PearlHanger 09 (6 page)

territory, using women as go-betweens, so I was carefully noncommittal about what I was doing and where I was.

That night I settled down determined to sleep the sleep of the just, but Vernon's weird term kept coming to mind: "the best brooch." Who on earth uses words like that, for heaven's sake? As if Vernon was making up some description, not really looking for anything in particular. Yet there was the precise address in what was presumably Donna Vernon's own handwriting, and Reverend Joe's name, J. Cunliffe, Rev. The sort of curt abbreviation you often see in local newspaper ads. Aha. Another clue.

Mystery: Antique Dealer Sidney Vernon launches a sweep looking for antiques, respectably enough. He zooms off with a list of contacts, yet doesn't get heartburn when missing a luscious antique by a whisker, and doesn't even

bother to suss out the rest of the stuff on sale. Really weird.

»

Despite all I eventually slept like a log and was downstairs whistling for breakfast by seven-thirty. Seeing Donna Vernon drinking coffee in the pub lounge, while motherly women vacuumed the carpets and shook dusters from leaded windows, brought me down to earth.

6

"Morning, Lovejoy," La Vernon said, simultaneously calm and furious. Women have the knack of being both, which is why we live in a woman's world.

"Morning, Mrs. Vernon."

She held out her hand. I dropped her car keys into the palm and sat. I'd been stupid to assume that she'd not follow. Evading police is easy. Escaping a woman isn't. Now why, I wondered as a bright lady came to serve, did she need me along? Hiring me made less and less sense. Nobody in his right mind would believe she was guided to me by Bea's tea-leaf gazing and that seance rubbish.

"Good morning, sir. What would you like for breakfast?"

I stared at the lady. Sometimes I honestly don't believe what I'm hearing. "I'd like breakfast for breakfast, please."

The woman laughed, pinking. She was chained to a notepad. Cold buzzie and cold feet but warm heart, I knew instantly, because this sort always has. "No. Do you want continental breakfast, or . . .?"

"Forgotten what your granny taught you, love? Break-

... 45

fast is eggs and bacon and toast and marmalade, and porridge if mice haven't dumped in the oats."

"We've no time," Mrs. Vernon rasped.

"See you around then, Donna," I said politely. "Get a move on, missus. I'm bloody starving."

The cleaning women were having a good laugh but keeping a weather eye on my unexpected visitor.

"Don't tell me, boss," I guessed resignedly. "You got the train to Nottingham, taxied round, spotted your crate, then asked at the nearest pub for somebody answering my description, right?"

"Quicker than that, Lovejoy." She lit a cigarette, which I extinguished in her coffee. She instantly erupted. "What the . . ?"

"There's a William the Fourth hunting-scene on the paneling behind you, love," I told her. "Your fag's bad for its chest." Might as well talk to the wall. She still glared. "Look. Hadn't you best just give me a photograph of your husband, then get out of my way?"

She didn't know which to be maddest at, me, her drenched fag, or being told to get lost. "But I hired you, Lovejoy! You're supposed to do what I want!"

The world's full of incompetents crying that tale. "Oh, aye," I said unbelievingly and waded into my porridge, which arrived just in time to save me fainting. I eat it as it comes. Milk makes scary patterns and sugar makes oats see-through. An old colonel and his missus were having Douglas kippers in the corner, with toast thin as rice paper. They wouldn't get far on that.

"Let's get one thing clear, Lovejoy," Mrs. Vernon ground out. "Your sexist attitude's a propaganda put- down, Lovejoy. It's oppressionism. It's totalitarianism. You default on me and
I'll..."

46 . . .

"Sue me? It'll take ten lawyers a costly year and I'm broke. I'm fed up with you."

She eyed me. Slowly, almost with an audible click, her brain began to function. Sooner or later it always happens, though oftentimes too late. "So it's you go on your own, Lovejoy?"

"Why not? I'm unemployed." I couldn't resist putting that nasty bit in. "I've got the list of places where he's gone."

"Because
I. . ."
She paused, made to reach for her coffee, changed her mind when seeing her fag bobbing in the caffeine.

