The Judas Pair

The Judas Pair

By

Jonathan Gash

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

PENGUIN CRIME FICTION

THE JUDAS PAIR

Jonathan Gash is the author of eighteen other Lovejoy mysteries, including The Possessions of a Lady. Gash's books served as the inspiration for the long-running Lovejoy television series on the Arts & Entertainment Network. He developed his love for antiques as a medical student when he earned extra money by working in a London street market. Now Mr. Gash is drawing upon his medical expertise to write a new series starring Dr. Clare Burtonall, the first of which is entitled Different Women Dancing.

Copyright © John Grant, 1977

Gash, Jonathan.

The Judas Pair.

Originally published: New York: Harper & Row, 1977

ISBN 0 14 01.2688 0

This book is dedicated, with respect and humility, to the Chinese god Wei Dt'o, protector of books against fire, pillaging, decay, and dishonest borrowers.

LOVEJOY

Chapter 1

This story's about greed, desire, love, and death—in the world of antiques you get them all.

Just when I was in paradise the phone rang. Knowing it would be Tinker Dill, I pushed her into the bathroom, turned all the taps on, and switched the radio on.

"What the hell's that noise?" Tinker sounded half sloshed as usual.

"You interrupted again, Tinker," I said wearily.

"How am I to know you're on the nest?" he said, peeved.

In the White Hart they only had one record that worked, and it was notching up the decibels in a background muddle of voices.

"What is it?"

"Got somebody for you," he said.

I was all ears. You know that tingling a sexy promise gives? Double it for religion. Treble it for collecting. And for antique dealers like me hearing of a customer, multiply by infinity to get somewhere near the drive that forces a man over every conceivable boundary of propriety, common sense, reason—oh, and law. I almost forgot law. I'd been on the nest two days with Sheila (was she Sheila, or was that last Thursday? I couldn't remember) and here I was quivering like a selling plater at its first race. All because one of my scouts was phoning in with a bite.

Scouts? We call them barkers in the trade. An antique dealer has scouts, people who will pass information his way. Tinker Dill was one of mine. I have three or four, depending on how rich I'm feeling at the time, paid on commission. Tinker was the best. Not because he was much good, but because he was loyal. And he was loyal because he judged every deal in terms of whisky. Or gin. Or rum.

"Buying or selling?" I said, quite casual. Twenty years dealing antiques, and my hands sweating because a barker rings in. It's a right game.

"Buying."

"Big or little?"

"Big."

"You having me on, Tinker?" That stupid bird was banging on the bathroom door wanting to be let out.

"Straight up, Lovejoy," he said. All right, all right. I was born with the name. Still, you can't forget Lovejoy Antiques, Inc., can you? The "Inc." bit was pure invention, brilliance. It sounds posh, reeks of dollars and high-flying American firms backing that knowledgeable antique wizard Lovejoy.

"Got enough copper in case the bleeps go?" I asked.

"Eh? Oh, sure."

"Hang on, then."

I dropped the receiver, crossed to open the bathroom door. There she was, trying to push past me into the room, blazing.

"What the hell do you mean—?" she was starting to say when I gave her a shove. Down she went on the loo amid the steam.

"Now," I explained carefully, "silence. Si-lence. Got it, love?"

She rubbed her arm, her eyes glazed at the enormity of these events.

I patted her cheek. "I'm waiting," I said. "Got it, love?"

"Yes." Her voice barely made it.

"I've got a deal coming in. So shut your teeth. Sit there and listen to all my lovely hot water going to waste."

I slammed the door on her, locked it again, and found Tinker hanging on by the skin of his alcohol-soaked teeth.

"Big? How big?" I demanded.

"Well…"

"Come on."

"S and four D's," he said shakily.

My scalp, already prickling and crawling, gave up as the magic code homed in.

"Give over, Dill."

"Honest, Lovejoy. God's truth."

"In this day and age?"

"Large as life, Lovejoy. Look, this bloke's real. He's here now."

"Where?"

"White Hart."

My mind took off. Computers aren't in it. Speed they've got and memory too, so people say. I have both those attributes and a bell. This bell's in my chest. Put me within a hundred feet of a genuine antique and it chimes, only gently at first, then a clamor as I get nearer the real thing. By the time I'm touching it I can hardly breathe because my bell's clanging like a fire engine. It's never been wrong yet. Don't misunderstand—I've sold some rubbish in my time. And lies come as natural to me as blinking in a gale. After all, that's life, really, isn't it? A little half-truth here and there, with a faint hint of profit thrown in for good measure, does no harm. And I make a living mainly from greed. Not my greed, you understand. Your greed, his greed, everybody's greed. And I want no criticism from self-righteous members of the indignant honest old public, because they're the biggest school of sharks on this planet. No? Listen:

Say you're at home relaxing in your old rocking chair. In comes a stranger. He's heard of your old—or indeed your new—rocking chair. Could it be, he gasps, that it's the one and only rocking chair last used by Lord Nelson on his flagship the Golden Hind? Good heavens, he cries, clapping his eyes on it in ecstasy. It is!

Now, you put your pipe down, astonished. What the hell's going on? you demand. And who the hell is this stranger butting into your house? And what's he babbling about? And—take your hands off my old rocking chair!

With me so far? Good.

The stranger, confronted with your indignation, turns sincere and trusting eyes to you. I've searched all my life, he explains. For what? you demand suspiciously. For Lord Nelson's famous old rocking chair, he confides. And here it is, at last. It's beautiful. My lifelong search is over.

See what I'm getting at? At everybody's dishonesty. At mine. And at yours. No? Yes! Read on.

Now, if I were a trusting soul, I'd leave you to complete the story, give it a proper ending, so to speak. How you smile at the stranger, explain that the chair's only a secondhand mock-up your cousin Harry's lad did at night school, and how in any case Nelson, who is pretty famous for rocking on the cradle of the deep for years on end, was the last bloke on earth ever to need a rocking chair, and how you kindly proceed to put the misguided stranger right over a cup of tea with gay amusing chat. But you can't be trusted to end the story the way it really would happen! And why? Because the stranger, with the light of crusading fervor burning in his eyes, reaches for his wallet and says those glorious magic words—How much?

Now what's the real ending of the story? I'll tell you. You leap off your—no, Lord Nelson's!—rocking chair, brush it down, bring out the Australian sherry left over from Christmas, and cod on you're the hero's last living descendant. And you just manage to stifle your poor little innocent daughter as she looks up from her history homework and tries to tell the visitor that Nelson missed sailing on the Golden Hind by a good couple of centuries, and send her packing to bed so she won't see her honest old dad shingling this stupid bum for every quid he can.

Convinced? No? Then why are you thinking of that old chair in your attic?

Everybody's got a special gift. Some are psychic, some have an extra dress sense, beauty, a musical talent, or have green fingers. Some folk are just lucky, or have the knack of throwing a discus. But nobody's been missed out. We've all got one special gift. The only trouble is learning which it is we've got.

I had this pal who knew horses—they used to come to him even when he'd no sugar. He and I once collected a Chippendale from near a training stables and we paused to watch these nags running about like they do. "Quid on the big one," I said, bored. "The funny little chap," he said, and blow me if it didn't leave the rest standing. It was called Arkle, a champion, they told us. See what I mean? To me that tiny, gawky, ungainly brute breathing all wrong was horrible. To my pal it was clearly the best of the lot. Now, to him a Turner painting—screaming genius over every inch of canvas—would look like a nasty spillage. Not to me. I've only to see an eighty-eight bus labeled "Tate Gallery" and my bell goes like the clappers. Like I say, a gift.

Once I brought this dirty old monstrosity for ten quid. It looked for all the world like a little doll's house with a couple of round windows stuck on, and a great sloping piece of broken tin fixed to the back. The boys at the auction gave me an ironic cheer, making my face red as fire. But my bell was bonging. My find was eventually the only original Congreve clock ever to be exhibited within living memory—a clock worked on a spring controlled by a little ball rolling down a groove cut in an inclined plane, designed and made by the great inventor William Congreve almost two hundred years ago.

If you've got the courage, find out what your own particular knack is, then trust it. Obey your bells, folks. They're telling you about cold stone certainties.

Where was I?

Tinker Dill. S and four D's, and he'd sounded frantic. Ten thousand.

S and D's? Look in any antique shop. Casually, you'll find yourself wanting some lovely little trinket, say a twist-stem drinking glass. The more you look the more you want it. So you search it for the price and find a little ticket tied on marked HA/-, or some such.

We use codes, all very simple. One of the most elementary is that based on a letter-number transposition. Each code has a key word—for example, SUTHERLAND. Note that it has ten letters. For S read 1, for U read 2, and so on to N, which is 9. For D read not 10 but nought, because you already have a letter to denote 1. So the glass goblet you fancied is priced at forty-eight quid. There are several ten-letter codes. A quick look around tips you off.

One further point. X is often used to denote the pound sign —£—or zero. That way, the customer thinks the ticket is something mysterious to do with bookkeeping or identification. Not on your life. When in doubt, it's money. The code price marked is often what the dealer paid for the glass in the first place, so naturally he'll stick about fifty per cent on, if not more. And remember you may actually look a mug. In antiques you pay for appearances—yours, the antiques themselves, and the antique dealer's wife's fur coat. So my tip is: Argue. Even though it goes against the grain in polite old Britain, never pay the marked price, not even if the dealer offers an immediate discount. Hum and ha, take your time, look doubtful. Spin it out and then, as gently and sincerely as you possibly can, barter.

Listen to me, giving away my next year's profit.

"Look, Tinker," I said, not daring to believe him.

"I know what you're going to say, Lovejoy," he said, desperate now.

"You do?"

"Trade's bad. Profits are bad. Finds are bad. Everything's bad."

Like I said, some are psychic.

"Who's got ten thousand these days?" I snapped.

"It's right up your street, Lovejoy."

"Where's the mark?"

"In the saloon bar."

Yet something was not quite right. It was too good to be true.

"How did he know you?"

"Came in looking for barkers and dealers. Somebody in the Lane told him we used this pub. He's done a few pubs at the Lane and on the Belly."

Petticoat Lane and Portobello Road, the London street markets. To ask after reliable dealers—and I'm the most reliable of all known dealers, honest—was reasonable and sounded open enough.

"He spoke to you first?"

"No." Tinker was obviously proud from the way his voice rose eagerly. "I was at the bar. I heard him ask Ted." Ted is the barman. "He asked if any antique dealers were in the bar. I chipped in." He paused. "I was in like a flash, Lovejoy," he added, pained.

"Good lad, Tinker," I said. "Well done."

"I told him I was your runner. He wants to see you. He's got your name in a notebook."

"Look, Tinker," I said, suddenly uneasy, but he protested.

"No, no, he's not Old Bill. Honest. He's straight."

"Old Bill" was the law—police. I had licenses to worry about. And taxes, paid and unpaid. And account books. And some account books I hadn't got at all.

"What's he after?"

"Locks. Right up your street."

My heart almost stopped.

"Locks locks, or just locks?" I stuttered.

"Locks," Tinker said happily. "Flinters."

"If you're kaylied," I threatened.

"Sober as ever was," the phone said. That'll be the day, I thought. I'd never seen Tinker Dill vertical in twenty years. Horizontal or listing, yes.

"Any particular ones?"

"See him first, Lovejoy. I'll keep him here."

"All right." I suddenly decided. A chance was a chance. And buyers were what it was all about. "Hang on to him, Tinker. Can you hear a car?"

He thought for a second.

"Yes. One just pulling into the car park," he said, sounding surprised. "Why?"

"It's me," I said, and shut off, grinning.

To my surprise the bath taps were running and the bathroom door was shut. I opened up and there was this blonde, somewhat sodden, sulking in steam.

"What on earth—?" I began, having forgotten.

"You pig," she said, cutting loose with the language.

"Oh, I remember." She'd been making a racket while I was on the phone. "You're Sheila."

She retorted, "You pig."

"I'm sorry," I told her, "but I have to go out. Can I drop you somewhere?"

"You already have," she snapped, flouncing past and snatching up her things.

"It's just that there's a buyer turned up."

She took a swing at me.

I retreated. "Have you seen my car keys?"

"Have I hell!" she screamed, rummaging under the divan for her shoes.

"Keep your hair on." I tried to reason with her, but women can be very insensitive to the real problems of existence.

She gave me a burst of tears, a few more flashes of temper, and finally the way women will began an illogical assault on my perfectly logical reasons for making her go. "Who is she?"

"That she is a hairy bloke," I told her. "A buyer."

"And you prefer a buyer to me. Is that it?" she blazed.

"Yes," I said, puzzled at her extraordinary mentality.

She went for me, firing handbag, a shoe, and a pillow as she came, claws at the ready. I gave her a backhander to calm the issue somewhat, at which she settled weeping while I found a coat. I'm all for sex equality.

"Look, help me to find my keys," I said. "If I don't find them I'll be late." Women seem to have no sense sometimes.

"You hit me," she sobbed.

"He's been recommended to me by London dealers," I said proudly, ransacking the bureau where my sales and purchase records are kept—occasionally and partly, that is.

"All you think of is antiques," she whimpered.

"It isn't!" I said indignantly. "I asked you about your holidays yesterday."

"In bed," she cut back viciously. "When you wanted me."

"Look for keys. They were here the day before, when I brought you back."

I found them at last under a Thai temple woodcut and rushed her outside the cottage, remembering to leave a light on and the door alarm switched over to our one vigilant hawkeye at the village constabulary station, in case the British Museum decided to come on a marauding break-in for my latest acquisition, a broken Meissen white I'd have a hard time giving away to a church jumble.

My elderly Armstrong-Siddeley waited, rusting audibly in the Essex night air between the untidy trees. It started first push, to my delight, and we were off.

"Antiques are a sickness with you, Lovejoy." She sniffed. I turned on the gravel and the old banger—I mean the car— coughed out onto the dark tree-lined road.

"Nothing but," I replied happily.

"I think you're mad. What are antiques for anyway? What's the point?"

That's women for you. Anything except themselves is a waste of time. Very self-centered, women are.

"Let me explain, honey."

"You're like a child playing games."

She sat back in the seat staring poutishly at the nearing village lights. I pushed the accelerator pedal down hard. The speedometer needle crept up to the thirty mark as the engine pulsed into maximum thrust. With a following southwesterly I'd once notched forty on the Cambridge Road.

"He might be a collector," I said. She snorted in an unladylike manner.

"Collector," she said scornfully.

"The collector's the world's greatest and only remaining fanatic," I preached fervently. "Who else would sell his wife, wreck his marriage, lose his job, go broke, gamble, rob and cheat, mortgage himself to the hilt a dozen times, throw all security out of the window, for a scattering of objects as diverse as matchboxes, teacups, postcards of music-hall comedians, old bicycles, steam engines, pens, old fans, railway-station lanterns, Japanese sword decorations, and seventeenth-century corsets? Who else but collectors?" I looked rapturously into her eyes. "It's greater than sex, Sheila."

"Nonsense," she snapped, the wind from the car's speed almost ruffling her hair.

"It's greater than religion. Greater love hath no man," I said piously, "than that he gives up his life for his collection."

I wish now I hadn't said that.

"And you make money out of them. You prey on them."

"I serve them." There were almost tears in my eyes. "I need to make the odd copper from them, of course I do. But not for profit's sake. Only so I can keep going, sort of make money to maintain the service."

"Liar," she said, and slapped my face.

As I was driving I couldn't clock her one by way of return, so I resorted to persuasion. "Nobody regrets us having to split more than me" was the best I could manage, but she stayed mad.

She kept up a steady flow of recrimination as I drove into the village, the way women will. It must have been nine o'clock when I reached the White Hart. The Armstrong was wheezing badly by then. Its back wheels were smoking again. I wished I knew what made it do that. I pulled into the forecourt and pushed a couple of quid into her hand.

"Look, darling," I said hastily. "See you soon."

"What am I to do now?" she complained, coming after me.

"Ring for a taxi, there's a good girl," I told her. "To the station."

"You pig, Lovejoy," she wailed.

"There's a train soon—probably."

"When will I see you?" she called after me as I trotted toward the pub.

"I'll give you a ring," I said over my shoulder.

"Promise?"

"Honestly."

I heard her shout something else after me, but by then I was through the door and into the saloon bar.

Women have no sense of priorities. Ever noticed that?

Chapter 2

The saloon bar was crowded. I labeled everybody in there with one swift glance. A dozen locals, including this bird of about thirty-six sitting stylishly on a barstool and showing thighs to the assembled multitude. We had been friends once—twice, to be truthful. Now I just lusted across the heads of her admirers and grinned a lazaroid greeting, to which she returned a cool smoke-laden stare. Three dealers were already in: Jimmo, stout, balding, and Staffordshire pottery; Jane Felsham, thirtyish, shapely—would have been desirable if she hadn't been an antique dealer—blond, Georgian silver and early watercolors; and finally Adrian, sex unknown, elegant, pricey, and mainly Regency furniture and household wares. Four strangers, thinly distributed, and a barker or two chatting them up and trying to interest them in antique Scandinavian brass plaques made last April. Well, you can only try. They can always say no.

