as you hadn’t tipped me off what he was after.’

  ‘Do you blame me? Would you have come if I had?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Anyway, I talked him out of it. I ask you – the Judas pair. At my age.’

  ‘What’s the job then?’

  ‘He’s decided to become the big collector,’ I improvised. ‘So he casts about for a real bingo, and hears of the Judas guns. He decides that’s what he’ll start with. I’ve told him I’ll get going after a pedigree pair that’ll be just as good. He bought it.’

  ‘What’ll we give him?’ Tinker asked. Already I could see his ferret mind sniffing out possibilities.

  ‘The best named pedigree ones we can get.’

  ‘Same name?’

  ‘Yeah – Durs.’

  ‘Some good Mantons might be on the move soon, word is.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Suffolk, so people are saying.’

  ‘Well . . .’ I pretended indecision. ‘Keep it in mind, but Durs for preference. I was just pinning them down.’

  ‘Three in Germany. Four in the States. Four here, and that Aussie.’ He ticked his fingers. ‘Twelve. That’s the lot.’

  I nodded agreement. ‘I’ll make sure none’s come through the auctions lately.’

  ‘You’d have noticed, Lovejoy.’

  ‘It’ll save you legwork.’

  ‘Right.’

  He sat and swilled my hooch while I sussed the auctions. In a dozen’ auctions three sets of Durs guns had been sold, two pairs of holster weapons, one by Joseph of Piccadilly and one by Durs, and one blunderbuss by Durs.

  ‘Run-of-the-mill stuff,’ I said, forcing back the tears.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’

  ‘Out into the wide world.’ I watched his face cloud with misery. ‘I go to work writing and whizzing round the collectors. You get down among the dealers and listen. You don’t ask anything, got it? You just listen.’

  ‘Right, Lovejoy. Only . . .’

  I gave him some notes.

  ‘This comes out of your commission,’ I warned. He would
expect that.

  ‘I’ll go careful.’

  ‘Do,’ I warned. ‘If you go shouting the odds –’ ‘I know better than go putting the price up.’ He winked. ‘Cheerio, Lovejoy.’

  ‘See you, Tinker.’

  I’d had to do it. If Tinker – who looked as if he hadn’t two coppers to rub together – suddenly appeared, asking after high-priced stuff, it would be the talking-point of the antique world within minutes and any trace of the Judas pair would vanish.

  I caught myself in time. I should have to remember they didn’t exist. What I was really going after was a pair of unusual real weapons, which did exist.

  I put the catalogues away and sat outside the front door on my stone alcove-seat. The day was fine, dry. Birds were knocking around in the haphazard way they do. A squirrel raced up a tree, stopping now and again for nothing. It was all pretty average. I could hear a few cars on the road. When I was settled enough I let my mind flow towards the job.

  A pair of guns existed. They had been bought by Eric Field, who’d got excited. They were certainly by the great Regency maker, and therefore not cheap. Said to be flint duellers, but were possibly not. The other possibility was that the weapons had been mere holster pistols, and Eric Field, not knowing much for all his collecting enthusiasm, mistook them as valuable duellers.

  Yet – if they were only officer’s guns, who killed Eric that Friday night, just to get hold of them? Nobody would murder for a couple of antiques you could buy at open auction, however expensive.

  But a hell of a lot of people would murder over and over again for the Judas Pair – if they existed. The day took on a sudden chill.

  I shook myself and planned action. First, locate for certain all sets over the past twelve months. Assuming they were all where they ought to be, I would have to think again.

  I went indoors to warm up a cheese-and-onion pie. That, two slices of bread and a pint of tea, and I would start.

  Chapter 4

  IT WAS ABOUT three that afternoon. I had walked down to my gate, a hundred yards, and latched it as an added precaution. To come in you had to lift the latch and push hard. It screeched and groaned and rattled like the Tower dungeons. Better than any watchdog. My doors were locked, all my curtains were drawn, and I was in my priest-hole.

  Every weekend, while other dealers ginned it up at the local and eyed the talent, I cross-indexed sales. Newspapers, auctions, gossip, cheap adverts I’d seen on postcards in village shop windows, anything and everything to do with antiques. Those little cards and two hardbacked books may be no match for IBM but my skills are second to none, powered as they are by the most human of all mixtures – greed and love. Let a computer get those.

  As I checked mechanically back for Durs items in my records I occasionally glanced at the shelves about me, wondering if there was anything the Fields could have mistaken for the Judases. I had a pair of lovely mint double-barrelled percussion Barratts cased and complete with all accessories. No goon could mistake percussion for flints, which narrowed the field considerably. There were other relatives of Joseph and Durs, one being Charles, but he came later and in any case was only a pale shadow of the two older craftsmen. Then came Augustus Leopold, no less. Only, to see his masterpieces you have to go to the London art galleries, for he was the famous oil painter pal of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. To read the scathing comments these writers left about him, he’d have run a mile on even seeing a pistol, flintlock or otherwise. No. It all pointed to Durs weapons. My own Durs flinters were holsters. The duellers I owned were a late large-bore pair by Henry Nock. All the rest, carefully wrapped and laid on dry sponges, were unmistakably non-Durs,

  The more I thought about it, the more unlikely it was that Eric had got it wrong. His pair probably were duellers, and perhaps even Durs. If a master craftsman can make a dozen pairs, what’s to stop him making one more set? Nothing.

  But what made them so special that Eric would babble eagerly over the phone about them to his bored brother?

  There was no other alternative. I would have to make the assumption that the Judas pair had been found and bought by Eric Field, that they were used to kill him by some unknown person, and that the motive for Eric’s death was possession of the unique antiques. How they’d managed to kill Eric without bullets was a problem only possession of the weapons themselves could solve. I put my cards away, switched off the light and climbed out.

