PearlHanger 09 Read online

  "Right. Mrs. Vernon. What are you doing in this man's company? He's a villain."

  "I hired him," she answered. She was becoming as unreliable as me, and I didn't like it. "Casual rates. He was highly recommended by a friend in Nazewell."

  "Purpose?" The policewoman was working a tape cassette. Why they don't learn to write I'll never know.

  "To advise on antiques." She paused. "He hasn't been very successful so far, unfortunately."

  "Your husband's name, please?"

  "Sidney Charles Vernon. Antique dealer. He isn't at home just now."

  Here it came. I was looking at Donna, fascinated. I'd learned more important negatives in the last few seconds than I had since that seance. Even cop shops have their uses.

  "Mrs. Vernon. Do you know anyone by the name of Chatto? Ken Chatto?"

  "No. Should I?" She had tautened, yet her voice remained full of calm. It was the dive off the springboard, the throw of the dice. More and bigger lies were on the way. "Why do you ask?"

  "Your husband was reported in his company a week ago. In this area."

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  "My husband's in Somerset," Donna said. "Your report is wrong. He said something about Cornwall."

  "His car registration, then?"

  "He probably left by train ..."

  It was all great stuff. I listened admiringly, fable after fable trotting out. Or, I thought anxiously, was what she'd told me the genuine lies while Chandler was only getting the fake lies? Or was my version the truly false lie, as a bluff? I got a headache and switched off. There was a print of one of Modigliani's longish faces hanging behind the police desk. Amazing where culture gets to. I found myself smiling, because Elmyr de Hory forged that very painting, and his fakes go for the price of a house nowadays. De Hory is the greatest of all fakers of modern masters, even if he was Hungarian. I don't hold that against him. People say that gallery in Santa Fe's all but cornered the market.. .

  "What're you grinning at, Lovejoy?"

  I came to. Chandler was glaring. "Er, sorry. Nice picture," I said humbly.

  He let us go then, but clearly still thought we were up to all sorts. "Let me know your whereabouts, once daily."

  We left down a long tiled corridor, steps down between brick banisters, a blue lamp with one bulb gone, a bobby leaning his bike against the curb. A small street, a few cars, and a library over the road. Donna said nothing, drove us out of the main street heading east.

  "Lucky old us," I said brightly.

  Still nothing. This, I thought with bitterness, is the woman who'd ballocked me for seeing that a beautiful Russian antique received justice and two infants got their dinner. Life's unfair to me and it's usually women that see to it.

  ... 71

  "Wonder if we'll catch Sid up before we get to Somerset," I speculated. Instead we were heading for Lowestoft, the opposite way.

  Still nothing? A police car in a layby watched us go by. I turned, adjusted the wing mirror. Sure enough, its headlights flashed once. Broad daylight. An average blue saloon pulled out at the nearby crossroads and settled in our wake.

  "How is Chatto these days, Donna?"

  "I'll tell you later, Lovejoy."

  Terse, but definite progress. An hour ago she'd have castrated me for using her first name. Now we were in deep there were only two choices: I'd get the sailor's elbow and be nudge-splashed at the next roundabout, or she'd keep me on because now something had gone seriously wrong with Hubby Sid's scam—and the clue lay in that oddly phony police interview.

  "Hey," I cackled suddenly, remembering a bagged pas- tie and some russell rolls I had in my pocket, and hauled them out.

  "Have one?" I offered her a roll. "Er, there's only one pastie, I'm afraid. Sorry."

  She shook her head, driving steadily, but gave a half laugh. "Lovejoy, I think you're slightly insane. Are you always odd?"

  "Do without, then." The nerve of the bloody woman. Sod her. I'd have the lot. Anyway, it's not me that's odd. It's everybody else. Including Chandler.

  She gave that incredulous near-laugh again. We made

  the next roundabout and she didn't sling me out. Odder still.

  *

  The unmarked police car drifted off our tail in Old Nelson Street, Lowestoft. We were left unhindered and

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  found a quiet little tavern pretending it was a hotel. Politely we arranged to meet for supper. I promised on my honor not to make any move without asking her first. It was getting on toward evening.