Tinker Dill was in the far corner by the fireplace with this middle-aged chap. I forged my way over.

"Oh," Tinker said, acting like the ninth-rate Olivier he is. "Oh. And here's my friend Lovejoy I was telling you about."

"Evening, Tinker." I nodded at the stranger and we shook hands.

He seemed fairly ordinary, neat, nothing new about his clothes but not tatty. He could have saved up ten thousand all right. But a genuine collector…? Not really.

"Mr. Field, meet Lovejoy." Tinker was really overdoing it, almost wagging like a dog. We said how do and sat.

"My turn, Tinker, from last time," I said, giving him a note to shut him up. He was off to the bar like a rocket.

"Mr. Dill said you are a specialist dealer, Mr. Lovejoy." Field's accent was anonymous southern.

"Yes," I admitted.

"Very specialized, I believe?"

"Yes. Of course," I hedged as casually as I could manage, "from the way the trade has progressed in the past few years, I maintain a pretty active interest in several other aspects."

"Naturally," he said, all serious.

"But I expect Dill's told you where my principal interest lies."

"Yes."

This guy was no dealer. In fact, if he knew a Regency snuffbox from a Rolls-Royce it was lucky guesswork.

Barkers like Tinker are creatures of form. They have to be, if you think about it. They find possible buyers who are interested, say, in picking up a William IV dining set. Now, a barker's job is to get clients: buyers or sellers, but preferably the former. He's no right to go saying, Oh, sorry, sir, but my particular dealer's only interested in buying or selling oil paintings of the Flemish School, so you've had it from me. If a barker did that he'd get the push smartish. So whatever the mark—sorry, buyer —wants, a barker will agree his particular dealer's got it, and not only that, but he will also swear blind that his dealer's certainly the world's most expert expert on William IV dining sets or whatever, and throw in a few choice remarks about how crooked other dealers are, just for good measure.

Now a dealer coming strolling in at this point only showing interest in penny-farthing bicycles would ruin all the careful groundwork. The customer will realize he's been sadly misled and depart in a huff for the National Gallery or some other inexperienced amateur outfit. Also, and just as bad, the barker (if he's any good) pushes off to serve another dealer, because clearly the first dealer's going to starve to death, and barkers don't find loyalty the most indispensable of all virtues. The dealer then starves, goes out of business, and those of us remaining say a brief prayer for the repose of his soul—while racing after the customer as fast as we can go because we all know where we can get a mint William IV dining set at very short notice.

"He has a very high opinion of your qualities," Field informed me.

"That's very kind." If Field got the irony it didn't show.

"You made a collection for the Victoria and Albert Museum, I understand, Mr. Lovejoy."

"Oh, well." I winced inwardly, trying to seem all modest. I determined to throttle Tinker. Even innocent customers know how to check that sort of tale.

"Wasn't it last year?"

"You must understand," I said hesitantly, putting on as much embarrassment as I dared.

"Understand?"

"I'm not saying I have, and I'm not saying I haven't," I went on. "It's a client's business, not mine. Even if South Kensington did ask me to build up their terracotta Roman statuary, it's not for Dill or myself to disclose their interests." May I be forgiven.

"Ah. Confidentiality." His brow cleared.

"It's a matter of proper business, Mr. Field," I said with innocent seriousness.

"I do see," he said earnestly, lapping it up. "A most responsible attitude."

"There are standards." I shrugged to show I was positively weighed down with conscience. "Ordinary fair play," I said. Maybe I was overdoing it, because he went all broody. He was coming to the main decision when Tinker came back with a rum for me and a pale ale for Field.

I gave Tinker the bent eye and he instantly pushed off.

"Are you an… individual dealer, Mr. Lovejoy?" he asked, taking the plunge.

"If you mean do I work alone, yes."

"No partners?"

"None." I thought a bit, then decided I should be straight— almost—with this chap. He looked as innocent as a new policeman. I don't know where they keep them till they're grown up, honest I don't. "I ought to qualify that, Mr. Field."

"Yes?" He came alert over his glass.

"There are occasions when an outlay, or a risk, is so large that for a particular antique it becomes necessary to take an… extra dealer, pair up so to speak, in order to complete a sale." I'd almost said "accomplice." You know what I mean.

"In what way?" he said guardedly.

"Supposing somebody offered me the Elgin Marbles for a million," I said, observing his expression ease at the light banter. "I'd have to get another dealer to make up the other half million before I could buy them."

"I see." He was smiling.

"For that sale, we would be equal partners."

"But not after?"

"No. As I said, Mr. Field," I said, all pious, "I work alone because, well, my own standards may not be those of other dealers."

"Of course, of course." For some reason he was relieved I was a loner. "Any arrangements between us—supposing we came to one—would concern…?" He waited.

"Just us," I confirmed.

"And Dill?"

"He's free lance. He wouldn't know anything, unless you said."

"And other employees?"

"I hire as the needs arise."

"So it is possible," he mused.

"What is, Mr. Field?"

"You can have a confidential agreement with an antique dealer."

"Certainly." I should have told him that money can buy silence nearly as effectively as it can buy talk. Note the "nearly," please.

"Then I would like to talk to you—in a confidential place, if that can be arranged."

"Now?" I asked.

"Please."

I glanced around the bar. There were two people I had business with. "I have a cottage not far away. We can chat there."

"Fine."

I crossed to Jimmo and briefly quizzed him about his Chinese porcelain blanc de Chine lions—white pot dogs to the uninitiated. He told me in glowing terms of his miraculous find.

"Cost me the earth," he said fervently. "Both identical. Even the balls are identically matched."

For the sake of politeness (and in case I needed to do business with him fairly soon) I kept my end up, but I'd lost interest. The "lions" are in fact Dogs of Fo. The point is that even if they are K'ang-hsi period, as Jimmo said, and 1720 A.D. would do fine, they should not match exactly to be a real matched pair. The male dog rests one paw on a sphere, the female on a pup. Jimmo had somehow got hold of two halves of two distinct pairs. I eased away as best I could.

Adrian—handbag, curls, and all—was next. He and Jane Felsham were bickering amiably over a percentage cut over some crummy "patch-and-comfit" boxes. "Real Bilston enamel," Adrian was telling her. "Pinks genuine as that. Oh." He saw me at his elbow and stamped his foot in temper. "Why won't the silly bitch listen, Lovejoy? Tell her."

"How many?" I asked.

"He's got six," Jane said evenly. "Hello, Lovejoy."

"Hi. It sounds a good collection."

"There you are, dearie!" Adrian screamed.

"Only two are named." Jane shook her head. "Place names are all the go."

These little boxes, often only an inch across, were used in the eighteenth century for holding those minute artificial black beauty patches fashionable gentry of the time stuck on their faces to contrast with the powdered pallor of their skins. Filthy habit.

"Any blues?"

"One," Adrian squeaked. "I keep begging her to take them. She can't see a bargain, Lovejoy."

"Any mirrors in the lids?"

"Two."

"Four hundred's still no bargain, Adrian dear," Jane said firmly.

"Show us," I said, wanting to get away. Field was still patient by the fireplace.

Adrian brought out six small enameled boxes on his palm. One was lumpy, less shiny than the rest. I felt odd for a second. My bell.

"I agree with Jane," I lied, shrugging. "But they are nice."

"Three-eighty, then," Adrian offered, sensing my reaction.

"Done." I lifted the little boxes from his hand and fought my way free, saying "Come around tomorrow."

Adrian swung around to the surprised Jane. "See? Serves you right, silly cow!"

I left them to fight it out and found Field. "My car's just outside."

I gave the nod to Tinker that he'd finished on a good note. He beamed and toasted to me over a treble gin.

The cottage was in a hell of a mess. I have this downstairs divan for, so to speak, communal use. It looked almost as if somebody had been shacked up there for a couple of days with a bird. I smiled weakly at my customer.

"Sorry about this. I had a, er, cousin staying for a while."

He made polite noises as I hid a few of Sheila's underclothes under cushions and folded the divan aside. With only the table lamp, the room didn't look too much of a shambles. I pulled the kitchen door to in case he thought a hurricane was coming his way and sat him by my one-bar fire.

"A very pleasant cottage, Mr. Lovejoy," he said.

"Thanks." I could see he was wondering at the absence of antiques in an antique dealer's home. "I keep my stock of antiques dispersed in safe places," I explained. "After all, I'm in the phone book, and robbery's not unknown nowadays."

Stock. That's a laugh. I had six enameled boxes I'd not properly examined, for which I owed a mint payable by dawn.

"True, true," he agreed, and I knew I had again struck oil.

In his estimation I was now careful, safe, trustworthy, reliable, an expert, and the very soul of discretion. I drove home my advantage by apologizing for not having too much booze.

"I don't drink much myself," I confessed. "Will coffee do you?"

"Please."

"Everybody just calls me Lovejoy, Mr. Field," I informed him. "My trademark."

"Right." He smiled. "I'll remember."

I brewed up, quite liking him and wondering how to approach his money—I mean, requirements. So far he hadn't mentioned flinters. On the drive back in my jet-propelled Arm-strong-Siddeley we had made social chitchat that got us no nearer. He seemed a simple chap, unaware of the somewhat horrible niceties of my trade. Yet he appeared, from what Tinker had said, to have gone to a lot of trouble to find a dealer known to have a prime interest in flinters.

"How long have you lived here?"

"Since I started dealing. I got it from a friend."

She was a widow, thirty-seven. I'd lived with her two years, then she'd gone unreasonable like they do and off she pushed. She wrote later from Siena, married to an Italian. I replied in a flash saying how I longed for her, but she replied saying her husband hadn't an antique in the place, preferring new Danish planks of yellow wood to furniture, so I didn't write again except to ask for the cottage deeds.

"Instead of London?"

"Oh, I go up to the Smoke maybe once a week on average." And do the rest of the Kingdom as well, inch by bloody inch, once every quarter. On my knees mostly, sniffing and listening for my bell. I didn't tell him that, seeing I was supposed to be temporarily the big wheeler-dealer.

"To the markets?" he persisted.

"Yes. And some, er, private dealers that I know."

He nodded and drew breath. Here it comes, I thought. And it did.

"I'm interested in a certain collector's item," he said, as if he'd saved the words for a rainy day. "I'm starting a collection."

"Hmmm." The Lovejoy gambit.

"I want to know if you can help."

He sipped and waited. And I sipped and waited. Like a couple of those drinking ostriches, we dipped in silence.

"Er, can you?" he asked.

"If I can," I countered cagily. For an innocent novice, he wasn't doing too badly, and I was becoming distinctly edgy.

"Do you mean Dill didn't explain?"

"He explained you were interested in purchasing flintlocks," I said.

"Nothing else?"

"And that you had, er, sufficient funds."

"But not what it is I'm seeking?"

"No." I put down my cup because my hands were quivering slightly. If it turned dud I'd wring Tinker's neck. "Perhaps," I said evenly, "you'd better tell me."

"Dueling pistols."

"I guessed that." Flintlock duelers are the P. & O. line of weapons men.

"A very special pair."

"That too." I cleared my throat. "Which pair, Mr. Field?"

He stared at me across the darkened room. "I want the Judas pair," he said.

My heart sank. With luck, I could catch Tinker before Ted called time at the pub, and annihilate him on the spot for sending me a dummy. No wonder he'd been evasive when I asked him on the phone.

I gazed back at the poor misguided customer. "Did you say the Judas pair?" I said, still hoping I'd misheard.

"The Judas pair," he affirmed.

Digression time, folks.

Flintlocks are sprung iron gadgets which flip a piece of flint onto a steel so as to create a spark. This spark, at its most innocent, can be used to ignite a piece of old rope or other tinder and set it smoldering to be blown into a flame for lighting a fire, candles, your pipe. This is the standard tinder lighter of history. You'd be surprised how many sorts of tinder lighters there are, many incredibly ingenious. But these instruments are the humdrum end of the trade, interesting and desirable though they are. You see, mankind made this pleasant little system into the business bit of weapons for killing each other.

About the time of our Civil War, the posh firing weapon was a wheel lock. This delectable weaponry consisted of a sprung wheel spinning at the touch of a trigger and rubbing on a flint as it did so. (The very same mechanism is used in a gas-fueled cigarette lighter of today, believe it or not.) They were beautiful things, mostly made in Germany, where there were clock-and-lock makers aplenty. A ball-butted German wheel lock costs the earth nowadays. And remember, the less marked the better. None of this stupid business of boring holes and chipping the walnut stock to prove it's old. Never try to improve any antique. Leave well alone. Sheraton and Constable knew what they were doing, and chances are that you are as ignorant as I am. Stick to wiping your antiques with a dry duster. Better still, don't even do that.

These wheel locks were rifled for accuracy. Prince Rupert, leader of his dad's Cavaliers, had a destructive habit of shooting weathercocks off steeples as he rode through captured towns. However, they were somewhat slow, clumsy, heavy, and took time to fire. The reason was the spark. It plopped into a little pan where you had thoughtfully sprinkled black gunpowder. This ignited and burned through a small hole into your end of the barrel, where you'd placed a larger quantity of gunpowder, a small lead bullet about the size of a marble, and a piece of old wadding to keep it all in. Bang! If you knew the delay to a millisec, the shift of the wind, could control your horse, pointed it right, and kept everything crossed for luck, you were one more weathercock short. It asked to be improved.

The culmination in weapons was the true flintlock—faster, and quicker to fire again should you miss. This may not be important, but only if your enemies are all weathercocks. Once the idea caught on, the wheel lock was replaced and the true flintlock came onto the historical scene.

The French had a crack at making them, and wonderful attempts they were. Some superb examples exist. I've had many with knobs on, gold inlay, silver escutcheons, Damascus-barreled beauties with delicate carving on precision locks that would melt your heart. And some beautiful Spanish miquelet pistols—a Mediterranean fancy of a strangely bulky style—are decorated to perfection. I admit that tears come to my eyes writing this, mostly because everybody else has them, not me. And Dutch too, though their taste for carving ugly ivory heads and figurines on the grips gives me the willies. All nations did their stuff on the flintlock, from the early snaphances and English doglocks to the final great explosion of exquisite functional murderous perfection in—you've guessed it—dear old peaceful Britain.

Came the industrial boom days and an outburst of inventive genius which was to catapult these islands into wealth, prominence, and power. Don't think our armies won by unaided valor, though they had it in plenty. They used an improved flintlock, standardized by a thoughtful young English squire, Oliver Cromwell by name. And it fired faster, surer, and noisier than anyone else's, which was a blessing in war.

From then the flintlock didn't look back. Inventors added devices you would hardly believe: flintlocks that fired under water (work it out), flintlock repeating rifles, flintlock revolvers, flintlock machine guns, ingenious safety catches that actually worked even if you forgot to slip them on, breech-loading flintlocks by the score, all the time edging toward a shorter firing time between pulling the trigger and sending regrets to your opponent's widow.

And ladies were at it too—no more than you'd expect—in subtle little ways having a charm all their own. Muff pistols, made for folding away in their hot little hands, were their scene, but they also liked tiny collapsible guns built into their prayer-books—presumably in the Exodus bit. Church was more exciting in those days.

By the 1770s dueling was in, and here comes the Judas pair. Or, rather, here they don't come.

Be careful, O ye innocent purchaser of these valuable—I mean, and repeat, valuable—weapons. They should be Damascus-barreled (i.e., spiral-welded barrels) and, at their best, brown because of a veneer of faint rust skillfully applied to the metal by makers of genius. They should have walnut stocks, and usually be rifle-grooved. But if the barrel measures less than nine inches, utter a loud derisory snort and mentally divide the asking price by three, if not four, because you are being had by some dealer who is trying to pass off a pair of officer's holster pistols as genuine duelers. A sneer is useful at this stage. On the other hand, if, say, they have ten-inch barrels, try to keep cool and go on to the next step, which is to look for decoration. Almost any metallic decoration on the barrels or on the locks disqualifies, because dueling, remember, was naughty, and silver squiggles and gold inlays tended to catch the first gleam of light on Wandsworth Common and reflect it unerringly into the eagle eyes of London's annoyed watchmen. You are allowed one silver escutcheon plate on the butt. And even this displeases you, because the real flintlock geniuses of Regency London knew their onions. Somber perfection was their aim. They achieved it.

