A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair

17

OPPOSITE THE EARL of Lonsdale tavern (there was this sign, WOMEN something. It made me think of Colette, and the son she was protecting by becoming Gluck's slag. I couldn't work it out, because motive is rubbish. Maybe I was tired, but the five letters kept rearranging themselves. Strange, the words you can make from that one word, women. Own. New. We. Nemo. I even got a weird sentence: Now women own me, owe no new woe. Woe? The daft game set me nodding off.

Trout was the first to enter. 'Tinker's about, Lovejoy. Just saw him.'

'Them padpas, Trout?' Every time we met he got smaller. I got him some bar grub. He looked famished.

'Your pal Sturffie was the one who sold them, handed them to Chev for delivery. Chev's the courier man, from Aldgate East. He's still in Edinburgh.'

Bad news. Sturffie might have supplied honest padpa gems, and this Chev could have swapped them. Or Sturffie'd gone bad.

Tinker came a few yards behind his thunderous cough, clearing spaces through the late afternoon drinkers. I'd had the foresight to have three pints on the table waiting with some pasties.

He engulfed two pints, then said hello.

'Floggell's the pits, Lovejoy,' he gravelled out. 'I asked him to help. He chucked me out.'

'Floggell?' I couldn't believe it. 'He's a pal.'

'Not now, Lovejoy. He said don't come back.'

We considered this grim news. To ask an antiques burglar to burgle antiques is like asking fish to swim. Old Masters from an undeserving college, priceless Chinese celadon glaze ware from a museum, Hepplewhite furniture in somebody's home, antiques burglars will always agree. If the job's too big, they simply recruit.

'Why?' Trout asked. I was proud of him. Good question.

'Because it's you, Lovejoy. Anybody else, he'd say yes.'

Me? What had I done, except nothing? I'd come to London, seen one or two friends.

And now I'm shunned by old pals who ought to be leaping at the jobs I was bringing. It didn't make sense.

A gorgeous shadow showed in the doorway. For a second I thought it was Lydia, but this was too tall.

'How did you get on, Lovejoy?' Trout asked.

The shadow stilled, listening. This in broad daylight, dealers in and out having an ale, a truly average scene.

'Wait till Lydia gets back—'

'Er,' I interrupted loudly, 'aye, let's do that. I only spoke to Sorbo. Happened on him by chance, but he only grumbled. You know him.'

The best I could do. I went to the bar, and caught the girl's reflection. It was Sir Ponsonby's elegant lass Moiya December. Last seen in Dieter Gluck's monster Bentley.

She gave a wave and left. It wasn't odd, nothing that couldn't be explained by chance. I mean, antiques abounding, and she was an antiques gofer. Was it her fault if she overheard some idle pub talk? Her wave hadn't been directed at me. I made a stumble, which let me glance about. A stout balding man, pipe smoker, looked away in good time. He held a bowler comfortably on his knees, your routine pint-and-baccy Londoner.

After a while I went to scour for Lydia, and found her in the Hovis bakery beyond the Earl of Lonsdale. I rescued her. We all reunited in the beer garden. She'd had a whale of a time, and just adored Dieter Gluck.

'Lovely Colette Antiques is wonderful!' she trilled. 'I had a marvellous time! Herr Gluck is an absolute linguist! His manservant Bern was somewhat taciturn but—'

'What did you discover, love?' I asked. Trout gave me that look.

'Dieter was so kind! He showed me his sales book. And provided me with a list of his interests! He has a share in a restaurant. Simply smashing!'

'Smashing,' I agreed gravely. From Herr Gluck to Dieter in one.

'Lovejoy,' Trout said in his throaty bass. 'I don't believe this.'

Tinker gave Lydia a tomato juice. The world paused while she made absolutely definitely certain it was salt-free.

'Love, what questions did Gluck ask you?'

'None!' She simpered a little. 'I had to insist, or he'd have known absolutely nothing about me! I explained I was interested in his background for my newspaper.'

We breathed collective relief. 'You told him you're a reporter?'

'Of course!' She laughed merrily. 'Do the three of you assume I am totally devoid of equivocation? I said I was from the St Edmundsbury Tatler and Gazette.' She sobered.

'Having previously ascertained that there is no such journal, or it would have been highly improper.'

'Of course.' I felt us all relax.

She laughed. 'Certainly! My subterfuge had an almost miraculous effect. We had a lovely meal at the Gluck Orpheo, his establishment.'

