The Judas Pair

Naturally I'd been done over before. Show me the antique dealer who hasn't. It's a hazard of the trade. Like injuries in motorcar racing, it comes with the job. Hence my usually meticulous concern for security. And the bloody alarm which had cost me the earth wasn't even switched on. Serves me right, I was thinking as I prowled about to make sure he'd gone. The place wasn't a complete shambles, but had suffered. Somebody in a hurry, obviously.

There were a couple of letters addressed to Sheila care of me on the doormat, so the post girl had called on time. Maybe her arrival had scared him off, I hoped, as nothing seemed out of place at first. The carpet hadn't been disturbed over my clever little priest hole, thank heavens, but I realized pretty quickly that my walnut-cased so-called carriage clock had gone.

I gave vent to every expletive I'd ever learned, ranting and fuming. I'd got the clock for a quid from a starving old widow —one of my kinder moments this, because if I'd been true to myself I'd have beaten her down to a few pence. The sheer effrontery of somebody having the gall to come in, finger anything of mine he wanted, then take a rare priceless antique was sickening. Literally, I felt physically sick. I phoned our ever-vigilant constable Geoffrey, who was mercifully in, probably still having his morning nap. He was ever so sympathetic.

"When you've stopped laughing," I snarled, "get my clock back."

"Estimate of value, please, Lovejoy."

"Six hundred," I said firmly. He was silent for once.

"Did— Did you say—?" And he laughed again, louder this time.

"Well, maybe three hundred."

"You mean about eighty."

"Ninety."

"As a friend, Lovejoy," he said sadly, "I can only make it eighty-five."

"But that's robbery."

He agreed. "You can argue it out with the insurance people, Lovejoy," he said. "Incidentally, how'd he get in?"

"I'll look. Hang on."

There was a cut around the window near its catch. The window looked right down the back garden and could be reached by anyone standing on the grass, which grows right up to the cottage. I told Geoffrey and he said it was typical, but how about my alarm system connected at great expense to a noisy little flashing light in his office? I explained I'd been in a rush that morning.

"Thanks, Lovejoy," he said cynically. "We love a bit of help from the public."

"Are you going to come and look for clues or aren't you?" I snapped and crashed the receiver.

I made some tea while I waited. Apart from scratches on the windowsill there was nothing. I moved about straightening things. The trouble is that you know where to look for antiques. Guns must be locked in an enclosed space, says the Firearms Act; porcelain will be in a fastened case; portabilia locked in a safe or drawer. He knew his stuff. Whoever had done this was neat, slick, and an opportunist dedicated to walnut carriage clocks. Now, two things worried me far more than the loss of the clock. One was that Geoffrey's guess about the clock's value wasn't too far out, which was important, because nobody robs for very little. The second thing stared back at me from the opposite wall as I lounged on the divan swilling tea. It was my Chien Lung plate, a lovely disk of hand-painted light pastel colors stenciled by a neat blue running-edge design. It stood in prominence 6n my desk on a three-leaved ebony hinge support of the sort the Chinese do so cleverly. Neither plate nor clock was unique, but of the two the plate was infinitely—well, ten times—more desirable in anybody's book, as well as being more valuable. So why pass it up?

That left two possibilities. Either my burglar was well informed enough to know that I had a carriage clock to suit him, or he hadn't come for the carriage clock at all. Which raised the question, Why take it if he didn't want it? Answer: To cause his intrusion to be written off as a simple uncomplicated robbery by a burglar who happened to have a casual eye for antiques.

It was starting to look as though I'd established contact with the owner of a very special pair of flinters.

The rest of the day's happenings I don't really want to talk about.

Geoffrey came on his bicycle and took notes. He examined the earth outside, searched patiently for heaven knows what sort of clues, and later went around the village asking who'd noticed what and when, with conspicuous failure. Left to my own devices, I retrieved my Adams from the priest hole before driving to Barton's on the estuary and settling with him for too much in part exchange, and bringing the cased Mortimers back home to gloat over despite the fact that I'd have to pay out to settle it before the month ended. I had my usual supper bought from the Bungalow Shop in the village, read a lot, and went to bed not knowing that by then Sheila was dead.

She had got on the London train, and apparently went home before reporting to work that same day. It was on the way home that evening that she was said to have stumbled and fallen beneath the wheels of an oncoming train.

The platform was crowded. In the friendly reliable way we all have, nobody came forward to say who was even standing near her. To hear the witnesses at the inquest, the three thousand people must have clustered awkwardly along the platform leaving an open space for several yards all around Sheila as she waited for the train to come and kill her. Don't go trying to say people may not have noticed somebody pushing a woman off a platform because of the crowd. There's no excuse. Women notice a pretty woman because they're practically compelled to, and men notice because they're compelled to in a different way. People simply look away when they want to, and they've no right.

Later, a couple of days on, I remembered what George Field had said: If you take away people, there's nothing left. One can't be answerable for all mankind, no. But you can sure as hell stick up for the little chunks of mankind that are linked with you, no matter how that link came about—birth, relations, by adoption, love. It all counts. Podgy old George and his dumpy little wife knew the game of living, while I was just a beginner.

I learned about Sheila from Geoffrey the day after the burglary. I just said thank you and shut the door.

No jokes from now on, folks.

Chapter 10

Somebody once said you get no choice in life, and none in memory either. Judging by what the Victorians left in the way of knickknacks, they made a valiant attempt to control memory by means of lockets for engravings, "likenesses" in all manner of materials ranging from hairs from the head of the beloved to diamonds, and a strange celebration of death through the oddest mixture of jubilation and grief. Their memory, they seemed to think, should be neatly ordered to provide the maximum nostalgia centered on the loved one. If it needed extra emotional work to achieve that reassuring state, then the labor would just have to be endured. You can't say the Victorians were scared of hard slogging.

I would have liked to have been as firm as they. You know what I mean, pick out especially fond moments from my friendship with Sheila and build up a satisfying mosaic of memories which would comfort me in my loss by giving assurance that all was really not wasted. Nice, but all really was wasted as far as Sheila was concerned. Finished. Done for. And for me Sheila was gone. Anyway, I'm not resolute enough to look inward for the purpose of emotional construction. Gone's gone.

So that terrible day I sat and sat and did nothing to my records, left letters unanswered, didn't pick up the phone. For some reason I made a coal fire, a dirty habit I thought I'd given up. I shifted my electric fire, put newspaper in a heap in the grate, chopped wood, and got it going first time. There was a residue of coal in the old coalbin by the back door so I set to burning that. The cottage became warm, snug, and the day wore on. I had no control over my memories of Sheila as I watched the flames gleam and flash in the fire.

She had this habit of watching me, not just glancing now and again to check I was still around and not up to no good, but actively and purposely inspecting me. I might be doing nothing; still she'd watch, smiling as if engaged in a private humorous conversation at my foibles. It made me mad with her at first, but you get used to a particular woman, don't you?

Another trick she had was reaching out and absently rubbing my neck for nothing while she was reading or watching TV in the cottage. I'd probably be searching through price data of antiques and she'd just put her hand on my neck. It distracted me at first and I'd shrug her off, but moments later back she would come caressing me. There was nothing to it, not her way of starting sex play or anything. It was just her preference. She used to do it for hours.

Then there was the business with the cheese. While I was studying she would suddenly put down her book, go across to the little kitchen, and bring back a piece of cheese so small it didn't matter, and push it in my mouth. Never said anything, never had any herself. It would happen maybe twice or three times in an evening. Often she'd not even stop reading; simply carried her book with her, reading as she went. As well she was tidy and neat, unlike most birds. They have this reputation, don't they, but most of them get fed up with the tidiness legend and chuck it in during their late teens. Sheila was really tidy by nature, almost to the point of being a bit too careful. Nothing of hers ever got in my way. I never fell over her shoes, for instance, because they were tidied out of sight, not like some I could mention.

And the fights. We scrapped a lot, sometimes because of sex, other times because stress is part of life and you let off steam. She was irritable sometimes. She'd announce it from the doorway on arrival, standing there. "I'm angry, Lovejoy," she'd say, blazing. "With me or without?" I'd say, and every time she'd fling back "With you, Lovejoy, who else?" and we'd argue for hours. I'd chucked her out before now because of her temper. Once women get their dander up, all you can do is send them packing, because there's no point in everybody getting in a rage to suit their need of a barney, is there? I've sloshed her too, sometimes when she'd got me mad and other times making love, but that's only the love sort of coming out, isn't it? Once I bruised her and got worried afterward, which made her laugh and call me silly. I don't follow their arguments, really, mostly because they make allowances for all sorts of wrong things yet go berserk over little matters you'd hardly notice.

The fire was hot on my face from staring at it. I needed one of Dandy Jack's embroidered fire screens but wanted to see the fire. Of course, a hundred years ago people had fire screens to protect their complexions from the heat, and to shield their eyes from the firelight while reading or sewing in a poorly lit room. A bright fire was a source of light. The complexion bit was the important thing, though. Only peasants and country women had ruddy complexions. Elegant ladies wanted lovely pale faces on the unmistakably correct assumption that though ruddy's only healthy, pale's interesting.

Natural light—fires, candles, oil lanterns—confers a special feeling in a room. One day a month when I feel like it I switch all electricity off and live by natural light. You'd be surprised at the effect it induces. Try it. Natural lights have sounds, small poppings and hissings betokening the fact that they have a life of their own. And that's another thing. Notice that word I just used, betokening? By natural light words you'd never even think of come back as it were from times before. Who uses words like that? See what even thinking of natural light can do for you. It teaches you a lot about times gone by too. Your eyes begin to sting sometimes if you use too many oil lamps in a room, so three is a maximum or you become uncomfortable.

One odd thing is that rooms which you'd think unduly cluttered become much more acceptable by natural light. You've seen mock-ups of Victorian drawing rooms in museums beautifully lit by bright inert-gas strip lights, and probably been dismayed by seeing practically every inch of wall space covered by pictures, every surface littered by ornaments and clocks, and the furniture draped with hangings so you wonder how they could stand it. The reason you're put off by all that congestion is that the museum's got the lighting wrong. Tell them to switch everything off and put a single oil lamp on the bureau and draw the curtains. What a difference! Those ornaments which should glow by natural light do so, while the rest merely set each other off in an easy, comfortable pattern of cozy acquaintanceship. Beautiful, really beautiful. The clutter becomes friendly and spaced out. Don't ridicule the Victorians when it's us that's being stupid and insensitive.

Sheila wouldn't rub my neck any more. No cheese would suddenly be pushed absent-mindedly into my mouth. No more fights. No more sex with her. No more being watched by her smile.

The fire kept in till dawn. Twice I put the radio on. A stupid woman was trying to be crisply incisive about domestic problems that really needed a kick up the backside instead of a psychiatrist. I told her my opinion in no uncertain terms and switched her off. Later I heard the television news about some Middle East catastrophe and switched that off as well. I managed half a cup of tea about midnight. My coal ran out about five-ish the next morning.

I cut up a piece of bread and some Wensleydale cheese to feed the robin. It was down to me within seconds, shooing competitors away from the door. You can't help waiting to see if they do different things from what you expect, or if they'll do exactly the same as they've done for years. In either case you're never disappointed.

"Sheila used to say I was too soft with you, Rob," I said to the robin. He came on my arm for his cheese. "You'll forget how to go marauding, she says-said." But that can't be bad, was my standard reply to her when she said that. If that's the worst we got up to, the world wouldn't be in such a mess. She'd insist the robin ought to go hunting worms to mangle them in the most unspeakable way because it was naturally what they did in searching for food. My cheese-feeding policy must pay off eventually, though, if you think about it. If you're crammed full of cake and cheese you can't fancy too many worms for at least an hour or two, can you? "Anyway, cheese is good for teeth and bones," I said to her. "You're foolish, Lovejoy," she used to say, falling about laughing. "Robins don't have a tooth between them." I used to say, So what, they'd got bones. It was a stupid argument, but she would never see sense.

