SOME PEOPLE KILL me. You can invent a name for anything and it will be believed. Say anything and somebody’ll cheer fit to burst. I’ll give you an example. There was Dandy Jack looking for cracks on this piece of ‘cracked’ porcelain – and him a dealer old enough to be my great-grandad. Of course, Dandy Jack was as indisposed as a newt, as one politician cleverly said of that minister who got sloshed and shot his mouth off on telly.
‘Give it here, Dandy.’ I took it off him, exasperated. ‘Crack porcelain doesn’t mean it’s got cracks all over it.’ His bloodshot eyes gazed vaguely in my direction while I gave him the gory details.
‘Kraak’, not ‘Cracked’, porselain (note that ‘s’). Once upon a time, the Portuguese ship Catherine was sailing along in the Malacca Straits when up came a Dutch ship and captured it, there being no holds barred in 1603. Imagine the Dutchmen’s astonishment when they found they’d bagged, not treasure, but a cargo of ceramics of a funny blue-white colour. The Catherine was a carrack, or ‘Kraak’. The nickname stuck. It looks rubbish but folk scramble for it. I priced it for him and said I’d be back.
The town was jumping. I felt on top of the world without knowing why. A bad memory of something evil having happened recently was suppressed successfully in a wave of sun and crowds. No dull weather, kids well-behaved, trees waggling and people smiling, you know how pleasant things can look sometimes. And the little arcade was thronged. Margaret waved from her diminutive glass-fronted shop, Dandy with his incredible luck was swilling down the profits. Harry Bateman was there with a good, really good, model compound steam engine of brass and deep red copper, Robert Atkinson about 1864 or thereabouts, and shouting the odds about part-exchange for a John Nash painting, modern of course, all those greens and lavender watercolour shades. It would be close.
Several real collectors had turned up in the cafe and sat about saying their antiques were honest. We were all in brilliant humour, exchanging stories and gossip. Such a cheerful scene, everybody entering into the act and taking risks in deals. It was one of those marvellous times.
I told you I’m a believer in the gifts people have, and luck. Luck is partly made by oneself. Go out feeling lucky, make yourself behave lucky and you will probably become lucky. Let yourself slip into the opposite frame of mind and you’ll lose your shirt.
There’d been two flint collectors and one flint dealer in Jim’s papers, and both collectors were in my files. The dealer Froude, a pal of Harry’s, wasn’t bad, just cheap and useless, so I could forget him. The collectors were different mettle. One, a retired major called Lister, was a knowledgeable Rutland man who ran a smallholding in that delectable county. He knew what he was about. The second spelled even more trouble, had an enviable record in my card system as a dedicated and lucky collector given to sudden spurts of buying often without relevance to the seasonal state of the market. Brian Watson was by all accounts one of those quietly spoken northerners who seem quite untypical of the usual image people have of cheerful, noisy extroverts laughing and singing round pints in telly serials. I had almost all Watson’s purchases documented but though I’d never actually met him at sales I’d heard he was hesitant, not given to confidences but gravitating with a true collector’s instinct towards the quality stuff. A good collector, Watson, who’d spend what seemed about two years’ salary in an hour then vanish for up to a year back to his native Walkden. Also on Jim’s list were Harry, Adrian and Jane together, Margaret, good old Dandy Jack, Muriel’s Holy Joe Lagrange, Brad, Dick from the boatyard and Tinker Dill, among the dross. And Muriel.
Now, of all these people, Brian Watson was significant because he already had one of the pairs of Durs duellers, and so was Major Lister of Rutland because he’d been making offers to Watson for them ever since Eve dressed. The field was getting pretty big, but I was cock-a-hoop. The pace was quickening. And as I talked in the arcade I smiled to myself at my secret. At the finishing post lay my beautiful unpaid-for Mortimers – loaded. I left the café and wandered through the arcade.
Tinker Dill was at my elbow full of news. We pretended to examine a phoney Persian astrolabe. It was described by Harry Bateman as ‘medieval’ and priced accordingly. My sneer must have been practically audible. Don’t overestimate their value, incidentally – eighteenth-century Continental ones are usually more pricey, though they’re all in vogue, and certain firms in Italy make excellent copies.