Pick up a genuine Regency dueler. Hold it with your arm straight down. Now lift as if about to aim. Its weight makes it wobble in the strongest fist as it rises. Up it comes, wobbling and waggling, and you begin to wonder how they managed to hit anything with the long barrel waving in the breeze. Then, just about on level with your bottom rib, something so remarkable happens you won't believe me, but it's the truth—a genuine flintlock dueler begins to lift itself. Honestly. Try it. The weight evaporates. The wobble disappears. Up it goes, seemingly of its own accord, and all you need to do is point it right. Its perfect balance, its meticulous design, and the love and joy expended in its making have achieved the seemingly impossible. That's the genuine dueler—grim, somber, almost dull of appearance, lying with its identically matched partner in a wooden case with powder flask, bullet molds, flints, separate ramrod, and screwdrivers. It reeks of class. It screams of perfection.

A pair of mint—that is, perfectly preserved—cased flintlock duelers would buy you a couple of new cars nowadays, minimum. A mint pair of them with a pedigree—belonging, say, to some hero, a famous dandy of the time, or perhaps some pal of Beau Brummell's or a member of the then royalty—will virtually buy you anything. If you discover such a pair of old pistols in a dirty old box upstairs, rush to the nearest church and light a candle in thanks to your Maker—Bate, Monlong, Murdoch, Pauly, whoever it turns out to be. Then retire for life in affluence.

Finally, one point more. Just like Queen Anne silver, each weapon is, or should be, named on the lock. Don't throw value away. Your famous silversmith's monogram can double or treble the value of your fruit bowl. So your famous maker's name can send your find ever upward in value. The names are too many to give here, but Joseph Manton; John Manton; Wogden, who gave his name as a nickname to dueling (a "Wogden affair"); the brilliant Joseph Egg; Henry Nock the Great and his younger relative Sam that he had a terrible row with; Mortimer; Tatham, who blew himself to pieces on a cannon for reasons best not gone into; Freeman; the fashionable Rigby; the Reverend Alexander Forsyth, who invented the percussion system, which did away with flintlocks altogether and doubled the killing speed—they are some you should not lose on your way home.

And last but not least, one "Durs" (nearly as bad as Lovejoy) Egg, flintlock maker to kings and princes, genius extraordinaire, maker—so they say—of the one and only Judas pair of flintlock duelers. Well.

This young man came to London about 1770 to seek his fortune. With another Swiss, Pauly, he became interested in the science of pneumatics and air propulsion, and between them they produced a variety of odd but lethal air guns. In later years he lost a fortune by inventing a flying machine, the Flying Dolphin, which he kept in a hangar down Knightsbridge way, to London society's huge delight and derision. A genius whose habit it was to pattern the walnut stocks of his flintlocks with a curiously stippled star design, to aid in the grip. He signed himself always by his nickname, Durs.

The legend is that he made twelve—only twelve—pairs of dueling pistols. The legend goes on to say that he privately made a thirteenth pair, when something terrible happened. What it was the legend fails to explain.

That thirteenth pair, sinister weapons of ill-omen, were his last. They were never found or heard of except as obscure rumors. Any antique dealer worth his salt will laugh till he falls down if you ask after them. They don't exist, and everybody knows it.

That thirteenth pair of flintlock duelers is the Judas pair.

I drew breath.

"I've bad news, Mr. Field," I managed to get out.

"Bad news?"

"The Judas pair. They don't exist," I said firmly, and rose to get my emergency beer. "They're a myth, a legend. The antique trade's riddled with myths."

"Is it really?" He was oddly calm for somebody who'd just been put down.

"Really," I told him. No use mucking about.

He watched me splash the ale as I drove the truth savagely home. "Michelangelo's Goliath to match his David. Turner's mysterious set of portraits and industrial paintings. Napoleon's woodcuts done by his very own lily-white hands. Sir Francis Drake's poetry in two breathtaking volumes. Bill Shakespeare's latest play, King Penda. Robin Hood's diary. Czar Alexander's secret will. The Grail. Excalibur. Prince John's necklace from the Wash. Friar Bacon's perpetual clock. Leonardo's jeweled casket of secrets. Cleopatra's ruby ring. The Kohinoor's partner diamond, even bigger and better. Nazi treasure chests in those tiresome bloody lakes. Rembrandt's French landscapes. Chippendale's missing design books. All myths. Like," I added harshly, "the Judas pair."

"Did Dill tell you how much I was willing to pay?" he asked.

"Ten thousand," I said bitterly. "Just my luck."

"Now I believe you, Lovejoy," he said, calm as you please.

"Look," I said slowly. "Maybe I'm not getting through to you. Can't you understand what I'm saying? Ten thousand's too little. So is ten million. You can't get something if it doesn't exist."

"Before," he continued evenly, "I thought you were leading me on, perhaps pretending to be more honest than you really were. That is a common deception in all forms of business." I took a mouthful of ale to stop myself gaping too obviously. "Now I believe you are an honest man. A dishonest dealer, seeing I know little about the subject, would have exploited my ignorance."

"It happens," I admitted weakly.

"I accepted that risk when I came to you." Field stared thoughtfully at me.

"So you knew about the Judas pair being legendary?"

"From various sources."

"And it was a try-on, then."

"Yes."

"Well, Mr. Field." I rose. "You've had your fun. Now, before you leave, is it worth your while to tell me what you do want?" I stood over him. To my surprise he remained unabashed. In fact, he seemed more cool as the chat wore on.

"Certainly."

"Right. Give." I sat, exuding aggression.

"I want you to do a job."

"Legal?"

"Legal. Right up your street, as Dill would say." So he'd listened in on Tinker's phone call as I'd guessed. "You'll accept? It will be very lucrative."

"What is it?"

"Find me," he said carefully, "the Judas pair."

I sighed wearily. The guy was a nutter. "Haven't I just explained—?"

"Wrongly." Field leaned forward. "Lovejoy, the Judas pair exist. They killed my brother."

It was becoming one of those days. I should have stayed on the nest with Sheila, somewhere safe and warm.

Chapter 3

Elizabethan ladies—the First, I hasten to add—had fleas. And lice. And gentleman suitors who came courting also suffered. If these heroes were especially favored, they were allowed to chat up the object of their desire. If they were really fancied, though, matters progressed to poetry, music, even handclasps and sighs. And eventually the great flea-picking ceremony. You've seen baboons do it on those unspeakable nature programs. Yes, our ancestors did the same, uttering rapturous sighs at all that contact.

What I am getting at is this: If you see a little (one and a half inches maximum) antique box, dirty as hell, that should be neat and enameled to be a proper patch-and-comfit box and somehow isn't quite right, it can be only one of two things. The first is a battered nineteenth-century trinket or snuffbox, in which case you can generally forget it. The second—oh, dear, the second—is an Elizabethan flea and louse box. Don't shudder. Don't boil it to kill any remaining creepy-crawlies. Lock it carefully in the biggest safest safe you can find, swallow the key, and then scream with ecstasy. These little jeweled boxes were used by lovers for holding fleas and lice that they captured on their paramours' lovely chalk-powdered skin. It was an exquisitely charming pastime of those days. We don't advertise them as such, these boxes. We call them anything: "Early antique sixteenth-century lady's minute toiletry box, heavily inlaid, made by…" and so on.

Remember Adrian? I spent part of the night cleaning the lumpy box—it was a genuine flea box. I kissed it reverently, drew all the curtains, doused my lamp, and rolled up the carpet. Underneath was the hinged paving stone. Down I went, eight wooden steps underground into my secret cave. Eight feet by eight, cold as charity, dry as a tinderbox, safer than any bank vault on earth. I laid the box on a shelf and climbed out, replacing the stone flag and making sure the iron ring lay in its groove. It wouldn't do to have a visitor tripping up over an unexpected bump in the carpet, would it? I smoked a Dutch cigar to celebrate, though they make me sleep badly, and went to bed. It was four o'clock.

Field's brother was a collector, apparently. One of the indiscriminate kind. To his wife's dismay he filled the house with assorted antiques and semi-antiques and modern junk, a mixture of rubbish and desirable stuff. In short, a collector after my own heart.

Somewhere, somehow, Field's brother found the Judas pair, so Field told me, not realizing they were anything more special than a pair of supreme antique flintlock duelers made by any old passing genius. He seems to have mentioned to all and sundry about his luck and I daresay let interested callers click the triggers—knocking guineas off their value at every click. Tender-hearted as I am, by this point in Field's narrative I was getting the feeling his brother might have got the same fate from me, but I suppressed it.

Anyway, one night several months ago Field had a phone call from his brother, who told him very excitedly that the flintlocks were very special, unique in fact, if not world-shattering. He would bring them over next day, it being Saturday, and show him.

"He never came, Lovejoy," Field told me.

He was found by Field himself, at noon. Field drove over to see why he hadn't turned up. He was in his living room among all his clutter. Blood seemed to be everywhere. He seemed to have been shot through his eye, but the bullet was never found not even at the post-mortem.

"Sorry about this," I said, "but did the pathologist say what bore?"

"About twelve, but he wasn't sure."

"Could be."

Take a pound of lead. Divide it into twelve equal balls. They are then twelve-bore bullets for flintlock or percussion weapons. No cartridges, remember, for the period we're talking about. The impetus comes from your dollop of gunpowder and the spark. Flintlock weapons range from two-bore, or even one-bore monsters which throw a bullet as big as a carrot, to narrow efforts like the eighteen-bore or less. Duelers went with fashions, but twelve-bores were not unusual.

"Where did he buy them?"

"He never said." Wise man.

"Nor how much he paid?"

"No." Wiser still.

"Were they cased?"

"Cased?"

"In a special box, the size of a small cutlery box, maybe up to two feet by one, maybe four inches deep."

"There was a box that went with them."

I stirred from desire. "And the accessories?"

"As far as I remember, there were some small screwdrivers and a couple of metal bottles, and pliers," he said slowly, "but that's as much as I can recall." He meant a flask and mold.

"So you actually saw them?"

He looked surprised. "Oh, yes."

"And… you didn't notice if they were of any extra quality?"

"To me they were just, well, antiques."

I eyed him coldly. You can go off people. "Did you notice the maker?"

"Eric—my brother—told me. It's such an unusual name, isn't it? Durs. And Egg. I remarked on it." He grinned. "I said, I'll bet his mates pulled his leg at school."

"Quite," I said, knowing the feeling well. "And of course you searched for them?"

"The police did."

"No luck?"

"Not only that. They didn't believe me about them."

No good looking for a gun—of any sort—if there's no bullet.

"They said he'd been stabbed with a metal object."

"Through the eye?" It sounded unlikely.

"It's hopeless, as you no doubt see."

"What theories did they have?"

"Very few. They're still searching for the weapon."

"Without knowing what sort of weapon it was?" I snorted in derision.

He leaned forward, pulling out an envelope. "Here's five hundred," he said. "It's on account."

"For… ?" I tried to keep my eyes on his, but they kept wandering toward the money in his hand.

"For finding that weapon." He chucked the envelope and I caught it, so the notes inside wouldn't bruise. Not to keep, you understand. "My brother was shot by one of the Judas weapons."

"The Judas pair don't exist." My voice sounds weak sometimes.

"They do." For somebody so hopeless at pretending to be a collector he was persistent. "I've seen them."

"They don't," I squeaked at the third try. It's funny how heavy a few pound notes can be.

"Then give me the money back," he said calmly, "and tell me to go."

"I could get you a reasonable pair for this," I said weakly. "Maybe no great shakes, not cased, and certainly not mint, but—"

"Yes or no?" he asked. Some of these quiet little chaps are the worst. Never give up no matter how straight you are. Ever noticed that?

"Well," I said gamely, feeling all noble, "if you really insist…"

"If you've got a pen and paper," he said, smiling in a rather disagreeable way, "I'll give you all available details."

I'd tried, hadn't I?

Adrian brought Jane Felsham along. I handed him a check.

"You're flush!" he exclaimed. "Come across a Barraud?" Barraud, a London watchmaker, about 1815 made some delicious flat-looking watches. Only the central sun decoration and the astounding nineteen-line movement and the sexy gold and enamel surface and the beady surround (pearls) tell you it's somewhat above average. The highest artistic imagination crystallized in a luscious context of brilliant science. I smiled, I think. People shouldn't make jokes. I'd once missed a Barraud by five minutes, late for an auction.

"Steady progress," I replied.

"Will it bounce?" He draped himself elegantly across a chair. Both he and Jane couldn't help glancing sharply around in case any of my recent finds were on display.

"Don't you want it?" I brewed up to show we were still friends.

"I must confess little Janesy and I were discussing whether you'd have the wherewithal, dear boy."

"It was touch and go."

"Business going a bit slow, Lovejoy?" Jane lit one of her long cigarettes and rotated her fag holder. "Not much about for the casual visitor to see."

"I have these two warehouses…" They laughed.

"That chap last night," Jane pressed. "A client?"

"Trying to be," I said casually.

"After anything we could help with?" from Adrian.

"I doubt it." I rattled a few pieces of crockery to show I was being offhand.

"A furniture man, I suppose." Jane waggled her fag holder again. A psychiatrist I sold a warming pan once told me something odd about women who habitually sucked fag holders. For the life of me I can't remember what it was.

"Asking the impossible as usual." I hoped that would shut them up. "Wanting something for nothing."

"Don't they all?" Adrian groaned.

"Did you risk him in your car?" Jane was smiling.

"Of course. Why not? I gave him a lift to the station."

"Did he survive?" She's always pulling my leg about my old bus.

"He said it was unusual."

"A death trap," Adrian interposed. "All those switches for nothing. Trade it in for a little Morris."

This sort of talk offends me, not that I'm sentimental about a heap of old iron. After all, though it's a common enough banger, it does give off a low-level bell or two.

"He didn't buy, then?"

"Not even place an order." I carried in their cups and offered sugar. "I got a faint tickle, though. Bring in any tassies you find. We'll split."

"I might have a few," Jane said, and they were satisfied.

Tassies—intaglios, really—are the dealers' nickname for an in-carved stone, usually a semiprecious one. You know a cameo brooch? The figure—a bust silhouette or whatever—stands in relief above the main brooch's surface. Imagine the same figure carved inward, grooving out the design. That's an intaglio. Mostly oval, about the size of a pea and as high, with a shallow carving. Watch for copies, modern ones you can't even give away except to some mug who can't tell bottle glass from the Star of India, though the way things are going, by the time you read this…

"Harry Bateman phoned in," Adrian said, pulling a face at my foul coffee.

"On the cadge?"

"Offering."

"Good?"

"Wordsworth's stuff. Genuine."

"Really?" I was interested, but Harry Bateman didn't know his bum from his elbow, which when you think of it is pretty vital information.

"His original chair and a shaving case given to him by his daughter Dora, 1839."

"Oh."

Jane looked up sharply. It must have been how I said it.

"Chair's a straight Chippendale—" Adrian was starting off, but I took pity.

"—And he's even got the date wrong as well. Trust Harry."

"No good?"

"How come he doesn't starve?" I demanded. "He'll catch it one day. For heaven's sake, tell him before he gets picked up. Wordsworth's chair was always a diamond-seater because of his habit of sitting with a hand in his jacket, Napoleon-style. And the National Trust will be narked if he's really got Dora's case. It should still be at Dove Cottage, on show with the rest of his clobber."

"That's what I like about Lovejoy," Adrian said to Jane. "He's abusive without actually giving offense."

"I'm pretty good value," I retorted.

We had a few similar rapierlike exchanges of witty repartee and then they left in Adrian's new Jaguar. A shower of gravel clattered the Armstrong-Siddeley as he spun down my path. I could hear the stones pattering into the bushes all the way through the copse onto the road. Jane had blown me an apologetic kiss. I phoned Tinker to come over.

I had all the Wallis and Wallis auction catalogues out— Knight, Frank and Rutley's, Christie's, Sotheby's, and Weller and Dufty's of Birmingham—plus every reference book just as a check. My real filing system was below in the priest hole. There wasn't time to open up before Tinker showed, and he wasn't that close a confidant. Nobody was, not even Sheila.

"Watcher, Lovejoy."

"Come in, Tinker."

He was grinning. "Did a deal?"

"Not so's you'd notice," I said, narked.

"He told me to be sure and mention the money."

"All right, all right."

"Did he cough up?" He brought out the Black Label from where I hid it and poured a glug.

"No. All we've got is promises."

"Ah well." He smacked his lips. "You can't have everything."

"I thought he was a nutter at first." I gave him a glare. "Especially as you hadn't tipped me off what he was after."

"Do you blame me? Would you have come if I had?"

"No," I admitted. "Anyway, I talked him out of it. I ask you —the Judas pair. At my age."

"What's the job then?"

"He's decided to become the big collector," I improvised. "So he casts about for a real bingo, and hears of the Judas guns. He decides that's what he'll start with. I told him I'll get going after a pedigree pair that'll be just as good. He bought it."