"See?" I said gently. "Your hiring me, all that rigmarole about mediums, stars, crystal balls, Owd Maggie's dream time. It was nonsense."

"Tell me why," she said, looking. Her eyes were blue, fetchingly done with eyebrows all her own and eyelashes a foot long. If only she had Edwardian stud-and-drop earrings or something, or even those modern multicolored titanium surfacers, and a ton more makeup, she'd look . . . no she wouldn't. It wasn't just that she was everything Lydia wasn't. There was something else. A shutout, a mental armor. It was in her. Thank God most women are her opposite.

"Give my acquaintance a fresh cup, wench," I said to the lady who was busy shoveling eggs, bacon, beans, and sausages in front of me. "She's been a dirty girl with that one. But don't put it on my bill or I'll never get rid of her. And why?" I continued to Mrs. Vernon. "Because you could have simply phoned around and asked how far your husband had got. Or come after him on your tod."

"Tod?"

"Tod Malone, own. You could have done this without

... 47

me. You're a resourceful lass." An overcoated bloke came in, chatted to the cleaners, and glanced over to me. He seemed quite at home. Us antique dealers are like those countries that once belonged to the same empire—competitors, but united for eternity from a shared belief in the same myth. It's not just the lingo. You can tell an antique dealer a mile off.

"I've explained all that." She was quite cool. "I need a
divvie
. My husband has our entire savings. We're at a critical time in our relationship. He's—not a very practical man. And a belief in the occult is not a crime. The only warning against you is that you are not to be trusted. But who is?"

Indeed. Good old Cardew wasn't so dumb.

"Whose side am I on? Hubby's or yours?" I was beginning to sound like a hireling.

She drank her scalding coffee. How women can do that beats me. My tea passes the elbow test before I can even sip on the rim. I noshed gamely on, waiting for more orders, like I'd done once for shellfire.

She rose. "How soon can you be ready, Lovejoy?" She almost choked on the mildness of it. The overcoated bloke had strolled into the kitchen, a publican's antique-dealing brother if ever I saw one.

"Half an hour to finish. I've someone to see first." Going red, I added, "Please," and watched her recede across the carpeted lounge. The attractive serf bringing the toast—proper slices, not like the colonel's thin triangles with no edges—watched her too. And the cleaners, and the colonel and his missus. Mrs. Vernon was watchable and obeyable, but probably not much else.

"What do you reckon, love?" I asked, lashing out with the marmalade.

48 .. .

"I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of her," the lady confided frankly, busily rearranging the pots.

"It is hell," I agreed. "Incidentally, tell that bloke you've dragged into your lair that the greatest antique dealer in the known world is now prepared to receive him."

"You saucy devil. And I can't say I took to her friend, either."

My marmalade hand froze. "Friend?"

"Looked a right misery." The description she gave— pale, thirtyish, wary—matched up to the bloke from the seance. The one I'd felt watching me sideways. He'd apparently arrived with Donna Vernon, carefully leaving before I'd come down.

Well, I told myself nervously after a think, there's no law, is there?

Josh Thompson turned out to be one of those friendly utility models, no time-waster. A brisk slogger without flair, but a stayer who'd be making a good living from this delirious antiques game when much cleverer blokes have died the Icarus death of overambition. I liked him. We did a good deal for the bulk of the cards, me chopping the markup for cash (translation: taking only half profit, for filthy lucre on the spot). I paid for his coffee, big spender me, and the greedy sod nicked four slices of my toast. I felt I could trust him, so didn't, and asked him about three of the nearest people listed on Mrs. Vernon's paper. He knew two, and spoke of them with Nottinghamshire bluntness and at great length. I was delighted at the progress I was making.

Like I say, a born duckegg.

»

I've met some vengeful women in my time, but this one wasn't so direct as the others. There was a reserve,

something held back. She felt emotionally wrong. I tried warning myself off because I'd got enough trouble to be going on with, and anyway antiques are a fulltime love. It's well known that love affairs should come one at a time.