‘You’re getting busy, aren’t you, Lovejoy?’
‘Whatever can you mean?’ I was all innocent.
‘Bending Jim like that.’ He enjoyed the thought of Jim’s injuries almost as much as a sale.
‘I’m quite unrepentant.’ I put the astrolabe down, feeling it unclean, and took Tinker back into the nosh bar where we could talk.
I told him of my developing interest, in Watson and Lister.
He whistled. ‘They’re First Division, Lovejoy.’
‘And Froude.’
‘He’s rubbish.’
‘I have this about the Field sale.’
‘Eh?’
Over tea, I showed him Jim’s lists.
He slurped in his cup. ‘They’re nicked!’
‘On loan. Jim’s good-hearted.’ I let him recover. ‘Heard anything special about any of those names?’
He flipped slowly through the lot, shaking his head each time. ‘Except the two big ones – that sale was a right load of heave-ho.’
‘You buy anything, Tinker?’
It hurt him. ‘You know me, Lovejoy. Antiques aren’t my business.’
I grinned in great good humour. ‘Neither of these bought anything? Try to remember, Tinker.’ He would. It’s like being a football fan. Just as they can recall incidents from games seen twenty years past, so we can tick off auctions as if they’d been yesterday. You might wonder why I didn’t just look at the purchasers’ names on the invoices.
Well. Invoices, however complete, never tell it all. I wish I had time to tell you what goes on in an auction. For every ten lots sold by the auctioneer, another ten are sold among dealers. We buy a lot from the auctioneer sometimes, and even before he’s moved on we’ve sold it to a fellow-dealer. All the time it goes on. ‘Ringing’ you already know about I’m sure, where dealers get together and do not bid for a choice item, say a lovely French commode. When it goes to Dealer A for a paltry sum – i.e. when it’s been successfully ‘ringed’ – he’ll collect his cronies and they’ll auction it again privately in a pub nearby, only on this occasion Dealer A’s the auctioneer and his mates are the congregation, so to speak.
You’ll probably think this – is against the law. Correct, it is. And you may be feeling all smug thinking it is rightly so because whoever’s selling her old auntie’s precious French antique is being diddled out of the fair auction she’s entitled to. Well, I for one disagree – nobody actually stops the public from bidding, do they? It comes back again to greed, your greed. And why? Answer: you want that valuable commode for a couple of quid, and not a penny more. If you were really honest you’d bid honestly for it. But you won’t. How do I know? Because you never do. You go stamping out of auctions grumbling at the price fetched by whatever it was you were after and failed to get. So don’t blame the dealer – he’s willing to risk his every penny for a bit of gain while you want medieval Florentine silver caskets for the price of a bus ride. You ring items by your greed. We do it by arrangement. Why your hideous but dead obvious greed should be quite legal and our honesty illegal beats me.
‘That Bible pistol,’ Tinker remembered. ‘Not too bad – I did drop a note in at your cottage, Lovejoy.’
‘I passed it up.’
‘Watson bought it.’
‘In his usual style?’
Tinker’s eyes glowed with religious fervour. ‘You bet.’ He rolled a damp fag and struggled to set it afire. ‘It was in one of his buying sprees. You know him, quiet and hurrying. I reckon he should have been a cop. Busy, busy, busy.’ I wrote a mental tick against Watson’s name. He’d attended six auctions that week, and the date matched no fewer than eight postal purchases, all after a ten-month gap. Phenomenal.
‘Major Lister buy, did he?’
‘Yes, a set of masonic jewels for some museum.’
I knew about those and the Stevens silk prints he’d bought as well.
‘All in all,’ I asked, ‘a quiet, busy little auction with more than the average mixture of good stuff?’
‘Sure. And not a bad word uttered,’ Tinker said, puffing triumphantly.
I let his little quip pass impatiently. ‘Is that list of people complete? Think.’
He thought. ‘As ever was.’ He shrugged. ‘The odd housewife, perhaps.’
‘Thanks, Tinker. Anything else?’
He told me of the Edwardian postcards from Clacton, the Regency furniture at Bishop’s Stortford, that crummy load of silver being unloaded up in the Smoke, and the Admiralty autograph letters being put on offer in Sussex. I knew them all but slipped him a note.