"What'll we give him?" Tinker asked. Already I could see his ferret mind sniffing out possibilities.

"The best-named pedigree ones we can get."

"Same name?"

"Yeah—Durs."

"Some good Mantons might be on the move soon, word is."

"From where?"

"Suffolk, so people are saying."

"Well…" I pretended indecision. "Keep it in mind, but Durs for preference. I was just pinning them down."

"Three in Germany. Four in the States. Four here, and that Aussie." He ticked his fingers. "Twelve. That's the lot."

I nodded agreement. "I'll make sure none's come through the auctions lately."

"You'd have noticed, Lovejoy."

"It'll save you legwork."

"Right."

He sat and swilled my hooch while I sussed the auctions. In a dozen auctions three sets of Durs guns had been sold, two pairs of holster weapons, one by Joseph of Piccadilly and one by Durs, and one blunderbuss by Durs.

"Run-of-the-mill stuff," I said, forcing back the tears.

"Where do we go from here?"

"Out into the wide world." I watched his face cloud with misery. "I go to work writing and whizzing around the collectors. You get down among the dealers and listen. You don't ask anything, got it? You just listen."

"Right, Lovejoy. Only…"

I gave him some notes. "This comes out of your commission," I warned. He would expect that.

"I'll go careful."

"Do," I warned. "If you go shouting the odds—"

"I know better than go putting the price up." He winked. "Cheerio, Lovejoy."

"See you, Tinker."

I'd had to do it. If Tinker—who looked as if he hadn't two coppers to rub together—suddenly appeared, asking after high-priced stuff, it would be the talking point of the antique world within minutes and any trace of the Judas pair would vanish.

I caught myself in time. I should have to remember they didn't exist. What I was really going after was a pair of unusual real weapons, which did exist.

I put the catalogues away and sat outside the front door on my stone alcove seat. The day was fine, dry. Birds were knocking around in the haphazard way they do. A squirrel raced up a tree, stopping now and again for nothing. It was all pretty average. I could hear a few cars on the road. When I was settled enough I let my mind flow toward the job.

A pair of guns existed. They had been bought by Eric Field, who'd got excited. They were certainly by the great Regency maker, and therefore not cheap. Said to be flint duelers, but were possibly not. The other possibility was that the weapons had been mere holster pistols, and Eric Field, not knowing much for all his collecting enthusiasm, mistook them as valuable duelers.

Yet, if they were only officer's guns, who killed Eric that Friday night just to get hold of them? Nobody would murder for a couple of antiques you could buy at open auction, however expensive.

But a hell of a lot of people would murder over and over again for the Judas pair—if they existed. The day took on a sudden chill.

I shook myself and planned action. First, locate for certain all sets over the past twelve months. Assuming they were all where they ought to be, I would have to think again.

I went indoors to warm up a cheese-and-onion pie. That, two slices of bread, and a pint of tea, and I would start.

Chapter 4

It was about three that afternoon. I 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 hard-backed 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-barreled 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 duelers 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 duelers, 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 duelers 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 antique dealer. I could do him a favor, 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 hood. "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 onto the metaled road, all its remaining arthritic twenty cc's throbbing with power. I pushed the throttle flat, and the speedo sailed majestically upward 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 in—down to five or six. They throw in a cafe to entice the unwary. Dandy Jack never closes.

I parked the Armstrong illegally, sticking the card on the windshield saying "Delivering," which could be anything from a doctor to a florist. It often worked. The cafe 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.

"Hiyer, Harry."

"Hear about my—?"

"Remember the Trades Descriptions 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.

"Hiyer, Margaret. How's business?"

"Not good." This means anything from bad to splendid.

"Same all around."

"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 around—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 aging, disheveled, 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 fire-gilt 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 colors, 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 signaled for the next course by combinations of these four bells. Not valuable."

"Thanks." I cast an 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 far 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 wood-worm 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 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 that 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 favorites, 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 translucency 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 favorite 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 raw 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 colors 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 black, and the underbelly had been skillfully 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 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 some 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 green 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 around 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 by 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 things 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 were going there. The next was a sale the previous week I'd missed hearing of, in Suffolk. Third was a dealer called Brad. He deserved to be first.

I loaded up with gasoline 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 gasoline. "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 there 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 heavens 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 duelers, 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 around 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 onto 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 around 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 fields, and dusty paintings clamoring 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 onto 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 shoddy 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 around the door. I could hear somebody else clattering 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 time hunting drafts 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 favors. 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 saber 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, toothpick, 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 about longcase clocks, but she was too stony-hearted and unwound her legs. Marvelous how women can twist them around 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 color 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 marvelous. 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 in 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 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 rearview mirror. I waved back, wondering even as I accelerated out of the landscaped gardens and back among the riffraff 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.

Chapter 5

Back at the cottage I summed things up, getting madder every minute at those slick so-and-so's on TV that make short work of any crime. I worked out a list in my mind of possible events as I made my tea, two eggs fried in margarine, baked beans with the tin standing in a pan of boiling water, and two of those yoghurt things for afters. I always like a lot of bread and make sandwiches of everything when I've not got company. A pint of tea, no sugar on alternate days because the quacks keep scaring the wits out of you about eating things you like, and I was off.

I sat down at the door to watch the birds fool around while I ate.

I'd learned the pistols were something vital, probably a really good pair, almost certainly Durs, as George said. Shiny, the lovely Muriel had said, and black. No decoration, but a platinum plug for the touchhold. And she'd indicated about fifteen inches long, not too far out. Shiny might mean not cross- or star-hatched, as Durs did his, but some of his early pieces were known unhatched, so that was still all right. Black, shiny, ugly… well, the poor lady was still probably slightly deranged after her shock. Cased. And Brother George had said there were accessories in it. And bought by post from Norfolk, near a coastal bird resort.

All Eric's stuff had been sold, but George was certain the flinters weren't there when he discovered his brother. And if they'd been hidden anywhere in the house, presumably Muriel would have come across them by now.

I finished my meal and sat drinking tea. It was afternoon, and the sun threw oblique shadows across the grass. The birds, a fairly ragged lot with not much to do, trotted about the path and milled around after crumbs. My robin, an aggressive little charmer who seemed to dislike the rest, came on my arm and gave its sweet whistle. It was blowing a cool breeze, rising from the east. With the east coast so near, afternoons could take on a chill.

"Do people go to bird sanctuaries to look at things like you?" I asked the robin. He looked back, disgusted. "Well," I explained to him, "some people must. Know where it is?"

He dropped off and shooed some brownish things off his patch. You'd think robins were soft and angelic from all the free publicity they get around Christmas, but they're tough as nails. I've seen this one of mine take on rabbits as well as those big black birds that goose-step about after you've cut the grass. Tough, but means well. I'm just the opposite, weak and bad-intentioned.

"Margaret?"

"Lovejoy!" She sounded honestly pleased. "At last! Where are we to meet?"

"Cool it, babe," I said. "I'm after information."

"I'd hoped you were lusting force five at least." She heaved a sigh. "I suppose it's still that tart from London."

"Which tart?" I asked, all innocent.

"You know. The one you sent walking to the station on her own."

"O.K., Hawkeyes of the East," I said sardonically.

"I just happened to notice," she said sweetly, "seeing as I was dangling out of the pub window when you arrived."

I hadn't seen her. The thought crossed my mind that she might have overheard Tinker and George Field, but I hadn't time to hang about if a real genuine pair of Sinters were in all this.

"She'd just been for a short… er… visit," I explained.

"How long's long, if three days is short?"

"Two," I snapped back, and could have bitten my tongue.

"Oh, two was it," she cooed. "You must be tired, sweetie, after all that entertaining."

See what I mean? They don't like each other really. I honestly believe that's what all that dressing up's all about. It doesn't matter what the bloke thinks, as long as they outdo any other birds in the vicinity. I often wonder how nuns get on, and whether they vie with each other for God in the convent. All the rest are fencing and machinating and circling warily, all for nothing. Frightening, if you let yourself dwell on it.

I once had this bird—the one I got the cottage from—and she found that I'd visited this other woman in the village. Honestly, it was quite innocent, really, but I'd had to stay away from the cottage for a night or two, only because I'd got pressing business, you see. My resident bird hit the roof—gave me hell—but was more eager to cripple this other woman for life than she was to tell me off.

I think they just like fighting each other, and I'd just given my bird an excuse for a scrap. How she found out I'll never know. They always assume the worst, don't they? Trust is not their strong point.

"I rang up to ask," I said with dignity, "about birds."

"How many do you want, sweetie?" she said coyly, putting barbs in.

"Birds that fly about," I reprimanded. "In the air."

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Lovejoy," she said, needling still. "I misunderstood. I thought—"

"Never mind what you thought."

"Stuffed?" she drooled.

"Now, look, Margaret," I snapped, and she relented.

"Sorry, old thing. What is it?"

"I have the offer of some glassed animals," I improvised. "Ten."

"Quite a collection."

"Well, the thing is, I haven't an idea."

"Want me to look at them for you?"

This was a blow, because Margaret was something of our local expert on such horrid monstrosities. Stuffed animals might be valuable antiques, rare as hen's teeth, but they still dampen my ardor.

"Er, well, you see…" I let it wait.

"All right, Lovejoy, I understand." She was smiling from her voice. "You don't trust me."

"Of course I do, Margaret," I said, fervor oozing down the phone. "It's just that I thought I'd rather learn a bit about suchlike myself. Anyway, I believe there are some bird sanctuaries further north along the coast which are pretty well known, so I thought—"

"Look, Lovejoy," she said, serious now, "I don't know what you plan to do, but if you're aiming to cart a load of stuffed birds into a bird sanctuary and ask them to help you identify them, you're going to be unpopular."

"Oh. Well, they might have some literature," I said weakly.

"I'll get the details. My nephew's in a club that comes out this way. Hang on." She left the phone a moment and then gave me a list of three bird sanctuaries, of which two were in Norfolk. I didn't say which one I was interested in, but said I'd probably go to the nearest.

Before she rang off, she asked if I was all right.

"Of course I am. Why?"

She hesitated. "Oh, nothing. It's just… Look, can I come and see you for a second?"

"Oh, Margaret." It was a bit transparent, after all, so I can be forgiven for being exasperated.

"Suit yourself, Lovejoy," she snapped angrily and slammed down the phone. Women don't like to give up, you see. Seen them with knitting? Yards, hours and hours, years even. And still they're there, soldiering on. Something pretty daunting about women sometimes, I often think. Anyway, it's change I like, and that's exactly what they resent.

While I went again through my records—locking up carefully as usual—there were two further phone calls. One was Sheila, who complained I hadn't rung. I said so what else is new, and she rang off telling me I was in a mood. Tinker interrupted me an hour later saying he'd had four possible tickles. Three were the same as I'd got from Dandy Jack and included the Yorkshire auction, plus one additional whisper of a man in Fulham who'd brought a load of stuff down from the north and had two cased sets among the items. That could have meant anything including percussion, so I took the address and said I'd speed off there in my speedster sometime.

There were numerous antique enthusiasts in Norfolk. Only a hundred lived near the coast. From the bird sanctuaries Margaret had given me I selected some five or six collectors, varying the narrow radius.

Cross-checking with the auction records I had, none of the six had bought within two years anything remotely resembling a Durs gun. Indeed, most of them seemed to be either furniture or porcelain people, though one particular chap, a clergyman called Lagrange, had purchased a revolving percussion long arm from a local auction not far from the Blakeney Point sanctuary. Adverts didn't help, except for a run of them from two Norfolk addresses in the Exchange and Mart some two years ago, wanting rather than offering flinters.

I emerged from my priest hole three hours later fairly satisfied that if Durs duellers had changed hands within the two years before Eric Field's death, it had been done so quietly nobody had known. Therefore the ones which came so innocently by post from Norfolk were a major find, something newly discovered to this century's cruel gaze.

My hands were shaking again, so I had my emergency beer. If it wasn't women it was antiques, or vice versa. I put the telly on and watched some little rag dolls talking to each other on a children's program. That did nothing for my disturbed state of mind.

I was getting closer to believing in the Judas pair.

Look about. That's all I have to say. Look about. Because antique discoveries happen. If in doubt read any book on local history. It'll set you thinking.

I've come across Minden faience jardinières—posh pots for garden plants—being used as garage toolboxes. I've seen a set of Swiss miniature gold dominoes making up an infant's set of wooden building bricks, in the original gold case. I've seen a beautiful octagonal ruby-glass hallmarked silver-ended double scent bottle used as a doll's rolling pin. I can go on all night.

I've seen a Spencer and Perkins striking watch used as a weight on a plumb line. You still don't believe me? Don't, then. Go and ask the Colchester laborers who dug out an old bucket a couple of years ago—and found in it the lost Colchester hoard of thousands of medieval silver coins. Or go and ask the farmer who four years ago got so fed up with the old coffin handles he kept plowing up in his field that he took them to the authorities. They're the famous solid gold Celtic torques that museums the world over now beg to be allowed to copy. And while you're about it, you can also ask where the most valuable pot in the world was found. No, not in some sacred tomb. It was in somebody's porch, being used as an umbrella stand. Well, a Charles I silver communion cup is my own principal claim to fame. I bought it as an old tin shaving cup years ago. And kept the profits. None of this rubbish about "fair play," giving part of the proceeds up as conscience money. A sale is a sale is a sale.

My mind was edging further toward an uneasy belief.

I let the evening come nearer the cottage by having a small cigar. The darkness swung in, inch by inch. I swept the living room and got out some sausages for my supper. Those and chips, with a custard thing from our village shop to follow.

Though the cottage seemed cozy enough, this Judas business had taken the steam out of me for the moment. Perhaps it was just my turn to feel a bit down. I get that way.

As I listlessly tidied up I realized how really isolated the cottage was. Solitude is precious to me, but only when I want it.

I phoned Margaret, intending to say I'd perhaps been rather short with her on the blower. It rang and rang without answer.

While my grub was frying I stood at the darkening window and watched the road lights come on across the valley edge a mile away. The White Hart would be starting up. Harry, possibly Jane Felsham, Adrian, probably Tinker, and for absolute certain Dandy Jack—they'd all be there. Later would come the nightlies, the knocker dealers who touted door to door leaving cards or hoping housewives bored to torture would fall for their blue eyes enough to search their attics.

Then the pub dealing would start—cuts, rings, groups, fractional slices of profit, marginal gains, the entire lovely exhilarating game of nudges and nods. I pulled the curtains to.

Suppose I did find the thirteenth pair. What then? I hadn't asked Field. Whoever had them had murdered Eric Field. I was to tell George Field, probably, who would accuse the owner, whoever it was, to the police. So the police would then arrest the owner. Q.E.D.

I poked the sausages and chips onto a cold plate and margarined some slices of bread. The tea. I'd forgotten tea. I put the kettle on, but before sitting down tried to phone Margaret again. No luck. By then the kettle boiled. By the time the tea brewed the food was cold. I sighed and sat down to supper.

Having the telly on helped, but I kept wondering what they really do for a living during the day.

Chapter 6

Next morning was just my sort, grayish but dry and promising a bit of sun. I had two eggs on bread, lashings of sauce to smother any taste that might linger on after my cooking, and a couple of Weetabix and powdered milk. Two apples and a pear for the journey, and the world was my oyster. My uneasy mood had vanished.

I rang George Field to summarize my progress, not mentioning my clue from Muriel, but saying I was following a couple of leads within the trade. He seemed disappointed, which was only to be expected. He was probably reared on Chandler's slick heroes.

The Armstrong didn't share my enthusiasm. Maybe it knew how far we had to go. I fed the robin, waiting for the engine to recover from an attempt to start it before half past nine. It usually functioned best about dinnertime. Oddly enough, it was also seasonal, preferring winters to summers and rain to sun.

I'm not a sentimental person. You can't be about a mere scrap heap, can you? But I have a liking for the old banger simply because it's the only time my bell's been wrong. I took the motor car in part exchange for a group of four small animal bronzes from a Carmarthen chap who, poor misguided soul, was interested in bronzes. Some people love them. Heaven knows why, as very few are attractive. Incidentally, always look underneath a bronze figure first. If it has a four-figure number, it may well be a "liberated" piece which arrived here after the war. "depose GESCHUTZT" or some such stamped in front of this number can lend weight to your suppositions. The value of most bronzes has increased eight times in the last couple of years among dealers alone.

I was on about my Armstrong. It is an open tourer with big squarish headlamps sticking out and a top that you pull over by hand. Nothing's automatic. The starter's a handle at the front, and you have to work a finger pump from the front seat before it will fire. The brake's outside, and a noisy exhaust runs like a portable tunnel from both sides of the long hood, which is held down by straps. It looks badly old-fashioned and clumsy, but it's sturdy as hell and safe as houses, which is the main thing. As I say, the fuel consumption is terrible. All along where the dashboard would be in a new car there are switches, handles, and a couple of mysterious gauges I've always been too scared to touch in case it stopped altogether. For such a huge car it is weak as a kitten, but once you get it going it is usually fine. The trouble is it seems to have only one gear, because there's no gear handle. Other motorists often blow their horns as they pass in annoyance at my slow speed. I only have a rubber bulb-type honker I never use.