  It took only a couple of minutes to have the living-room carpet back in place. I opened the curtains and phoned Field.

  ‘Lovejoy,’ I told him. ‘Tell me one thing. How long before his death did Eric have them?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe a few months.’

  ‘Months?’

  ‘Why, yes,’ he said, surprised. ‘I’m almost certain he mentioned he’d found a pair of good-quality flintlocks quite some time ago.’

  ‘Who would know for certain?’

  ‘Well, nobody.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You could try his wife Muriel, my sister-in-law.’

  ‘Same address?’

  ‘She still lives in the house. Only, Lovejoy.’ He was warning me.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please go carefully. She’s not very . . . strong.’

  ‘I will,’ I assured him, and hung up.

  So Eric had bought them, and only months later had he discovered their unique nature. I was justified, then, in searching for duellers which looked like most other flints.

  This was a clear case for Dandy Jack over at the antique mart, the world’s best gossip and worst antiques dealer. I could do him a favour, as he’d recently bought a small Chinese collection and would be in a state about it. He always needed help.

  I locked up and examined the weather. It would stay fine, with hardly a breeze. The nearby town was about ten miles with only one shallow hill to go up. My monster motor would make it. I patted the Armstrong-Siddeley’s bonnet.

  ‘Let’s risk it, love,’ I said, set it rolling with the outside handbrake dropped forward, and jumped in.

  Mercifully, it coughed into action just as it reached the gate. The engine kept grinding away while I swung the gate open, and we trundled grandly out on to the metalled road, all its remaining arthritic 20 cc’s throbbing with power. I pushed the throttle flat, and the speedo sailed majestically upwards from walking pace into double figures. The jet age.

  Practically every town nowadays has an antique market, mart, arcade, call it what you will. Our town has an arcade of maybe ten antique shops. Imagine Billy Bunter’s idea of the Sun King’s palace, built by our town council who’d run out of money before finishing the foyer, and you’ve got our shopping arcade. It’s given to seasonal fluctuations, because people from holiday resorts along the coast push up summer sales, and the dearth of winter visitors whittles the arcade’s shops-stalls included – down to five or six. They throw in a café to entice the unwary. Dandy Jack never closes.

  I parked the Armstrong illegally, sticking the card on the windscreen, saying DELIVERING, which could be anything from a doctor to a florist. It often worked. The café had a handful of customers swilling tea and .grappling with Chorley cakes. I got the cleanest cake and a plastic cup. Within five minutes they were popping in.

  ‘Hello, Lovejoy. Slumming?’ Harry Bateman, no less, of Wordsworth fame.

  ‘Hiya, Harry.’

  ‘Hear about my –’

  ‘Remember the Trades Description Act, that’s all.’ He gave me a grin and shrugged.

  ‘I thought I’d done me homework that time. Bloody encyclopedia you are, Lovejoy. See you later.’

  ‘It’s Lovejoy – going straight yet?’ came a second later.

  Margaret Dainty was perhaps a useful thirty-five, tinted hair, plump and prematurely matronly of figure. She was cool, usually reasonably griffed up on her wares, and tended to be highly priced. There was a husband lurking somewhere in her background but he never materialized. An unfortunate childhood injury gave her a slight limp, well disguised.
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  ‘Hiya, Margaret. How’s business?’

  ‘Not good.’ This means anything from bad to splendid.

  ‘Same all round.’

  ‘Interested in anything – besides Jane Felsham?’ She sat opposite and brushed crumbs away for her elbows. I raised eyebrows.

  ‘What’s she done wrong?’

  ‘One of your late-night visitors, I hear.’

  ‘Word gets round wrong as usual. Daytime. Accompanied.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, Lovejoy,’ she said, smiling.

  We had been good friends, once and briefly. I’d assumed that was to be it and that she’d developed other interests.

  ‘Now, now, young Dainty,’ I chided. ‘You don’t want an ageing, dishevelled, poverty-stricken bum like me cramping your style.’

  ‘You are hard work,’ she agreed coolly. ‘But never dull.’

  ‘Poor’s dull,’ I corrected her. ‘Failure’s dull. That’s me.’

  ‘You’re determined not to risk another Cissie.’ Cissie, my erstwhile lady wife.

  ‘There couldn’t be another. It’s one per galaxy.’

  ‘You’re safe, then.’ She eyed me as I finished that terrible tea. ‘Coming to see my stock?’

  I rose, bringing my unfinished Chorley cake with me. Frankly, I could have gone for Margaret badly, too deeply for my own good. But women are funny, you know. They keep changing, ever so slightly, from the time you first meet them. There’s a gradual hardening and tightening, until finally they’re behaving all about you, unmasked and vigilant, not a little fierce. It’s all made worse by the crippling need for them that one has. There’s an absolute demand, and women have the only supply. I prefer them before their shutters and masks come down. Not, you understand, at a distance.

  She had a bonheur de jour – lady’s writing desk – eighteenth-century.

  ‘Sheraton?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘No. His style, though.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I shrugged in answer. I couldn’t tell her about my bell’s condemnatory silence. ‘Doesn’t seem quite right.’

  Tip: look for neat firegilt handles, that lovely satinwood, tulipwood and ebony, and never buy until you’ve had out the wooden runners which support the hinged writing surface. You’ll be lucky if the baize is original – look at it edge on to see if it’s standing high or not. High = modern replacement. Low = possibly original. Forget whether it’s faded or not because we can do that on a clothesline, washing and sun-drying repeatedly, day in, day out for a week. It’s only stuck on.