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.
‘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.
‘Good or not?’she pressed.
‘Pretty good,’ which satisfied her.
She showed me two pottery birds, all bright colours and asked if I liked them.
‘Horrible.’
‘Genuine?’ They looked like Chelsea. I touched one. Ding-dong.
‘As ever was.’
‘You haven’t looked for the gold anchor mark underneath yet,’ she said, vexed. ‘It’ll be there,’ I said.
‘Seeing you’re on form,’ she asked, ‘what are these?’
There were four of them, shell-cases of various sizes, cut and decorated. A small cross, also brass, had been drilled into each. I picked one up. The crosspiece of each was loose and came free.
‘Table bells,’ I told her. ‘Prisoners of war, probably Boer War. You signalled for the next course by combinations of these four bells. Not valuable.’
‘Thanks.’
I cast my eye for flinters, but they weren’t in Margaret’s line.
In he tore, alcoholic and worried, eagerly trying to judge if we were just browsing or up to something, stained of teeth, unshaven of chin, bleary of eye, shoddy of gear, Dandy Jack.
‘Come and see my jades, Lovejoy,’ he said.
I tried to grin while backing from his evil breath. A customer was showing interest so Margaret stayed put, making a smiling gesture for me to look in before I left.
I let Dandy tell me how clever he’d been to do the deal. A retired colonel’s widow, Far East wars and all that. I would have to be careful asking about flinters, but so tar my approach had been casual in the extreme. Out came the jade collection. I sat on his visiting-stool while he showed me. By hook or by crook I would have to do him a good turn.
Jades are odd things. There are all sorts of daft ideas in people’s minds about antiques of all kinds-that all antiques if genuine are priceless, for example, a clear piece of lunacy. Nothing is truly beyond price if you think about it. All you can say is that prices vary. Everything’s always for sale. Another daftness is that anything is an antique, even if it’s as little as five years old. Remember the golden date, 1836. This side equals modern. That side equals antique. The most extreme of all daftnesses, though, is the idea that if something looks mint and beautifully preserved, it shouldn’t, and therefore needs false woodworm holes bored into it, scratches and dents made in unscathed surfaces, and splinters worked from corners. Wrong. Moral: the better preserved, the costlier. Keep things mint.
Jades attract more daftness than any other antiques. And Dandy Jack had every possible misconception, displaying them all to anyone who called.
‘It’s a pity some aren’t proper green,’ he was saying, fetching the small carved pieces out. ‘They must be some sort of stone. But here are some deep green ones . . .’ and so on. I tell you, it’s bloody painful. You’d think these people can’t read a reference book between them. ‘I played it cool,’ he kept on. ‘Maybe I’ll let them go for auction. Do you think Christie’s would –’
I picked one up – a black-and-white dragonfly, beautifully carved. Not painted, but pure jade through and through. To tell real jade – though not its age, however – from anything else, feel it. Never leave jade untouched. Hold it, stroke it, touch it – that’s what it’s for, and what it loves. But never touch it with freshly-washed hands. If you’ve just washed your hands clean, come back in an hour when your natural oils have returned to your fingers. Then pick up and feel the jade’s surface. You know how oil gets when it’s been rubbed partly dry, like, say, linseed oil on a wooden surround? Faintly tacky and slightly stiff? If the object you hold gives drat immediate impression, it’s jade all right. To confirm it, look at the object in direct light, not hooded like posh lamps. The surface mustn’t gleam with a brilliant reflection. It must appear slightly matt. Remember what the early experts used to say of jade: ‘Soapy to look at, soapy to feel.’ It’s not too far out.
Now, there are many sorts of jade. Green jades are fairly common, but less so than you might think. ‘Orange-peel’ is one of my favourites, a brilliant orange with white, not a fleck of green. Then there’s ‘black-ink’ jade, in fact perhaps nearer blue-black, usually mixed with white streaks, as in the dragonfly I was holding. One of the most valuable is ‘mutton-fat’ jade, a fat-white jade of virtually no trans-lucency despite its nickname.