‘You got them Mortimers, then,’ he said as we parted.
‘A hundred quid,’ I replied modestly. He was still laughing at the joke as I left to see Margaret’s collection of English lace christening gowns.
‘Sorry about everything, Lovejoy.’ She pecked my face and brewed up. There were a couple of customers hanging around, one after pottery, one after forgeries. (Don’t laugh – collectors of forgeries will walk past a genuine Leonardo cartoon to go crazy over a forged Braque squiggle.) As they drifted out, she hooked her CLOSED notice on the door.
‘I’ve had a drink, Margaret, thanks.’
‘I saw you.’
‘Tinker reporting in,’ I explained, looking round. Her lace christening gowns were beautiful but I always sneeze looking them over. ‘I can never understand why these things are so cheap. A few quid for such work, years of it in each one.’
She smiled. ‘Keep plugging that attitude. Genuine?’
‘Does it matter?’ I said. ‘Any forger who does something so intricate deserves every groat he gets.’ I felt them. ‘Yes, all good.’
‘I thought you’d been neglecting me till I heard, Lovejoy.’ She brought tea over despite my refusal.
‘No matter now.’ I took the Victorian Derby cup as a mark of friendship because her tea’s notorious. ‘All over.’
She sat facing. People outside in the arcade must have thought we were a set of large bookends for sale.
‘Give, Lovejoy.’
‘Eh?’
‘I’ve one thing you’ve not got, darling,’ she said in a way I didn’t like. ‘Patience. What are you up to?’
‘I’m going to find the bastard. And I’m going to finish him.’
‘You can’t, Lovejoy.’ God help me, she was crying. There she sat, sipping her rotten tea with tears rolling on to her cheeks. ‘It’ll be the end of you, too.’
‘Cheap at the price, love.’
‘Leave it to the police.’
‘They’re quite content with matters as they are.’ My bitterness began to show. ‘It’s much more dramatic to rush about with sirens wailing than slogging quietly after the chap on foot.’
‘They know what to do –’
‘But they don’t do it.’ I pulled away as she reached a hand towards me. ‘I’ve no grouse with anybody, love. I just want help.’
Two people staring in turned quickly away at the sight of our tense faces.
‘Supposing you do find him – why not just turn him in?’
I had to laugh, almost. ‘And endure months or years of questions while he wheedles his way out?’
‘But that’s what law is for,’ she cried.
‘I don’t want law, nor justice,’ I said. ‘From me, he’ll get his just deserts, like in the books. I want what’s fair.’
‘Please, Lovejoy.’
‘Please, Lovejoy,’ I mimicked in savage falsetto. ‘You’re asking me to let him off with seven years in a cushy gaol thoughtfully provided by the ratepayers? No. I’m going to spread his head on the nearest wall and giggle when it splashes.’
She flapped her hands on her lap. ‘We used to be so . . .’
‘Things have changed.’
‘You’ll get yourself killed. Whoever it is must have heard you’re spreading word about fancy Durs duellers. It’s the talk of the trade. Half of them already think you’re off your head.’ Good news.
‘There’s one person who knows I’m serious, love.’ I was actually grinning. ‘I’m going to needle and nudge till he has to come for me.’ I rose and replaced her cup safely.
‘All right, Lovejoy.’ She was resigned. ‘Anything I can do?’
‘Spread the word yourself. Tell people. Make promises. Invent. Tell people how strange I’ve become.’ I kissed her forehead. ‘And your tea’s still lousy.’
I phoned George Field from the kiosk. He agreed to send an advert to the trade journal whose address I gave him:
A substantial reward will be paid by the undermentioned for information leading to the specific location (not necessarily the successful purchase) of the Durs flintlock weapons known to the antique trade as the Judas Pair.
I thought, let’s all come clean. He gasped at the sum mentioned but agreed when I said I’d waive any costs. I insisted he put his name and address to the notice, not mine because he was in all day and I wasn’t.
I called in at the cottage and then drove to see Major Lister, happy as a pig in muck. By the weekend the murderer would know I was raising stink and getting close, and he’d start sweating. Don’t believe that revenge isn’t sweet. It’s beautiful, pure unflawed pleasure. He was losing sleep already because I had the little Durs gadget. I slept the sleep of the just. My revenge had begun.