Any sort of hunting is only very rarely necessary, it's always seemed to me. When the robin had surely eaten enough I scattered the remainder about on the path near the Armstrong for the sparrows and the big browny-black birds to share. Even so the robin wouldn't have any peace. He flew at them, making stabs with his beak and generally defending the crumbs against all comers. You can't help admiring a bird like that. I wondered if he was more of a hunter than I thought, but decided to stick to my pacification policy anyway. You have to stand by your theories because they're for that, otherwise there's no sense in making them up.

I left them all to it and rang Geoffrey.

"For God's sake," he said dozily. "Look at the time."

"Did Sheila's handbag turn up?" I asked him as he strove to orient himself. He didn't know. I said to find out and let me know or I'd pester the life out of him. It took twenty minutes for him to ring back.

"She didn't have a handbag with her, your young lady," he reported.

"Then how," I asked evenly, "did they know to get in touch with me?"

"The station police. They asked… other passengers to try to recognize…"

I suppressed the terrible desire to imagine rush-hour queues being invited to file past.

"I suppose one of her workmates—"

"Eventually." Geoffrey was not enjoying this. "They went to her home. Your address was on the back of your photograph."

"Ta." I rang off, but he was back on the blower instantly.

"Lovejoy, anything up as well as this?"

"Clever old bobbies should mind their own business," I said, clicking him off.

I knew exactly what he would do. He'd sniff about the village uneasily for a day, then come around to pop the question, What was I up to? and warning me not to do anything silly. The answer he'd get would be a sort of mystified innocence: "But what on earth do you mean, Constable?" straight out of amateur rep, which would gall him still further.

You can't trust the law. Anybody in business will tell you that. As for me, the law is a consideration to be strictly avoided. Never mingle with it. If it's there in force, bow your head, agree like you meant it, and scarper. Then when it's gone for the moment, carry on as normal. It's not for people. I wonder where it all comes from sometimes. Think of it like weather; keep an eye on it and take sensible precautions when it proves intrusive.

The dawn had come. I stood at the door smoking a cigar. Red sky, streaks of crimson against blue and white. It was really average. You get the same blue-on-cream in those Portuguese vases, quite nice. I couldn't finish my smoke. The robin was singing, rolling up his feathery sleeves for the day's battles.

Indoors I ran a bath, thinking, This is where I clouted Sheila that time Tinker rang up about Field. I would do my favorite breakfast, fried cheese in margarine and an apple cut into three and fried in the same pan. Three slices of bread. Tea. Heaven knows how, but I managed to eat it all, with the radio going on about politics and me trying to sing with the interlude music like a fool. I banged the dishes with a spoon, pretending I was a drummer in a band. Don't people do daft things?

I'd never forget my alarm again. The doors locked, I repaired the window. Outside I ran some meshwire around the edge and put new bolts on the inside of all the windows. The day promised fine with a watery sun.

The bath water had cooled enough by the time that job was done. I soaked, working out my chain of suppositions.

Suppose somebody had killed Eric Field for the Judas pair. Suppose then he had learned that I'd managed to pick up the one possible gadget missing from the most costly unique set of Sinters the antique world could ever dream of—a small case-hardened instrument with all the features of a Durs accessory. It had after all been probably chucked into the apothecary box from ignorance to up that particular crummy article's price, so it was definitely a hangover from Seddon's sale of Eric Field's effects. Continuing the idea, suppose then he'd seen me come from Seddon's, followed me here to the cottage. He'd have seen me give Sheila the instrument by the war memorial, seen her put it in her handbag. And the town war memorial's as private as Eros in Piccadilly. Adrian and Jane had passed, Muriel and her tame priest were there. It could be anybody, he or she, seen or unseen.

Maybe he'd waited outside all night.

Then, seeing us depart, he'd broken in, searching, failed to find the Durs instrument, taken the carriage clock as a blind, and, seeing Sheila's letters, guessed wrongly that she still had the instrument in her handbag. Perhaps he'd assumed I realized its importance and was too worried to have it about. So he'd sprinted off to London after her and pushed her under the train when perhaps she'd suddenly realized he was stealing her handbag. Or he'd just pushed her, and in the subsequent uproar picked up her handbag, escaping because of our splendid public's tradition of keeping out of trouble. Now she was dead. I had to say it, dead.

It was heavy in my hand, bulbous in my palm. It could have been a straight screwdriver except that it bent at right angles about the middle of the shaft. Two additional flanges served to catch on some projection, perhaps near a sear spring in the flintlock. I got the impression it slotted into rather than onto something, but it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Despite my ignorance, I was certain it was the object for which Sheila had been killed.

I was dried and in my priest hole by nine o'clock. I was nervous, because I was going to kill somebody.

Who, I didn't know. Nor where, nor when, nor in what circumstances.

But I knew how.

He would get nothing but the best, the very best Lovejoy could manage. Price no object.

I had a small amount of black powder—smoky gunpowder— in a pistol flask belonging to the Barratt guns. They wouldn't do. Percussion, after all. Let's do it properly. I began to go over the contents of the shelves.

Now, Lovejoy's no killer. I love these flinters the way I love Bilston enamels and jades, as examples of supreme craftsmanship. I don't like weapons because they're weapons. Only maniacs love them because they kill. During one of these tiresome wars we used to have I was conscripted and put into uniform. We were stationed on a snowy hillside in the East and given some field guns to shoot. The trouble was, an army on the opposite hillside had guns of their own and kept trying to kill us by shooting back. For me, I'd just as soon we all kept quiet, but the general feeling was that we ought to keep firing. I couldn't see what it was all about. Our hillside had nothing but a few trees, and from what little I could see of their hillside they were just as badly off. It was a waste of time, in addition to which I was frightened to death. But now I began to wish I'd taken more notice of the bare essentials during training.

The Barratts wouldn't do, so could the Nocks? Samuel Nock had made special holster and pocket flinters swan-necked in the French manner, but occasionally deviated into singles made in a special utilitarian style. I had a pair of double-barreled side-by-side flinters of his making. They really were precious to me, so I included them as possibles. A Brown Bess, heavy as hell, wouldn't do. The space might be too confined when I came to it, and forty-odd inches of massive barrel might prove cumbersome. Also, he was going to die slowly if the opportunity offered a choice; the Land Pattern might help him on his way too precipitately. We had matters to discuss. Reluctantly I put it aside.

The Adams revolving long arm was gone to Dick. That left me with two Eastern jezail guns, flintlock of course, the Adams pocket weapon, an elegant gold-inlaid La Chaumette pinfire weapon with a folding trigger, a Durs air gun you have to pump up, a Cooper blunderbuss, an early Barbar flintlock brass-barreled blunderbuss good enough to eat, a lonely Henry Nock dueler I'd been trying to match with its missing partner for twelve years, and last but not least the beautiful Mortimer weapons acquired that terrible day from Dick's boatyard. The Mortimers it was.

I melted a piece of lead bar over a spirit lamp and poured it from the pan into the bullet mold, crushing the brass handles firmly to avoid pocking the bullet surface with bubbles. Twelve attempts it took before I got two perfect spheres of dulled lead. After cooling them, I polished both in a leather cloth until they were almost shiny.

The black powder I poured into the pistol flask. It was set correctly on the dispensing nozzle, so I cleaned inside the barrels with a swab of cloth screwed onto the wrong end of the ramrods. All this is easier said than done with white linen gloves on, but you must never leave fingerprints on a flinter. It ruins the browning after some years, and actually precipitates real rust even on the best Damascus barrel. The barrels cleaned, I poured the dose of powder into each, and forced the bullets in after tamping the powder down. It was hard work getting them to the bottom of the breech but I managed it. After that, a soft wad of cloth torn from a handkerchief down each barrel to keep the bullets in. Then a squirt of powder into each flashpan, bringing back the cocks to the half-cock position where the triggers wouldn't work them and clapping the steel closed, and all was lovely.

I replaced them in their mahogany case, pulling the safety catch into the halt position and dusting them off. They looked priceless, stylish, graceful, wondrous in their red-felted boxwood recesses among the accessories. Every item fitted snugly. Even the case itself was brilliantly designed, a product of an age of skilled thinkers.

There was one more thing they looked—lethal, maybe even murderous.

And that really pleased me, because I was going to blow some fucking bastard's brains out.

Chapter 11

I'll be frank.

Before this the business had been a bit unreallike. You know the sort of thing—income tax rebates or these insurance benefits you get if ever you reach ninety. My attitude I suppose was one of blissful pretense. Sheila always said I pretended too much; "romancing," she called it. The Judas affair had previously been somehow at a distance, even though I'd been involved in setting up a search for the pistols through the trade. I suppose there was some excuse, since you can't believe in a Martian in Bloomsbury in quite the same way you might believe in the Yeti or Nessie. I'd paid lip service of sorts to the Judas pair idea. If they were mythical, well, O.K., I would spend time chasing a myth. If the bloke that had killed two people for those precious things believed in their existence, so would I. Funny, but my mind began to work clearer now I believed.

If he had searched and followed and then killed for a small accessory like my turnkey, it followed for certain that there could be no possible doubt about where the Judas pair were. He had them. I knew as sure as I breathed.

And I understood his anguish. Imagine the distress of scientists as they search for that one missing-link creature whose existence will finally prove a million theories. Imagine the shepherd's grief as he finds his prize sheep's gone absent. Double all those sorrows, and it comes somewhere near the anguish of a collector with a stupendous possession that is one vital component short. I would have felt compassion in other circumstances, even shared part of his grief. Now I cackled with evil laughter as I emerged from my priest hole and went about letting the light into the cottage and unlocking doors and windows. Let him suffer. He'd come again; somehow and sometime he'd come because I had the instrument he wanted.

From now on I would have to be ready every minute of every day. I therefore checked the garden from behind the curtains and decided to play the game to its fullest.

I telephoned George Field. His wife answered. George was out.

"I want a list from him, Mrs. Field," I explained. "Tell him I need urgently—within the day—the names of all those people his brother was friendly with, known collectors or not. Dealers included." She was all set to chat, but I cut it short and then rang Geoffrey.

"Look, Lovejoy," he began wearily, but I wasn't being told off by any village bobby. I was going to do his job for him and he was getting paid from taxes I provided.

"Silence, Geoffrey old pal, and listen." He listened in astonishment while I said my piece. "I want the names, ranks, and stations of the people in charge of Sheila's… accident." Straightaway he began his spiel about not having the authority to divulge and all that. "Listen, Geoffrey, I'll say this once. You give me the names now, or I'll take your refusal as obfuscation and ring the Chief Constable, Scotland Yard, and my local M.P. I'll also ring the local newspaper, three London dailies, and the Prime Minister." I didn't know what obfuscation was, but it sounded good.

"What if I don't have the information you want?" he asked, a guarded police gambit.

"There you go again, obfuscating," I said pleasantly. "Goodbye, Geoffrey. You'll be hearing from the communications media and the politicians very shortly, if not sooner."

"Hang on."

They can be very helpful, these servants of our civic organizations, when they're persuaded in the right way. He gave me a number to ring and an address of a police station.

"What's got into you, Lovejoy?" he said, very uneasy.

"A rush of civic duty to the head," I explained.

"I don't like all this, I'll tell you straight."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning I want to know what you're up to, Lovejoy."

"Geoffrey," I said sweetly.

"Yes?"

"Get stuffed, comrade," I cooed. "Go back to sleep."

I felt better now I was on the move.

Faith is a great prime mover. No wonder the distance to Jerusalem didn't daunt the early crusaders. With all that faith, the fact that they'd have to walk every inch of the way would have appeared a mere incidental. Faith gives a clarity of vision as well as thought, and I was reaping the benefit of the new believer. It gave me freedom. Apart from the law, I could tell anybody the truth, what I was after, and even say why. I could show my Durs turnkey to every collector or dealer I'd ever met, knowing sooner or later I'd strike oil. Word would spread like fat in a hot pan. Then, one fine day, my visitor would arrive at the cottage for his big farewell scene. He wouldn't be able to help it. He'd come back again.

I spent an hour on the blower. First to Adrian, explaining that a friend of mine, Eric Field, deceased, had had a pair of Durs flinters, now untraceable, and would he please keep an ear open for any whisper. I got derision back down the receiver but persevered. In the way of his kind, he sensed swiftly there was something seriously wrong and went along with me, saying he'd put the word about.