Of course, nowadays the common green jade comes from damn near anywhere except China – Burma, New Zealand, you name it. And it’s blasted out of hills, in a new and unweathered state, which gives a massive yield but of a weak, scratchable quality. Most of these wretched carvings of fishes or horses you see now are done in China, of jade imported there. Green, fresh, soapy, mechanical travesties they are too. Get one (they should be very cheap) to teach yourself the feel, texture and appearance of the stuff, but if your favourite little nephew shatters it to pieces one day, don’t lose any sleep. China’s exporting them by the shipload. ‘New-Mountain Jade’ they call it in Canton, Kwantung, China.
But. That only goes for the new, modern, mine-blasted green jade. The ancients were much more discriminating. To satisfy them, a piece of jade had to be weathered. The new pieces were found exposed on hillsides, and were taken to a craftsman carver, an artist who loved such a rare material. With adulation he would observe where the flaws ran, what colours were hidden beneath the surface. And then, after maybe a whole year of feeling, stroking the magic stone and imagining the core of beauty within, he would begin to carve. New-Mountain Jade (i.e. modern) is soft. The antique stuff is hard, hard, and to carve it took time. This means that a dragonfly such as I was holding took about six months. The craftsman had left the dragonfly’s wings, head and body in black, and the underbelly had been skilfully carved through so it was mutton-fat jade, white like the spindly legs. The dragonfly was on a white mutton-fat jade lotus leaf – all less than two inches long, the detail exquisite, all from one piece of antique hard jade. And not a trace of green. Lovely. An artistic miracle.
I did my own private test – put it down a minute, my hands stretched out to cool, then picked it up again. Yes, cold as ice, even after being held in a hot, greedy hand. That’s jade for you. The miracle stone. The ancient Chinese mandarins had one for each hand, a ‘finger-jade’ just for fiddling with, to comfort themselves. It was regarded as a very human need and not at all unmanly to want dispassionate solace as well as human comfort in that civilization, and what’s wrong with either?
Dandy Jack had fetched out about thirty pieces. About half were agate, and of the rest some six were modern ugly deep leaf-green new jade pieces, carved with one eye on the clock and some productivity man whining about output. I found nine, including an orange-peel piece, of old jade, exquisitely carved foxes, hearts, lotus plants, bats, the dragonfly, fungi. It really was a desirable cluster.
‘You’ve got good stuff here, Dandy,’ I said. It hurt to tell the truth.
‘You having me on, Lovejoy?’ He had the sense to be suspicious.
‘Those over there aren’t jade at all. Agate.’
‘The bastard!’ he exclaimed. ‘You mean I’ve been done?’
‘No. You’ve got some stuff here worth half your business, Dandy.’
‘Straight up?’
‘Yes. Those dark things are modern – for heaven’s sake don’t scratch them. It’s a dead giveaway and you’ll never sell them. These though are rare. Price them high.’
I gave him the inky dragonfly, though my hand tried to cling hold and lies sprang to my lips screaming to be let out so as to make Dandy give it me back for nothing. I hate truth. Honest. I’m partial to a good old lie now and again, especially if it’s well done and serves a good honest purpose. Being in antiques, I can’t go about telling unsophisticated, inexpert lies. They have to be nudges, hints, clever oblique untruths that sow the seed of deception, rather than naive blunt efforts. Done well, a lie can be an attractive, even beautiful, thing. A good clever lie doesn’t go against truth – it just bends it a little round awkward corners.
‘You having me on?’
‘Price them high, Dandy. My life.’ The enormity hit him.
‘Do you think they’re worth what I paid?’
‘Whatever it was, it was too little.’ I rose to go. He caught my arm.
‘Will you date and price them for me, Lovejoy?’
‘Look,’ I told him, ‘if I do, promise me one thing.’