Major Lister turned out to be a fussy disappointment, a stocky, balding, talkative, twinkly chap who wouldn’t hurt a fly. His vast house was full of miscellaneous children. Everybody there, including three women who seemed to be permanent residents, was smiling.
‘I’ll bet you’re Lovejoy,’ were his first words to me. ‘Come and see my fuchsias.’ He drew me away from the front door towards a greenhouse, calling back into the house, ‘We’ll have rum and ginger with the fuchsias.’
‘I like your system,’ I said. The nearest child, a toddler licking a dopey hedgehog clean in the hallway, cried out the rum message hardly missing a lick. The cry was taken up like on the Alps throughout the house until it faded into silence. A moment later a return cry approached and the hedgehog aficionado shouted after us, ‘Rum on its way, Dad.’
‘They like the system, not I.’ He twinkled again and began talking to his plants, saying hello and so on. A right nutter here, I thought. He chattered to each plant, nodding away and generally giving out encouragement.
Well, it’s not really my scene, a load of sticks in dirt in pots. He evidently thought they were marvellous, but there wasn’t an antique anything from one end of the greenhouse to the other that I could see. A waste of time. His sticks had different names.
‘Same as birds, eh?’ I said, getting to the point. ‘Identical, but each one’s supposed to be distinct, is that the idea?’
‘I see you’re no gardener.’
‘Of course I am.’
‘What do you grow?’
‘Grass, trees and bushes.’
‘What sorts?’
‘Oh, green,’ I told him. ‘Leaves and all that.’
‘Yes,’ he twinkled as a little girl entered carrying two glasses of rum yellowed by ginger. ‘Yes, you’re Lovejoy all right.’
‘Seen me at auctions, I expect, eh?’
‘No. Heard about your famous Braithwaite car.’
‘Braithwaite?’
He saw the shock in my eyes and sat me on a trestle. The little girl wanted to stay and sat on the trestle with me.
‘Herbert Braithwaite, maker of experimental petrol engines early this century. Some ohv cycles. Yours must be the only one extant. Didn’t you know?’
‘No. Well, almost.’
‘Drink up, lad.’ He settled himself and let me get breath. ‘Now, Lovejoy, what’s all this word about a pair of Durs guns?’
I told him part of the story but omitted Sheik’s death and the turnkey.
‘And you came here, why?’
‘You were at the Field sale.’
‘And Watson got the Bible pistol. Yes, I recollect.’ He took the little girl on his lap and gave her a sip of his rum. ‘Fierce man is Watson. One of those collectors you can’t avoid.’
‘The Field sale,’ I persisted.
‘Nothing very special for me, I’m afraid. Naturally,’ he added candidly, ‘if you’re trying me for size as a suspect, ask yourself if I would dare risk this orphanage.’
‘Orphanage?’ It hadn’t struck me.
‘I don’t breed quite this effectively,’ he chided, laughing so much the little girl laughed too, and finally so did I.
‘You saw Watson there?’
‘Certainly. He’ll be not far from here now, if indeed he’s on one of his whirlwind buying sprees.’
My heart caught. I put the glass down. ‘Near here?’
‘Why, yes. Aren’t you on your way there too? The Medway showrooms at Maltan Lees. It’s about eleven miles –’
I left as politely and casually as I could. Nice chap, Major Lister. I mentally filed him away as I moved towards the village of Maltan Lees:
Major Lister (retd): collector flck dllrs; orphanage; plants; clean hedgehogs.
Then I remembered I’d not finished my rum. Never mind, that little girl could have it when she’d finished his.
Four o’clock, Maltan Lees, and the auctioneer in the plywood hall gasping for his tea. I had no difficulty finding the place, from the cars nearby. They were slogging through the remaining lots with fifty to go. The end of an auction is always the best, excitement coming with value. By then, the main mob of bidders has gone and only the dealers and die-hard collectors are left to ogle the valuables. Medway’s seemed to have sold miscellaneous furniture including bicycles, mangles, a piano and household sundries, leaving a few carpets, some pottery, a collection of books and some paintings, one of which, a genuine Fielding watercolour, gave me a chime or two.