No reply from Margaret Dainty, though I tried her number three times, and none from Dandy Jack either. He was probably sloshed still from last night, while Margaret was possibly up in the Smoke doing the street markets. Jane Felsham was in, coughing with the rasping breath of the morning smoker and asking what was the matter with me. She thought I was drunk.

"It's on, Jane," I said. "Don't muck me about, love, because I'm tough and nasty today. Just take the essentials down and spread it about. Tell anyone, bring anyone to see me any time. And I'll travel. There's a bonus in it. Keep thinking of all those pots you could buy with a bit of taxfree."

Harry was out too, also probably down on the market stalls the same as Margaret. I left a message at the White Hart for Tinker and Dandy Jack to contact me urgently. The barman was out on the village green with the pub's football team training for the Sunday League, but his wife Jenny was reliable.

I wrapped the turnkey in white tissue-paper hankies (always the best for carrying small antiques, even storing them for years) and put it in my jacket pocket, using a safety pin to fasten down the flap. That way, if he wanted it he'd have to get me first. Before locking up and leaving I phoned Dick Barton and asked him to sell me some black powder, as I wanted to try the Mortimers later on. He was surprised, knowing my antipathy to flinters as actual weapons, but promised me three-quarters of a pound.

I would collect it on my way back from Jim's, in case Geoffrey decided to finger my parked Armstrong to learn what I was up to. The sale of the black powder in this cavalier fashion is highly illegal, you see, and the law is especially vigilant in this matter. Terrible what some people will do. I chucked a handful of crumbs to the robin to keep it going and drove to Seddon's. On the way over I decided to park outside the showrooms, in accordance with my new plan of inviting my unknown enemy's attention. Old Jim lived in a neighboring street some four hundred yards down East Hill.

The town was almost empty of pedestrians and cars. One of those quiet days. Driving through in the dilute sun made a very pleasant change from the untidy scramble of the bad week. I parked, confidently facing uphill, and walked down to the street where Jim lived. Apart from a few folk pottering innocently off to shops and others strolling toward the riverside nursery gardens there wasn't a soul about. The terraced houses seemed cheerful and at ease.

I knocked. Jim came to the door, frowning when he saw my happy smiling face.

"Top of the morning, Jim."

"Morning." We stayed in an attitude of congenial distrust for a second. "No use coming here, Lovejoy," he said sourly. "All business must go through the firm, you know that."

"So I believe," I said, optimism all over.

"What you want then?"

"Now, Jim, you know me." I honestly felt benign toward him. "All for a quiet life." I let it sink in, then added, "You must be too."

"Aren't we all?"

"Some, only some, Jim." He was being careful.

"What's this about?"

"Your new job."

"Eh?"

"You start now." He started to close the door, but my foot was in the way. "No, Jim, leave the door open and don't go inside. Stay and listen."

"I want no trouble."

"And you'll get none, old pal." I beamed at him. "Remember the Field sale? Eric Field, deceased?"

"I thought you hinted a bit too much," he said. "Nothing wrong, was there?"

"Nothing," I said easily. "Your new job's trying to remember everything about it: sales lists, who the auctioneer was, who was there, who bought what, and how much they paid—"

"Confidential." Remarkable how self-important these pipsqueak clerks are.

I went all concerned. "What about your arm?" I asked anxiously.

"What about it? Nothing wrong with my arm."

I beamed into his eyes and winked. "There will be, Jim. It'll be broken in several places."

"Eh? You're mad—"

"Left or right, Jim?" I was really enjoying myself. No wonder people change when they get religion if this is what faith does for you. Faith's supposed to cancel doubt, isn't it? Marvelous how much calm conviction can bring. If Jim's four brothers had called about then I'd have said the same thing. Numbers are a detail when principle's the prime mover.

"Get the message?" I was so contented. "Don't get in my way when I'm moving. Now, you've got three seconds to agree, and by six tonight I'll have the invoices, the lists, the sales notes, and all essential details of the Field sale. You bring them around to my cottage and wait there until I come."

"You're off your bleeding head, Lovejoy," he moaned. "I've no car."

"Don't miss the bus from the station, then. Remember it's a rotten bus service."

"Get stuffed," he said, kicking at my foot.

My forehead felt white-hot. For a moment I struggled for control, then moved up into the doorway, pushing him back. I kneed him in the crotch and butted his nose with my head. Heaven knows where I learned it. I honestly am a peaceable chap. He tried to scramble away in terror and found an upright modern Jameson piano, only teak and 1930, to lean against. His face showed white above his two-day stubble.

"For Christ's sake—"

"Peace be unto you too, Jim," I said. "Now, be a good lad and get me the details."

"You've broken me ribs," he wailed. I nodded patiently. Some people just can't be hurried. Others must learn.

"And I'll break your arm at ten past six if you don't get me the answers, Jim."

"I've got to get to a doctor."

I shoved him down to his knees again and twisted his arm behind him.

"No doctors, Jim. No hospitals. You've a job to do, right?" He nodded through pain and fear. "Another word, Jim. I'm on the move. It's not a pretty sight. Now, you can call the law like any decent citizen and turn me in. I won't deny your allegations. But as God's my judge I'll came back and maim you for life if you do. You just do my little job like I ask and I'll leave you alone ever afterward."

I turned to go while he was sick all over his Afghanistan—he'd have said Persian—carpet, flower-fruit design with that rather displeasing russet margin they adopt far too often for my liking. I paused at the door. "Oh, and Jim."

"What?"

"Miss nothing out. All details complete, or you'll have to suffer the consequences. I must know everything about the Field sale. Understand?"

He managed a nod and I departed thinking of at least one task well done for a starter.

There wasn't a soul on East Hill except for a queue at the baker's and the car was quite untouched.

Black day. Traipsing from one cop shop to another making bother till they gave in. An inspector went over reports of Sheila's death word for word in the manner of his kind. Ever noticed how many people talk like union officials nowadays? Anonymous speech is everywhere—politicians, lawyers, priests in pulpits, auctioneers, the lot. Too many maybes. Listen to a political speech. I'll bet you a quid everything definite he says is canceled out by something else he says a moment later. Daft. As I sifted through the details I wondered where all the common sense had gone. It vanished about fifteen years ago, about the time those bone ships made by our French prisoners from the Napoleonic scraps vanished. You don't get either any more.

From the police I went to Camden Town, where Sheila's pal lived. Betty, fabulous for multicolored lipsticks, cleavage, and a legendary succession of loves, all with wealthy City men. Her husband, twice her age, kept model trains. I letched away as she gave her tale. She'd missed Sheila at home-time that day. Betty, all nineteen years of her, explained she'd had to work late. I pretended to believe her from politeness.

Seeing her old man was playing trains outside, I gave her my deep dark Lovejoy smolder. I only wished she'd been a customer. I swear I could have got rid of that tarty Dutch cutlery at last. You get no tax allowance for stock. Bloody Chancellor.

I held Betty's hand at the door. They measure you with their eyes, don't they? I said how I felt biological toward her. She liked biological and gave me the address of a little executive cottage she visited at certain times. These places can be a mine of antiques. What more pleasant than searching for antiques, up and down stairs with the help of a huge cleavage? Two birds per stone and that.

But no clues. Maybe the steam was going out of my crusade. It depressed me. I knocked about, saw the Bond Street arcade, did time in Fairclough's, did a few deals. The four-thirty train was on time from Liverpool Street.

I reached home at ten to six. Jim was waiting, gray-faced, hurting, obedient. I drove up with the now familiar knot of tension in my belly at the sight of him. It pleased me. My crusading zeal had only momentarily tired because of so many false leads. Here was one I relied on to give me a few more details.

He gave me a photocopied list of the Field sale and every single invoice to do with it. In his own clumsy handwriting was a list of everybody who'd attended, the auctioneers, clerk, and his two mates who assisted.

"There's a good lad." I patted his head. "Look, Jim—"

"Yes?" He stood mournfully on the gravel.

"I don't want to hurry you, but the doctor's surgery closes at seven. You'll just make it on the bus."

"Aren't you going to give me a lift?" His spirits were on the mend. There was a faint hint of the old truculence.

I smiled. "Good night, Jim," I said and closed the door.

Chapter 12

Some people kill me. You can invent a name for anything and it will be believed. Say anything and somebody'll cheer fit to burst. I'll give you an example. There was Dandy Jack looking for cracks on this piece of "cracked" porcelain—and him a dealer old enough to be my great-granddad. Of course, Dandy Jack was as indisposed as a newt, as one politician cleverly said of that minister who got sloshed and shot his mouth off on telly..

"Give it here, Dandy." I took it off him, exasperated. "Crack porcelain doesn't mean it's got cracks all over it." His bloodshot eyes gazed vaguely in my direction while I gave him the gory details.

"Kraak," not "cracked" porselain (note that "s"). Once upon a time, the Portuguese ship Catherine was sailing along in the Malacca Straits when up came a Dutch ship and captured it, there being no holds barred in 1603. Imagine the Dutchmen's astonishment when they found they'd bagged not treasure but a cargo of ceramics of a funny blue-white color. The Catherine was a carrack, or "Kraak." The nickname stuck. It looks rubbish, but folk scramble for it. I priced it for him and said I'd be back.

The town was jumping. I felt on top of the world without knowing why. A bad memory of something evil having happened recently was suppressed successfully in a wave of sun and crowds. No dull weather, kids well behaved, trees waggling, and people smiling, you know how pleasant things can look sometimes. And the little arcade was thronged. Margaret waved from her diminutive glass-fronted shop. Harry Bateman was there with a good, really good, model compound steam engine of brass and deep red copper, Robert Atkinson about 1864 or thereabouts, and shouting the odds about part exchange for a John Nash painting, modern of course, all those greens and lavender watercolor shades. It would be close.

Several real collectors had turned up in the cafe and sat about saying their antiques were honest. We were all in brilliant humor, exchanging stories and gossip. Such a cheerful scene, everybody entering into the act and taking risks in deals. It was one of those marvelous times.

I told you I'm a believer in the gifts people have, and luck. Luck is partly made by oneself. Go out feeling lucky, make yourself behave lucky, and you will probably become lucky. Let yourself slip into the opposite frame of mind and you'll lose your shirt.

There'd been two flint collectors and one flint dealer in Jim's papers, and both collectors were in my files. The dealer, Froude, a pal of Harry's, wasn't bad, just cheap and useless, so I could forget him. The collectors were different mettle. One, a retired major called Lister, was a knowledgeable Rutland man who ran a smallholding in that delectable county. He knew what he was about. The second spelled even more trouble, had an enviable record in my card system as a dedicated and lucky collector given to sudden spurts of buying, often without relevance to the seasonal state of the market. Brian Watson was by all accounts one of those quiet-spoken northerners who seem quite untypical of the usual image people have of cheerful, noisy extroverts laughing and singing around pints in telly serials. I had almost all Watson's purchases documented, but though I'd never actually met him at sales, I'd heard he was hesitant, not given to confidences but gravitating with a true collector's instinct toward the quality stuff. A good collector, Watson, who'd spend what seemed about two years' salary in an hour, then vanish for up to a year back to his native Walkden. Also on Jim's list were Harry, Adrian, and Jane together, Margaret, good old Dandy Jack, Muriel's Holy Joe Lagrange, Brad, Dick from the boatyard, and Tinker Dill, among the dross. And Muriel.

Now, of all those people, Brian Watson was significant because he already had one of the pairs of Durs duelers, and so was Major Lister of Rutland, because he'd been making offers to Watson for them ever since Eve dressed. The field was getting pretty big, but I was cock-a-hoop. The pace was quickening. And as I talked in the arcade I smiled to myself at my secret. At the finishing post lay my beautiful unpaid-for Mortimers— loaded. I left the cafe and wandered through the arcade.

Tinker Dill was at my elbow full of news. We pretended to examine a phony Persian astrolabe. It was described by Harry Bateman as "medieval" and priced accordingly. My sneer must have been practically audible. Don't overestimate their value, incidentally. Eighteenth-century Continental ones are usually more pricey, though they're all in vogue, and certain firms in Italy make excellent copies.