'And he learned nothing about you, Lydia?' I was uneasy. Pint-and-baccy had moved closer, to the next bench.

'No.'

She was so proud. I didn't have the heart to question her further, just took Gluck's list from her and stuffed it into my pocket.

'Right, then,' I said quietly, drawing them in close like spies at a bomb plot. Really pathetic, especially as I was probably imagining things about the stout bloke. 'Here's what we do. Lydia, take on Holloway University. Suss out their paintings, get me off the hook. This is my lawyer.' I gave her Shar's address. 'Trout, you'd best steer clear of Gluck from now on. You and Tinker go back to East Anglia. Suss out Dosh Callaghan.

From what dealers here say, he couldn't possibly have been taken in like he says.

Nobody's that dim.'

'What will you be doing, Lovejoy?' Lydia never trusts me.

'I'm going shooting. Everybody meet up the day after tomorrow in Camden Passage antiques markets. You know it. The Angel, Islington. Don't go to King's Cross. It's hell of a walk up Pentonville Road.'

'I like Camden Passage,' Tinker said. 'They pull a good pint at The York.'

So much for culture. I concluded, 'We must find a youth called Goldhorn. Colette's son.'

'Mortimer?' Trout said. 'I can find him in an hour.'

For a little bloke, he certainly stopped conversations. 'Eh?'

Trout grinned. Gnomes have good grins. 'I like the lad. He talks to birds and dogs in their own lingo.'

'Birds, or birds?' I was startled. Was Mortimer barmy, and that was Colette's dreadful secret?

'Not women, you randy git,' Trout said patiently. 'Birds that fly. And hares. And bats, owls, foxes.' We all waited while Trout rummaged in his mind for more quaintness. He found a bit. 'He whistles at fish.'

'Oh, good.' I'd had enough. 'Lydia, please get me Ordnance Survey maps, massive scale and one inchers, of Saffron Fields. The map shop's in Long Acre, Leicester Square end.'

I beckoned them closer. 'Do we let Sorbo join us?'

'Yes,' Trout said. 'Gluck ripped him off badly. He'd done Arthur a score of intaglios in white Baltic amber for pendants. Some of the amber belonged to Sorbo's mum. When Sorbo asked Gluck for payment, that Bern duffed him up then windowed them as his own work.'

Tinker almost exploded. 'He what? That's a 'angin' offense.'

I shoved a brimming glass his way to keep the silence, but Tinker was right. Fakers who are true craftsmen, like Sorbo, have pride. To have their forgeries passed off as by another faker is criminal.

'Right, Sorbo's in. He'll do us a good job, when we find out what to do. Anybody know any titled folk, anyone upper crust, carriage trade? Gluck's Achilles heel is he's a supersnob.'

'Oh, that can't be true, Lovejoy!' Lydia exclaimed. 'He was charming!'

Trout said from deep in his miniature chest, 'He's made a fan.'

Lydia coloured. 'Stop it, all of you! You're making a great deal of fuss about nothing!

Your opinions are wholly misconstrued. You've only to meet Dieter.'

'I suppose you're right, Lydia,' I said evenly, giving Trout the bent eye to shut up. It was clearly time to sling Lydia. Her credit cards were useful, but she was a liability. We wanted loyal soldiery, not a dreamy-eyed fifth column. High time Lydia vanished into the ivory towers of academe. 'Maybe we're being just melodramatic.'

'And poor Arthur did die of natural causes,' she reminded us.

'Leave Sorbo to me. Ta, everybody.'

The stout bloke drained his pint, folded his newspaper. My tone must have pinged Lydia's antennae because she frowned.

'With whom are you going hunting, Lovejoy? Not that wretched Caprice Rhodes?'

'No, love. Her husband Clovis. And I hope to murder not one living thing.'

Some hopes. I didn't know it then, but I was heading for a really bad day. We parted amiably, Lydia still suspicious. I left her paying Trout and Tinker their expenses, and hit the road. With luck, my cottage wouldn't have been repossessed by the building society. I had enough for the fare.

All the way home I wondered if really this wasn't a task for Doomsday Walberswick and his enticing missus. But you can have too many cooks for one broth, or so they say.

Tally ho to the county set. 18

JACKO GAVE ME a lift in his bone-shaking coal lorry. He sings opera, badly, like all opera singers except two.

'Join in, Lovejoy!' he kept urging. 'Don't you like music?'

'Yes.'