I milled about near the back peering at odd bits of junk. The auctioneer, a florid glassy sort, was trying unsuccessfully to increase bids by ‘accidentally’ jumping increments, a common trick you shouldn’t let them get away with at a charity shout. Among this load of cynics he didn’t stand a chance. Twice he was stopped and fetched back, miserably compelled to start again and once having to withdraw an item, to my amusement. Another trick they have is inventing a nonexistent bidder, nodding as if they’ve been signalled a bid then looking keenly to where the genuine bidder’s bravely soldiering away. Of course, they can only get away with it if the bidder’s really involved, all worked up. Therefore, in an auction keep calm, keep looking, keep listening and, above all, keep as still as you can. You don’t want anybody else knowing who’s bidding, do you? If you can do it with a flick of an eyebrow, use just that. Don’t worry, the chap on the podium’ll see you – a single muscle twitch is like a flag day when money’s involved. Where was I?
You’ve only to stay mum and patterns emerge in a crowd. The old firms were there, Jane, Adrian, Brad, Harry and Dandy Jack, and some collectors I knew – Reverend Lagrange, the Mrs Ellison from the antique shop where I’d bought the coin tokens while returning from the bird sanctuary, Dick Barton among others.
A handful of travelling dealers had descended on lucky Maltan Lees. They smoked and talked noisily, moving about to disturb the general calm and occasionally calling across to each other, full of apparent good humour but in reality creating confusion. It’s called ‘circusing’, and is done to intimidate locals like us. They move from town to town, a happy band of brothers.
I watched a while. One of the travelling dealers paused near me.
‘’Ere,’ he growled. ‘Are you ’ere for the paintings or not?’ I gave him my two-watt beam free of charge. ‘I said,’ he repeated ferociously, ‘are you ’ere for the paintings?’
‘Piss off, comrade.’ I raised my smile a watt. He rocked back and stared in astonishment at me before he recovered.
‘You what?’
‘Where I come from,’ I informed him loudly, ‘you circus chaps’d starve.’
‘Clever dick.’
He barged past me, tripping over my foot and ending up among assorted chairs. His pals silenced. I laughed aloud, nodding genially in their direction, and stepped towards their fallen companion.
‘Sorry,’ I apologized because my foot had accidentally alighted on his hand. He cursed and tried to rise, but my knee had accidentally jerked into his groin so he stayed down politely while my knuckles injured his eye. I get annoyed with people sometimes, but I think I’d been a bit worse lately. I bent down and whispered. ‘Me and my mates got done for manslaughter in Liverpool – twice – so go gently with us, whacker. We’re fragile.’
‘No harm meant, mate,’ he said.
As I say, a lie works wonders. I stepped away, embarrassed because people were watching. The auctioneer had kept going to keep the peace and some fortunate chap got his missus a wardrobe for a song. It’s an ill wind.
I settled down near the bookcases and all went gaily on. I fancy the auctioneer was rather pleased with my little diversion. I saw Adrian applaud silently and Jane nod approval. I noticed Brian Watson after another twenty minutes and knew instantly who he was.
Some blokes have tins chameleon-like ability, don’t they? My mate in the army was typical of the sort. The rest of us had only to breathe in deep for all the grenades on earth to come hurtling our way, but Tom, a great Cheshire bloke the size of a tram, could walk on stilts for all the notice the enemy took of him. It was the same everywhere. I’ve even seen blokes come into pubs, stand next to Tom and say, ‘Anybody seen Tom?’
Brian Watson was standing a few feet away, virtually unseen. He stood there watching, quiet, listening, and I knew instantly he was as fully aware of me as I was of him. A careful chap, the sort you had to be careful of. I instinctively felt his capabilities. A real collector. If he starved to death he’d still collect. You know the sort. No matter what setbacks come they weather them and plough on. I honestly admire their resilience. It’s a bit unnerving if you ask me, too straightforward for my liking.