It made a successful running start eventually. As I drove at maximum speed I worked my journey out. Margaret had given me the names of three places, Minsmere in Suffolk, Blakeney Point and Cley in Norfolk. I would say I'd been to Minsmere if anyone asked, and, engine willing, would look at the other two places in one go. I would reach home before opening time. I had the six significant addresses with me to consider one by one.

I was frankly disappointed with the bird sanctuaries, not that I knew what to expect. Quite a few cars were around when I drove up to Cley. A few folks, Rommelized by great binoculars and businesslike weatherproof hats, stood all forlorn in attitudes of endeavor staring toward acres of desolate muddy stuff where nothing was happening. Occasionally they murmured to each other and peered eastward. Perhaps they placed bets among themselves to make it interesting. As well as being disappointed I was puzzled. I've nothing against birds, feathered or not, but once you've seen one sparrow you've seen the lot, haven't you? Occasionally, one particular one might become sort of family just by sheer persistence, like some around the cottage. That's different. Unless you know them specifically it's a waste of time, like people. I asked one bloke what they were all looking at.

"Oyster catchers," he said. I stared about, but there wasn't a boat in sight.

"Oh," I replied, and honestly that was it.

There were no stalls, cafes, not even a fish-and-chip shop. As a resort it was a dead duck, if you'll pardon the expression. I talked the Armstrong into life and we creaked away on ye olde greate mysterie trail. I had more birds in my garden than they had on all that mud. I was frozen stiff.

Now brilliant Lovejoy had made a plan. Muriel's memory being what it was, I was down to guesswork—scintillating, cunning brainwork of the Sherlock type.

To post a case you need a post office, right? Sniggering at my shrewdness, I drove around trying to find one, lurching along country lanes where hedges waved in the gales and animals stooged about fields being patient as ever.

I eventually gave up and some time later drove through Wells into Blakeney, where there was a post office. I was dismayed. What do private eyes do now? I couldn't just bowl in and say "What ho! Who posted a heavy box about a year ago, give or take six months?" My plan hadn't got this far. I inspected it from a distance and then drove to the Point. More desolation, with some different shaped birds bumming around aimlessly, all watched eagerly by enthusiasts. No shops, no stalls, no real scene. I departed shivering.

All this countryside was dampening my earlier high spirits. It's nice from a distance. A few trees and a sparrow or two can be quite pleasant sometimes as a diversion. But you can't beat a good old town crammed full of people milling about on hard pavements, street after street of houses, shops, antique merchants, cinemas, pubs, the odd theater, and lots of man-made electricity. Bird sanctuaries are all very well, but why can't they share them with people?

I drove around Blakeney. In case you come from there, I'm not knocking it. Charming little joint, with the odd tasty antique shop and a place I had dinner near a tavern. But it's not a metropolis, is it? And it had no coastal holiday resorts nearby, either. From the way Muriel's postmistress had spoken, I wanted something like Clacton. That cold wind started up again. I decided there were no clues in bird sanctuaries and drove south. What dumps those places are, I thought, feeling a witticism coming. Those places, I sniggered to myself, are for the birds.

I like antique dealers. We may not be much to look at, but scratch us and we're nothing but pure unadulterated antique dealer all the way through. Everything else comes second. This means you've only to put us, blindfolded, anywhere on earth, and we home instinctively on the nearest fellow dealer. When I'm driving, I swear my banger guides itself along a route that has the highest number of dealers along it.

Trusting my Armstrong, I was at my ninth antique shop asking for nothing in particular, when the name "Lagrange" accidentally caught my eye. The shopowner, a doctor's wife, Mrs. Ellison, full of painting chat, had gone into the back to find a painting I'd heard of, alleged Norwich School, and to fill in time I was leafing through her invoice file. Lagrange had bought a pistol flask from her about a year before, and paid in groats from what I saw.

I was safely near the door hovering over a box of copper tokens when she returned with the painting. It was a water-color, not an oil, which was a measure of her knowledge. David Cox had signed it, so the name said. I held it. Good stuff, but not a single chime. I showed a carefully judged disappointment and turned to other things. David Cox taught a lot of pupils water-color painting, and had an annoying habit of helping them with little bits of their work, a daub here, a leaf there. If their final painting pleased him he would sign it, thereby messing up the whole antique business. Worse, his signature's dead easy to forge—so they say. Beware.

I bought a score of her copper tokens, to pay for my journey's expenses. They are cheap, rather like small coins. Merchants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, times when copper change was in short supply owing to incompetence at the mint among other causes, made their own "coins" as tokens in copper. These were given for change, and you could spend them when you needed to go shopping again. It must have been a nightmare, because some shops would refuse all except their own tokens, so you might finish up with perhaps thirty different sets of copper "coinage" of this kind in your pocket, and still not be able to buy what you wanted from the thirty-first shop. The early seventeenth-century ones are about half the size of those from the next century—an important fact, as many are undated. I bought the "cleanest," that is those least worn, no matter how dirty. "Buy the best, then buy old," as we say. Of any two antiques, go for the one best preserved and remember that repairs or any other sort of restoration doesn't mean well preserved. Then consider the degree of rarity. Then, and only then, consider the degree of age. This is Lovejoy's Law for Collectors of Limited Means. Of course, if you have bags of money, head straight for a Turner seascape, a silver piece made by that astonishing old lady silversmith Hester Bateman, or a Clementi (the London maker) square piano of about 1840, and two fingers to the rest of us. But for other poorer wayfarers, my advice is to have only these three general rules.

I paid up painfully and turned to go.

"Oh, one thing." I paused as if remembering. "You've not such a thing as a powder flask?"

"Powder? Oh, for gunpowder?" I nodded.

"No," she said. "I had one a while ago, but it went very quickly." She'd probably had it on her hands for years.

"I'm trying to make one of those wretched sets up," I explained.

She was all sympathy. "Isn't it hard?"

I hesitated still. "No chance of you managing to pick one up, is there? I don't have much chance of getting one myself."

"Well…" I was obviously treading upon that sacred confidentiality.

"I'd be glad to pay a percentage on purchase," I offered, which made it less holy.

"I know," she said. "When you have money locked up in stock, trying to move stuff can be so difficult."

We commiserated for a minute in this style. She told me she'd sold the flash to a local collector. She gave me Lagrange's address, the one I already had. I expressed surprise and gratitude and handed her my card.

"He's a very pleasant padre," she informed me, smiling. "A real enthusiastic collector. I'm sure he'll be glad to see you."

"I'll either call back or phone," I promised, and set about finding the Reverend Lagrange, collector.

Mrs. Ellison had given me the usual obscure directions which I translated by a vintage RAC roadmap. He lived about fifteen miles off the trunk road, say thirty miles. I patted my speedster and swung the handle. I'd be there in an hour and a half with luck.

The trouble was I'd not had any feminine companionship for a couple of days. It blunts any shrewdness you might possess. Your brain goes astray. It's no state to be in.

I drove toward the Reverend Lagrange's place thinking of Sheila as a possible source of urgent companionship. No grand mansion here, my cerebral cortex registered at the sight of the grubby little semidetached house with its apron-sized plot of grass set among sixty others on a dull estate. Such trees as people had planted stood sparse and young, two thin branches and hardly a leaf to bless themselves with. I parked on the newly made road where there was a slope, a hundred yards away, and walked back among the houses. A curtain twitched along the estate, which pleased me as a sign that women hadn't changed even here in this desolation. But where was the Reverend's church? Maybe he was still only an apprentice and hadn't got one. I knocked.

Ever run into a patch of mistakes? My expectations were beginning to ruin my basic optimism. Just as Muriel had turned out to be half the age I'd anticipated, here was this padre who I had supposed couldn't be more than twenty-two. He was middle-aged. Worse still—much more upsetting—I'd seen him before, walking up Muriel Field's drive as I had left. All this might not matter to you, but to an antique dealer, it's his life-blood. First approaches are everything. I suppressed my flash of annoyance and gave my I'm-innocent-but-keen grin.

"Reverend Lagrange?"

"Yes?" He was a calm and judging sort, in clerical black and dog collar, not too tidy.

"I hope I'm not intruding." The thought occurred that it might be a feast day or Lent or something. Worse, he might be fasting. I eyed him cautiously. He seemed well nourished.

"Not at all. Can I help?"

"Er, I only called on the off chance."

"Do come in." He stood aside and in one stride I was in his living room. There was a cheap rolltop desk and a scatter of Cooperative furniture. He had a one-bar electric fire for the chill winter evenings. My heart went out to him.

"It isn't anything to do with, er… the soul." I faltered. "I'm interested in antiques, Reverend. I was at a shop—"

His eyes lit up and he put his black Bible inside his desk, sliding the lid closed. "Do sit down, Mister… ?"

"Lovejoy."

"Splendid name," he said, smiling. I was beginning to quite like him. "The shop was—?" I told him and he raised his eyes heavenward.

"Ah, yes. I bought a pistol flash there, quite expensive it was," he said.

May heaven forgive you for that, I thought nastily. It was a steal. I would have asked five times what he paid.

"Er," I began, weighing out those grains of truth which gospel fables. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"Do you?" He seemed as careful as I was.

"You couldn't by any chance know the Fields?"

"Ah, yes." We unbent, full of reassuring noises. "My poor friend."

"I visited Mrs. Field. I thought I saw you arriving."

"And you're the gentleman in the long car. Of course. I thought I recognized you. Did you manage to get it seen to? I'm no mechanic myself, but I could tell from the noise and all that smoke—"

I wasn't taking that from any bloke. "You're a friend of Eric Field's?" I interrupted, peeved. My speedster might stutter a bit, but so did Caesar.

"An old friend." He went all pious like they do. "I try to visit Muriel—Mrs. Field, that is—as often as I can, to lend solace." He sighed. "It's been a very difficult time for her, seeking readjustments."

"I do appreciate that, Reverend," I said, considerably moved for a second or so.

It's pleasant being holy, but isn't it boring? Holy duty done with, I got down to business. "I know you'll think it a bit of a cheek, Reverend," I began apologetically, "but I'm trying to complete a set of accessories for a pistol I have, in a case."

"Oh." His eyes glinted. I was onto a real collector here, no mistake. "Any special variety?"

"Very expensive," I said with the famous Lovejoy mixture of pride and regret. "A pocket Adams revolver."

"Oh." His fire dampened. "Percussion."

"Yes, but almost mint." I let myself become eager. "There's one nipple replaced, and a trace of repair…"

His lip curled into an ill-concealed sneer. "Well, Mr. Love-joy," he said, still polite, "I'm afraid percussion's not my first choice."

"Flinters?" I breathed in admiration.

"It so happens…" He controlled himself and said carefully, "I am interested. If you ever do hear of any flintlocks, I would be most happy to come to some arrangement."

"They're pretty hard to find these days, Reverend," I told him sadly. "And the prices are going mad. Never seen anything like it."

"You're a dealer, Mr. Lovejoy?" he asked, as if he hadn't guessed.

"Yes, but only in a small way." He would check up with the shop lady as soon as I was gone. Always admit what's going to be found out anyway. "I'm mainly interested in porcelains."

I got another smile for that. "I'm glad we're not flintlock rivals."

"I only wish I had the money to compete," I confessed. "What I came about—"

"The flask?"

"If you still have it," I said, carefully measuring my words in case this all turned into a real sale, "I'd like to make you an offer."

To my surprise he hesitated. "They're fairly expensive," he said, working out private sums.

I groaned and nodded. "Don't I know it?"

"And you'll require a flask more appropriate to a percussion—"

"Oh, that's a detail," I interrupted casually. "It doesn't matter too much. Anything goes these days."

I sank out of sight in his estimation. As far as he was concerned, I would forever be a tenth-rate dealer of the cheapest, nastiest, and most destructive kind. Even so, he still hung on, hesitating about selling me his flask. It was only after a visible effort that he steeled himself to go no further and courteously refused. I tried pushing him, offering a good market price, though it hurt. By then he was resolved.

We said nothing more. I didn't enlighten him about my visit to Muriel Field's. He'd be on to her soon enough. But, I wondered, had Eric told him about the Judas pair?

I went down the new road. This little estate miles from anywhere probably hadn't an antique from one end to the other. On the other hand, there were a few shapely birds here and there, but the sense of desolation was very real. I would phone Sheila and ask her to come back to Lovejoy's waiting arms in time for me to meet her off the London train in the romantic dusk. As I trotted around the corner I planned a superb meal for the luscious lady who would bring a little—maybe much— happiness into my humdrum existence. I would get three of those pork pies in transparent wrapping, a packet of frozen peas and carrots mixed, one of those gravy sachets, and two custard pies for afters. Lovely. How could any woman resist that?

I leapt into my chronic old speedster and started it by releasing the handbrake to set it rolling on the slope, wondering as I did so if I had any candles to make my supper party a really romantic seduction scene. I didn't give the sad new dwellings another glance. Give me bird sanctuaries any time.

Chapter 7

I should own up about women.

It's a rough old world despite its odd flashes of sophistication. Women make it acceptable the same way antiques do. They bring pleasure and an element of wonderment, when oftener than not you'd only be thinking of the next struggle. There's nothing wrong in it all. It's just the way things are. Morality's no help. Keep cool, hang on to your common sense, and accept whatever's offered. Take what you can get from any woman that is willing to give it.

And before you even start to argue—no! I won't listen to all that junk about waiting for spontaneous out-of-the-blue "true love." Love is made. It is the product of many makings. A man and woman just don't fall in love at a glance, sighing and longing and whatever. They have to make love, build it up month after month, having sex and becoming loving toward each other. When they've made enough love and built it around themselves brick on brick, then they can be said to be in a state of love. Read those old religious characters. They knew all about love as a spiritual event. It didn't come to them by a casual notion as a sudden idea that sounds not too bad or from a weekly magazine. Love, that mystical magic stuff of a lifetime, came from working at the very idea of it, grieving and straining and suffering the making of it. Then, in possession of it, comes the joy and the ecstasy of knowledge in the substance of love.

Well, sorry about that.

I make it when and where I can. Any honest man will tell you that the main problem is where the next woman's coming from. Women often decry this truth. Cissie used to. For some reason women find it necessary to deny the obvious. Ever noticed how many phrases they have for that very purpose? "That's all you think about."

"Men are like children." And so on, all wrong. I can't understand why women aren't more understanding.

Sheila was coming close to it. I'd known her a year, meeting her at one of those traction-engine rallies. She was there with her chap, a dedicated man who was so busy oiling things he didn't even notice when she left with me.

That isn't to say Sheila should go down as a cheap tart. These terms are as irrelevant as differences of racial color, engine pattern, weight, any nonessential of human behavior. Women like men, and men like women. It's only natural they tend to bump into each other now and again, sometimes accidentally, sometimes not. And if both parties wish to pretend it's more socially acceptable meeting properly introduced at the vicar's tea party drinking tea with little finger poised crookedly in the air, big deal. What difference does it make as long as the chance of making love emerges from the great masquerade?

I take love seriously. It's a serious business and doesn't deserve to be left to the tender mercies of penny-paper romances and demented Russian novelists griping at one set of commissars after another.

Her family keep a shop in Islington, clothes and that. She has a younger sister at school. She opted out of typing suddenly. "I read," she explained once, "they'd done experiments on a chimpanzee. It had learned to type. I ask you." That did it. She hitched up with this traction-engine chap, helping in his garage and generally doing paperwork while he played with plugs and valves.

I collected her at the station.

"Hello, Lovejoy," she said evenly.

"Hello, Sheila." I was standing there like a spare tool, holding these flowers.

"Pig."

She stood unmoving in the station foyer. It was the scene from "When did you last see your father?" all over again. I felt like the kid on the cushion.

"You know, love," I said lamely. "I was busy."

There were few people around. This was the last train in or out. She'd have to stay the night with me. Alf the porter used to stand and grin at these scenes years ago. Now all he wants to do is clear up, lock up, and push off before the White Hart shuts. We stood under the solitary lamp.

"You're not as thick as you pretend, you know that?"

I nodded. In this sort of mood you have to go along with them. She was wearing one of those fawn swingback coats that seem slightly unfashionable even when they're in, but never seem less than elegant. I'd never noticed before. Her clothes never quite matched the latest trends. She stood in a pool of light, smooth and blond. My heart melted.

"I'm not very nice, love," I admitted before I caught myself for a fool.

"I know."

"I rang because—"

"I know why."