That set him off laughing so much we nearly hit a tree. I've a lot of time for Jacko, though he's got a nerve asking me for payment every time I con him into taking me somewhere. Travelling in the gale of his cabin, shattered by the million-decibel rattle, poisoned by engine fumes, I deserved danger money, yet he charges me penny a mile.

This morning he treated the world to Deserto in terra. Everybody thinks they've got the best voice in the world. They're wrong. It's really me.

East Anglia's supposed to be lovely in the dawn. I think it's eerie. Ghostly trees assume scary shapes. The occasional shire horse stands there watching. Dense mists slide along rivers. Unexpected bridges lurk near deserted railway cuttings. You need nerve. Jacko was born here, and thinks this is normal. I wasn't, so know there's an alternative to countryside known as civilization. It lives in towns.

Jacko slammed us to a halt so sudden I nearly shot over the bonnet. I couldn't see a damned thing. He ended his aria with a flourish, flat.

'We're here, Lovejoy. Dykers Heath.'

The mist closed in. I thought I saw a vague thicking that might have been a gateway.

Darker blotches could have been an ornamental hedge, or not. Dykers Heath's the name of Caprice and Clovis's estate. I'd been there once, on a balmy summery day.

'You sure, Jacko?' Suddenly I didn't like this. Why was I here? To suss out the county set's gossip about Arthur's death. 'Look. Maybe I'd better—' I screeched as a hand reached in and clutched my arm.

Jacko fell about, rolled in the aisles. 'That'll be a tenner, Lovejoy.'

'I'll owe you, Jacko. Ta-ra.'

There stood this lad, maybe fourteen, thin, fairish hair turning teenage mousey. His blue-eyed features looked familiar. He wore a thick jacket, the sort you see horsey folk don for the dank outdoors. He had the nerve to help me down. Angrily I shook him off.

He'd look a grown man in some wood. I ignored Jacko's imprecations for money.

We started between the gates. He wore cut-down Wellingtons, moved with that countryfied sloth that shifts ground quickly underfoot.

'It's this way.'

When you're lost, miles into the lalang like now, you have to believe these rural clowns.

Except he was no clown. He imparted instant confidence. Immediately the mist's sinister shadows became simple trees and without menace. The earth beneath turned into honest gravel, no grim ditches. Hooded deformed ghouls turned into bushes, quite pleasant really if you like that sort of thing. I couldn't help glancing at the lad. He hadn't said his name.

I'm Lovejoy, er…?'

'I know. Mr Rhodes said to kit you up.'

'You're one of the beaters, then?'

He nodded, or maybe he didn't. These folk who live beyond village boundaries are strange. They assume you'll know the answer, so say nothing. If you guess wrong, the more fool you. And they talk in dialect, hard to follow.

A car's headlights showed off to the right, its engine purring to silence. Doors slammed.

Women's voices raised in that posh country-house scream. I heard a man call welcome.

The clans were gathering.

Not long since, some sociologists - nothing better to do - dug into the nation's pastimes. They 'discovered' the most amazing fact. It's this: folk sometimes go fishing, bird watching, studying nature. This 'research survey' - their term - cost thousands, every groat of which could have been spent on antiques or leprosy. I suppose we were even now being studied by sociologists concealed in the foliage as I glimpsed Clevis's imposing dwelling.

'No. This way.'

Round the back? The Queen Anne frontage emerged from the mists. A butler, no less, and two maids scurried as guests arrived. Shooting brakes, estate cars, Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, one sulking Jaguar, showed the visitors' worth. Me and the lad went round the side of the house, in at a small door and up stairs to a gun room. Arrays of double-barrelled shotguns, with several rifles, were chained in racks behind reinforced glass. No antique flintlocks, worse luck, love of my life. A whiskery old countryman was checking the guns.

'Lovejoy, Mr Hartson.'

'Right, Mort. Morning, sir.'

Mort for Mortimer, my brilliant mind snapped up. I saw him in the light. Familiar, indeed. Probably Arthur I was seeing, or hints of Colette.

'Morning,' I said. 'Look. I don't know what—'

'In the ante-room, sir, please.'

Next door was a changing place. I got thick brogues, tartanish stockings, plus fours, a deerstalker hat, shooting jacket, cape. I looked like a duckegg trying to be Sherlock Holmes. Mr Hartson promised me a Westley Richards double-barrelled shotgun. I could war against innocent birds.

'Mort's your bearer, sir. Mr Rhodes is expecting you at breakfast.'