‘What?’
‘You won’t sell me that bloody inky dragonfly. It’s worth its weight in gold four times over. If I put a price of two hundred quid on it then offer to buy it from you, don’t sell.’
‘You’re a pal, Lovejoy,’ he said, grinning all over his bleary face.
I pulled off my coat and set to work. I saw Margaret make a thumbs-up sign across the arcade to Dandy, who had to rush across and give her the news. Morosely, I blamed Field’s mad search. If I hadn’t needed Dandy’s gossip, I could have tricked most of the old jades out of him for less than twenty quid and scored maybe a thousand. Bloody charity, that’s me, I thought. I slapped a higher price on the dragonfly than even I’d intended. Give it another month, I said sardonically to myself, the way dungs are going and it would be cheap at the price.
I eventually had three leads from Dandy Jack, casual as you like. I think I was reasonably casual, and he was keen to tell me anything he knew. Lead one was a sale in Yorkshire. Jack told me a small group – about seven items is a small group-of weapons was going there. The next was a sale the previous week I’d missed hearing of, in Suffolk.
I loaded up with petrol at Henry’s garage.
‘Still running, is it?’ he said, grinning. ‘I’ll trade you.’
‘For one that’ll last till Thursday?’ I snarled, thinking of the cost of petrol. ‘You can’t afford it.’
‘Beats me how it runs,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Never seen a crate like it.’
‘Don’t,’ I said, paying enough to cancel the national debt. ‘It does six – gallons to the mile, that is.’
I drove over to the estuary, maybe ten miles. Less than a hundred houses sloped down to the mud flats where those snooty birds rummage at low water and get all mucky. A colony of artists making pots live in converted boathouses along the quayside and hang about the three pubs their groaning about lack of government money. Money for what, I’m unsure.
Brad was cleaning an Adams, a dragoon revolver of style and grace.
‘Not buying, Brad,’ I announced. He laughed, knowing I was joking.
‘Thank heaven for that,’ he came back. ‘I’m not selling.’
We chatted over the latest turns. He knew all about Dandy’s jades and guessed I’d been there.
‘He has the devil’s luck,’ he said. I don’t like to give too much away, but I wanted Dandy to learn from Brad how impressed I’d been, just in case he’d missed the message and felt less indebted. So I dwelled lovingly on some of the jades until Brad changed the subject.
‘Who’s this geezer on about Durs guns?’
You must realize that antique collecting is a lifetime religion. And dealing is that, plus a love affair plus a job. Dealers know who is buying what at any time of day or night, even though we may seem to live a relatively sheltered and innocent life. And where, and when, and how.
This makes us sound a nasty, crummy, suspicious lot. Nothing of the kind. We are dedicated, and don’t’ snigger at that either. Who else can be trusted, but those with absolute convictions? We want antiques, genuine lustrous perfection as objects of worship, and nothing else. All other events come second. In my book, that makes us trustworthy, with everything on earth – except antiques. So Brad had heard.
‘Oh, some bloke starting up,’ I said.
‘Oh?’
I thought a second, then accepted. ‘An innocent. No idea. I took him on.’
‘They’re saying flinters.’
‘Yes.’
‘Difficult.’
I told him part of the tale I’d selected for public consumption.
‘I thought maybe duellers, a flash cased set.’
‘I’ll let you have a few pair he can choose from.’
I grinned at the joke. ‘I’m hardly flush,’ I said. ‘That’s why I was round Dandy’s, on the prod. He said you might have word of a pair. Have to be mint.’
He looked up from replacing the Adams in its case.
‘I’m in the Midlands next Monday. I’m on to five pieces, but they might turn out relics.’
I whistled. Five possible miracles. A relic is any antique defaced and worn beyond virtual recognition, but you never think of that. The desire for the wonderment of a sensational discovery is always your first hope. Some people say it’s ridiculous to hope that way, but doesn’t everyone in one way or another? A man always hopes to meet a luscious, seductive woman; a woman always hopes to meet a handsome, passionate man. They don’t go round hoping for less, do they? We dealers are just more specialized.