"It was just that…" I petered out, holding the flowers toward her instead of explanation.

She gazed at me, making no move to take them. "It's just that you were taken short again."

"Beautifully expressed." I tried my clumsy jocularity act, which sometimes worked on the low graders. She evaded my attempt to thrust the bunch into her arms. I'd never seen her in this particular mood before.

"Lovejoy." Her voice was quite dispassionate.

"Yes, darling?"

"Stop that. I want to ask you something."

"Go on." The passengers were all gone. Two cars started up outside and purred away. I could hear Alf clattering buckets, encouraging us to leave.

"If I don't stay with you tonight," she said in that calm voice, "what will you do?"

"Have two suppers, hot bath, and bed," I lied.

She gave me that new calm look she'd learned during the last two days. I didn't care for it. "Liar."

I almost staggered. "Eh?"

"I said, liar."

"That's what I thought you said." Stalemate.

The platform lights suddenly plunged out behind her. The single overhead bulb gave her an uncanny radiance I'd never seen. Maybe it was just that I was wanting her so badly.

"You'll be out picking up some middle-aged tart," she said serenely.

"What, me?" I never can sound stern, though I tried. It came out weak as a blister.

"You, Lovejoy." She reached out and took the flowers. "And you'll lay her after three pink gins."

"Look, Sheila," I said, worried sick by all this.

"You'll give her the eye and the hi-baby act. I know you."

"Nothing's further—"

"From your mind? Perhaps not, because I'm dope enough to come." She sighed and scrutinized my shabby frame. "You'll get any flabby amateur tart from the nearest taproom and make love to her wherever she says, in the car, your cottage, her place if her husband's out."

"What's it all about?" I pleaded. "What did I do?"

"You can't help it, Lovejoy, can you?" she said.

I gave in, shrugging. "Sometimes it's not easy," I said.

She smiled and took my arm. "Come on, you poor fool," she said. "I'm famished." She climbed into the car and started to push the finger pump. As I said, she'd known me for a year. The motor responded. I saw Alf the porter thankfully closing up as we left the darkened station forecourt. We clanked through the silent village, my spirits on the mend.

"Not to worry, angel," I reassured her. "I've a repast fit for the Queen. One of my specials."

"I suppose that means your sawdust pies."

"Pork," I replied, narked.

"Custard tart for afters?"

"Of course."

"Beautiful."

I turned to say something and noticed she was laughing.

"What's the joke?" I snapped.

"Nothing." She was helpless with laughter.

"Look," I said roughly, "don't you like my grub? Because if so, you can bloody well—"

"N—no, Lovejoy," she gasped, still laughing.

"I've gone to a lot of trouble," I informed her with dignity. "I always do."

"I know, love," she managed to say, and held my arm as I drove. "It was just me. Don't take offense."

"All right, then."

She gave me a peck on the cheek. "Friends again?" she asked.

"Pals," I promised fervently, relieved her odd mood was over.

We held hands all the way home.

Next morning.

I was itching to have my priest hole open to enter up a few oddments of information I'd gathered on my journey the previous day, but with Sheila there I contented myself with cataloguing my tokens. One or two were quite good. I'd advertise those, priced high. The rest I'd sell through local dealers when the big tourist rush began.

She was watching me, turned on her side on the fold-out bed. "You love them," she said.

I sighed theatrically. "Don't come that soul stuff."

"It's obvious you do."

"It's also obvious that going all misty-eyed because we had it off is pretty corny."

She laughed again when she ought to have been put out. "Have you had breakfast, Lovejoy?"

"Yes, thanks."

"What time were you up?"

"Seven."

"Did you notice the bruise?"

"What bruise?" I felt guilty.

"When you belted me in the bathroom the other day."

"Oh. About that, love." I didn't look at her. "I've been meaning to say sorry. It was important, you see."

"A phone call?"

"Well, yes." I forced justification into my voice. "It turned out to be vital. I admit I was a wee bit on the nasty side—"

"Come here, Lovejoy," she said. I could tell she was smiling.

"No," I said, concentrating.

"Come here," she said again, so I did.

See what I mean about women, never giving up?

Muriel answered the door, still jumpy and drawn but as stylish as before.

"I'm sorry to bother you again so soon," I apologized.

"Why, Mr. Lovejoy."

"I just called—"

"Come in please."

"No, thank you." There was no sound of cutlery in the background this time. A gardener was shifting little plants from pots into a flower bed. "I thought they only did that on Easter Mon-day," I said. She looked and I saw her smile for the first time. It was enough to unsettle an honest dealer.

"Wait. I'll get my coat."

She emerged, putting a head scarf on over her coat collar.

"You'll remember me for ruining your day if nothing else." I shut the door behind her and we strolled to watch the gardener at work.

"These days I welcome an interruption," she said.

"Mrs. Field—"

"Muriel." She put her arm through mine. "Come this way and I'll show you the pond." We left the house path and went between a setting of shrubberies.

"I wish I could return the compliment." A woman's arm linked with yours does wonders for your ego. I felt like the local squire.

"Compliment?"

"Nobody calls me anything but Lovejoy."

She smiled and seemed glad to do it. "Me too?"

"You too. Oh, one thing more."

She looked at me, worried. "Yes?"

"Cheer up, love. Nothing's the end of the world."

"I suppose not." She was about to say more, but we came upon another elderly gardener tying those mysterious strings around plant stems. I must have looked exasperated, because she asked me what was wrong.

"Beats me why they do it," I said in an undertone.

"Do you mean the gardener?" she whispered back.

"Yes," I muttered. "Why can't they leave the blinking plants alone?" I was glad I'd said it, because it gave her a laugh.

The pond was a small lake, complete with steps and a boat. A heron, gray and contemplative, stood in the distance. I shivered.

"Cold?" she asked.

"No. Those things." I nodded to where the heron waited. "It's fishing, isn't it?"

"Why, yes." She seemed surprised.

"Can't you give it some bread instead?" I suggested, which made her laugh again and pull me around to see my face.

"Aren't you… soft!" she exclaimed.

"I'd like the countryside, but it's so bloody… vicious."

"Don't you like my garden, Lovejoy?"

I stared around accusingly. "It's a county, not a garden." I flapped my hand but the heron wouldn't go. "Does it all belong to the house?"

"Of course. Eighty acres."

"It's lovely," I agreed. "But everything in it's hunting everything else. Either that or trying to escape."

She shivered this time and raised her head scarf. "You mustn't talk like that."

"It's true."

I watched her hands tidy her hair beneath the scarfs edge. They had a natural grace to set off their own gestures, doing hair, pulling on stockings, or smoking a cigarette. She saw me gaping at her. I looked back at the water.

"Lovejoy, what do you really do?"

"Oh, very little. I'm an antique dealer, really." I paused to let her load. Where the hell was all this kindness coming from? I wondered irritably. She said nothing. "I'm your actual scavenger. Nobody's sacred. I even winkled out your priestly collector friend, and he lives miles away."

"Reverend Lagrange?"

"Yes."

"He's been a good friend. He and Eric met years ago. I don't think he collects the same things Eric did."

Nobody else does, either, I thought enviously. We moved along a flowered walk with those trellises against a wall.

"I wasn't telling the truth the other day." Own up, Lovejoy. Never be only half stupid. Go broke. "You probably guessed."

"Yes."

I eyed her carefully. "Aren't you mad at me?"

"No." She pulled a leaf from some thorny plant that hadn't done her any harm. "You're not the first to have tried the same… thing."

"Trick," I said. "Be honest. We call it the box gambit in the trade."

"Box gambit?"

"I wish I hadn't started this," I said.

She put the leaf idly between her teeth and saw me wince. "What's the matter?"

"You wouldn't like it if you were that leaf." She looked at it and dropped it on the path. "It's not dead."

"But how on earth do you eat, Lovejoy?" she asked me.

"Like us all, but that's an essential."

"What's the box gambit?"

I told her, feeling rotten. Box as in coffin. Anybody dying leaves a house and antiques, if he's wealthy enough to get his name reported in the papers. Those who are missed by our ever-vigilant press are listed in the "Deceased" column by sorrowing relatives anxious to do the local antique dealers a favor. We read up the facts of the case. Within seconds, usually, and before the poor deceased is cold in his grave, we kindly dealers are around visiting the bereaved, claiming whatever we think we can get away with. And you'd be surprised how much that is.

"And do… widows fall for it?" She stopped, fascinated.

"More often than not."

"Do you really mean that?"

"Of course," I snapped, harshly. "Over ninety per cent of the time you come away with a snip, nothing less than useful information."

She seemed intrigued by the idea, part horrified and partly drawn to it. "But it's like… being…" She hesitated and looked back. The heron was still there.

I said it for her. "Predators."

"Well…"

"You mean yes," I said. "Which is what we are."

"But why do the wives give you—?"

"Sell. Not give. Never leave a box gambit unpaid." I quoted the trade's unwritten rule. "It's what makes it legal."

"And what if you're caught?"

She drew me to a bench seat and we sat. From there we faced the house beyond the water, trailing trees and sweeping grass studded with bushes. It was as charming as any scene on earth and made me draw breath.

"You think it's lovely," she said.

"Wonderful. They had a sense of elegance we've lost," I said. "It all comes down to judgment. They had it. Whatever shape or design or pattern was exactly right, they recognized it. You have to love it, don't you?"

"I know what you mean, Lovejoy." Her tone was cold. "I used to feel the same until Eric died."

"Will you stay here?"

"No, not now."

"Where will you go, Muriel?"

"Oh." She shrugged.

The heron stabbed, was erect and still before the drops fell from his beak.

"What if you are caught in the box gambit?" She shook my arm until I relaxed.

"You lie," I said. The ripples were extending toward us. "Lie like a trooper. You say that you, in all innocence, called at her house. The widow asks you in to see some heirloom because you'd asked particularly about antiques. You say she bargained like an old hand, and anyway you'd given her money for the object, hadn't you? She won't deny it."

"How do you know?"

I gazed into her eyes. "They never do."

"Have you done it, Lovejoy?" she asked as the first ripple lapped on the bank below us. I nodded.

"I don't believe you," she said candidly.

"You must."

"Why must I?"

"Because… because, that's all."

"Why, Lovejoy?"

"Look, Muriel." I rose and tipped earth with my shoe into the water, staring down. It seemed pretty deep. You could see a few pebbles, then a dark brown murkiness. "I don't know much about you, your family, who there is to give you a hand now… after your husband. But that mansion over there. These grounds. It's enough to bring every dealer and scrounger running from miles around."

"Are you trying to warn me?"

"Just listen." I tried to stop myself, but like a fool I talked on. "We dealers are pretty slick. Some are all right, but some are not. We're good and bad, mixed. There are grafters, crooks, conners, lifters, zangers, edgers, pullers, professional dummy-ers, clippers—every variety of bloke on the make. Some pretty boys, smart, handsome, looking wealthy. Cleverer than any artists, better than any actor. They'll pick your house clean any way they can and brag about it in the pub afterwards."

"Are you warning me, Lovejoy?" Womanlike she stuck to her question. I felt like shaking her.

"Never mind what I'm doing," I cried, exasperated. "Just be careful, that's all. Be suspicious and sharp, and don't let in everybody who comes knocking."

"I let you in, Lovejoy," she reminded, smiling.

I sat down and took her by the shoulders. "Can't you see the obvious?"

"What do you mean?"

I drew breath and tried to glare into her innocent eyes. "You're too damned trusting, Muriel. You should never have let. me in the other day. It's too risky. Look," I said, maddened by her smile. "Look. In that house, that great mansion you live in, your husband Eric lost his life."

"I don't need reminding."

"You do." I was almost shouting, not knowing why I was so worked up. "Has it not dawned on you?"

"What?"

"Who killed him?"

She paled instantly. I could see the skin over her cheeks tauten. "Why… why are you asking me?" she said.

"Because somebody must have," I said. "Do the police know who? No. Does anyone else know? No. And not only that. Does anyone know why he was killed? Do you? No. The police? No."

"They… they said it must have been an attempted robbery," she said faintly.

"So they think," I said. "But is that reasonable? What was stolen?"

"Why, nothing," she faltered.

"Not even one or two of your husband's antiques?"

"No. At least, I don't think so."

"Did the police think so?"

"Practically everything was there, according to Eric's lists. They weren't complete, of course. He never did keep very tidy records."

"Think," I urged. "Was nothing at all missing?"

"The only thing is that my brother-in-law said a pair of pistols were gone. The ones you asked about. The police did go over the inventory when all Eric's antiques went to Seddon's afterwards, though. George had rather an argument with them about it, I recall. He seemed to blame them for not being concerned enough."

"That doesn't alter the fact," I put in, "that you're in this house, rich and with plenty of valuable stuff about, I guess."

She nodded. "There's the—" God help me if she wasn't going to give me a rundown of her valuables.

I clamped my hands over my ears. "Don't," I begged. "For heaven's sake, you're doing what I told you not to. Keep quiet about your things. Chain everything down. Change the locks. Treble the burglar alarms. Quadruple the dogs."

"I'll be all right, Lovejoy," she said, smiling. She pulled down my hands and kissed me. "I think you're sweet."

"How can I be sweet when I'm a hard nut?" I said angrily, pulling away. "You don't realize how versatile dealers, collectors can be. We'll do anything—any thing—to get what we want. It may only be a couple of old matchboxes, but if we collect matchboxes we'll do anything to get them."

Her face was back in its previous solemn, worried expression. "But that can't be true."

"It is true."

"It can't be," she said doggedly.

"It is."

"But, Lovejoy," she said, almost pleading, "that's so unreasonable."

"Of course it's unreasonable. All collecting's unreasonable. But it's real." I shrugged and beckoned her to her feet. We strolled on. "You're not really taking notice of me, are you?"

I could see I had upset her.

"You aren't telling me all collectors are like that, are you?" she said, hesitating beside a white-flowered bush set between large rocks.

"I am."

"All?"

"All," I said firmly. "That's what makes a collector special. Unique. Your husband must have been like that too."

"Well, yes," she said, "but he was—"

"Eccentric?" the sardonic note struck.

She swung on me. "How did you know I used to—?" she blazed, looking momentarily more frightened than angry.

I kissed her lightly. "All wives call their husbands that, Muriel, love," I said, smiling.

"Oh."

"Beware of collectors," I warned again.

She glanced obliquely at me as we walked. "And what about you, Lovejoy?"

I gave her my frankest avaricious leer. "I'm the worst dealer there ever was, as far as you're concerned," I said hoarsely.

"I doubt that."

"The greediest, the cleverest, and the randiest," I admitted, thinking, What am I doing? "So don't trust me, especially me."

"I don't believe that, either," she said. "But I'll do as you say."

"Right," I said with finality, disengaging my arm. "That's it, then. Madam, before I rape you under this elm tree, show me the door."

"I like you, Lovejoy," she said.

"Don't push your luck, Muriel." I watched the heron stab and crook in a swallow again. "You've only been safe so far."

She tried to laugh again, but something had gone from the day. We waited for the next ripple to reach the steps, then set off back toward the house as the boat slowly began to tug at its mooring.

Seddon's, I was thinking. They sent his antiques to Seddon's for auction.

Chapter 8

Sheila said Dandy Jack had phoned but left no message, that Margaret had too but said not to bother.

"And a strange gentleman who seemed annoyed," she added.

"Pansy?"

"He had that… mannerism."

"Adrian."

"Will you call, please. And that's the lot." She made coffee better than I did, but only Yanks do it properly in my opinion. I drank it for appearance's sake. "What's she like?"

"Who?" On guard, Lovejoy.

Sheila curled on the divan. "Whoever it was you've been to see."

"Oh." A measure of truth was called for, I thought. Always dangerous stuff to handle. You know where you are with a good old fable, so much more adaptable.

"Pretty?"

"Yes. Her husband died in odd circumstances some time back."

"Was it a box gambit?"

"Sort of." I eyed her unkindly. "You're learning too much for your own good."

She blew a kiss. "I won't split." Dated slang, I noticed. Pity there's no market for it.

"Finish up," I told her. "We're going to the arcade, then Adrian's."

Instantly she was all about getting ready. Now, there's a difference for you. I knew a dealer in Manchester once who said that the only real difference between us and women was that they strike matches in an away direction, while men did it in a cupped hand toward themselves. But you can list a million things. Say to a chap, "Come on, I'll give you a lift. It's time to go," and he'll say, "Fine. Thanks," but not move for a while. A woman's immediately all bustle, hardly bothering to listen to the destination. Funny, that.

We pulled up near the arcade, doing the "Delivery" bit. I was proud of Sheila. She looked good enough to eat, as some of our local Romeos perceived. I went straight to Dandy Jack's. He was tilting a bottle.

"For my chest," he explained, grinning. "Hello, Lovejoy. Sit down, love."