"You're getting busy, aren't you, Lovejoy?"

"Whatever can you mean?" I was all innocent.

"Bending Jim like that." He enjoyed the thought of Jim's injuries almost as much as a sale.

"I'm quite unrepentant." I put the astrolabe down, feeling it unclean, and took Tinker back into the nosh bar, where we could talk.

I told him of my developing interest in Watson and Lister. He whistled.

"They're First Division, Lovejoy."

"And Froude."

"He's rubbish."

"I have this about the Field sale."

"Eh?"

Over tea I showed him Jim's lists.

He slurped in his cup. "They're nicked!"

"On loan. Jim's good-hearted." I let him recover. "Heard anything special about any of these names?"

He flipped slowly through the lot, shaking his head each time. "Except the two big ones, that sale was a right load of heave-ho."

"You buy anything, Tinker?"

It hurt him. "You know me, Lovejoy. Antiques aren't my business."

I grinned in great good humor.

"Neither of those bought anything? Try to remember, Tinker." He would. It's like being a football fan. Just as they can recall incidents from games seen twenty years past, so we can tick off auctions as if they'd been yesterday.

You might wonder why I didn't just look at the purchasers' names on the invoices. Well. Invoices, however complete, never tell it all. I wish I had time to tell you what goes on in an auction. For every ten lots sold by the auctioneer, another ten are sold among dealers. We buy a lot from the auctioneer sometimes, and even before he's moved on we've sold it to a fellow dealer. All the time it goes on. "Ringing" you already know about, I'm sure, where dealers get together and do not bid for a choice item, say a lovely French commode. When it goes to Dealer A for a paltry sum—i.e., when it's been successfully "ringed"—he'll collect his cronies and they'll auction it again privately in a pub nearby, only on this occasion Dealer A's the auctioneer and his mates are the congregation, so to speak.

You'll probably think this is against the law. Correct, it is. And you may be feeling all smug thinking it is rightly so because whoever's selling her old auntie's precious French antique is being diddled out of the fair auction she's entitled to. Well, I for one disagree. Nobody actually stops the public from bidding, do they? It comes back again to greed, your greed. And why? Answer: You want that valuable commode for a couple of quid, and not a penny more. If you were really honest you'd bid honestly for it. But you won't. How do I know? Because you never do. You go stamping out of auctions grumbling at the price fetched by whatever it was you were after and failed to get. So don't blame the dealer. He's willing to risk his every penny for a bit of gain, while you want medieval Florentine silver caskets for the price of a bus ride. You ring items by your greed. We do it by arrangement. Why your hideous but dead-obvious greed should be quite legal and our honesty illegal beats me.

"That Bible pistol," Tinker remembered. "Not too bad. I did drop a note in at your cottage, Lovejoy."

"I passed it up."

"Watson bought it."

"In his usual style?"

Tinker's eyes glowed with religious fervor. "You bet." He rolled a damp fag and struggled to set it afire. "It was in one of his buying sprees. You know him, quiet and hurrying. I reckon he should have been a cop. Busy, busy, busy."

I wrote a mental tick against Watson's name. He'd attended six auctions that week, and the date matched no fewer than eight postal purchases, all after a ten-month gap. Phenomenal.

"Major Lister buy, did he?"

"Yes, a set of masonic jewels for some museum." I knew about those and the Stevens silk prints he'd bought as well.

"All in all," I asked, "a quiet, busy little auction with more than the average mixture of good stuff?"

"Sure. And not a bad word uttered," Tinker said, puffing triumphantly.

I let his little quip pass impatiently. "Is that list of people complete? Think."

He thought. "As ever was." He shrugged. "The odd housewife, perhaps."

"Thanks, Tinker. Anything else?"

He told me of the Edwardian postcards from Clacton, the Regency furniture at Bishop's Stortford, that crummy load of silver being unloaded up in the Smoke, and the Admiralty autograph letters being put on offer in Sussex. I knew them all but slipped him a note.

"You got them Mortimers, then," he said as we parted.

"A hundred quid," I replied modestly. He was still laughing at the joke as I left to see Margaret's collection of English lace christening gowns.

"Sorry about everything, Lovejoy." She pecked my face and brewed up. There were a couple of customers hanging around, one after pottery, one after forgeries. (Don't laugh—collectors of forgeries will walk past a genuine Leonardo cartoon to go crazy over a forged Braque squiggle.) As they drifted out she hooked her "Closed" notice on the door.

"I've had a drink, Margaret, thanks."

"I saw you."

"Tinker reporting in," I explained, looking around. Her lace christening gowns were beautiful, but I always sneeze over them. "I can never understand why these things are so cheap. A few quid for such work, years of it in each case."

She smiled. "Keep plugging that attitude. Genuine?"

"Does it matter?" I said. "Any forger who does something so intricate deserves every groat he gets." I felt them. "Yes, all good."

"I thought you'd been neglecting me till I heard, Lovejoy." She brought tea over despite my refusal.

"No matter now." I took the Victorian Derby cup as a mark of friendship because her tea's notorious. "All over."

She sat facing. People outside in the arcade must have thought we were a set of large bookends for sale.

"Give, Lovejoy."

"Eh?"

"I've one thing you've not got, darling," she said in a way I didn't like. "Patience. What are you up to?"

"I'm going to find the bastard. And I'm going to finish him."

"You can't, Lovejoy." God help me, she was crying. There she sat, sipping her rotten tea with tears rolling onto her cheeks. "It'll be the end of you too."

"Cheap at the price, love."

"Leave it to the police."

"They're quite content with matters as they are." My bitterness began to show. "It's much more dramatic to rush about with sirens wailing than slogging quietly after the chap on foot."

"They know what to do—"

"But they don't do it." I pulled away as she reached a hand toward me. "I've no grouse with anybody, love. I just want help." Two people staring in turned quickly away at the sight of our tense faces.

"Supposing you do find him. Why not just turn him in?"

I had to laugh, almost. "And endure months or years of questions while he wheedles his way out?"

"But that's what law is for," she cried.

"I don't want law, nor justice," I said. "From me he'll get his just deserts, like in the books. I want what's fair."

"Please, Lovejoy."

"Please, Lovejoy," I mimicked in savage falsetto. "You're asking me to let him off with seven years in a cushy jail thoughtfully provided by the taxpayers? No. I'm going to spread his head on the nearest wall and giggle when it splashes."

She flapped her hands on her lap. "We used to be so…"

"Things have changed."

"You'll get yourself killed. Whoever it is must have heard you're spreading word about fancy Durs duelers. It's the talk of the trade. Half of them already think you're balmy." Good news.

"There's one person who knows I'm serious, love." I was actually grinning. "I'm going to needle and nudge till he has to come for me." I rose and replaced her cup safely.

"All right, Lovejoy." She was resigned. "Anything I can do?"

"Spread the word yourself. Tell people. Make promises. Invent. Tell people how strange I've become." I kissed her forehead. "And your tea's still lousy."

I phoned George Field from the kiosk. He agreed to send an advert to the trade journal whose address I gave him:

REWARD

A substantial reward will be paid by the undermentioned for information leading to the specific location (not necessarily the successful purchase) of the Durs flintlock weapons known to the antique trade as the Judas Pair.

I thought, Let's all come clean. He gasped at the sum mentioned but agreed when I said I'd waive any costs. I insisted he put his name and address to the notice, not mine, because he was in all day and I wasn't.

I called in at the cottage and then drove to see Major Lister, happy as a pig in muck. By the weekend the murderer would know I was raising stink and getting close, and he'd start sweating. Don't believe that revenge isn't sweet. It's beautiful, pure, unflawed pleasure. He was losing sleep already because I had the little Durs gadget. I slept the sleep of the just. My revenge had begun.

Major Lister turned out to be a fussy disappointment, a stocky, balding, talkative, twinkly chap who wouldn't hurt a fly. His vast house was full of miscellaneous children. Everybody there, including three women who seemed to be permanent residents, was smiling.

"I'll bet you're Lovejoy" were his first words to me. "Come and see my fuchsias." He drew me away from the front door toward a greenhouse, calling back into the house, "We'll have rum and ginger with the fuchsias."

"I like your system," I said. The nearest child, a toddler licking a dopey hedgehog clean in the hallway, cried out the rum message hardly missing a lick. The cry was taken up like on the Alps throughout the house until it faded into silence. A moment later a return cry approached and the hedgehog aficionado shouted after us, "Rum on its way, Dad."

"They like the system, not I." He twinkled again and began talking to his plants, saying hello and so on. A right nutter here, I thought. He chattered to each plant, nodding away and generally giving out encouragement.

Well, it's not really my scene, a load of sticks in dirt in pots. He evidently thought they were marvelous, but there wasn't an antique anything from one end of the greenhouse to the other that I could see. A waste of time. His sticks had different names.

"Same as birds, eh?" I said, getting to the point. "Identical, but each one's supposed to be distinct, is that the idea?"

"I see you're no gardener."

"Of course I am."

"What do you grow?"

"Grass, trees, and bushes."

"What sorts?"

"Oh, green," I told him. "Leaves and all that."

"Yes." He twinkled as a little girl entered carrying two glasses of rum yellowed by ginger. "Yes, you're Lovejoy all right."

"Seen me at auctions, I expect, eh?"

"No. Heard about your famous Braithwaite car."

"Braithwaite?"

He saw the shock in my eyes and sat me on a trestle. The little girl wanted to stay and sat on the trestle with me.

"Herbert Braithwaite, maker of experimental petrol engines early this century. Some o.h.v. cycles. Yours must be the only one extant. Didn't you know?"

"No. Well, almost."

"Drink up, lad." He settled himself and let me get breath. "Now, Lovejoy, what's all this word about a pair of Durs guns?"

I told him part of the story but omitted Sheila's death and the turnkey.

"And you came here, why?"

"You were at the Field sale."

"And Watson got the Bible pistol. Yes, I recollect." He took the little girl on his lap and gave her a sip of his rum. "Fierce man is Watson. One of those collectors you can't avoid."

"The Field sale," I persisted.

"Nothing very special for me, I'm afraid. Naturally," he added candidly, "if you're trying me for size as a suspect, ask yourself if I would dare risk this orphanage."

"Orphanage?" It hadn't struck me.

"I don't breed quite this effectively," he chided, laughing so much the little girl laughed too, and finally so did I.

"You saw Watson there?"

"Certainly. He'll be not far from here now, if indeed he's in one of his whirlwind buying sprees."

My heart caught. I put the glass down. "Near here?"

"Why, yes. Aren't you on your way there too? The Medway showrooms at Maltan Lees. It's about eleven miles…"

I left as politely and casually as I could. Nice chap, Major Lister. I mentally filed him away as I moved toward the village of Maltan Lees: Major Lister (retd.): collector flck dllrs; orphanage; plants; clean hedgehogs.

Then I remembered I'd not finished my rum. Never mind, that little girl could have it when she'd finished his.

Four o'clock, Maltan Lees, and the auctioneer in the plywood hall gasping for his tea. I had no difficulty finding the place, from the cars nearby. They were slogging through the remaining lots with fifty to go. The end of an auction is always the best, excitement coming with value. By then the main mob of bidders has gone and only the dealers and die-hard collectors are left to ogle the valuables. Medway's seemed to have sold miscellaneous furniture, including bicycles, mangles, a piano, and household sundries, leaving a few carpets, some pottery, a collection of books, and some paintings, one of which, a genuine Fielding watercolor, gave me a chime or two.

I milled about near the back peering at odd bits of junk. The auctioneer, a florid glassy sort, was trying unsuccessfully to increase bids by "accidentally" jumping increments, a common trick you shouldn't let them get away with at a charity shout. Among this load of cynics he didn't stand a chance. Twice he was stopped and fetched back, miserably compelled to start again and once having to withdraw an item, to my amusement. Another trick they have is inventing a nonexistent bidder, nodding as if they've been signaled a bid, then looking keenly to where the genuine bidder's bravely soldiering away. Of course, they can only get away with it if the bidder's really involved, all worked up. Therefore in an auction keep calm, keep looking, keep listening, and above all keep as still as you can. You don't want anybody else knowing who's bidding, do you? If you can do it with a flick of an eyebrow, use just that. Don't worry, the chap on the podium'll see you. A single muscle twitch is like a flag day when money's involved. Where was I?