'Ta.'

A right prune in this clobber, I entered the long hall. Twenty guests were already noshing. A chorus of names rose in introduction. I grinned with embarrassment.

Nobody joked about my attire, thank God. I shuffled down the hall.

Most were young middle-agers. Several women were clobbered up for the day's cruelty, but two or three others were fashionably attired, obviously ready for a sloggingly hard gossip over coffee and cream cakes. I don't know about you, but these Sloanies always seem to have bandsaw voices. They look dazzling, clothes that- cost a fortune an inch, yet their endless 'Okayee, yah?' is really dispiriting. Like their protruberant teeth. They don't pronounce the letter M because their lips never meet.

'Hellayo,' said one gorgeous Sloane Ranger in a black sheath dress. She was whaling into hot kidneys, bacon, liver, fried black pudding, eggs, and a stack of fried bread.

Despite this nosh, she looked on a hunger strike. Some females can do it. Most groan at the sight of an irresistible chip, and biscuits are death. "Orning. Fleury La Ney.'

'Morning,' I greeted everybody, Ms to the fore, teeth defiantly behind my lips. 'Lovejoy.'

'Oy saaah!' she exclaimed. 'Quayte a nane, hot?'

She hooted with laughter. I smiled weakly and got grub from the sideboard. When Clovis Rhodes and Caprice bought Dykers Heath mansion they scoured everywhere for reproduction furniture. Crazy. For the same money they could have furnished the place with Victorian, maybe late Georgian, furniture. Our plates for instance were a massively complete set of modern antiquey Japanese porcelain. I'd warned Caprice off this, because for less than the cost of this new junk they could have bought genuine secondhand Royal Doulton, maybe even Derby, in mint condition. I honestly don't understand. Caprice hadn't long been married when I met her. I can hear her yet. 'No!'

She'd put her hands over her ears when I'd tried to tell her. 'I don't want other women's cast-offs!' She'll change when she learns sense, but by then it'll be too late.

The price of fine old porcelain will have gone through the roof and she'll complain about the scandalous prices. Might as well talk to the wall.

'Morning, Lovejoy.' Astonishingly it was Doc Lancaster, our village doc. He was having dry toast, a scrape of marmalade, and weak tea with skimmed milk. He's a maniac, wants to set me jogging on some punishment machine in his surgery, the loon. 'You, in killing mode!'

Chuckle chuckle round the repro table. I tried to hide my loaded plate from Doc Lancaster's accusing gaze. Was I expected to starve? Just because I'd got a bit of decent grub the lunatic gives me his stare of pure wheat germ. Truculently I fed myself, told him I was here to make up numbers.

'Trouble is, Lovejoy,' Doc said affably, 'there's not a single flintlock!'

Then the wash of expIanations, Lovejoy's an antique dealer, etc. I let them talk.

Inevitably the divvy question came up.

'Lovejoy can tell antiques a mile off,' Doc told everybody. 'I've seen him do it. I had an early set of surgical instruments…'

Doc started demonstrating the antique Chamberlen obstetric forceps. A set now costs a king's ransom. Heaven knows why, when the hated Chamberlen family of doctors -

Huguenot refugee doctors, lived in Essex, avarice personified - were reviled for keeping their precious forceps secret. I switched off as Doc explained the gruesome details. His audience was fascinated. The wicked ancient rhyme went through my head about Dr Hugh Chamberlen:

To give you his character truly complete He's doctor, projector, man-midwife, and cheat.

'What a strange little rhyme!' a lady said. Fortyish, bonny, tweed suit, managing to look normal. She spoke without the Sloanie's shout, and there was an M in there. Her lips met!

'Eh? Sorry. Didn't realize I'd spoken aloud.'

'Was he really a cheat?' she asked, interested.

'Folk thought he should have remembered his oath, instead of cashing in.'

'Is it true, this divvy thing? Gloria Dee, Ashwood Pentney.'

'Hello. Aye. It gives me a headache.'

'How fascinating. Do you accept orders?' She saw my anxious frown, and smiled. 'I mean do you do it professionally? Could you test some antiques of mine, for instance?'

She meant for hire. Posh society avoids mentioning lucre, it being filthy rotten stuff and beneath one.

'Afraid so.'

'Watch him, Gloria,' Doc Lancaster called amiably. 'If he doesn't like you he'll let you down. He's known for it.'

Mrs Dee smiled. 'Like so many!'