I bought a catalogue. Now, Harry and the rest were quite explicable in terms of attendance at any auction virtually no matter what was on offer. But Watson? Every piece he had was known to me, apart from some I only suspected, bought by concealed postal bid but quite in the Watson pattern. A buyer, not a seller. He very rarely sold anything, and when he did it was only to buy bigger still. A cool resilient man. Moreover, one who was now observing me with his collector’s antennae.
All of which, I thought, as the auctioneer chattered on, raised one central question: If everybody else was here with good reason what good reason did Brian Watson have? There was nothing to interest him. I scanned the remaining lots but failed to find an answer. He was a pure flint man, never deviating into the mundaner fields of prints, pottery and portabilia, which to my dismay seemed all that was left. There was no choice but to wait and see.
It came to lot 239, the small collection of portabilia. Watson was in character, waiting with the skill of an old hand until the bidding showed signs of ending, then he nodded gently and off we went. We, because I was in, too, all common sense to the winds. People gradually became aware of the contest. You could have heard a pin drop.
While the bidding rose, I racked my brains wondering what the hell could be in the portabilia that could be so vital to Watson. On and on we went, him against me. Everyone else dropped out. Portabilia are small instruments made especially for carrying about. They included in this instance a sovereign-balance for testing gold coins, a common folding flintlock pistol by Lacy of Regency London’s Royal Exchange, a tin box with a tiny candle, a collapsible pipe, a folding compass, a folding sundial, a diminutive snuff horn and other minutiae. It wasn’t bad, but you couldn’t pay twice their value in open auction and keep sane. I saw Adrian hide his face in his hands as we forged inexorably on and Jane, cool Jane, shook her head in my direction with a rueful smile. Many people crossed to the cabinet to see what they’d missed. Still we drove the price upwards until my calculations caught up with me and I stopped abruptly, white-hot and practically blind from impotent rage at missing them.
‘Going . . . going . . . gone. Watson. Now to lot two-forty,’ the pleased auctioneer intoned.
I went outside to wait for Watson and partly to avoid the others.
Jane followed me out. ‘Better now, Lovejoy?’ She had style, this woman with the smile that meant all sorts of business.
‘No.’
‘What’s it all about?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
We crossed the road and sat near the window in the café opposite the auction room. She ordered tea and faced me across the daffodils.
‘Aren’t you making a fool of yourself?’
‘No.’
‘You’re like a child without its toffee-apple.’ She irritated me with her bloody calm dispassionate air and I said so. ‘I heard about Sheila,’ she went on. ‘Do you think it’s what she’d want you to be doing, going to pieces like this?’
‘I’m not going to pieces.’ I wouldn’t give in to this smarmy woman who couldn’t mind her own business.
‘You look like it, Lovejoy.’ She should have been a teacher. ‘We’re all worried about you, everybody. Your business’ll go downhill next. Look at you. You haven’t shaved you’re . . . soiled-looking.’
That really hurt because I’m not like that. I looked away in a temper because she was right.
‘Somebody killed her – the same character who killed Eric Field.’
Another of her famous appraisals came my way. ‘Are you serious?’
I gave her an appraisal back. ‘You know I am.’
‘By God, Lovejoy,’ she breathed. ‘What are you up to? You’re not seriously thinking –’
‘I am.’
‘You don’t think Watson –’
‘I’m not sure.’ The tea came. ‘He’s a Durs collector, a clever one. I’ve eliminated most of the rest one way and another. It could be a dealer of course, or somebody I don’t know about, but I must try to follow the leads I’ve got.’
‘Was he at the Field sale you’ve been on about?’
‘Yes.’
‘He may have nothing to do with it.’
‘And again,’ I said coldly, ‘he may.’
For the next few minutes, Jane quizzed me. I told her the whole story including the turnkey bit while she listened intently.
‘Have you anything practical to go on?’ she demanded. ‘So you found a posh screwdriver – big deal.’
‘Yes,’ I said after a minute. ‘There is something.’
‘What?’
‘God knows.’ A few people drifted out of the doors across the way. It would end in five minutes. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night for worrying – the answer’s been given me, here in my mind, and for the life of me I can’t think what makes me think so. I’d know who it is, but the bits of my mind won’t connect.’
‘From Seddon’s?’
‘I feel helpless. I just can’t think.’
‘Give it up, Lovejoy.’ She was less forbidding than I remembered. ‘It’ll ruin you.’