You've only to stay mum and patterns emerge in a crowd. The old firms were there—Jane, Adrian, Brad, Harry, and Dandy Jack—and some collectors I knew—the Reverend La-grange, the Mrs. Ellison from the antique shop where I'd bought the coin tokens while returning from the bird sanctuary, Dick Barton, among others.

A handful of traveling dealers had descended on lucky Mal-tan Lees. They smoked and talked noisily, moving about to disturb the general calm and occasionally calling across to each other, full of apparent good humor but in reality creating confusion. It's called "circusing," and is done to intimidate locals like us. They move from town to town, a happy band of brothers.

I watched a while. One of the traveling dealers paused near me.

" 'Ere," he growled. "Are you 'ere for the paintings or not?" I gave him my two-watt beam free of charge. "I said," he repeated ferociously, "are you 'ere for the paintings?"

"Piss off, comrade," I raised my smile a watt. He rocked back and stared in astonishment at me before he recovered.

"You what?"

"Where I come from," I informed him loudly, "you circus chaps'd starve."

"Clever dick."

He barged past me, tripping over my foot and ending up among assorted chairs. His pals silenced.

I laughed aloud, nodding genially in their direction, and stepped toward their fallen companion. "Sorry," I apologized, because my foot had accidentally alighted on his hand. He cursed and tried to rise, but my knee had accidentally jerked into his groin, so he stayed down politely. I get annoyed with people sometimes, but I think I'd been a bit worse lately. I bent down and whispered, "Me and my mates got done for manslaughter in Liverpool—twice—so go gently with us, wacker. We're fragile."

"No harm meant, mate," he said.

As I say, a lie works wonders. I stepped away, embarrassed because people were watching. The auctioneer had kept going to keep the peace, and some fortunate chap got his missus a wardrobe for a song. It's an ill wind.

I settled down near the bookcases and all went gaily on. I fancy the auctioneer was rather pleased with my little diversion. I saw Adrian applaud silently and Jane nod approval. I noticed Brian Watson after another twenty minutes and knew instantly who he was.

Some blokes have this chameleonlike ability, don't they? My mate in the army was typical of the sort. The rest of us had only to breathe in deep for all the grenades on earth to come hurtling our way, but Tom, a great Cheshire bloke the size of a tram, could walk on stilts for all the notice the enemy took of him. It was the same everywhere. I've even seen blokes come into pubs, stand next to Tom, and say, "Anybody seen Tom?"

Brian Watson was standing a few feet away, virtually unseen. He stood there watching, quiet, listening, and I knew instantly he was as fully aware of me as I was of him. A careful chap, the sort you had to be careful of. I instinctively felt his capabilities. A real collector. If he starved to death he'd still collect. You know the sort. No matter what setbacks come, they weather them and plow on. I honestly admire their resilience. It's a bit unnerving, if you ask me, too straightforward for my liking.

I bought a catalogue. Now Harry and the rest were quite explicable in terms of attendance at any auction, virtually no matter what was on offer. But Watson? Every piece he had was known to me, apart from some I only suspected, bought by concealed postal bid but quite in the Watson pattern. A buyer not a seller. He very rarely sold anything, and when he did it was only to buy bigger still. A cool resilient man. Moreover, one who was now observing me with his collector's antennae.

All of which, I thought as the auctioneer chattered on, raised one central question: If everybody else was here with good reason, what good reason did Brian Watson have? There was nothing to interest him. I scanned the remaining lots but failed to find the answer. He was a pure flint man, never deviating into the mundaner fields of prints, pottery, and portabilia, which to my dismay seemed all that was left. There was no choice but to wait and see.

It came to lot 239, the small collection of portabilia. Watson was in character, waiting with the skill of an old hand until the bidding showed signs of ending, then he nodded gently and off we went. We, because I was in too, all common sense to the winds. People gradually became aware of the contest. You could have heard a pin drop.

While the bidding rose I racked my brains, wondering what the hell could be in the portabilia that could be so vital to Watson. On and on we went, him against me. Everyone else dropped out. Portabilia are small instruments made especially for carrying about. They included in this instance a sovereign balance for testing gold coins, a common folding flintlock pistol by Lacy of Regency London's Royal Exchange, a tin box with a tiny candle, a collapsible pipe, a folding compass, a folding sundial, a diminutive snuff horn, and other minutiae. It wasn't bad, but you couldn't pay twice their value in open auction and keep sane. I saw Adrian hide his face in his hands as we forged inexorably on; and Jane, cool Jane, shook her head in my direction with a rueful smile. Many people crossed to the cabinet to see what they'd missed. Still we drove the price upward until my calculations caught up with me and I stopped abruptly, white-hot and practically blind from impotent rage at missing them.

"Going… going… gone. Watson. Now to lot two-forty," the pleased auctioneer intoned.

I went outside to wait for Watson and, partly, to avoid the others.

Jane followed me out. "Better now, Lovejoy?" She had style, this woman with the smile that meant all sorts of business.

"No."

"What's it all about?"

"I don't know what you mean."

We crossed the road and sat near the window in the cafe opposite the auction rooms. She ordered tea and faced me across the daffodils. "Aren't you making a fool of yourself?"

"No."

"You're like a child without its toffee apple." She irritated me with her bloody calm dispassionate air and I said so. "I heard about Sheila," she went on. "Do you think it's what she'd want you to be doing, going to pieces like this?"

"I'm not going to pieces." I wouldn't give in to this smarmy woman who couldn't mind her own business.

"You look like it, Lovejoy." She should have been a teacher. "We're all worried about you, everybody. Your business'll go downhill next. Look at you. You haven't shaved, you're… soiled-looking."

That really hurt, because I'm not like that. I looked away in a temper because she was right. "Somebody killed her—the same character who killed Eric Field."

Another of her famous appraisals came my way. "Are you serious?"

I gave her an appraisal back. "You know I am."

"By God, Lovejoy," she breathed, "what are you up to? You're not seriously thinking—"

"I am."

"You don't think Watson—?"

"I'm not sure." The tea came. "He's a Durs collector, a clever one. I've eliminated most of the rest one way and another. It could be a dealer, of course, or somebody I don't know about, but I must try to follow the leads I've got."

"Was he at the Field sale you've been on about?"

"Yes."

"He may have nothing to do with it."

"And again," I said coldly, "he may."

For the next few minutes Jane quizzed me. I told her the whole story including the turnkey bit while she listened intently.

"Have you anything practical to go on?" she demanded. "So you found a posh screwdriver—big deal."

"Yes," I said after a minute, "there is something."

"What?"

"God knows." A few people drifted out of the doors across the way. It would end in five minutes. "I couldn't sleep last night for worrying. The answer's been given me, here in my hand, and for the life of me I can't think what makes me think so. I'd know who it is, but the bits of my mind won't connect."

"From Seddon's?"

"I feel helpless. I just can't think."

"Give it up, Lovejoy." She was less forbidding than I remembered. "It'll ruin you."

"I might." And I almost believed me, except that Watson came out of the auctioneer's that instant. I was up and out into the road darting between cars before I knew where I was.

He waited, casually looking through the window at a set of old seaside lantern slides that had gone dirt cheap. There's quite a market for them nowadays. It was decimalization that did it.

"Mr. Watson." We stood together, me somewhat breathless and aggressive, him a little reserved.

"Mr. Lovejoy."

"Right."

He smiled hesitantly. "I admired your, er, act with the circus crowd."

"Thanks."

"Could I ask"—I nodded and he went on—"er, if you, er, were very keen to have that group of portabilia?"

"No," I snapped.

"I thought not. May I ask then why you bid?"

"Never mind me, comrade," I said roughly. "Why did you?"

He was astonished. "Me? They belonged to my father."

"Eh?" I was saying as Jane strolled up.

"My brother put them up for sale," he explained, "somewhat against my wishes. Why do you want to know?"

"Well done, Lovejoy," Jane said sarcastically.

"Keep out of it," I said. "Why did you go to the Field sale?"

His memory clicked away for a moment, then his brow cleared. "After that collector was killed, you mean? Oh, the odd item."

"Never mind what you actually bought. What attracted you there?"

He glanced from Jane to me, but it was no use messing about at this stage.

"He gets like this periodically." Jane's casual excuse didn't calm me.

"It's my habit," Watson replied with dignity, "to do so. It's also my right."

"I couldn't agree more," Jane chipped in.

I looked about. People had gathered around. The windows of the auction rooms were full of faces, staring. Cars were slowing to see what the rumpus was about. My old aunts would have called it a "pavement scene."

"You're among friends, Lovejoy," Jane said kindly, and explained to Watson, "He's not like this normally. He's been under a strain lately, a bereavement, you know."

Murmurs of sympathy arose from a couple of old dears in the throng who quickly transmuted compassion into reminiscences of similar events in their own past. "Just like our Nelly's cousin when her Harry was took," etc., etc.

"Will he be all right?" Watson was asking anxiously of Jane. That more than anything shook me. When people talk over you as if you're not really there, you really might have vanished.

"His car's near here somewhere. Over there."

Watson and Jane frog-marched me to the Braithwaite. Rage shook me into a sweat, rage at Jane's smooth assumption of power and Watson's obvious concern. If I'd cast him in the role of murderer, why didn't the bastard behave like one?

"You'd better come to my sister's; it's a few miles." They discussed me while I trembled like a startled horse. My face was in my hands. I could hear their voices but not what they said, so sick did I feel from the stink of the leather upholstery and the extraordinary vertigo which took hold. Jane took my keys and we drove out of Maltan Lees in the wake of Watson's old white Traveller.

There's nothing much to say about the rest of that day except that I stayed at Watson's sister's house in a room the size of a matchbox full of toys. Children came to stare at me as I was given aspirin tablets and milk to swallow—heaven knows why—and finally I dozed until dawn. Watson, my erstwhile villain, slept on a settee. Jane drove home in my old crate, saying she'd come back for me in the morning. When I woke I found one of the children had laid a toy rabbit on my bed for company, a nasty sight in the sunrise of a nervous breakdown. Still, thank God, it wasn't a hedgehog.

I can't remember much except Watson's kindness, his sister's concern, and Jane smiling too quickly at everything that was said as we departed.

"I feel a bloody fool" were my parting words, epitaph for a crusader. Amid a chorus of denials and invitations to return soon Jane ferried me away. I couldn't even remember what the house was like.

On the way back, Jane, a smart alert driver, told me she'd been summoned into Geoffrey's police station to explain what she'd done with me, because the cottage was raided again during the night. Our vigilant bobby, understandably narked by his ruined sleep, told her in aggrieved tones how he'd wakened to the sound of the alarm and arrived before entry was effected. The would-be intruder fled unseen.

I received the news with utter calm and stared at the ceiling.

Chapter 13

Weeks of feeding my robin and watching weather, occasionally getting the odd visitor. Twice I found myself embarking on gardening expeditions armed with rusty shears and suchlike, but my heart was never in it. After all, grass does no harm growing and birds and bushes don't need mowing anyway, so there's not a lot you can do in a garden. Somewhere I'd cleared a patch for growing vegetables years ago, but it had reverted to jungle, as the herbaceous border had, and I couldn't find exactly where it was. I abandoned the attempt, taking the wise view that if vegetables had wanted to grow there they'd have done so whatever assistance they'd been given by me. There's a chap Brownlow in a bungalow not far from me who's never out of his garden. It beats me what he finds to do. Maybe he's got a blonde in the shrubbery.

Ever been stuck at home? You get up and make breakfast, put the radio on, and wash up. Then you mill about doing odd jobs like cleaning and washing, and that's the end of it. What housewives keep moaning about heaven only knows, because I was up at seven-thirty and finished easily by ten, after which the rest of the day was waiting there—in my case, for nothing. Margaret called at first with provisions, and Jane dropped in with Adrian.