Anyhow, right or wrong, I was becoming quite interested in Mrs. Vernon. I couldn't help watching her as we drove away: confident, sharp, aggressive. The weather promised warm and the dress she wore had a pale green self-stripe, some silk material that caught light. She drove intently, slightly hunched, casting frequent glances at the rearview mirror and rolling the steering wheel like rally drivers do.

But even she, expert driver as she was, had a hell of a time getting us out of Nottingham. Like most ancient places its traffic now follows guess-where merry-go-rounds until good luck reprieves it and you blunder out down some side street. I was sorry to be leaving, though. I would miss the smiles and the antiques, but not Tinker. Unless the booze had hit hard he would soon be shuffling into the pub where I'd stayed. There he would find my letter and the gelt to follow at his speediest, which is small in velocity but certain. He never questions orders wrapped in money.

"Is this the time to ask about you?" I tried.

"No," I got back.

"Hubby, then?"

Her pause wasn't indecision. More for effect, to show she was still calling the tune. Then she began to explain as we made it from the inner maze and bowled toward our next joint triumph.

»

She had met Sid Vernon while she was a secretary for a London auction firm near Hanover Square, when he had

50...

called to arrange the sale of a painting, a lovely Northcote oil of a lady.

"Not Sir Joshua Reynolds's missus?" I cracked, smiling.

She did not respond, which puzzled me, and sailed on: "Sid and I married. He set up business near Hampstead. I did the documentation, he the antiques. We recently moved out of London, sold the house, cheaper district, that sort of thing.
Lately Sid planned to do a sweep through East Anglia because paintings are our thing, and there's nowhere like it for finding genuine Old Masters, is there?
He drew our capital and left about three weeks ago. His sweep was going to take a fortnight."

"You've not heard since?"

"Not directly. It was drawn out as a money order."

Movable anywhere in the kingdom, and untraceable. Clever old Sid.

"And the seance bit?"

"It's a sensible precaution to take the best advice, Lovejoy. You're just stupid."

Well, yes, but not so stupid as a bird who calls assorted English paintings "Old Masters," and who doesn't know that the great Reynolds had as weird a bunch of pupils and followers as you could ever imagine. The point is that James Northcote studied under Sir Joshua, and wrote the great man's biography. Ostensibly full of praise, it has become the all-time classic back-hander, packed with the cleverest malice you'll ever come across. Read it and see for yourself. The book's a collector's item. A couple of fascinating but odious blokes. I remember one unsigned Reynolds School portrait that me and Rex from Polstead faked and sold in Suffolk—

"Lovejoy?"

"Er, yes, I quite agree," I replied hurriedly. We were

... 51

bowling along and signs saying Lincoln were starting to appear. Hers was a good story, for a pack of lies. Other people's falsehoods always make me switch off.

She took us to a roadhouse where we freshened up and had a snack. Then we hurried into Lincoln while our state of truce lasted.

Exactly then I realized that the last person she wanted back in bed was good old Sid, because I was almost sure there was a thin, pale, wary-faced bloke in a Mini waiting at the traffic lights as Donna thrust a map at me and demanded directions. Different story now, I observed, and a different type of pursuit. Circumstances alter chases. I avoided staring in the bloke's direction and concentrated on the chart. Odd coincidence that we see him here. Maybe he was on the way to another seance?

52

7

"This it?"

Following the map we found a street of small terraced houses. A push-chair leaned folded against the wall. A plastic toy was upended nearby, and a child's tricycle lay in the gutter. The rest of Lincoln is beautiful. I'd drawn the short straw.

"It must be, Lovejoy. Stay here."

"Like hell." I was out and knocking before she could reply.

The woman who came to the door carried a bulbous infant and had the hunted look that comes from struggle. A tatty little girl sucked two thumbs behind her mother's skirt.

"Hello, love. Mrs. E. Smith? I'm trying to catch Mr. Vernon. He called a while since."

She had been pretty once. Now disheveled and harassed, she still had some of that allure simply because all women keep it no matter what. Her presentation was just a little awry.

"Who?"

... 53