His tiny shop was a ruin as usual. Everything lay under a coating of dust. He had two fire screens which would have been superb except that filth made them look like pieces of cladding, all that splendid granular coloring obscured.

"Why don't you spruce your place up, Dandy?" I couldn't help asking.

"Oh." He grinned. "Well, I would, but it takes time, doesn't it?"

Sheila sat gingerly on a Victorian piano stool, knees together and heels off the ground, with the air of a quack in an epidemic through no fault of his own.

"Bonny girl you got there, Lovejoy," he said.

"Thanks."

"Dandy Jack and Randy Lovejoy." He gave out a cackle and swigged again, wiping the bottle neck on his tattered sleeve.

"And they say wit is dead."

"No harm intended, love," he confided to Sheila, his hand on her shoulder.

"None taken," she said bravely without recoiling.

"You phoned," I reminded him. "But before you tell me why, have you still got those jades?"

"Of course." He delved into a pile of open trays and pulled one out. A jade tumbled off. He picked it up, rubbing it on his tatty pullover.

I snatched them all off him irritably and took them toward the light. It was still there, an unreal lustrous netsuke masquerading among jade and agate. I pulled off the ticket I'd written for it. A netsuke is a little carved figure of ivory, jade, or other decorative material. The Japanese made them for embellishing sword handles. We, of course, rip them out and ruin the entire setting.

"I've had second thoughts, Dandy." I tried not to feel guilty and avoided Sheila's eye.

He crowded close, stinking of rum. "It's not duff, is it, Love-joy?" he asked anxiously.

"No. It's superb."

The bitterness in my growl made him cackle with glee. "You're too bloody soft for this game," he croaked.

"Don't keep saying that," I snapped. I wrote out a new ticket upping the price five hundred per cent. "Here. Now," I said ferociously, "move them, Dandy. Move them! They should be treated with velvet gloves, not rattled around this cesspit of yours, and sold fast."

He cackled again and offered me a swig, which I declined. He glanced toward Sheila as a caution, but I nodded.

"Well," he said, reassured. "Some geezer phones me early. He'd heard I was putting the whisper out for flinters and rings to ask what sort. Wouldn't leave a name."

"That's useless, Dandy."

"Wait. He asks after a Mr. Lovejoy, did I know if he'd anything for sale in that line."

"Eh? Are you serious?"

"Straight up."

There was nothing more. Now this smacked of some amateur sleuthing on somebody's part. No dealer would tackle A about B's intentions so directly. I cast about for Margaret on the way out of the arcade but didn't see her. Her small den across the shopping arcade was unlit and carried its "Closed" sign. I don't know what I'd done wrong.

We pushed down the High Street among buses and cars toward Adrian's. It's a cut above the arcade. He has a spruce display, tickets on everything. Today's offerings included a series of Adam-style chairs, good copies, a lush mahogany Pembroke table by Gillows—a great name—of Lancaster about 1820, and a run of Byzantine icons on the walls among English watercolors.

Incidentally, remember that the watercolor game is a characteristically English art. Continental light is too brilliant. It's the curious shifting lights in our countryside that imparted a spontaneity and skill to the art that made it a feature of this land as opposed to others. Praise where it's due.

Adrian had a Rowbotham (moderate value, great skill), a Samuel Palmer (much value, brilliant skill), an Edward Lear (moderate value, moderate skill) and a minute Turner that must have taken less than a minute to do. I touched the frame just to say I'd done so, not kneeling, and recoiled stunned by bells. Huge value plus the skill of genius.

"Now, dear boy," Adrian was saying when I could concentrate. "You're not going to tell me it's phony. Don't you dare."

"It's perfect, Adrian."

"Isn't he sweet?" he cooed at Sheila. She concurred while I looked daggers.

"You wouldn't by any chance have popped in one of the local auctions, Adrian?"

I waited, but he stayed cool. "All the time, sweetie."

"Seddon's." Still not a flicker.

"Fortnightly." He smiled. "To remind myself how low one can sink, dear boy. They have rubbish and rubbishy rubbish, just those two sorts."

"You wouldn't have bought some gadgets about maybe a year ago? A collection of card cases, early nineteenth century… ?" My lies flowed with their usual serenity.

"No luck, love." He sat and thought. "Not heard of them either."

"Started out from a box job, so word is."

"Not even a whisper." He was sympathetic. "Ask Jane Felsham. It's more in her line. Got a buyer for them?"

I gave a rueful shrug. "I would have if I could find them."

"How many?"

"Ten—some mother of pearl, black lacquer, engraved silver, one silver filigree, and a couple chatelained."

He whistled. "I can understand your concern. Shall I ask about?"

"If you would, Adrian. Many thanks."

He cooed a farewell, waving a spotted cravat from his doorway as we went back to the car. I'd got a ticket from a cheerful traffic warden and grumbled at Sheila for not having reminded me about putting up my infallible "Delivering" notice.

Seddon's is one of those barnlike ground-floor places full of old furniture, mangles, mattresses, rotting wardrobes, and chairs. The public come to see these priceless articles auctioned. Dealers and collectors come to buy the odd Staffordshire piece, an occasional Bingham pot, or a set of old soldier's medals. The trouble is, the trade's nonseasonal at this level. To spot the public's deliberate mistake, as it were, you must go every week and never let up. Sooner or later there'll be a small precious item going for a song. It's not easy. To see how difficult it is, go to the auction near where you live. Go several times and you'll see what dross is offered for sale and gets bought! Now, in your half-dozen visits by the law of averages you could have bought for a few coppers at least one item worth a hundred times its auctioned price. The people who actually did buy it weren't simply lucky. They study, read, record, assemble information and a store of knowledge. It's that which pays off eventually. That, and flair—if you have any.

I stress "nonseasonal" because almost all of the antique business at the posher end is seasonal. It's too complex and full of idiosyncrasies to give it my full rip here, but in case you ever want to buy or sell anything even vaguely resembling an antique, follow Lovejoy's Law: All things being adjusted equally, sell in October or November to get the best auction price; buy between May and early September for the lowest prices.

It was viewing day, when you go around the day before the auction and moan at how terrible the junk is, and how there's cheaper and better stuff in the local market. That way, innocents hear your despair and go away never to return. Result— one less potential buyer. Also, it provides the auctioneer's assistants with an opportunity for lifting choice items out of the sale and flogging them in secret for a private undisclosed fee. We call it "melting down," and deplore it—unless we can get our hands on the stuff, in which case we keep quiet.

I took Sheila in and we milled around with a dozen housewives on the prowl and a handful of barkers. Tinker was there and came over.

"Any luck?"

"Yes, Lovejoy. Hello, miss."

Sheila said hello. We left her leafing through a shelf of drossy books and went among the furniture where nobody could listen in.

"I've got a cracker, Lovejoy," Tinker said. "You won't believe this, honest."

"You're having quite a run," I commented.

He got the barb and shook it off. "I know what you're thinking," he said, "but it's a whizzer. Listen. You're after a mint pair for that Field I put onto you—right?" I nodded. "I've found a cased set going."

"Where?" My mouth dried.

"Part exchange, though." This was Tinker creating tension. "Not a straight sale."

"What the hell does that matter?" I snarled. "Who the hell does a straight sale for the good stuff these days anyway? Get on with it."

"Keep your hair on." We chatted airily about mutual friends while an innocent housewife racked herself over a chest of drawers before marking it carefully on a list and pushed off steeling herself for tomorrow's auction.

Tinker drew me close. "You know that boatbuilder?"

"Used to buy off Brad down the creek?"

"Him. Going to sell a pair of Mortimers, cased."

"I don't believe it, Tinker."

"Cross my heart," he swore. "But he wants a revolving rifle in part exchange. Must be English."

I cursed in fury. Tinker maintained a respectful silence till I was worn out.

"Where the hell can I get one of those?" I muttered. "I've not seen one for years."

I actually happened to have one in my priest hole, by Adams of London Bridge, a five-chambered percussion long arm. There's bother with a spring I've never dared touch, but otherwise it's perfect. I cursed the boatbuilder and his parents and any possible offspring he might hope to have. Why can't people take the feelings of antique dealers into account before they indulge in their stupid bloody whimsies? Isn't that what all these useless sociologists are for? I came manfully out of my sulk.

Tinker was waiting patiently. "All right, Lovejoy?"

"Yes. Thanks, Tinker." I gave him a couple of notes. "When?"

"Any time," he answered. "It'll be first come first served, Lovejoy, so get your skates on. They say Brad's going down the waterside early tomorrow. Does he know—?"

"The whole bloody world knows it's me that's after flinters," I said with anguish.

When a punter puts money on a horse at two-to-one odds, as you will know, nothing happens at first. Then, as more and more punters back it, the odds will fall to maybe evens, which means you must risk two quid to win only two, instead of risking two to win four as formerly. In practically the same way, the more people want to buy a thing, the dearer it becomes. Naturally, merchants will explain that costs and heaven-knows-what factors have pushed the price up, but in fact that's a load of cobblers. Their prices go up because more people want a thing. They are simply more certain of selling, and who blames them for wanting to make a fortune?

Gambling is a massive industry. Selling spuds is too. Buying flintlocks or Geneva-cased chain-transmission Wikelman watches is not a great spectator sport, so the field is smaller. A whisper at one end therefore reverberates through the entire collecting world in a couple of weeks, with the effect that those already in possession of the desired item quickly learn they are in a position to call the tune. They can more or less name their terms. Hence the indispensable need of a cunning barker.

"I'll go and see him," I said. Nothing makes humanity more morose than an opportunity coming closer and closer as the risks of failure simultaneously grow larger.

A toddler gripped my calf crying, "Dadda! Dadda!" delightedly. I tried unsuccessfully to shake the little psychopath off and had to wait red-faced until its breathless mother arrived all apologetic to rescue me. The little maniac complained bitterly at having lost its new find as it was dragged back to its push chair. Sheila was helpless with laughter at the scene. The fact that I was embarrassed as hell of course proved even more highly diverting.

"Oh, Lovejoy!" she said, falling about.

"You can go off people, you know," I snarled. "Very funny. A spiffing jape."

"Oh, Lovejoy!"

"Mind that apothecary box!" I pushed her away just before she knocked it off a side table.

This gave her the opportunity to ask about it I saw through her placatory maneuver, but for the life of me I couldn't resist. It gave me an excuse to fondle the box, a poor example it was true, but they are becoming fairly uncommon and you have to keep on the lookout.

Watch your words. Not an "apothecary's" box. It wasn't his, in the sense that he carried it about full of rectangular bottles and lovely nooky felt-lined compartments for pills and galenical "simples," as his preparations were called. It belonged usually to a household, and was made to stand en a bureau, a medicine cabinet if you like. You dosed yourself from it, or else hired an apothecary, forerunner of the general practitioner, to give advice on what to use from it. The current cheapness of these elegant little cabinets never ceases to amaze me. I wish they would really soar to a hundred times their present giveaway price, then maybe the morons who buy them and convert them into mini-cocktail cabinets would leave well alone and get lost.

You find all sorts of junk put in by unscrupulous dealers and auctioneers besides the bottles. This one had a deformed old hatched screwdriver thing with a flanged blade and a pair of old guinea scales imitating the original physic balance. I dropped them back in, snorting scornfully Sheila heard my opinion with synthetic attention and nodded in all the right places.

"If I catch somebody doing it, darling, I'll smash it on his head," she promised as we strolled around.

"You'll do no such thing."

"No?"

"Smash a brick on his head, and bring the apothecary box to me."

"For you, Lovejoy, anything."

After an hour Sheila was protesting Inspecting stuff's best done by osmosis. Don't rush, stroll. Be casual. Saunter, wander, learn.

"We keep going round and round, Lovejoy," she complained, sitting to take off a shoe to rub her foot like they do.

"Shut up," I said, wandering off.

Jim, one of the elderly attendants, guffawed. "Chivalrous as ever, eh, Lovejoy?" he said, and I was in with an excuse.

"This junk's enough to make a saint swear," I groused. "Never seen so much rubbish since Field's stuff came through."

He was aggrieved at that. Nobody likes their own stuff being recognized for the rubbish it is.

"We sold some good stuff that day," he said, quick as a flash. "If you hadn't gone to Cumberland you'd know better."

That explained why I'd missed it. I was beginning to feel better as things clicked into place.

"Nothing still around from it, is there?" I asked casually.

He grinned. "Do leave orf, Lovejoy. It was donkeys' years back."

"Oh, you never know," I said, hinting like mad.

He shook his head. "No, we played that one straight," he admitted ruefully. "Practically all of it went the same week we got it."

"Just a thought, Jim. Some things do get left behind occasionally."

"Pigs might fly," he said.

I played casual another minute, then collected Sheila and we made it back to the car.

We pulled out, rolling against protesting traffic to get started.

"We have one more call to make before home," I told her. "Game?"

She sighed. "These places always make me feel so grubby. I need a bath."

"Same here." I shrugged. The motor coughed into eraphysematous life and we were under power. "What's that to do with anything?"

"Where are we going?"

"Down the creek."

"Is it a tip from Tinker?"

"You guessed, eh?"

"It was pathetically obvious, Lovejoy."

"You're making me uneasy."

And she was. Tinker was loyal, wasn't he? I paid him well by comparison with other dealers' barkers. I never disclosed a confidence. Twice I'd bailed him out. Once I'd rescued him from Old Bill, and once saved him getting done over by the Brighton lads. But you could never tell. Was it this suspicion that was worrying me? Something niggled in my memory, something I had seen.

We were out of town and down on the estuary in no time. It's not much of a place—four small boatbuilders in corrugated iron sheds, the usual paraphernalia of the pleasure-boating fraternity, and a few boats hauled up on the mud by the wharf. Those big Essex barges used to ply between here and Harwich in the old days, crossing to the Blackwater and even London, but the two that are left are only used for showing tourists the Colne estuary and racing once a year, a put-up job.

I found Barton planing wood. The lights were on inside his boathouse though outside was still broad daylight. You could see the town-hall clock in the distance some five miles off. I waited until he stopped. Well, what he was making could be a valuable antique in years to come. Never interrupt a craftsman.

"Hello, Lovejoy." He stopped eventually and nodded to Sheila as we sat on planks.

"When are you going to give this boat lark up, Dick?" I said. "You could go straight."

It gave him a grin as he lit his pipe. "Dealing in antiques?"

"Maybe," I offered. "I'd take you on as a substandard junior partner for a year's salary."

"I like a proper job," he countered, winking at Sheila. She was quite taken with him.

"On second thoughts, I couldn't see you standing the pace."

"Of course," he yakked on, "I can see the attraction. Nothing really matters in antiques, does it? Right or wrong, you get along."

"It's time for his tablet," I apologized to Sheila. "This feverish air down on the waterside, you understand. His blood's thin."

"I turn into a man after dark," he said solemnly to Sheila. "If ever you're thinking of ditching this goon, give me a tinkle."

"Flinters, Dick," I said gently. There was silence. A waterbird made a racket outside and something splashed with horrid brevity.

"Ah, well," he said.

These pipe smokers are one up on the rest of us. It might be worth taking up just for the social advantages. If you want a few moments peace, out it comes and you can spin out the whole ritual for as long as you feel inclined. The universe waited breathlessly until his pipe was chugging to his satisfaction.

"Launched?" I asked. "Better now?"

"Flinters," he said. "They're a problem, now, aren't they?"

"You are telling me?"

"And rare."

"And desirable. Go on, Dick. And costly."

"Ah, yes." He stared down the short slipway. "About a month ago I decided which pair I'd keep. I have two Sandwells and the Mortimers. The Mortimers can go, but I want exchange. A revolving rifle, English." Sandwell was an early brass-barrel specialist, lovely stuff.

"And cash adjustment."

"Something of the sort."

"And the Mortimers?" I could feel that old delicious greed swelling in my chest. Magic.

"Mint," he said.

"Really mint?"

"Not a blemish." He'd let his pipe doze. "Cased. Casehardening. I don't think," he said, winking at Sheila, "you'll be disappointed." The understatement of all time. Casehardening. Something scratched again at my memory, worrying me.

If you keep any metallic object in an unopened case for long enough, it acquires a curious characteristic. If the surface was originally made an acid-protected rust brown, it simply becomes shinier, almost oily in appearance. If previously made a fire-protected shiny blue ("gunmetal" blue), the surface develops an odd mother-of-pearl effect very like the sheen of gasoline on water. This casehardening is an especially desirable feature of anything metal having a protected surface, from coins to weapons. On no account clean it off; you will be doing posterity a cultural favor and yourself a financial one by leaving it intact.

"Look, Dick." I drew breath and launched. "I can lay my hands on one."

"Good?"

"A faulty spring I've not touched. Otherwise mint."

"Cased?"

"Come off it."