'I'm not that bad!' I exclaimed, heated. Conversation became humorous as Clovis entered, everybody getting excited at the coming shoot, saying how many they'd bagged the previous week, and was old Jarvis still gamekeeper at the Breakspeares'

estate. I felt depressed. It was all so jolly hockeysticks. Clovis came over, said hello, good of me to come. Dunno what tale Caprice had fed him.

'I shall invite you,' Gloria Dee said. 'Would you mind?'

'No, fine.' I wondered if I could get away with wiping my plate with some bread. That's the only decent way to end a meal, but in East Anglia you're not supposed to. (Why not, when it's good manners in France?)

'I suppose you must get fed up, people asking you to value things. Please don't mind saying no.'

For the first time I really looked at her. Decent, I suppose the word is. Her gaze was level. I don't know exactly what a level gaze means, because a gaze that isn't level is in real trouble. 'Got them with you?'

She shook her head. 'Far too big to carry, Lovejoy. You'll have to come. Expenses, of course,' she added quietly as people noisily moved off.

'Very well.'

'One thing,' she said, rising with me. 'Guests bet on the shoot. I'd be disinclined to give anyone the nod. It's rather taken as binding, you see. Bets start at a thousand guineas.'

God Almighty. What was I doing here?

Her eyes searched mine. 'I do hope you're not offended at my mentioning it, Lovejoy?

Sometimes people feel obliged to pretend they're high fliers when…'

'I'm not?' I got her off the hook.

She smiled. 'I can't afford to gamble either, you see.'

We trudged out in clusters. Sherry, madeira, and port were offered in beautiful but phonily new silver stirrup cups. Everybody started saying toodle-pip and suchlike. Odd, but here it sounded quite normal. Genuine, possibly? I'd have sounded ridiculous saying anything like that. A stompy old colonel kept on, 'What? What?' to me. I just grinned back, which pleased him. I quite liked the man, but didn't like the modern double-barrelled shotguns he handled like toothpicks.

Gloria Dee came with us in the estate cars. I noticed she brought an artist's palette box.

I tried to get into the same Range Rover but was shunted into the last. We drove off as the mist dwindled and the world appeared in all its murderous glory.

There's a bloke and his missus I know who buy and sell antiques solely to save up money to kill ducks on the Norfolk Broads. He's Jepp and she's Zina. They have a house full of trophies, and talk endlessly about duckocide, this one shot at a seventy-three angle in a ninety-knot wind, all that. I don't visit, unless I'm delivering some antique.

They're desperate to show me yet another photograph of themselves proudly holding up another dead creature. Deep down they suspect that I hate them, so taunt-torture me with their accounts. 'Our triumph wall, Lovejoy!' Zina says. I ask you. To kill an unarmed bird, for Christ's sake, a triumph? Zina's offered me more than a glimpse of her trophy wall, but I couldn't in a million years. I'd keep seeing those poor reproachful slaughtered birds just as we… No, no. I'd like to tell her straight out, but can't. I think I'm basically weak.

Here, I was to admire the trophies in course of creation, so to speak. Mort, Mr Hartson and other countrymen were waiting along a small valley. Mort attached himself to me.

He carried two double-barrelled shotguns, under-and-overs. I said nothing. He whistled a gentle trill. A black dog appeared from nowhere, wagging along its entire length, grinning up.

'Jasper's your retriever for the day,' Mort said.

'What do I have to do?'

'I load. You fire when the birds come.'

'Do we have to hide? Or be camouflaged?'

He brightened at my ignorance. 'Not today. The beaters start soon. Please don't shoot low. Keep the gun high. Avoid the hunters.' A hint of dryness there? Cocky little sod.

We stood in a line along the shoulder of the vale. Each shooter had a dog. They seemed to know far more than me what was happening. To my immediate left was a tallish man wearing more or less the same gear as me. Beyond him stood a loudmouth, telling how many he'd bagged at the Southworth's place in Dorset. I saw the look Mort gave him. Good. A few more glances like that, I'd be able to assess these people's usefulness for me.

'Hey, Lovejoy,' the colonel called. 'Don't know how much of this you've done, but under-and-overs are more difficult. Don't mind my saying, hey?'

'Not at all, sir,' I called as Mort avoided my eyes. 'The hard way!'

'Harf harf,' the old gent laughed. 'You young uns, what?'