‘Keep me in mind,’ I said, swallowing. ‘The cash is there.’
‘Where, exactly?’ he rejoined smoothly, and we laughed.
We chatted a bit more, then I throbbed away in my fiery racer. I made a holiday-maker curse by swinging out into the main’ road without stopping, but my asthmatic old scrap-heap just can’t start on a hill whereas his brand-new Austin can start any time, even after an emergency stop. People ought to learn they have obligations.
Muriel’s house turned out to be my sort of house. Set back from the road, not because it never quite made it like my cottage, but from an obvious snooty choice not to mob with the hoi polloi. I imagined banisters gleaming with dark satin-brown depths, candelabras glittering on mahogany tables long as football pitches and dusty paintings clamouring on the walls. My sort of house, with a frail old widow lady wanting a kindly generous soul like myself to bowl in and help her to sell up. My throat was dry. I eagerly coaxed the banger to a slow turn and it cranked to a standstill, coughing explosively. I knocked with the door’s early nineteenth-century insurance company knocker. (They come expensive now, as emblems of a defunct habit of marking houses with these insignia of private fire insurance companies.) It had shiny new screws holding it firmly on to the door, though the thought honestly never crossed my mind. The door opened. The frail old widow lady appeared.
She was timid, hesitant, and not yet thirty.
‘Good day,’ I said, wishing I was less shabby.
I’ve never quite made it, the way some men do. I always look shabby about the feet, my trousers seem less than sharp, my coats go bulbous as soon as they’re bought. I have a great shock of hair that won’t lie down. I’m really a mess.
‘Yes?’ She stared from round the door. I could hear somebody else clattering cooking things in the background.
‘Look, I’ll be frank,’ I said, feeling out of my depth. ‘My name is Lovejoy. I’ve called about . . . about your late husband, Mr Field.’
‘Oh.’
‘Er, I’m sorry if it seems inopportune, Mrs Field . . .’ I paused for a denial, but no. ‘I’m an antique collector, and . . .’ Never say dealer except to another dealer.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Lovejoy,’ she said, getting a glow of animosity from somewhere. ‘I don’t discuss –’
‘No,’ I said, fishing for some good useful lie. ‘I’m not after buying anything, please.’ The door stayed where it was. I watched it for the first sign of closing. ‘It’s . . . it’s the matter of Mr Field’s purchases.’
‘Purchases?’ She went cautious, the way they do. ‘Did my husband buy things from you?’
‘Well, not exactly.’
‘Then what?’
‘Well,’ I said desperately, ‘I don’t really know how to put it.’
She eyed me doubtfully for a moment, then pulled back the door.
‘Perhaps you should come in.’
In the large hall she stood tall, elegant, the sort of woman who always seems warm. Cissie spent her rime hunting draughts to extinction. This woman would be immune. She looked deeply at you, not simply in your direction the way some of them will, and you could tell she was listening and sensing. In addition she had style.
Now, every woman has some style, as far as I’m concerned. They are fetchingly shaped to start with, pleasant to look at and desirable to, er, encounter, so to speak. And all women have that attraction. Any man that says he can remain celibate for yonks on end is not quite telling the truth. It’s physically impossible. What astonishes me is that very few women seem to see this obvious terrifying fact, that we are completely dependent on their favours. Ah, well.
I had no plan of action, trusting simply to my innate instinct for deception and falsehood. Mrs Field dithered a bit then asked me into a lounge, where we sank into nasty new leather armchairs. There was a rosewood desk, eastern, modern, and one tatty cavalry sabre on the wall. On the desk I could see a chatelaine which looked like Louis XIV from where I was sitting but I couldn’t be sure.
‘You mentioned you and my husband were fellow-collectors, Mr Lovejoy.’
