The Lies of Fair Ladies Read online

  "What is it, Lovejoy? Brought your problems to Geronimo?" From Cassandra, laid back, smart.

  Cutting my losses, I smiled apology to Marvella. "Look, love. About money. I wonder if you're flush. Only, I've had a few expenses and—"

  "What do you think I am, Lovejoy?" Veil bridled. Geronimo hissed a snakely chuckle. "Made of money?"

  That sounded authentic. My begging patter sounded right, so maybe I'd convinced Cassandra I was simply here on the cadge.

  "I know, love. But it's for something special."

  That seemed to stop the conversational flow. I swear there was a kind of tension in the room that hadn't been there before.

  "What special?" Veil asked.

  "I’m trying to escape from under,” I said apologetically, wanting out.

  ''A woman? You mean a woman, Lovejoy?"

  "Yes." I added lamely, "It's a bit difficult. She wants to divorce her bloke and marry me. I've got too much on—"

  Cassandra nodded. Veil said smoothly, "How much?"

  "Grub. Today, tomorrow. A taxi to the auctions, maybe enough to deposit on something."

  Cassandra nodded again. And immediately The Great Marvella said, "Honestly, Lovejoy! You'll be the death of me. I thought you'd come for an ephemeris analysis."

  With that snake in the room? People are daft. Veil gave me a few notes. I said thank-you so very sincerely and Cassandra smiled and Geronimo watched and Veil and Cassandra smiled and I retreated down the stairs calling thanks until I was safe among pedestrians and sweating heavily, not knowing why. Sweat trickled from my chin.

  Luna picked me up from the war memorial, and I borrowed this beekeeper's gear.

  Torrance is a fat geezer you wouldn't ever imagine keeps bees. He lives down on the Colne, where you wouldn't think there are many bees anyhow. He sells the honey, and brews mead and sells that. He talks to them, which all beekeepers do, as if the hives were filled with real people.

  He charged me a fortune, the swine. He was desperate to know if the bees I was going after were wild bumblebees, or a cultivated stock. I told him my girlfriend's dad was mad about bees, to shut him up. The goon followed me out to the car wanting recruits for his manky beekeeping society. What a nerk. I loaded up and told Luna to drive to the cottage.

  There we inspected the depradations done by the skilled artificers of the Eastern Hundreds. Mercifully, the pot was still intact. It was the first thing I looked at, but the phone shrilled. Phones are a mistake.

  "He's just here. It's urgent, Lovejoy."

  "Ever known a phone call that wasn't?" I said sourly.

  "Hello, Lovejoy, I'm in Edinburgh." Miss Turner. I glared, threatened Luna with a fist. She smiled serenely back. "It's so different! Can you tell me where I am, please?"

  One day I'll escape. Then what will the world do? "Where are you? Exactly? Read the name."

  Pause, clatter, a breathless hello. "General Register House,

  Lovejoy. Opposite the North British Hotel. It's really quite nice— "

  "You stupid old mare!" I yelled in fury while Luna tried to calm me down. I clouted her away and bawled, "I distinctly told you not to go to the wrong place. Didn't I? Didn't I?"

  "Please don't be angry, Lovejoy," the old lady quavered. "But I'm on my own and—"

  Bloody fine. Loses herself, then rings me to sort her out. Typical. "Listen, you daft old bat. Is there a big statue outside? Duke of Wellington?"

  "Why, yes!" She was delighted. "Very imposing, with—"

  "You stupid mare! You're in the Scottish Record Office's place. You want the General Register Office for Scotland, silly cow. Births, marriages, deaths and census records." I made her write it down, read it back. "Got it, you silly old fool?"

  "Got it, Lovejoy," she cooed happily. "Now, where exactly . . . ?"

  "New Register House," I said, broken. "It's next door to where you're standing. Go there immediately. And never ring me again." I slammed the receiver down on the crazy old loon. Honest to God. Where was I? Luna's pot.

  Luna was quite put out. "You haven't noticed, Lovejoy!" She indicated the cottage. Electric light, bulbs and everything. Gas, on. Water, on. Phone, on.

  "The cost was too great, love. That tole tray was something we'll possibly never see ever again in a lifetime." I smiled at her, held up the lovely stoneware nipple-spout Castleford feeding-pot. "This makes up for it, partly. About 1795. Like it?"

  What a stupid question. She smiled tentatively. "Well, yes. But those holes in the spout. Why isn't it proper?"