While we were waiting I asked Mort, quiet, who everybody was. He started telling me. I listened to his inflexion, not the words. I wasn't so thick that I'd missed the coincidence

- Mort, the one I wanted to talk to, appearing at the only shoot I'd ever joined, same day, time, place, and being made my bearer. It couldn't be coincidence. Trout's influence? Anyhow, I'd deliberately asked Caprice to slot me in because Clovis's land almost adjoins Saffron Fields, the old Carting's Vineyard just over the river.

'That one over there's a big land buyer. Has boats, him and his cronies.'

'Cronies? Who?'

'Sir Jesson Tethroe.' The name was familiar. 'The MR'

Dots joined swiftly in my head. The Hon. J. Tethroe, MP, whose seat was unsafe, next election. Who'd been partly disgraced, after that affair with some Spanish lass, lost Cabinet promotion on account of it. He definitely was one of the people I'd need. Tided snobbery counts double.

'Lives in Westminster and Weymouth. Rich. Shrewd.'

'Even better,' I'd said before I could stop myself. 'I mean, even better that he's, er, made a go of life.'

Mort ran down the list. I noticed Gloria Dee setting up her easel and watercolours. A Midlands engineer contractor called Talleyton had fetched his own gunbearer. And a timber merchant from the coast. And a lady called Mrs Patterson they called Maeve, expert shooter.

'They're coming,' Mort said, with anguish. He'd heard the signals.

The first gunshot startled me. I felt grieved. The birds flew so heavily, having to work at it, monstrous energy for so little speed. God must have been all thumbs the day he made ducks. I shot last. The recoil almost knocked me over, slamming into my shoulder. I missed by a mile.

The roar steadied, kept up as the birds came in rushes, darting to avoid the beaters thrashing the bracken. I thought, 'Keep hidden, you daft sods, and you'll be safe.'

Terrified creatures never do the right thing. I'd learned that from me.

Before long I realized I was following Mort's signals. He'd give a wave of his hand down by his side. 'Right, high,' I'd mutter, pulling the trigger. The birds coming at me would angle slightly, making it over the line of us shooters to safety beyond. Mort'd pat his leg rapidly, and I'd translate, 'Quick, left,' blasting merrily away into the void, and another bird would make it. I missed successfully, every time.

They'd put muffs on me so I could only hear the distant thump of the gun as it cracked my shoulder. Once, taking the reloaded gun from Mort, I saw the dog, Jasper. It was gaping at me with utter disbelief, obviously thinking, God, expert shooters everywhere and I draw this nerk. I gave it a wink. It turned aside in disgust, watching its mates jauntily bringing back dead birds, tails wagging. You can't win. Save a duck, you get ballocked by a hound.

The slaughter ended. I was worn out, my shoulder creaking. I handed the gun to Mort.

He took it without a word, started stowing things in satchels.

'Good day's work, eh?' I tried not to sound appalled. Jasper sneered.

'Thank you, Lovejoy,' Mort said quietly.

'Sorry, old chap,' Colonel Humbert bawled in sympathy. 'Did warn you, what? Under-and-overs! Direction!'

'Should have listened to you, sir.'

He chuckled. I looked for the estate cars. None.

'It's lunch, Lovejoy,' Mort said. 'You go again, across the heath.'

'Right!' I said heartily, concealing my groan. 'Looking forward to it!'

The nosh they provided was superb, hampers of exotic food. I spoke with Mrs Dee, having checked that Mr Dee wasn't here.

'Don't worry. I shan't study your paintings.' Artists hate ramblers peering over their shoulder.

She laughed. 'You paint too, Lovejoy.' And answered my unspoken question, 'Sir Jesson told me. He's a collector.'

'You meant warned.' Was she a special friend of the scandal-riddled parliamentarian?

'Yes, warned.' She was amused.

'You're not using acrylics?' I asked in mock horror, looking at the peeling cerulean blue on her fingers.

'As a matter of fact I am.'

'Then the deal's off, love.' I returned to the trenches, her laughter following.

I won't go into details about that day of carnage. I finally reeled away sickened. I didn't harm a single thing, thanks to Mort. He had a series of cunning hoots and shrill keenings that somehow diverted birds from their flight paths away from the shooters.

Even so, our scattered lead shot will pollute the earth for the next frigging millennium.

God help us, we're a rotten lot.