  Then I slipped out and spent a fortune phoning around as darkness fell and the harbor lights lit up from South Basin to Hamilton Dock. I couldn't raise Margaret but Lydia was in and the phone mercifully reconnected. Between assurances (no, I wasn't cold; yes, I was putting my dirty clothes in the plastic bags provided for the purpose; no, I wasn't being rude to Mrs. Vernon; yes, she was keeping her distance) I got her to search the names of antique dealers. Chatto, K.W. Esq. lived in Nazewell at a shop called Chatto and Vernon. Aha. I told Lydia my address in case Tinker rang, and said to suss this Chatto bloke out.

  "Somebody must know him," I said.

  "Very well, Lovejoy. Oh, could you please get in touch with Madame Blavatsky? Urgently. It must be important, Lovejoy."

  "I promise," I said, to shut her up, then went into my act. "The police pulled me in for interrogation."

  "That's utterly scandalous!" she bleated. "I shall protest immediately!"

  "Please don't," I cautioned anxiously, but I was delighted because she would, too. Detective Sergeant Ledger would have to tell her why Chandler had been asking after Chatto and Vernon. My way of finding out.

  "No, Lovejoy," she said sternly. "It's a citizen's responsibility . . ."I could imagine her mouth trying to set grimly, showing how empires were won.

  "My coins are gone," I interrupted. The call was costing a fortune, but indulging women's prejudices always

  ... 73

  does. I've found that. "Look. Suss out Sidney Charles Vernon too."

  "Lovejoy!" Lydia exclaimed, scandalized. "You aren't suggesting. . . ?"

  "Something underhand? Now, would I?" I left smiling. And committed a terrible, terrible crime.

  I forgot Owd Maggie's message.

  »

  "Were those beads really worth all that money?" So much for Donna the dedicated antique dealer. "Those beads" indeed.

  "You'd no right to look at that check," I said. We were slightly befuddled from the wine. Only four other tables were occupied, and the people were not bothered with us. It was an ancient nook-and-cranny place, the sort where lovers go to commemorate anniversaries or start new ones. I needn't add that we'd chosen it by accident.

  "You could have kept it. It was made out to you."

  Michaela had given me ten percent in notes. "I'd got my commission."

  The nosh place was a little dump near The Scores, a tangle of cobbled streets in the old town. I was feeling oddly contented. Donna was defrosting. And we were near my own territory, out on the coastal estuaries where I get to hear of most things by osmosis.

  Neither of us mentioned Sid nor the mysterious Ken Chatto whose name uttered by Sergeant Chandler had sent her pale. Loosened, she talked of this dream she had, of becoming such a good sociologist that she would iron out all the world's problems. I was polite and didn't yawn. I'm kind deep down.

  Then I got reminiscing, nearly my only fault. The antique

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  fakes, the old fiddle trick pulled with oil paintings. I told her about the boom in antique musical instruments (and who created it). And, laughing, of a hitherto unknown pre-Raphaelite painting (and who created that). And how frantic the East German currency dealers are, now they've learned about Italian middlemen. She was intrigued, her eyes shining. And of a fake called Equal Freedom I'd given to the hospice exhibition. "Filled with Polyfilla and old nails and said it was bronze, nothing fancy."

  She was quizzically amused. "Rob the rich to give to the hospice? It has a famil
ar ring, Lovejoy."

  I was indignant. "People who buy art for investment are the worst sort of criminal. They steal our antiques, then hold them to ransom."

  "You're a romantic. Can't you see that antiques are all simply money?"

  "Can't you see they are all simply not?"

  She did her sad fifty percent laugh again. I had to explain, but why do I bother? Women are rotten listeners. They only hear what they agree with.