  Headache time. I sighed. Baby feeders are called "bubby pots" in the trade, because Dr. Hugh Smith in 1777 invented one sort and called it that. Transfer-printed ones were made by Wedgwood, or plain creamware. They are lovely. Specialist items, of course, but so far hardly ever faked or even copied.

  "You did well," I said. She was pleased, and we rested a bit. I asked if she'd ever heard of The Great Marvella. She said yes, several acquaintances went to her. Did I know she actually had a talking snake? I said I'd heard.

  Then I had the wit to ask if she'd ever heard of Cassandra Clark. Luna said yes, she did improving social causes. In fact. Miss Clark was on the mayor's fund-raising charity committee. Oliver knew her. She Had Money.

  Dusk falls slowly at first in East Anglia, then suddenly tumbles over the edge into pitch black. I didn't want to be on my own, not knowing what I’d have to face, so I told Luna we were going to work late and would she drive me. She was doubtful until I said it was a secret. Then she was all thrilled and shrieked of course and we went out towards the estuaries, down where the marshes meet the tides and the rivers end in low mud flats.

  Eleven

  “Lovejoy.” Luna dropped me off at the lane head. ''Why the outfit?'' She meant I was getting out of hand.

  I gathered it in my arms. "You'd be surprised how much clobber you need to look at a bee."

  She looked worried. "Lovejoy. Oliver always asks what I've done each day. What shall I say?"

  "It's confidential." Others can use the lie word, so can I. "But this—" She gestured at the darkening countryside, the loneliness of it. "It's nothing to do with antiques."

  I leaned into the car. "Everything I do is to do with antiques, love. Remember that."

  The buzzing was fitful. I heard it from quite a distance. But I went through the hedge and donned the protective gear. I had a smoke gun to doze them, but wasn't sure how to use it. Did it make me sleepy as well? Or, worse, did it act on me but not the bees? For "bees" read another kind of flying object.

  There was just enough daylight when I reached the little hut. Except I could hardly see a damned thing. Torrance hadn't warned me about this net mask. It blacks out your sight. No wonder beekeepers always get stung. But I made it into the hut and gagged a few times, avoiding Prammie Joe's buzzing horrible thick black teeming mess of a face ... I won't describe it. There was a squirming mound on the floor beneath his chair. It stank, the whole place. I tried not to stand in anything, leave footprints, but who could see? Ugh. I retched inside the mask, searched his cupboards, drawing my hands away sharply in disgust when blowflies came between my fingers. Nothing. You never do. But on the planking floor, near where he Aussie-crouched to watch the birds of an eve, was a fold of paper. I grabbed it and shot out. I’d had enough.

  Gagging, I escaped, blundered, crashing, down to the water, still retching. It was some time before I had the sense to peer up and down the small tributary. I got a stick, prodded the water. A few inches. How much did a boat need?

  There was an ugly moment when I found three bluebottles were trapped inside my hood with me. I shouted, ripping off the mask and batting it on my thigh, struggled to get it back on before the rest of that hideous swarm came buzzing on my face, my eyes. I found I’d held my breath like a fool. I was almost fainting.

  Which, I resumed weakly, raised the question of where the pram was. I knew about one of Prammie's rafts—safe in the hands of that smarmy Cradhead. But the other? And the pram? If hereabouts, i
t would be well hidden. Prammie Joe hadn't been detected by the vigilant watchers of Cornish Place. So he wouldn't be spotted by home-goers from the village pub, would he?

  Twenty minutes later I’d changed, and met Luna.

  ''Did anybody see you?" I asked, all nonchalant, Lovejoy the countryman, pally with ornithology or whatever bees are.

  "No, Lovejoy." She stared hard in the dashboard lights. It was now quite dark, our sudden fall to blackness. "You've been sick, Lovejoy. And that clothing smells."

  Trust her, silly cow. "Remember Ipswich?"

  Half an hour's lecture on the state of Ipswich's traffic, then she told me. Zilch. Nothing. No reports in the papers, no boy falling in the water and being rescued. I'd have to suss out Therla Brewer myself.

  "Luna. Ever heard of anybody called Calamy?" No. She hadn't. "Or Godbolt?" Not that either.