The itinerant dealer Jimmo called. Tinker came after the first day, but within a week all the visits had dwindled. I was pretty glad, because I was in no mood to talk and they were embarrassed. People are, where a nervous breakdown's concerned. It's posh and gallant to break your leg, and brave to have appendicitis, but a nervous breakdown's a plain embarrassment best avoided. You're better off with the plague. Maybe people think a breakdown's a sign of lack of moral fiber, that you ought to be pulling yourself together, putting your shoulder to that wheel, et cetera. It taught me one lesson at least, that any form of "weakness" is highly suspect. I wish I knew why.

I'd heard of breakdowns before, of course. Half my difficulty was that I didn't know what they actually were or where they came from, let alone what went on; yet there I was with all my anxieties gone, all my worries vanished, all interests evaporated. It would have been rather disturbing, if I'd been capable of being disturbed that is. As it was, I was utterly serene—dirty, unwashed, filthy, unshaven, unfed, and unkempt, but serene. Calm as a pond I was, uncaring. Worst of all, grief about Sheila had disappeared. Margaret came on a second then a third visit and discreetly left money on the mantelpiece, saying I was to be sure to remember to pay it back when I had a chance. I mumbled vacantly. Finally everyone had stopped coming. The letters lay in a heap by the door.

As days went into weeks I found myself stirring, not physically but something inside me. It really was an awakening. Instinctively my switched-off mind must have realized there was no point in trying to hurry things along and had stayed resting. My recovery was under way before I realized. The first event I can really recall is making myself some food—sausages and stale bread. Then I started feeding the birds again, sitting with them for a short while as usual, although I'd earlier automatically shunned their company as too intrusive, making too many demands on me.

About three days after starting eating I took conscious positive steps. I shaved. The next day I shaved and washed, then after that I bathed and got fresh clothes out. It was about sixteen days before I was presentable. The cottage was reasonable, and I started going down to the launderette. For some reason it was important to set myself a mental limit and stick rigidly to it, no matter how senseless that scheme actually was. Therefore, for four consecutive days I walked the garden's borders ten times every afternoon and counted all my trees and bushes assiduously after doing the washing up about nine o'clock; and for those four days I took my clothes, clean and soiled alike, to the launderette and washed them. Naturally I ran into practical difficulties such as coins for the slots, not knowing when the wretched machines were going to start or stop, what to do with that cup of powder and other details like losing socks. By the fourth day I was becoming quite intrigued by the system. You put in eight socks with your things and get out only five socks and one you've never seen before. Next day's the same. Unless you're careful you can finish up with an entirely different set of miscellaneous gear and all your own socks presumably transmuted into energy. I cut my losses on the fifth day and merely watched other sockless people's machines on the go.

My interest in antiques like everything else had suddenly vanished. Auctions had presumably taken place, the phone carried on unanswered, and Lovejoy was temporarily indisposed. Now, as I mended and consciousness returned, I took up a catalogue and read it in small stages during the course of an entire evening while the telly was on. It was an odd sensation, reading at a distance as it were, with details registering in the right places yet my own self somehow observing the whole process with caution and not a little distrust. Anyhow, I acted it out, feeling a flicker of interest here and there but suppressing it in case it got out of hand. It must have been the right thing to do, because the very next day I was answering letters and making decisions, about half speed. Injured animals go and lie quiet, don't they? Maybe that's what my mind had done. The fourth week I faced the world again.

I began life by attending a sale in Colchester and after two more days another, this time in Bury St. Edmunds. As a starter, the tokens I'd bought in darkest East Anglia—easy material whose value you can always gauge by an hour's careful checking —were launched out in a coin mart we have not far away, and they went for a good profit. I was pleased because I was pleased. The cottage hadn't been assaulted while I was out. Cheered and feeling full of emotions that were no longer lying dormant, I whistled and sang and forayed into the garden for some flowers to put in a vase. I was unsuccessful, though, not because there weren't any but because you can't really go hacking plants' heads off just because you feel a bit bouncy. I seriously thought of planting one into a pot and bringing it inside the cottage but decided against that as well. There's no breeze inside a house like there is in a garden, is there, and plants might really depend on being pushed about by the wind, not being able to stretch themselves as we can. Also, you have to think of the proper sunshine outside instead of no real light indoors. And rain. And company. I don't know much about them, not like Major Lister would, for instance, but it stands to reason you're best not trying to dabble in what you don't understand. People do damage when they want things. If people didn't want things, hardly anything would go wrong with anybody's life. All bad's desire.

I temporarily shelved the notion that if it was true that all bad came from desire, then maybe all desire was bad too. Calm but feeling alive again now, I gently worked my way back to a proper behavior.

Six whole weeks after I'd gone up to Maltan Lees and met Watson I was well again.

Not that I was yet in the full circle of my usual life. I kept out of friends' way, didn't phone any of them, and only spoke when I was directly addressed if ever I ran into anyone I knew. Business picked up from nil, and a trickle of post came again. The phone calls started. It was a pleasure to be active and doing something useful, but I had to keep myself from regretting the lost opportunities during my holiday. There'd been an undeniable upsurge of deals in the antiques world during the previous weeks. I just had to accept that I'd done my business no good by chasing all over England looking for a needle in a haystack.

Finally, when I was really well and having to restrain myself hourly, I shook out the reins of my mind and took off.

I rang Field. He was very relieved.

"I'm sorry about your illness. What was it?"

"Oh, you know," I parried, "some virus I expect."

"Terrible, terrible things, those." After passing on some amateur therapy he told me of the replies to the advertisement.

"Were there many?"

"You've no idea!" He drew breath. "The wife nearly went off me. A mountain of letters, some really rather odd. I'd no idea people could be so extraordinary."

"Are they mostly cranks?"

"Some, but some I would say are worth your attention. You'd better come and have a look."

"I shall."

We fixed a time and I rang off. Feeling strong, I rang Tinker Dill at the White Hart.

"Tinker? Lovejoy," I greeted him. "What's new?"

"Christ!" he exclaimed in the background hubbub from the bar. "Am I glad to hear you!"

"I want ten buyers tomorrow, first thing." It was the best joke I could manage, feeling so embarrassed at his pleasure.

"Will do," he replied cheerfully. "I heard you was about again. O.K.?"

"Not bad, ta."

"When you coming into town again?"

"Oh, maybe tomorrow. I think I'll come into the arcade." I wasn't too keen on going, but I could always ring later and postpone it if I wanted.

"Everybody asks about you." I'll bet, I thought.

"Much stuff around?"

"Some," he said with sorrow in his voice. "You've missed quite a bit of rubbish, but there's been some interesting stock whizzing about."

"Ah, well."

"Tough, really, Lovejoy. A set of fairings went for nothing last week…" He resumed his job, pouring out details of everything important he could think of. It sounded lovely and I relished every word, stopping him only when his voice was becoming hoarse.

"Thanks, Tinker. Probably see you tomorrow, then."

"Right, Lovejoy. See you."

It was enough excitement for one day. I drew the curtains and gathered an armful of the sale lists that had arrived while I was ill. There was a lot of catching up to do.

As I read and lolled, lists began forming in my mind, of faces and where I'd seen them. I don't mean I stopped work, just studied on and let faces come as they wished. Tinker Dill seemed everywhere I'd ever been, practically, since the Judas pair business began. And Jane. And Adrian. Dandy Jack. And Watson, of course. And, oddly, the Reverend Lagrange, which for somebody who lived many miles north in darkest East Anglia was rather enterprising. But he said he went to Muriel Field's house, being such a close family friend and all that. Did priests get time off? Maybe he'd struck a patch of movable feasts and it was all coincidence. And then there was Margaret, Brad, Dick Barton who'd sold me the Mortimers. Plus a few incidental faces who appeared less frequently, so you barely noticed them at all.

But that's what murderers are supposed to be good at, isn't it?

That same afternoon I had a cup of tea ready for the post girl, a pleasant tubby lass who worked the village with her brother. He kept a smallholding and sold plants from a stall on the London road bypass.

"I brewed up, Rose. Come in."

"Whatever do you do with all these magazines, Lovejoy?" She propped her bicycle against the door and brought a handful of catalogues and two letters. She was a plain girl, long-haired and young. They seem so active these days and full of talk. "I've just had a terrible row with the Brownlows. Oh, you should have heard them going on at me! As if I have anything to do with how much stamps cost." She sank onto the divan thankfully.

"Been busy?" I knew she had two spoonfuls of sugar.

"Don't ask!" She grinned.

"What time do you start your round?"

"Five, but then there's the sorting."

"Do you do that as well?"

"Sort of. Get it?"

"Super pun," I agreed, stony-faced. She grinned and settled back. There's this shed in the middle of the village where the post comes.

"I was worried in case you had one of your birds in with you."

"You're too young to know about such matters."

"You're a hoot, Lovejoy, you really are." I tell you, youngsters nowadays must learn it from the day they're born.

"What's funny?"

"The whole village can hear you making… er, contact with your lady visitors some nights. And some mornings."

"They can?" That startled me.

"Of course." She giggled. "We're all terribly embarrassed, especially those of us who are still in our tender years and likely to be influenced by wicked designs of evil men." A laugh.

"Well the village shouldn't be listening."

"Face it, Lovejoy." She began to look around. "You've something of a reputation."

"That's news to me." And it was.

"Is it really?"

"Yes." She turned to eye me. "You're our most exotic resident."

"Pretty dull place."

"Pretty exotic character," she countered.

"I can't be more exotic than our musician." We have a man who makes an extraordinary musical instrument of a hitherto unknown pattern. Needless to add, it cannot be played—which for a musical instrument is some handicap.

"Compared with you he's a bore."

"Then there's the preacher." This is a chap who preaches somewhat spontaneously at odd hours of night and day. Very praiseworthy, you might say, to have deep religious convictions in this immoral world. Well, yes, but to preach to trees, fence-posts, and assorted bus stops is hardly the best way of setting a good example.

"Even the preacher."

"What's special about me?" I was fascinated. Rose seemed surprised at my astonishment.

"You collecting old pots."

"Thanks," I said ironically. So much for years of study.

"And that crazy old car. It's hilarious!"

"Go on."

"And your… lady visitors."

"Well," I said hesitantly, "they've diminished of late, apart from the odd dealer. I was ill, in a way. I expect you noticed."

"Yes." She poured herself another cup and stirred sugar in. "You had one special bird, didn't you?"

"Sheila."

"Better than that blousy brunette with all those teeth."

"Which was she?"

"About four months ago. You remember—she shared you with that unpleasant married lady with the nasty manners."

"You keep my score?"

She grinned. "Hard not to, when I'm coming here every day."

"I suppose so."

"Did she give you the sailor's farewell?" she asked sympathetically.

"Who?"

"Sheila."

"No, love." I drew slow breath. "She… died, unfortunately."

"Oh."

"It's all right."

"I'm so sorry. Was that why you… ?"

"Lost control, my grandma would have called it," I said to help her out. "Yes, it must have been."

"Was it over her you… ?" She hesitated.

"I what?"

"You were going to kill somebody?" Word had spread, then. Not really surprising, the way I'd behaved.

"How did you hear that?"

She leaned forward excitedly. "You mean you are?"

"Do I look in fit state to go on the prowl?"

She looked me up and down. "Yes, probably."

"Well you can think again." I offered biscuits while I got myself another cup.

"The whole village was talking about you."

"Even more than usual?" My sarcasm hardly touched her.

"We were all agog."

"Well you can de-gog then. I'm better."

"Oh." Her disappointment should have been a bright moral glow of relief at salvation from dastardly sin.

"Sometimes I wonder about you women."

She beamed roguishly. "Only sometimes?"

"I mean, you're all interested when you think I'm going to go ape and axe some poor unsuspecting innocent"—the word nearly choked me—"yet when I'm going straight again you're all let down."

"You must admit, Lovejoy," she was reprimanding, so help me, "it's more, well, thrilling."

"You read too many books for your own good. Or letters."

She accepted the jibe unabashed. "No need to read letters, the way some people carry on. You found quick consolation, Lovejoy."

"What do you mean?"

"I nearly saw her the other night, and her natty little blue pop-pop." She poked her tongue out at me.