"Who by?"

"Adams, London Bridge. Five-chambered." I photographed it in my mind's eye. "It's beautiful."

He thought a second in a cloud of smoke. "How would we adjust?"

"Because you're a close relative," I said, in agony, "I'll pay the difference."

"Let's settle it tomorrow," he said, and we shook hands.

Sheila rose. "Is that all that happens?" She seemed peeved.

"What do you want, blood?" I demanded. I was drenched with sweat, as always. The excitement of the forthcoming deal was brewing in me. Tomorrow, with luck and good judgment and money, I would be in possession of a pair of casehardened flinters made by the most aristocratic and expensive of all the great London makers, Henry Walklate Mortimer.

"Thanks for coming, Lovejoy." Dick came to the door of his boatshed to see us out. "Still got your steamer, I see."

"Any more jokes about my motor and the deal's off," I shot back. "At least I've got a license for it. Have you, for that thing?" I pointed to his pipe.

"Bring your lovely lady again, Lovejoy," he called, and I replied with rudeness.

He was able to get his own back because my wretched banger refused to start despite all the cranking I could manage. Dick borrowed a trio of amused boatmen to push us off, to a chorus of catcalls and derision.

"Why don't you put an engine in, Lovejoy?" was Dick's final bellow as we pulled off the wharfside and escaped onto the road up from the village. I didn't reply because I was white-faced and my teeth were chattering.

"Love?" Sheila asked. "Are you ill?"

"Shut up," I hissed, foot flat on the accelerator. The needle flickered up to twenty and we pottered slowly upward past the church. It was almost time for lights.

"What is it?" She tried to pull me around, but I swore and jerked my face away.

"I've just remembered something."

"For God's sake, darling—"

"This bloody stupid car!" I almost screamed the words. "Why the hell don't I get a new one? What's the matter with it?"

"Darling, pull over to the side and I'll—"

"Shut up you stupid—" My hands were ice-cold and my scalp prickled with fear.

"Please, love. I'm frightened. What is it?"

"That frigging box!"

"What box?"

"That apothecary box! There's something in it. A… a…" The words wouldn't come.

"The bottles? Drugs?" I shook my head and strove to overtake the village bus, to the driver's annoyance. He hooted and pulled in as we crawled past toward the town. We were up to thirty. "Those little scales?"

"That other thing."

"You said it was junk the auctioneers put in to make it look complete. Wasn't it a screwdriver?"

"It was casehardened!" I snarled. "Who the hell puts a screwdriver away in a felt-lined case to preserve it for a whole bloody century?" I was practically demented, kicking and blaspheming at the decrepit motor, begging it for greater speed. "And its handle was hatched—hatched like a Durs gun. Oh, God almighty, please let them still be open. Please, please, please."

Sheila grabbed my arm. "Lovejoy, if we see a taxi, flag it down."

"Yes, yes, yes," I whimpered. "Please send a taxi. Please, please."

"What time do they close?"

"Half past five."

"It's twenty past."

"The swine will go early. They always do, those bloody attendants, the idle sods."

We reached the trunk road roundabout by the river bridge at twenty-five past five, and swung left away from the Ipswich road. East Hill was well into lighting-up time as we screeched to a graceful stop outside Seddon's. It was closed and dark.

"Knock," Sheila said, climbing out.

"They've gone." I was lost, defeated by the calamity.

She remained resolute and banged on the main door. I stepped down to join her just as one of the stewards opened the partition. My relief almost made me faint.

"What the hell—?"

"Jim," I said weakly. "It's me. Lovejoy."

"Closed till tomorrow."

"Not for me you're not." I pulled out a note. "A single question, Jim. Just one."

He eyed it and nodded. I gave it to him and asked, "The question is, Will you let me find my nail file? I dropped it in the showroom an hour or so back."

"Gawd." He hesitated. "Mr. St. John has the keys."

"And so have you, Jim."

"Well…" he was saying, when Sheila came to the rescue.

"It's actually my nail file," she broke in. "I was really careless. It's one of a set, you see, in a case."

"Well, miss, dealers aren't allowed—"

"I know exactly where it is, Jim," I said, calmer now. "I'll bet you five of those notes I could put my hand on it in three seconds flat." That was a mistake and scared him.

"Here, Lovejoy," he began, starting to close the door. "I don't want none of your fiddling—"

"You stay here, Lovejoy," Sheila said chidingly. She stepped into the doorway and turned to push me back. "You're always so abrupt. The gentleman said that dealers weren't allowed in after fixed hours so you'll have to wait here, that's all." On a tide of feminine assurance she swept past Jim, who humbly put the door to. I heard their footsteps recede along the passageway and keys rattle in the showroom door.

I hung about the sidewalk getting in people's way and generally prowling around for quite five minutes before Sheila reappeared. I was up with her in a flash.

"Thank you so much," she was saying to old Jim, who was smirking at all his extra gallantry. "I'm so sorry we delayed you. You've been so kind. Good night."

I honestly tried to grin at Jim, but he wasn't having any from me and banged the door.

Sheila walked to the car. "I've got it in my handbag," she said, swinging the strap to her other shoulder. "Don't grab, or Jim will see."

She was really quite smart at that. Old Jim would no doubt be lusting after her as we left. You could see virtually the whole hill from the office. With quivering fingers I set the handle and cranked. We rumbled up the hill and I pulled in by the park railings in town.

The cars pouring from the car park got in the way of this maneuver. I'm sure they didn't really mind having to stop suddenly. Muriel Field was at the wheel of a gray Rover, but I'd no time for light chitchat. After all, she had no antiques any more. Not like Sheila, who had the device out. I carried it into the lights of the lamps on the war memorial. It was a Durs screw mechanism, the weirdest I'd ever seen, but authentic, star cross-hatched on the handle and casehardened, maybe in all five inches long.

"I'm afraid I have a confession, Lovejoy," Sheila said, beside me.

"Eh?"

"I'm afraid I… I stole it." She pulled away as I tried to embrace her, laughing. "Promise me."

"What? Anything."

"You'll pay for it tomorrow."

"You're off your head."

"Promise, Lovejoy."

I sighed at all this whimsey. "I promise." I gave her a rubbery kiss under the memorial's lamp despite the pedestrians. A car's horn sounded. Adrian and Jane sailed past signaling applause. He'd have some witticism ready next time. "Here. You can have the honor of carrying the find home."

"Is it important, Lovejoy?" I gave it to her and she slipped it into her handbag.

"Somewhat," I said, beginning to realize. "Somewhat."

A hurrying mother pulled her gawping child along the pavement to stop it from openly inspecting the couple kissing in the main street. I kept my eye on her as Sheila and I stepped apart to drive home, and sure enough she gave a swift glance back to see how we were managing. Aren't women sly?

Chapter 9

I dropped Sheila at the station. She had to go to work, poor lady, on some crummy newspaper. We had a small scene outside.

"I'll be here on Sunday," she told me, and I nodded. She waited. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Aren't you going to come onto the platform and see me off?"

"I daren't take my foot off this pedal or she'll never start again today," I explained. "Otherwise I'd come in with you like a shot."

She came around to my side and kissed me. "You know, Lovejoy," she said, "for the world's greatest antique dealer you're an awful dope."

"I keep telling you your slang's dated."

"No use trying to needle me," she said, cool as ever I'd seen her. "You're falling for me, Lovejoy."

"Look," I said testily. "This accelerator's down to the floor. It's costing the earth in gas just sitting here while you babble—"

She put her arms around me and hugged me tight. This, note, was about ten in broad daylight, with the paper man grinning and the kiosk lady enjoying the show.

"I have a secret to tell you, Lovejoy."

"You're not—?"

"Certainly not!" She reached under the dashboard in front of me. "Take your foot off the accelerator."

"I can't. The engine'll cut out."

"Please."

I did as she said. Just before the engine coughed to silence she twisted something near the steering rod. The engine muted instantly into a deep, steady thrum.

She stood back and dusted her hands. "There!"

I sat mesmerized.

"Now," she said casually, "care for a spin?"

"Er—"

"Push over." She came into the driver's seat and nudged me across. "Let the expert do it, honey," she said kindly, flicked a switch somewhere, and yanked on an angled rod-thing near her knee.

We took off. My spine nearly slipped from the force. The old Armstrong boomed easily around the station roundabout and Sheila put it onto the hill near the hospital at fifty. We zoomed onto the main A 12 about three minutes later, and Sheila crashed her slickly up into the seventies. Fields and trees flicked by. Wind pulled at my face and her hair streamed out flat against her temples. In a couple of breaths the signs to Kelvedon darted past. I sat in frozen disorientation while all this happened around me. Sheila pulled into the middle lane and did her mystery with the levers. We hummed alongside a column of slower cars, and as she overtook back into the inside the needle wobbled down to seventy. There was hardly a shudder. A couple more millisecs and we were at Witham. She brought us into the station and switched off. The motor breathed a sigh quieting into silence.

"Tea, guvnor?"

There was a tea stall within reach. I nodded and climbed shakily down. Let Sheila pay, I thought angrily. We stood in silence slurping tea from cracked cups. Sheila had this strange feminine knack of being able to drink scalding fluids without losing her esophagus. I was quite ten minutes finishing mine. I stared at the Armstrong while I sipped, thought, and wondered. I handed my cup onto the counter with a nod of thanks. The chap on the stall must have thought we'd had a row, because he studiously busied himself picking losers at Cheltenham and left the cup there.

"Is that what you were doing last night?" I managed to say finally.

"Yes, love. I'm so sorry." She held my hand.

"Was it… really obvious?"

"It was rather, Lovejoy," she said sadly. "A massive car like this, so old, supposedly only one gear, fantastic fuel consumption, no speed to speak of, weak as a kitten, all those gadgets within reach."

"When did you suspect?"

"Yesterday, when we were trying to hurry to Seddon's before it closed." She smiled. "It was ridiculous. And everywhere we go other motorists hoot at it, even when you're driving quite well. So, while you got our usual fantastic supper—"

"What's wrong with my suppers?" I said angrily.

"Nothing, love," she said quickly. "Nothing at all. Those pies are lovely, and I really look forward to those shop custards. But I had to do something while you, er, got it ready, didn't I?"

"I thought you were cleaning it," I said bitterly.

"It wasn't me, really," she pacified. "It was you. I remember you once told me the car was the only time your wretched bell proved itself wrong. That set me thinking. So I turned a few switches and—"

"Did you know all the time it was special?"

"No, love. Honestly." I looked askance at her. Sometimes women aren't quite truthful.

"I think you're lying in your teeth," I said.

She smiled. "I quite like a lie now and again," she said demurely, and I had to laugh.

"You know what?" I asked. She shook her head. "I think I'm starting to fall for you."

She inspected me for a few moments. "About time, Lovejoy," she said. "We're both suffering from malnutrition with those corny dinners you insist on serving up. I'll bring my things on Sunday to stay for as long as we last."

"I'll meet you at the station, seeing I'll be able to start the car now."

"There's a switch near the starting pump. Push it down, and she'll start with the first crank of the handle." She pulled me into the driver's seat and showed me an exotic circular gear wheel, five gears and one reverse. I sat like a beginner as she explained the controls.

"The London train, lady." The tea man knocked on his window to attract our attention.

"That's it, then, Lovejoy." She brushed her hair back and got her case out.

"I love you." I embraced her. "Give us a kiss, love."

The train came and took her away.

"Go easy in that monster," she called, her very last words to me. Go easy in that monster. Some exit line.

"I will. See you Sunday."

The tea man was out of his booth and examining the Armstrong as I came up. "You've a right bit of gorgeous stuff there," he said.

"Yes. I thought it was an Armstrong." I kicked a tire.

"Eh? Oh, no. I meant your young lady."

"Oh, yes. Her too."

I did the necessary and notched an intrepid forty-five on the trunk road back. The Armstrong—was it still an Armstrong?— didn't cough once and went like a bird.

I rolled up to George Field's house in style.

I was beginning to realize there was a lopsided distribution of wealth in the Field family. On the one hand was Eric, evidently wealthy, complete with mansion, eighty acres of manicured grass, and gardeners touching forelocks to the boss and his lady as they strolled out for a morning row on the two-acre pond. On the other was George, here in a two-bedroom farce on a small estate, with bicycles and wrecks of lawn mowers and old bits of wood bulging the garage. His little Ford, clean as a new pin, was parked in a drive barely long enough for it. Despite all this, he had dashed out a handful of notes, hired me as a would-be sleuth because of my knack of sniffing out antiques, and promised all those lovely D's for what could be a pipe dream.

He came to the door agog for news. It was obviously a major disappointment to him when I told him I'd only called to give him a progress report. We went into the living room and he asked his wife, a dumpier female version of himself, to bring some coffee. I told him some of the events but was careful when I said I'd visited Muriel.

"I'm so glad she's better now," Mrs. Field said. "She went through a very bad patch."

"She's still rather nervous," I agreed, setting her clucking at the tribulations all about. "Was she always?"

It seemed she was, but much worse since poor Eric's sudden end. I told George of my find in the apothecary box, mentally absolving myself of the payment I'd promised Sheila the day before.

"Do you recognize it?" I handed it over and he put on glasses.

"I wouldn't," he said. "I never touched the weapons, nor the screwdrivers. I wasn't much interested, as I said before."

I ran down the main events of the past couple of days for him and remembered to ask him if he had any details about the sale of Eric's stuff at the auctioneers, but without luck.

"It seems the cased weapons might have come from near a bird sanctuary near a coastal resort."

"There's a nice holiday place near Fellows Nab," Mrs. Field said. "Too many caravans there now, though. That's in Norfolk."

Mrs. Ellison's antique shop was a few miles from Fellows Nab. I'd seen the sign.

"You never saw the wrapping?" I asked George.

"No. You have to realize I only saw him and Muriel once a week on average, and he was always showing me this and that."

"You should have taken more notice, George," his wife said.

"Yes, dear," he said with infinite patience. I'd have to watch myself with Sheila, I thought uneasily, if this is marriage.

"I'm making a systematic study of every possible flinter transaction during the past two years." I was eager to show I was really trying. "It'll take a little time, though."

"But if you found out where they did come from, what then?" He was a shrewd nut.

"I don't honestly know," I said as calmly as I could. "But what else is there? They've vanished. The police are—"

"They've given it up," Mrs. Field said, lips thinned with disapproval. "I always said they would, didn't I, George?"

"I suppose what I'll do is find whoever sold them to your brother and ask who else knew where they were."

"Well, you know best, of course," he said, worried. "But poor Eric was a real talker. He wasn't the sort of person to conceal any of his finds in the antique world. He loved company and used to have his friends in."

"Friends?" I interrupted. "Collectors?"

"Oh, yes. And dealers."

"And dealers," Mrs. Field echoed. "Ever so many people thought highly of Eric's opinion. Very knowledgeable, he was, about practically everything. Old furniture as well."

"So it's probable a lot of people may have seen the Durs?"

"For certain."

I rose and thanked them. George came with me to the door.

"Look," I began hesitantly. "Please don't think I'm rude, Mr. Field, but—"

"Yes?"

"Well…"

Understanding began to dawn in his eyes. "You're wondering where I can get so much money from, Lovejoy," he observed with a smile.

"It's a lot of money," I said in embarrassment.

"Oh, I'm a careful man. Only thing I've ever done is run a shoe shop, and I didn't make good like Eric did in the property business." He was quite unabashed at my rudeness. "I have some savings, insurance. And the mortgage on the house is almost paid. I could take out a new one. You needn't be afraid the money would be forthcoming. After all, the Judas guns are the only real evidence, aren't they? If we can buy them back from whoever the… murderer… sold them to, they'll be proof, won't they?"

I listened as he rambled on about them for a moment, and chose my words with care.

"Mr. Field." I cleared my throat. "Do you mean to say that now, when you're comfortably settled and solvent at last, you'll chuck it all up and start working and paying all over again, just to—?"

"Don't say it, Lovejoy," he said gently. "Of course I would. And don't go looking at Eric's wealth for a reason, either. That just doesn't come into it. I approached you because somebody did Eric wrong. It shouldn't be allowed. It's wrong. It always was. Even these days, robbery and killing is still wrong."

I mumbled something I hoped sounded humble.

"You see, Lovejoy," he finished, "if you take away people, there's nothing else left, is there?"

I drove away. Ever feel you're beginning to lose your faith in human nature?

There was something wrong with the cottage. You get feelings like that even though there's nothing in particular you can detect consciously. I hadn't switched the alarm on that morning because I had planned only to run Sheila to the station, pop back to the cottage to collect my Adams revolving percussion gun, then drive to Dick Barton's boatshed and complete the deal, all this before going to George Field's. If Sheila hadn't been so knowledgeable about the car I'd have been back in time to prevent the robbery, for robbery it was. You can smell it.