  But the names were worrying. Godbolt. Calamy. Hopkins. Clark? Funny, but I knew somehow there was yet another. A quite ordinary English name. I couldn't for the life of me think. I put my head back on the seat as she drove. So far, I'd heard of a scam that had vanished, lost an old pal by foul means, searched for knew-not-what, and found nowt. Now I was trying to remember something I'd maybe never heard of. God Almighty. What a pillock.

  To please Luna, I told her to sell the feeding pot in Wittwoode's auction. She'd done quite well. I had to teach her some antiquery, besides murder, or Oliver Carstairs, Mayor, might get narked.

  Joan Vervain came to the cottage that night. She did her screams of abuse at her husband on his radio show while we made smiles. Wondrous, of course. That rush to paradise can't ever be anything else. But I was fed up. Her rabbiting on about Monte Carlo or Mustique narked me. I felt bought, for development. I mean. I’d ditched the bloody woman days ago, yet here she still was, more here than ever.

  A pile of agents' brochures, showing Mediterranean places, was provided for me to approve. The lawyers would meet Del Vervain next Monday, and the news of the divorce would hit the world. Together, she said coyly along the pillow, with the announcement of our impending marriage. Which saw the night through, to the pale feet of morn.

  Two things: I’d somehow see Jenny Calamy, and I’d discover if she fitted in to Prammie Joe's scam. I had only met her once, and even then we'd had a row about a piece of Meissen. She swore the decoration was "genuine factory." But crossed swords marks which have a nick in them show the piece was sold "in the white" and decorated elsewhere. It would have been better if the crossed swords had had an S, signifying Samson of Paris, a notable copier/ faker whose work is highly sought. You can't tell some folk.

  Especially you can't tell Big Frank that your visit to his next wife is entirely platonic—i.e., sexless. He's dynamite on fiancées. I’d have to think up some legitimate reason. I fed the birds—the lot of them were sulking, because I’d had a bad morning last time—then had my breakfast. Fried tomatoes pall sometimes, but there aren't many alternatives when they're what you've got. I went to do my washing. I’ve got one spare sheet, change it every week. The blanket rarely needs washing, but I hang it on the washing line sometimes. I forget to bring it in, and have to wear all my things to get to sleep. Night dew falls early on the coast.

  There's a launderette in the village, up by the Bungalow Stores. It sells you a cup of powder, and you watch the washing going round, trying not to listen to the daft taped music. Some children came in, larking about. I watched them playing ghosts, springing out and frightening each other. One took the broom from the corner and rode it round. It wasn't All Hallows' Eve yet, nowhere near. Some American horror film in town, I supposed. The dump felt empty when they were shooed out by Old Bessie.

  The second thing was La Brewer. The discovery of Prammie Joe's body by the Old Bill might take a day, a week. All hell would be let loose. Why had Drinkwater been to see Sandy? Plenty of other dealers were interested in antique furnishings. In fact, you could even say that every dealer was. Maybe because Sandy and Mel were the wealthiest of our local dealers? The Cornish Place turkey job was a matter of millions, biggest scam we'd had in years. No wonder somebody killed Joe.

  Had Joe wanted a share? Was that the reason?

  Surely it had to be. Why else? Prammie knew what he was doing. Theft is theft, however skilled. I was the only one who knew how he'd done it, because . . . Hang on a sec. I thought about that as I counted my socks—they get eaten by Old Bessie's machines. I couldn't be the only one who knew, could I? I mean, whoever had commissioned Prammie Joe to turkey Cornish Place also knew, right?

  Prammie had mentioned some bloke he'd met in clink. Somebody he was in jail with. That same killer had known that Prammie Joe, elusive waterman, was the only bloke in the Eastern Hundreds who could pull it off.

  Who else had been in nick lately? Answer: Acker Kirwin. Easy peasy. Acker had done Prammie in. QED? It seemed logical. Those names came into my mind, and I dozed.

  "Lovejoy?" Bessie was shaking me. "Lovejoy? You've done your washing three times. Did you mean to?"

  "Mmmmh?" God, it was ten o'clock. "Mmmh? Oh, aye, Bessie. It was, er, messy. I've been gardening."

  Bessie's an old crone who knows I don't garden. She got my stuff in silence, bagged it up for me. Wet washing's horrible stuff. Ever noticed that?

  "Big Frank's his name," I told Luna. She was waiting in the porch. She looked really attractive, pastel twin set and smart suit, the skirt well cut. Her rings were too classy for an antique dealer's apprentice. At first I'd said to dress down rather than up.