I gave a special sheepish grin but shook my head. "I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, no," she mocked. "Just good friends, I suppose."

"It must have been the district nurse."

"Like heck it was. Nurse Patmore doesn't go shoving her bike in the hedge. It's been here twice. I saw it."

"One of the forestry men," I suggested easily.

"On a woman's bike?" She fell about laughing. "You're either kidding or you've some funny friends, Lovejoy. It's an old-fashioned bike, no crossbar."

"You're mistaken." Keeping up my smile was getting very hard.

"Can't she afford a car, Lovejoy? Or is it just that it's quieter in the dark and easier to hide?" She snorted in derision. "You must think we're dim around here."

I surrendered, grinning with her. "A little of what you fancy," I absolved myself.

"They run a book on you down at the pub."

"In what race?"

"The Marriage Stakes."

"Out!" I said threateningly, and she went giggling. "You're probably being raped, according to that nosy lot of Nosy Parkers."

"That an offer?"

"Don't be cheeky to your elders!"

"Any particular cheeks in mind?"

I waved her off, both of us laughing. She pedaled down the path and was gone. I went in to clear up.

Now, Rose starts her work about five, but her actual round only begins once the sorting is ended. That could take up to an hour. So she was around my place no later than six-fifteen in the morning. Her afternoon round was much more variable on account of the number of chats she had to have between the sorting shed and our lane. She must have glimpsed the woman's —if it was a woman—bike at the "ungodly hour" of six A.M. or so. How much light was there at that time? I couldn't remember whether the clocks had been put ahead an hour or whether we still had that to do.

Rose would be out of our lane by now. I locked up, chucked the robin some bread and cheese, and walked down to the lane. It's a curving road no more than twelve feet across, with high hedges of hawthorn and sloe on either side. My own length of it is two hundred feet, dipping slightly to the right as you look at it from the cottage. A house is opposite, set a fair way back from the lane like mine. I hardly ever see him, an ascetic chap interested in boats and lawn mowers, while she's a devotee of amateur opera. As I said, it takes all sorts. They have two grownup children who periodically arrive with their respective families.

Down the lane is a copse, if that's the right word, a little wood joining my garden. For some reason old people once built a gate into the copse, perhaps to let pigs in to rummage for berries or acorns. Now it's derelict and failing apart. Up the lane but beyond another strip of hazels and birch is a cluster of a dozen houses centered on a well, then the lane gradually widens and levels off to join the main road at the chapel.

Since the lane leads down to a splash ford going to Fordleigh, the next village, not much traffic comes along it except for the milk float, sometimes a car risking the ford in exchange for rural scenic delights, and genuine visitors or people out for a walk or cycling. You can get to the village road again that way, but only with a bike or on foot. There's no way through for cars except by continuing on over the river.

Which sets you thinking.

The lane was empty as usual. You can hear cars approaching a couple of miles away. Nothing was coming, and with it being schooltime still, the children weren't yet out to raise hubbub at the chapel crossroads. Whoever intended to watch the cottage from a hidden position would have been wise to either come through the Fordleigh splash and appear in the lane at the copse, or pretend to be out for a quiet country stroll and walk down from the chapel toward the river. Whichever way they —she?—came, she could always duck into the copse and work her way near to the cottage among the trees. There was little likelihood of being seen so early anyway.

Yet there was one important proviso in all this. Does any reasonable morning stroller need a bike, and a motorized one at that? Answer: No. But my visitor did. And why? Because she was a stranger to the village, that's why. You don't go to a village miles away for a morning stroll.

Ail of which meant that my watcher was not a villager, and had come toward my place by crossing the river. She had used a motorized cycle of some sort to ride within walking distance of the copse and pushed the pop-pop into cover while slinking closer to the cottage. Then she'd watched me, presumably to nip in and steal the instrument when it was safe. She? But a forester or a farm laborer would never ride a bike without a reinforced crossbar.

I came to the copse gate. I'd not looked at it for years. You don't scrutinize what's familiar, though I must have passed it a hundred times. My hedge was only thick enough for concealment in two places and they were undisturbed. It had to be here.

My scalp prickled. The gate seemed untouched, but behind the rotting post brambles and hawthorns were crushed. A few twigs were broken and one sloe twig was quite dead, hanging by a slip of bark. Deeper inside, the ground was grooved and clods of dried mud still showed above the vegetation. Some scooters have quite wide tires. Those of the more orthodox bicycle shape have tires thicker than for ordinary bikes but thinner than the tires of, say, a mini-sized car.

I entered the copse with as much care as I could and knelt to examine the ground. It must be a motorized pedal-cycle or something very similar, I thought. The grooves were of a tire fairly thin but of a probable radius about bike size.

There's something rather nasty about being spied on. I once knew this woman friend of mine. We'd been out for an evening and on reaching her home for a light chat and a drink—her husband was abroad—found the place had been ransacked by burglars, whereupon she'd been violently sick. It seemed odd to me at the time, but now I felt nausea rise at the image of a silent watcher here among the trees near the cottage. The intrusion was literally sickening. There wasn't exactly a beaten path through the undergrowth, but the path the watcher had taken was pretty obvious if one assumed the purpose was to get near to the cottage. It took me about an hour of careful searching to find out where she'd waited.

The ground was dry and had that beaten look it gets from being shadowed by trees. One edge of my garden runs adjacent to the copse and it was about midway along it that the watcher had established herself, having a broken stump to lean on. There was adequate protection from being observed. I leaned on the stump myself. You could just about see my front door and the near half of the gravel path. The car was in full view, plus the side window looking into my kitchenette and there was an oblique view of the front two windows. They're only small, so the chance of actually watching me move about inside was practically nil, especially as I'm not a lover of too much light.

And, considering how it's my usual practice to draw the curtains as soon as I switched on, that must make it more difficult. What really displeased me was the horrid sensation—I was having it now on the back of my neck as I imitated my silent watcher— of having somebody peering in. I actually shivered.

Moving further through the copse, I found that the nearest the ground cover approached the cottage was about a hundred feet, maybe a little more. The trouble was you could see both front and back entrances from the copse. I could neither leave nor enter without being in full view, unless she allowed her attention to lapse, which in view of the trouble she'd taken wasn't at all likely. That was the most worrying feature of the whole business.

Taking care not to displace the brambles, I stepped out of the thicket. One pace and I was on my grass in full view of the cottage window. There had been a fence in the old days, long since rotten. I couldn't help looking back, seeing the copse and hedge in a completely new way. Before, everything had been almost innocent and protective, if not exactly neat. Now, even the odd bush in my lawn was somehow too near the cottage for comfort. And as if that wasn't enough, no sooner was I indoors than I began imagining odd noises, actually hearing them, which is most unlike me. The number of creaking sounds in an old cottage is really very few, but there I was like an apprehensive child full of imagination left alone for the night.

I examined the entire place minutely. The walls were wattle-and-daub, a common construction in East Anglia. These dwellings have been standing hundreds of years. In this ancient method you put sticks in wattle fashion as your main wall structure and slap mud between, adding more and more until it's a wall. Then a bit of plaster and you're home, providing you've a few beams and thatch for a roof. It's cool in summer, dry in winter, and offers the best environment for the preservation of antiques known. Not all the best preservation happens in museums and centrally heated splendor. In fact that environment's a hell of a sight worse for the really good stuff.

Like a fool I found myself peering at the copse from every conceivable angle. What I'd seen of the cottage from the murderer's stump told me it would be impossible, without the help of artificial light, for him/her to see much of me unless I was actually close to the window. The trouble was, whoever stood inside the cottage was equally blinded, because the copse formed a dark opaque barrier at the edge of the grass. Worse, there were two sides of the cottage I couldn't look out from.

I couldn't grumble, though I felt peeved at the mess I was in. I'd told Geoffrey the constable to get lost, alienated all my acquaintances, found myself discredited and scorned and regarded as a mentally sick buffoon without sense or judgment. To undo this would be the work of a lifetime. And it was no good grumbling that the cottage was an awkward shape, remote and rather vulnerable, because what I now regarded as its defects I'd always thought of as marvelous attributes, exactly the sort I needed for my antiques. And my hidden priest hole—now seeming so useless because it could have been made into a lovely airy cellar with a cellar door I could get out of—had seemed in my palmy days a perfect boon. It was private, hidden, and ventilated. Whoever had built the cottage had been wise in the way of country crafts. Two small ventilation shafts each about six inches wide ran from the priest hole to a point about a foot from the outside of the wall, ending in an earthenware grid set in the grass and partly overgrown. I kept the grids clear of too many weeds so the air could circulate. That way there was no risk of undue humidity, the great destroyer of antiques of all kinds.

The chiming clock struck four-thirty, which meant the village shop was still open. Suddenly in a hurry, I collected some money and rushed out to the car, remembering and cursing the locks and alarms for holding me up. I made it with about five minutes to spare. Mrs. Weddell judged me with an expert eye to list any grim details about me suggesting further decadence, but I wasn't having any. Knowing the dour insistence of the Essex villager upon gossip of the most doom-ridden kind, I gave her a ten-watt beam of exuberance and demanded information about her health. That put her off her stride. She was rather sad I wasn't at death's door and became quite miserable when I kept smiling. Added to that I bought enough provisions to feed a battalion and managed to find the right change with many a quip and merry jest, which was one more in her eye. "I've decided that a plump man's a happy one, Mrs. Weddell," I told her. "I'm going to put some pounds on." Exit laughing.

One of the hardest things I've ever done was to drive up to the cottage and not search the copse for the intruder. Whistling flat and nonchalantly, I unloaded the three carrier bags, making myself do it one bag at a time and deliberately controlling the urge to sneak a glance.

The night fell quicker than I'd realized that evening. I couldn't help leaving the curtains alone just to get a good look in the direction of the thicket without risk to myself, but finally had to draw them to keep things seeming normal. I sat with the telly and radio silent all evening, listening, and made a supper by the quietest possible means, though I'd usually have a noisy fry-up. A million times I heard somebody outside. Worse, a million times I didn't hear anything at all. It reminded me of the story about the students' hostel where a studious lad had complained of his neighbor who entertained a girl friend in the next room: "It's not the noise, it's the silences I can't stand!"

The distance across the grass grew shorter in my imagination. You could shoot somebody with fair ease from the cover provided by the bushes, especially if killing was getting to be a habit and you had the unique advantage of possessing a priceless flintlock that could kill without leaving the slightest trace of evidence. Still, no matter what else he tried I was fairly secure. I had enough food, milk, and water to last well over a week, and there was always the phone.

And the loaded Mortimers, waiting patiently and still motionless beneath the flagstone floor.

The phone suddenly rang, making me jump a mile. It was Margaret. She'd heard I was on the mend and chatted a full minute about antiques real and imaginary. It was kind of her and I urged her to ring again when finally we'd run out of things to say.

"I miss you around the arcade," she said. "Are you really better, Lovejoy?"

"Yes, love," I said. "Thanks. I appreciate the phone call."

"Pop around here whenever you want." She lives at Fordleigh. I promised I would, but I wanted friends checking up on me to make sure I was in the pink, not invitations to go visiting. I invented a couple of false promises to entice Adrian, Tinker, and Harry to phone in, knowing Margaret would pass the messages on.

The rest of the night was quite uneventful.

I only wish I'd rested and harbored my strength.

Chapter 14

I didn't sleep a wink. Long before dawn I was up being brave. Today was going to be my round of people. Today the old debonair impeccable Lovejoy would hit the road as politicians do to show how young and thrusting they actually are behind that comfortable rotund shape. It was really something of a confidence trick, but I was going through with it anyway. The night had taught me how alone I was.

Further reflection had increased my nervousness. Despite having the phone and living so near other people, there was one major problem. Whereas I didn't know who'd killed Sheila, the murderer certainly knew who I was. Collecting's a small world. Sooner or later I would come across him, and whether I recognized him or not was irrelevant. The risk I represented was still there.

I drove to George Field's house and collected the replies to his advertisement, some twenty replies, with one catalogue from an overseas dealer casting bread hopefully on distant waters. The ones Field thought most likely turned out dud. Disappointed, I promised to read them with enthusiasm and left.