A chatelaine is a small (six to eight inches or so) case, often shaped in outline like a rounded crucifix. It opens to show scissors, tooth pick, manicure set and sometimes small pendants for powders and pills, that sort of thing, for people to carry about. Quite desirable, increasing in value –
‘Mr Lovejoy?’ she said.
‘Eh? Oh, yes. Mr Field.’ I dragged my mind back.
‘You mentioned . . .’
In the better light she was quite striking. Pale hair, pale features, lovely mouth and stylish arms. She fidgeted with her hands. The whole impression was of somebody lost, certainly not in her own territory.
‘Poor Mr Field,’ I hedged. ‘I heard of the . . . accident, but didn’t like to call sooner.’
‘That was kind of you. It was really the most terrible thing.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Did you know my husband?’
‘Er, no. I have . . . other business associates, and I collect antiques in partnership with, er, a friend.’ It was going to be hard.
‘And your friend . . .?’ she filled in for me.
I nodded. ‘We were about to discuss some furniture with Mr Field.’ I was sweating, wondering how long I could keep this up. If she knew anything at all about her husband’s collecting, I was done for.
‘Was it a grandfather clock?’ she asked, suddenly recalling.
I smiled gratefully, forgiving her the use of that dreadful incorrect term.
‘Yes. William Porthouse, Penrith, made it. A lovely, beautiful example of a longcase clock, Mrs Field. It’s dated on the dial, 1738, and even though the –’
‘Well,’ she interrupted firmly, ‘I wouldn’t really know what my husband was about to buy, but in the circumstances . . .’
I was being given the heave-ho. I swallowed my impulse to preach on about longcase clocks, but she was too stony-hearted and unwound her legs. Marvellous how women can twist them round each other.
‘Of course!’ I exclaimed, as if surprised. ‘We certainly wouldn’t wish to raise the matter, quite, quite.’
‘Oh, then . . .?’
‘It’s just –’ I smiled as meekly as I could as I brought out the golden words – ‘er, it’s just the matter of the two pistols.’
‘Pistols?’ She looked quite blank.
‘Mr Field said something about a case with two little pistols in.’ I shrugged, obviously hardly able to bother about this little detail I’d been forced to bring up. ‘It’s not really important, but my friend said he and Mr Field had . . . er . . .’
‘Come to some arrangement?’
I blessed her feminine impulse to fill the gaps.
‘Well, nothing quite changed hands, you understand,’ I said reluctantly. ‘But we were led to believe that Mr Field was anxious for us to buy a small selection of items, including these pistol things.’ I shrugged again as best I could but was losing impetus fast. If any smattering of what Field had told me was remotely true, a pair of Durs flinters had actually resided under this very roof, been in this very room, even. I raised my head, which had bowed reverently at the thought. I felt as if I’d just happened on St Peter’s, Rome.
‘As part exchange, I suppose?’
‘Well, I suppose so. Something like that.’
‘I heard about them,’ she said, gradually fading into memory. Her eyes stared past me. ‘He showed me a couple of pistols, in a box. The police asked me about them, when George –’
‘George?’
‘My brother-in-law. Eric, my husband, phoned him the night before he . . . He was going to go over and show George the next morning. Then this terrible thing happened.’
‘Were you here, when . . .?’
‘No. I was in hospital.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
‘We’d been abroad, Eric and I, a year ago. I’d been off colour ever since, so I went in to have it cleared up. Eric insisted.’
‘So you knew nothing at all about it?’
‘Until George came. I was convalescent by then. George and Patricia were marvellous. They arranged everything.’
‘Did you say the police asked about the pistols?’
‘Yes. George thought whoever did it . . . used them to . . . to . . .’
‘I suppose the police found them?’ I said innocently. ‘They can trace guns these days.’
‘Hardly.’ Her face was almost wistful. ‘They were so old, only antiques, and they don’t think he was . . . shot.’