  "Tell me, Donna. What do you think you're doing? Not," I continued over protest, "chasing Sidney or whatever. But this very minute." She was puzzled. "Feeding your face? Wondering how much that bird at the corner table paid for her frock? Well, there was no such lax moment for the man who made that chair in 1755." In the corner stood a lovely old chair with a red cord to stop anybody sitting on it, Chippendale period. "That chairmaker had no chance of living to old age. Half of his children died before they were one year old. He slogged a hundred hours a week for a pittance in a slum that'd turn our hair, and slept on woodshavings. He could be sacked at whim, and would

  then starve. He owned nothing except his pants, shirt, and clogs if he were lucky."

  "So? Times change."

  "But his chair hasn't, love." I was so narked by her response I rose, hauled her up, and yanked her over to the corner. The other couples watched us in silence. "Look at the back legs. They curve in every plane! How thick did the wood have to be? Come on. Answer."

  "Two feet? Four feet?"

  "Seven inches, love. A miracle, because he felt the living wood as he went, stroke by stroke. He'd never tasted wine, tea, coffee, or sugar in his life, never seen an orange, couldn't afford any book, never worn a hat, never touched soap, or drunk clean water." I was so mad I nearly clocked her. "You see, Donna? Whoever he was, he loved his work even in hell. His chair's telling you all this. And I'm proud of him."

  Donna looked across at the beautiful piece. What a sight a complete set must have been.

  "Touch it and you touch him, back across the centuries. See? Antiques are how we hit back at time."

  "I'll believe you," she said. It was to shut me up.

  Her hand covered mine a moment. She was in midnight blue, with a simple V neck and a Victorian pearl necklace. I was worried about her larger pearls. One or two were looking a bit barreled from wear, but they were a good try. I love pearls. Her nails were long and gleaming, her hands and skin good. Maybe this Ken Chatto bloke was her . . . Well. My face must have given the thought away because her hand moved. She rose to pay our bill saying, "We don't want Lydia turning up to argue the contract, do we?" From Donna Vernon that was a joke.

  We went for a walk toward the coast guard station for

  76 .. .

  half an hour. She linked arms with me. We didn't say much more.

  At the tavern she took her key and went straight up because we wanted to make an early start. I decided on a nightcap in the taproom.

  While I was chatting the barmaid up Lydia rang. She'd been trying to reach me all evening. Maggie Hollohan had had an accident. She'd passed away shortly after help had arrived.

  Sometimes it takes a shock to make you realize you've just been buggering about doing nothing. I snatched three cheese rolls and a bottle of Bulmer's from the taproom, and moved. Three minutes flat and I was zooming out of Lowestoft on the A12, driving like the clappers.

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  2

  The car needed filling with petrol within a few desperate miles, which only goes to show how thoughtless Donna was. Not that she'd known that I was going to nick her motor, but she might at least have filled the damned thing. I was at the mortuary after a fast scary drive along East Anglia's winding night roads.

  A bobby called Jock Ellis recognized me from past encounters with the peelers, but he knew precious little. Nothing new for the Old Bill.

  "She was down an alley down the Dutch Quarter," Jock said. "A couple found her. She'd been duffed up."

  "St. Martin's Lane? Actors?" It was a guess. The amateur dramatics people always go home through there after rehearsal.

  "Who told you? Here, Lovejoy. Never knew Owd Maggie was a friend of yours."

  One of those terrible moments came when every word seems horrendous. Friend. Yours. Was. Jock got the technician to show me Owd Maggie's mortal remains. I welled up. The poor old dear had plasters on her where the ambulance

  78 people had infused her veins. She'd been battered, caked blood and dirt everywhere on her sparse hair. Her spectacles were in a manila envelope on the tray beneath. Her feet had come uncovered. I pulled the sheet over her toes and tucked them in. Don't you do some daft things. St. Martin's Lane is an ancient narrow little alley in the part we call the Dutch Quarter, after Flemish weavers settled there yonks ago. Picturesque, with alleys and lanterns and quietude.

  "Couldn't you at least have washed her hands?" I heard myself ask in a thick voice. Murder—indeed any death—contradicts all norms.

  "Ledger said not to, Lovejoy." The man was apologetic. "Coroner's case, see."