Teatime. I changed back, getting a mouthful of astonishment at my fashion style from Fleury La Ney. I liked her, though. She wore a ton of makeup, thick mascara, rouge, dense eye-liner, plastered lipstick, blusher inches thick, so she was class even for a Sloanie. I noticed Gloria Dee sitting with Sir Jesson Tethroe. They looked a pair - item, do they say now? I caught her glance when Sir Jesson asked about me. Fine. They'd see me soon enough. They didn't know it yet but they were on my team.

I spoke a bit with Clovis and Maeve Patterson. She was lively, fifties, stridey, endlessly on about horses. I sensed a looming invitation to come riding, and quickly told her I was allergic. She had fishing rights along the river almost all the way to the estuary. I thought, hey, any canals? I spoke sadly of some bloke I used to know nearby called Arthur Goldhorn. It turned out she'd known him.

'Poor man,' she said. 'Born loser, Arthur. He tried riding point-to-point at Marks Tey, fell off. That cow Colette's gone to the dogs. Lost everything except the tide, over some loony investment in London.'

'Haven't they a son?' I asked, thinking, title?

'A token yokel, hardly literate, lives wild. Does odd jobs. Shouldn't be allowed, I say.

You'd think the social services'd do something, instead of bugger all.'

It's always a shock to hear a lady swear, but I agreed on principle.

'Heart attack,' my other cultivar, Talleyton, cut in. 'Arthur get any further with that canal thing, Maeve?'

'No. He invented that magnet. I couldn't see what the canal hold-up was. Mind you,'

Maeve added, lowering her voice so we drew in close not to miss a whiff of scandal,

'Colette went mental over some local antique dealer. Queer fish with an odd name. I always think the woman should control sex, don't you?'

My throat thickened. How long had it been since me and Colette made smiles? Years. I put in quickly, 'What canal thing?'

'Goldhorn owned Saffron Fields. Has an extinct canal. The inland length is all right, but it's a mess further down. Arthur had the idea of linking it with the estuary. It would join the North Sea to the Lake District.'

'Good idea,' I said, smiling, still working out how long it had been since I'd known Colette. But the canal story seemed reliable enough.

Before leaving, I thanked Clovis for his hospitality. He said he was glad I'd enjoyed it.

'You were popular, Lovejoy,' he said, accompanying me to the hall. 'I noticed Gloria Dee and Sir Jesson giving you their cards. And Maeve and Bert Talleyton. So you're interested in canal engineering! It's his speciality. He does the Leicester Loop, you know. Pity you shot a zero. I'll tell Caprice you bagged a dozen, shall I?'

'Clovis,' I said with feeling, 'you're a gent.'

Outside I walked off, ready to start thumbing a lift. Mort suddenly fell in with me, coming from nowhere. The watery sun was slanting across the huge ornamental gates.

I didn't know what to say, kept looking at the lad.

'This way.' He led me down a gully. No time at all, we were among trees, then undergrowth. I finally halted, tired. The dog Jasper was with us.

'Look, Mort,' I said lamely. 'I'd better get home.'

'We're here.'

A ramshackle hut was somehow there. You could stand within yards and not notice it. I heard a brook's gurgle nearby. He pulled branches aside. I recalled Maeve's remark about Colette's boy who lived wild. Yet Mr Hartson the head gamekeeper trusted Mort completely, left him alone with all those priceless guns. I stepped in after him.

'I collected these for you,' Mort said, shy.

'For me?' I was stunned.

'I knew you'd come.'

Garden implements, maybe a score, and all different. It sounds stupid, but nothing's more elegant than Edwin Budding's lawn mower. The world's first, patented in 1830.

Looked at from the side, it has a lovely Hogarthish curve. His pal John Ferrabee manufactured them, in Stroud.

Budding actually invented the idea from watching machines cut cloth in a textile mill.

Check that it has that delectable curve, its five blades arranged as a sort of empty cylinder, with a strange toothed roller to adjust cutting height, and you've found a fortune. It's worth a look in your old garden shed, I promise. By the following year, 1831, Budding's lawn mowers were being used in Regent's Park - one man pulling, one pushing, doing the work of 'six men with scythes and brooms', Loudon the great gardener wrote.

Snobbery persisted, though. Traditionalists grumbled that all 'effective' grass cutting must be done 'by the scythe'.

'You haven't raided any gardening museums, have you?' I croaked.

He shook his head. 'Mr Hartson lets me have old implements the nearby estates throw out.'

'Does he now.' I sat on a stool, weak. On rough shelves stood arrays of watering pots and cans. Every single one was a genuine antique. 'Watering pots' were from 1706 on.