  "Whose name, Lovejoy? And good morning, Luna."

  "Good morning, Luna. The dealer. Ask him if you can go and see Jenny Calamy. Her address," I added grandly, "will be in my new phone book. You misappropriated my money to have us connected, so use it."

  "Here, Lovejoy." She took the washing. I followed her onto the grass while she pegged out the wet things.

  She'd given me an envelope. Checks from the gas, electricity, phone, television people. Rebates? Now, our local services don't make rebates except on the rack, not even if they owe you.

  ''It's money I didn't spend. The tole tray." She had pegs in her mouth and spoke past them, the way they do. I try this, but I choke. Women's mouths are fantastic, a life of their own . . . "Somebody else had already paid, Lovejoy. They'll repossess the spare TV set. We can leave it in our porch."

  Our? Well, she was an apprentice. "Good girl."

  "I read until very late last night, Lovejoy." She paused, faced me. She looked lovely against the green grass, the hedgerow russets. "I apologize. I realize now what a wonder that antique was. To me, it was simply an old tray. Seeing you do that dividing—"

  "Divvying."

  "—in the old aerodrome cellar explained a great deal."

  A But was on the way. Women have conditions; we have deceit.

  "But why are you so, forgive me, poor?"

  "I'm not poor," I gave her, stung. "It's just I have a lot of friends. And I . . ."I shrugged, looked for escape.

  "You're hopeless, Lovejoy. A scatterbrain. Money, clothes. Your cottage is upside down. And ..."

  More praise? I always get this. She'd start staying late, tidying me up so I couldn't find a flaming thing.

  "You are taken advantage of, get into scrapes. Incur obligations and escape them by your love of these old things."

  "These old things, love," I cut in, narked, "are all that matters. I keep telling you. Frigging well listen." I envy Americans. They have this commanding phrase, listen up. It means harken intently or you're for it. "Up," I added defiantly.

  "Lovejoy. I'm worried by all these journeys you make me do."

  She hadn't enough pegs to hang the remaining wet things out. I said not to worry. They always blow about the garden anyway. I once found a pillowcase with a nest in, low down among the hawthorns. I didn't know I'd lost it.

  One day, I'm going to stop explaining. "They're vital. Jenny's engaged to Big Frank. Go carefully, because of his wife. His mistress, her sister, lives in the fa
rm opposite."

  "Lovejoy," Luna said. "Are we in difficulties?"

  "Us?" This time I rather liked the plural. We walked back up to the cottage, my arm through hers. "Never in a million years, love. Remember the feeding pot. Wittwoode's. Don't accept an auction number below ten, nor in the last eight."

  "Why not?"

  "It's where gunge goes."

  She plugged the kettle in, cast about for cups. "I couldn't help noticing those bee clothes. They're still sort of slimy. I’ll have my maid see to them. That veil thing . . . Lovejoy?"

  Quickly she stood close, taking my arm. I sat on the divan. "We’ll have some tea before you go anywhere. You look quite pale."

  "Fine," I piped heartily. "Take it to Torrance. Tell him ta."

  "And what do I buy from Miss Calamy?"

  "You do something really sly, Luna," I said. "Nothing. You're just my apprentice, seeing how an average antiques shop is run. Don't go without Big Frank's permission."

  When I felt better I dialed Sandy, to get him to explain some of the nastier antique dealer tricks to my new apprentice, a lady called Luna. He was in, and garrulous.

  "So you flew to me, fountainhead of deceit, Lovejoy!" he shrilled. "How perceptive!"

  "You be nice to her, Sandy. Y'hear?"

  "Could I fail, dear? What colors is this perfectly grotesque obese cow trying to wear?"

  "Er . . ."I avoided looking. "I'm not sure. I haven't seen her yet this morning. She's putting a piece in Wittwoode's. Guide her, will you?"

  "Very well, Lovejoy. It will be a change from that oaf Drinkwater, though his friend Cradhead—"

  Quickly sussing, I put in, "Troubling you?"

  "I mean, I don't even know Spoolie. He's far too plain!" Oscar Wilde's line. "I shall pretend your tart's a customer." He tittered. "Lovejoy. I want to thank you for sending her. A perfectly marvelous opportunity to shine."

  Click, burr. "Sandy's, er, mannered, Luna," I said. "Sort of eccentric. Tell me everything he says. Especially names."

  We went to the motor. I dropped her off at East Hill, then drove to the Ghool Spool.