  Police, the law, and medicine therefore scored my question stupid. Well, if they scored me I'd score them. High time that Lovejoy began to use his cerebral cortex, always assuming. Our town's as peaceable as they come— this murder might even drive fowlpest off the County Standard's headlines—but the Dutch Quarter leads nowhere. It's a nook between the castle, our ruined priory, and a hedged park.

  "Why the Dutch Quarter?" I asked.

  "Yes, why, Lovejoy?" And there stood Ledger, really great.

  "Sly old Jock," I reproved. "You phoned in, eh?"

  "Well done, Constable," Ledger said. Jock looked proud but shy. You'd think they'd caught Jack the Ripper. And our safety's in the hands of nerks like these.

  "Stop congratulating each other," I said nastily. "Explain why you got Owd Maggie killed."

  Ledger's a mundane-looking bloke, as these go. He has a doggy mustache, hornrims, a waistcoat and watch chain,

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  and uses after-dinner speakers' tricks—patting pockets, ahemming—to slow up conversations and give his lonesome neurons time to synapse. I have a theory that he's really a publicity still from the 1950s.

  "Lovejoy," Ledger was saying, ex cathedra. "You're coming down to the station to make a statement as to the extent of your involvement."

  I stared, incredulous. "As to the extent of my involvement? It must be these bloody courses they keep sending you peelers on. You all come back talking like the Home Secretary. You ignorant burke. I wouldn't go to church with you, let alone your neffie clink."

  He was tough, but law-bound. The mortuary technician was looking in, wanting to close up. Jock had finished his report. He'd made two carbon copies in his alphabet- soup scrawl. I wanted one. Distraction was called for.

  "Did you know that Confucius was a police inspector, Ledger?" I walked across, giving the morose technician a shove into Jock. "And Ghandi was a stretcher-bearer like you burke. Standards are falling."

  "Here, nark it." The technician and Jock were in a heap.

  "Right, Lovejoy," Ledger was saying, but I'd scrambled across them and out of the door. Nobody chased me. I made the hospital car park unhindered and drove sedately out along the road to our village. It's not far. I made it just as the night's pitch was weakening. Old Kate's cottage light was on. Today she would take her joint to be cooked in our village baker's oven, after the first bread batch was drawn at four o'clock. They still do this in country villages, get the baker's oven to do roasts and dry the bedsheets on rainy washdays.

  A quick brew up, and I read Owd Maggie's BID DOA 80 .. .

  police report, which Constable Ellis had typed. It had been no bother to nick a carbon copy while the technician and he tumbled. Brought In Dead-Dead On Arrival. Nothing I didn't already know. But by the phone in Lydia's writing were notes I needed.

  Lovejoy,

  Chatto and Vernon run Spendlate Antiques, Nazeivell, specializing in antique jewelry, mainly pearls. Remember the Siren rumor. They dried
about ten weeks ago; some deals are in abeyance. Take care.

  Lydia

  About five I set off to Lowestoft deep in thought. My mind went: Donna Vernon's husband Sid embarks on an antique sweep. Off he goes, and is now long overdue. Donna collars me; off we chase. Fortunately we have a list of where he's supposed to have gone. Partner Chatto seems to have joined him, and this upsets Donna. And she'd pretended ignorance of Chatto. For my benefit, or Chandler's? And why? Chatto is Sid Vernon's partner in Spendlate Antiques. Chandler pulls me and Donna to suss out what relationships exist between the four of us, if any. I had this odd feeling that everything—Chandler's interview as well—was part of a play.

  Flaw One: if Sid's trying to escape Donna, why is he leaving such a well-marked track? Flaw Two: Sid is even thicker than your average antique dealer, the world's greatest known epsilon-minus nerks. His performance so far had been pathetic: not caring about a genuine aigrette, not spotting Reverend Cunliffe's pricey box of genuine cards, dismissing Ellen Smith's brilliant gedanite rosary when he could have wheedled it off her for a song. Flaw Three: Owd