AROUND THE SAME time, Grace was driving past the twenty-four-hour petrol station, checking that her rented ute was still parked beside the side wall. She continued on to Runacre Hall, five kilometres outside Angaston, then up a manicured driveway, following arrows that directed her to a broad stretch of mowed grass bordered by golden cypresses at the rear, where a parking marshal indicated a slot between an old Kombi van and a Jaguar SUV. All kinds here today, she thought, watching as other cars arrived. She looked up: a grey day, with high, silent winds tearing the clouds into ribbons and driving them across the sky. Yet curiously calm here on the ground, the air scented by tyre-crushed grass.
She set out across an expanse of lawn in comfortable flat shoes. She’d be on her feet for the next few hours, wandering about the Hall, buying, appraising. Even talking—she recognised a couple of dealers who’d come into the shop one day. Were they her tribe? She was not in disguise just now. Didn’t need to be. Didn’t need a story, a wig, oversized glasses or layers of clothing to bulk up her shape. She was who she wanted to be: Erin Mandel’s assistant, an unremarkable young woman faintly excited by the prospect of a day spent looking, touching and buying. If anyone looked more closely, and saw the alert spring in her step, maybe they’d put it down to jogging and swimming.
A voice behind her: ‘Hello there, gorgeous.’
Grace tensed, turned. It was Robert Stuart, a bric-a-brac dealer from Oakbank. Tall, skeletal, a bundle of bones stitched together under a once-classy woollen suit now too big for him, he was leaning heavily on a walking stick. Smiling a greeting, she waited for him to catch up, then they strolled together.
Stuart touched her forearm, slowing her. ‘Not as young as I was.’
‘Take your time.’
Another round of wheezing. ‘Do an old man a favour, dear?’
‘Glad to, Robert.’
‘There’s a Matchbox set…’
‘I saw it in the catalogue.’
‘Couldn’t run on ahead and snap it up for me, could you?’
‘Sure,’ Grace said.
‘I’ll pay, of course, soon as I find you. But if you could at least save it from a couple of other old reprobates who are likely to be interested…’
‘See you soon,’ Grace said.
And she hurried off, slipping through the idlers massing on the paved area leading to the main entrance. A shuffling queue had formed inside the broad doorway, and then she was at a desk where she picked up a name card and a list of the items on sale. Then into a grand main room with small valuables and collectibles displayed on trestle tables. Visible inside a roped-off side room were the next day’s auction items: cabinets, sideboards, chairs and other antiques. And at the end, also roped off, a broad staircase leading to the top floor.
Grace took a moment to take stock of doorways, obstacles and people, and felt uneasy. Too crowded, too few exits, too many security types wandering around or standing in corners. A couple at the top of the stairs, too.
She shook off the feeling: habit, and unnecessary today. Spotting a woman wearing an Ask Me! badge, she said, ‘Excuse me.’
‘Yes?’
Grace tapped the catalogue. ‘These Matchbox cars. Where can I find them?’
The woman indicated a table beside a piano—and just in time, for two men of Robert’s vintage were peering at the Matchbox set, thirty 1980s cars, trucks and vans in a wooden display case—asking price $800—next to a box of gramophone records and a set of Bean’s history of the First World War.
Grace hurried. Sidled in so winningly that the old men apologised for blocking her. That changed when she called to a woman wearing a Sotheby’s T-shirt: ‘I wish to buy the Matchbox set.’ One man said to the other, ‘Talk about pushy,’ and they walked off muttering.
Robert puffed into view a moment later. Abruptly thanking her, and just as brusquely dismissing her, he began to bargain with the Sotheby’s agent.
Grace shrugged and turned away into the other rooms, touching, scrutinising, googling, buying. By 4 p.m. she had spent almost $10,000: $1,850 for the 1916 Blamire Young watercolour, Rain over the Range; $975 for a signed first edition of Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair; $6,500 for a pair of nineteenth-century Meissen porcelain oriels. Leaving just over $10,000 to spend tomorrow, when the furniture would be auctioned.
At 4.30 she took everything out to Erin’s Forester and locked them into a strongbox. The Blamire Young would need a clean: there were age spots in the grey wash of rainy sky. Another job for Gaynor Bernard.
She was on the approach road to her motel when Erin called, the bluetooth connection routing her voice through the car’s audio system.
‘How…today?’
‘You’re breaking up a bit,’ Grace said, ‘but pretty good.’
She listed what she’d bought and spent, and Erin responded, her voice surging and scratching: ‘I didn’t quite…that last bit?’
Grace found herself shouting idiotically: ‘I said I’ll have just over ten thousand to spend at auction tomorrow.’
Static, then: ‘Hope you…sideboard and the…’
Exasperated, Grace stopped the car, reached for her phone and tapped an SMS: Reception not great, call you tomorrow.
The reply came: a tick and a thumbs-up.