Somehow, Mort had acquired examples of all the important variants. He had a bulbous Dutch mid-eighteenth-century thing, fifteen inches tall, black-painted copper with a vast rose on its spout and a hooped top handle. Shining bright was a Victorian teapot can, its copper polished to a gleam, with a dainty drooping spout and no rose, hardly a hand's span tall. Desirable enough to make my mouth water was an English clay watering pot, seventeenth-century, jug-shaped and hardly a foot tall, with a fixed half-cover and a stubby spout ending in a flattish rose. I'd only ever seen one of these before in my whole life, even in East Anglia. I gaped at the lad.

'You're rich,' I told him. 'How did you know what to save?'

Mr Hartson stepped into the hut. 'He says they tell him.'

I jumped. 'I wish you'd stop bloody creeping about,' I said, narked. 'You lot scare me to frigging death.' I waited. 'They tell him?'

'Like speaking.' The gamekeeper shrugged. 'He feels odd. Sometimes he has to sit down.'

Quickly I stood up. 'Well, between you, you've amassed a fortune. The great gardener J. C. Loudon advocated all of these.' I pointed. 'That one is Money's "inverted" watering can. Date 1830, give or take a day. Loudon was a strict old codger, especially about watering seedlings. Said water should never fall with "more than its own weight". Very stern on what he called "carelessness on the part of the operator" washing soil from seedlings. Have you got one of Loudon's French thumbers? The flow's controlled by your thumb on a hole. It had been invented in England a decade earlier, but…' I petered out. 'What?'

'Mortimer needs your help, Lovejoy,' Mr Hartson said.

'To sell this lot? It's serious money.' So the lad had the divvy gift, same as me. Two rare birds in one shed. What are the chances of that?

'Not these, Lovejoy,' the old gamekeeper said. 'We believe Saffron Fields is in the wrong hands, and rightly should be returned to Mortimer.'

'Aye,' sez me, thick as a plank. 'But rightly doesn't work.' I looked at Mortimer's fantastic array. 'I mean, if I wanted a pricey collection of gardening implements, I'd get two serfs and steal the greatest assembly in the world, Queen Victoria's children's handmades at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, all tools labelled and no security to shake a stick at. See what I mean? Rights are only what you can hang on to.'

'Wrong, Lovejoy,' Mr Hartson said directly to me with those gamekeeper's eyes. 'Rights must be preserved.'

And then the most astonishing thing happened,

'That will do,' Mortimer said quietly.

That was it. No more. Yet Mr Hartson, head gamekeeper and Mortimer's boss, with wellnigh absolute power over several large estates and scores of underlings, simply nodded and said, 'I'll be getting on, then. I bid you good day, Lovejoy.' And left. That will do, from a sprog young enough to be… My thoughts ran out of steam.

Minutes later, me and Mort stood by the roadside. Evening was falling.

'How long will it take?' I asked after a bit.

'The bird numbers? They'll be up this time next year. To die again.'

What to say to his quiet voice, these haunting words? He gave a little click and Jasper materialized at his side.

'Don't do that,' I said, narked. 'Can't you shout his bloody name like ordinary people?'

He almost smiled, didn't make it. 'You live in a cottage,' he said. 'I walk past it. Can I visit?'

'Aye. Any time.' I cleared my throat. 'Er, knock first, eh? Only, sometimes a lady might stay.'

He held out his hand. A robin immediately flew on it, sticking like they do. Mort had a tiny white thing in his fingers. The robin took it, eyed me with a cock-of-the-walk sneer, and flirted away.

'They eat cheese instead of grubs,' I said, narked.

'They need living things,' he said. 'Cheese alone won't do. This bus is Mount Bures.'

This bus? I looked about. Nothing. We stood by the gate, spoke for a bit. I asked if he'd been in the wood the day I visited Arthur's grave. He nodded. I didn't mention Colette, but asked about Arthur's canal plans. He told me. Then a bus really did chug into sight.

'You kept the tide? Lord of the Manor, Saffron Fields?' He nodded. 'Primogeniture. Dad kept it back when he signed the guarantees.'

'See you soon, then, Mort. Come any time.'

'Thanks again for missing the birds. Write to me care of Mr Hartson.'

Did you shake hands with somebody you ought to have known all his life? I dithered, finally didn't, caught the bus.

I watched him until the bus rocked round the bend.

That was the good bit of the day, slaughtering all that wildlife and encountering Mort.

Now read on.