‘What were they like?’ I swallowed. The words were like sandpaper grating.
‘Oh, about this long,’ she said absently, measuring about fifteen inches with hands suddenly beautiful with motion. ‘Dark, not at all pretty.’
‘My friend said something about gold decoration,’ I croaked in falsetto.
‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ she said, relieved. ‘They must be different ones. These had nothing like that. Blackish and brown, really nothing special, except that little circle.’
‘Circles?’ I shrilled. At least I wasn’t screaming, but my jacket was drenched with sweat. She smiled at her hands.
‘I remember Eric pulling my leg,’ she said. ‘I thought they were ugly and a shiny circle stuck on them made them look even worse. Eric laughed. Apparently they were pieces of platinum.’
I realized I should be smiling, so I forced my face into a gruesome ha-ha shape as near as I could. She smiled back.
‘You see, Mr Lovejoy, I never really . . . well, took to my husband’s collecting. It seemed such a waste of time and money.’
I gave my famous shrug, smiling understandingly. ‘I suppose one can overdo it,’ I lied. As if one could overdo collecting.
‘Eric certainly did.’
‘Where did he get his items from, Mrs Field? Of course, I know many of the places, but my friend didn’t see very much of him.’
‘Through the post, mostly. I was always having to send down to the village post office. I think the case came from Norfolk.’
‘What?’ I must have stared because she recoiled.
‘The box. Weren’t you asking about them?’
‘Oh, those,’ I said, laughing lightly. ‘When you said “case” I thought you meant the cased clock I mentioned.’ I forced another light chuckle. Stupid Lovejoy.
‘The shiny pistols. I remember that because they were so heavy and the woman at the post office said she’d been there.’
You have to pay for the pleasure of watching a beautiful woman. In kind, of course. Like struggling to understand her train of thought.
‘Er, been where, Mrs Field?’
To the place in Norfolk. She said, Oh, that’s where the bird sanctuary is, on the coast. She’d been there with her family, you see. I tried to remember the name for the police, but they said it didn’t really matter.’
‘Ah, yes. Well, I never get quite that far, so perhaps . . . er, one thing more.’ I was almost giddy with what she’d told me.
‘Yes?’
‘What, er, happened to them? Only,’ I added hastily, ‘in case my friend asks.’
‘Well, I don’t know.’ Any more questions would make her suspicious. ‘George asked, and the police asked, but that’s the point. When I returned from hospital they were gone.’
‘And the rest of the antiques . . .?’
‘Oh, they were sold. I wasn’t really interested, you see, and Eric had always said to send them off to a respectable auction if anything happened. He was a very meticulous man,’ she informed me primly.
I nodded. He was also a very lucky man, I thought. For a while.
She was waiting for me to go. I racked my exhausted brain. How did the police and these detectives know what questions to ask, I wondered irritably. I knew that as soon as the door closed a hundred points would occur to me. I’m like that.
‘Well, thank you, Mrs Field,’ I said, rising. ‘I shouldn’t really have called, but my friend was on at me about it.’
‘Not at all. I’m glad you did. It’s always best to have these things sorted out, isn’t it?’
‘That’s what my friend said.’
She came with me to the door, and watched me away down the drive. A priest was walking up as I screeched away from the house, probably on some ghoulish errand. They’re never far away from widows, I thought unkindly, but I was feeling somehow let down. I gave him a nod and got a glance back, free of charge. I had an impression of middle age, a keen, thin face and eyes of an interrogator. Interesting, because I’d thought fire-and-brimstone weren’t policy any more, though fashions do change. I didn’t see his cash register.
She gave me a wave in the driving-mirror. I waved back, wondering even as I accelerated out of the landscaped gardens and back among the riff-raff whether I could ask her out on some pretext. But I’d now blotted my copybook with all the pretending I’d done. Women don’t like that sort of thing, being unreasonable from birth. Very few of them have any natural trust.
It’s a terrible way to be.