‘I might.’ And I almost believed me, except that Watson came out of the auctioneer’s that instant. I was up and out into the road darting between cars before I knew where I was.
He waited, casually looking through the window at a set of old seaside lantern slides that had gone dirt cheap – there’s quite a market for them nowadays. It was decimalization that did it.
‘Mr Watson.’ We stood together, me somewhat breathless and aggressive, him a little reserved.
‘Mr Lovejoy.’
‘Right.’
He smiled hesitantly. ‘I admired your, er, act with the circus crowd.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Could I ask –’ I nodded and he went on, ‘Er, if you, er, were very keen to have that group of portabilia?’
‘No,’ I snapped.
‘I thought not. May I ask then why you bid?’
‘Never mind me, comrade,’ I said roughly. ‘Why did you?’
He was astonished. ‘Me? They belonged to my father.’
‘Eh?’ I was saying as Jane strolled up.
‘My brother put them up for sale,’ he explained, ‘somewhat against my wishes. Why do you want to know?’
‘Well done, Lovejoy,’ Jane said sarcastically.
‘Keep out of it,’ I said. ‘Why did you go to the Field sale?’
His memory clicked away for a moment, then his brow cleared. ‘After that collector was killed, you mean? Oh, the odd item.’
‘Never mind what you actually bought. What attracted you there?’
He glanced from Jane to me, but it was no use messing about at this stage.
‘He gets like this periodically.’ Jane’s casual excuse didn’t calm me.
‘It’s my habit,’ Watson replied with dignity, ‘to do so. It’s also my right.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Jane chipped in.
I looked about. People had gathered round. The windows of the auction rooms were full of faces, staring. Cars were slowing to see what the rumpus was about. My old aunts would have called it a ‘pavement scene’.
‘You’re among friends, Lovejoy,’ Jane said kindly, and explained to Watson, ‘He’s not like this normally. He’s been under a strain lately, a bereavement, you know.’ Murmurs of sympathy arose from a couple of old dears in the throng who quickly transmuted compassion into reminiscences of similar events in their own past. ‘Just like our Nelly’s cousin when her Harry was took,’ etc, etc.
‘Will he be all right?’ Watson was asking anxiously of Jane. That more than anything shook me – when people talk over you as if you’re not really there, you really might have vanished.
‘His car’s near here somewhere. Over there.’
Watson and Jane frogmarched me to the Braithwaite. Rage shook me into a sweat, rage at Jane’s smooth assumption of power and Watson’s obvious concern. If I’d cast him in the role of murderer, why didn’t the bastard behave like one?
‘You’d better come to my sister’s – it’s a few miles.’ They discussed me while I trembled like a startled horse. My face was in my hands. I could hear their voices but not what was said, so sick did I feel from the stink of the leather upholstery and the extraordinary vertigo which took hold. Jane took my keys and we drove out of Maltan Lees in the wake of Watson’s old white Traveller.
There’s nothing much to say about the rest of that day except that I stayed at Watson’s sister’s house in a room the size of a matchbox full of toys. Children came to stare at me as I was given aspirin tablets and milk to swallow – heaven knows why – and finally I dozed until dawn. Watson, my erstwhile villain, slept on a settee, Jane drove home in my old crate saying she’d come back for me in the morning. When I woke I found one of the children had laid a toy rabbit on my bed for company, a nasty sight in the sunrise of a nervous breakdown. Still, thank God, it wasn’t a hedgehog.
I can’t remember much except Watson’s kindness, his sister’s concern and Jane smiling too quickly at everything that was said as we departed.
‘I feel a bloody fool,’ were my parting words, epitaph for a crusader. Amid a chorus of denials and invitations to return soon Jane ferried me away. I couldn’t even remember what the house was like.
On the way back, Jane, a smart, alert driver, told me she’d been summoned into Geoffrey’s police station to explain what she’d done with me because the cottage was raided again during the night. Our vigilant bobby, understandably narked by his ruined sleep, told her in aggrieved tones how he’d wakened to the sound of the alarm and arrived before entry was effected. The would-be intruder fled unseen.
I received the news with utter calm and stared at the ceiling.