Muriel Field was next. I enjoyed the drive, but exactly how many times I caught myself looking carefully into the rearview mirror I'll never know. The one blue scooter I did see turned out to be ridden by a district nurse. She's probably wondering yet why a complete stranger gave her a glare for nothing when she was in the opposite lane. I didn't recover for miles.

Muriel was glad to see me. I honestly mean that, really pleased. That whole morning was brilliant; every cloud seemed effervescent and the sky a deeper blue than it had ever been. She was radiant, dressed maybe somewhat younger than her age, and looked as though the party was soon to begin. The difference between the anxious, hesitant woman she'd been some weeks before and the scintillating beauty I now saw was remarkable. I was coerced into drinking coffee.

"If that heron keeps its distance," I warned.

She laughed. "I promise I'll protect you."

We sat on the patio and made small talk while a crone fetched coffee, Sheffield plate of some distinction, and Spode. The sugar bowl's fluted design didn't quite match but could be passed off as the right thing with luck in a nooky antique shop. My pleasure made me careless.

"I'll remember you above everything else for elegance," I said playfully, and saw her face change.

"Don't talk like that."

"It was a compliment."

"It sounded… so final."

"A joke," I said.

She wouldn't be appeased and set about pouring for us both. "Everything needn't be bad or sad." I felt out of my depth and said so. "I just don't like it when people talk about going away or changing things," she said. "It happens too often without anyone wanting it."

"I was only admiring your coffee set. It would have been terrible if you'd spoiled the effect with a spoon made out of Georgian silver coins." I took my cup and stirred. "Have I put my foot in it?"

"No." She shook her hair, head back and face toward the air as they do.

"I'll be careful in future." That was better. She raised her cup to toast me.

I asked about her upbringing. As she talked I absorbed security and ease all around. No chance of being spied on here, with the two loyal gardeners busy interrupting plants and keeping an eye on the mistress. Inside the house stalwart ancient ladies —infinitely more formidable than any gardeners—creaked and bustled vigilantly. So many things came down to money. Wealth is safety. Muriel chatted on about her father, her many aunts, her mother's concern with spiritualism ("But, then, it was all the fashion in her day, wasn't it?"), and her inherited wealth. Husband Eric had been as wealthy as she, it appeared, when they met.

"Will you stay on here, Muriel?" I asked.

She glanced away. "It depends."

"On …?"

"Oh, just things." Her vagueness was deliberate, yet there was a hint of a reflective smile in her expression. Oh-ho. I began to ask about Eric.

Society's cynicism clouds our minds sometimes. When a younger woman marries or cohabits with a much older man, it's supposed to be only for money. Conversely, when an old woman takes up with a much younger man, she's blamed for wanting physical gratification and is condemned on those grounds. This is one of the few occasions women come off worst. Society says they're cheap chiselers or sex-crazed. On the other hand the old chap's regarded as a sly old dog, and the young chap's seen simply as having just struck lucky getting sex and a steady income together in one parcel, as it were. So as Muriel chatted happily on about her elderly husband, I found my treacherous mind wondering what possible motive she'd dreamed up for marrying Eric Field in the first place. Naturally under the influence of Muriel's undoubted attractiveness and charm I was stern with myself and forced these unbecoming suspicions out as best I could.

"He had a real sense of fun," she was saying, smiling.

"I suppose it's a lot quieter now," I put in.

"Oh…" For some reason she was hesitant.

"I mean, fewer visitors," I hurried to explain. She seemed to become upset at the slightest thing. "You won't have dealers and collectors bothering you quite so much, seeing we only go for antiques."

"No." She saw my cup was empty and rose a little too quickly. "You haven't really seen the house, have you?"

"Er… no, but—" I was taken a little by surprise.

"Come on. I'll show you." Mystified by these sudden changes of course, I followed her in from the terrace.

The house wasn't quite the age I'd expected. Despite that, it was only just beginning to feel lived-in. Muriel had taste. Flowers matched the house colors and weren't too obtrusive the way some people have them, though you couldn't help thinking what a terrible fate it was to be scythed off in your prime and stuck in a pot to decay.

"Could I please… ?"

"Yes?" We were on the stairs, apparently about to tour upstairs.

"Would you mind very much if I asked to see where Eric was found?" To my surprise she was unperturbed.

"Not at all." We descended together. "I thought you might."

The room led off the marble-floored hall and was beautifully oak-paneled, done about 1860 or so at a quick guess. Muriel's unfaltering taste had enabled it to be exposed to more daylight than others could have allowed. She'd used long heavy velvet curtains drawn well back from the tall windows to draw attention to their height.

"I like it."

"Eric used it for a collecting room and his study. I never came in much when he was alive." She wandered about touching things rather absently, a book, the desk, adjusting a reading lamp. The carpet was Afghan but pleasing for all that. A small Wilson oil, the right size for that missing Italian waterfall painting he did, hung facing the desk, setting my chest clanging. However, care was needed, so I filed the facts and said nothing.

"I warned you about interlopers," I said.

"I know what you collectors are like. All Eric's things have gone, as I said, so I've no reason to fear."

"Do you see any of Eric's acquaintances still?"

"No," she said firmly.

"No collectors?" She paused at that, then again told me no. I shrugged mentally. It was none of my business. "If one does turn up," I said, chancing my arm, "tell him I'd rather like to see him."

We gazed at the lawns and admired the sweeping landscaped gardens. Muriel was eager to explain her plans for the coming flower show. I let her prattle on and, adopting an idiot smile, stared toward the flower beds.

In the window was the reflection of a small occasional table, mahogany drop-leaf with a single stem leg, quite good but Victorian. I couldn't see the top surface because it was covered with a neat new tablecloth. On it were mats and the essentials for starting the inevitable tea ceremony. I never came in it much when Eric was alive were her words. Therefore she did use it now, and fairly frequently from the way she had spoken. And whoever the visitor was must be a fairly regular customer. He rated the cozy intimacy of a sophisticated room from which all sour memories had been happily erased. I only rated the terrace. Hey-ho.

That would account for her reflective smile when I'd asked if she would keep the house on. It depended on just things, she'd said. Maybe it would also explain her displeasure when my miscued remark had suggested that collectors were hardly interested in people. Was he therefore a collector? I wondered about her holy friend. Older, but age doesn't really matter. Never mind what people say.

Still, where was the harm? It was quite some time ago since her husband had died. Sooner or later she was going to meet somebody new, as the song says. You couldn't blame her—or him, come to that. I honestly felt a twinge of jealousy. I couldn't help starting to work out how much I could buy with Muriel's wealth. I'd start with a group of Wedgwood jaspers. Then I'd— No good, Lovejoy.

"Come and see me off," I asked.

She agreed. "I'll get my coat and ride with you to the gate."

I strolled out onto the drive. The gardeners were grumbling with the endurance of their kind. As I approached I heard one saying, "That swine never grew those leeks himself. The bastard bought them, I'll bet." And I grinned inwardly at the politics of village competitions. At that moment his companion, detecting the presence of an observer, made a cautionary gesture, at which both turned to greet me with rearranged faces. Seeing my slipshod frame, they relaxed and grinned. I nodded affably and strolled on. They'd thought perhaps I was Muriel. Or Lagrange?

She was in the car when I returned. I'd get no kiss today. You can tell a woman enraptured by someone else. The delight isn't delight with you. Her vivacity's pleasure at what's to come, and in case you miss the point it's you that's departing. The minute it took to drive her to the gate I used to good effect, being as secure and companionable as other characters of the landscape. She blew me a kiss from the gate.

A child, I thought, just a child. Everything must be kind and happy for her. And in her protective shell of opulence she would instinctively make the whole world appear so. Lucky bloke, whoever he was.

The White Hart quietened a bit as I entered, but when a raving nut goes anywhere people behave circumspectly no matter how hard they try to look normal. Tinker bravely came along the bar for a chat, but Jimmo and Harry Bateman were obviously preoccupied and couldn't manage a nod. I was calm, easily innocent, and merely eager to talk about antiques. Jane, cautious on her stool, was relaxed enough to offer me a couple of rare book bindings—though I wouldn't normally touch them with a barge pole and she knew it—and Adrian gave me welcome only a little less effusive than usual.

Tinker had a source of antique violins—no, don't laugh, they're not the trick they used to be—for me, owned by a costermonger of all things. He had found as well a collector of old bicycles who was in the market for price-adjusted swaps, wanting assorted domestic Victoriana, poor misguided soul; and his third offer was some collector after old barrows. You know, the sort you use in gardens. At a pinch this last character would buy antique shovels if the antique wheelbarrow market was a little weak.

"An exotic crew, Tinker," I commented over my pale ale.

"It's the way it's happening, Lovejoy," he said. "I don't know whether I'm coming or going these days, honest. No two alike."

"Good."

"I wish it was." Drummers like Tinker are notorious moaners, worse than farmers.

"Better for business when tastes vary," I said, nodding to Dick, who'd just come in with traces of the boatyard still on him. Dick waved and gave me the thumbs-up sign.

"I like things tidy," said Tinker, except for Dandy Jack the untidiest man I knew.

"I like collectors," I answered just to goad him and get a mouthful of invective for my trouble.

A couple of new dealers were in from the West Country and, unaware of my recent history, latched affably on to me and we did a couple of provisional deals after a while. I earmarked for them a small folio of antiquary data, drawings of excavations in Asia Minor and suchlike, done by an industrious clergyman from York about 1820. It was supported by abstracts from the modern literature, photographs, and articles, plus the diary of a late-Victorian lady who'd spent a lengthy sojourn near the excavations and described them in detail. All good desirable script. They in their turn came up with a Forsyth scent-bottle lock, which they showed me there and then, an early set of theodolites they'd bring to the pub next day, and what sounded a weird collection of early sports equipment I'd have to travel to see. Knowing nothing about early sports gear, I fell back on my thoughtful introverted expression and said I was definitely interested but I'd have to think about it. They asked after a Pauly air gun, but I said how difficult it was to find such rarities and I'd see what I could do. I might let them have a Durs air gun in part exchange.

Ted the barman, pleased at my appearance of complete normality, was only too glad to serve me when I asked for pie, pickle, and cheese. "Nice to see you up and about again, Love-joy." He beamed.

"Thanks, Ted."

"Completely well now, eh?"

"A bit shaky on my pins now and again," I said.

With transparent relief he said it was understandable. "The girl friend had one of these viruses too," he said. "She was off work a month. Time them researchers got onto things like that and left smoking alone."

Back in my old surroundings with Dandy Jack and the rest popping in and out for the odd deal, I passed the time in utter contentment. I honestly admire antique dealers, like me. They are the last cavaliers, surviving as an extraordinary clone against fantastic odds by a mixture of devotion, philosophy, and greed. The enemy, it practically goes without saying, is the succession of malevolent governments who urbanely introduce prohibitive measures aimed at first controlling and then finally exterminating us. We don't bow to them. We don't fit neatly into their lunatic schemes for controlling even the air everyone breathes. The inevitable result is hatred, of us and of our freedom. It includes the freedom to starve, and this we do gladly when it's necessary. But we are still free, to be interested in what we do, to love what we practice and to work as and when we choose. And we work on average a good twelve hours a day every day, our every possession totally at risk every minute we live. And these poor duck eggs in the civil service actually believe they can bring us to heel! It's pathetic, honestly. Our ingenuity will always be too profound for a gaggle of twerps— I hope.

Listening to the banter going on hour after hour in the bar, my troubles receded and my fears vanished. We ranged over subjects as far apart as Venetian gondoliers' Renaissance clothing to Kikuyu carvings, from eighteenth-century Eskimo gaming counters to relics from the early days of the American wild west. It was lovely, warm, and comfortable.

Then I noticed it was dark outside.

Chapter 15

I rose and left amid a chorus of good nights, quite like old times. The two strangers promised they'd be back about noon the next day, same place, and I promised I'd fetch my stuff.

The road to the cottage seemed endless. Worse still, it was quiet in a degree I'd never before experienced. My old car seemed very noisy. Its engine throbbed a beat out into the dark on either side of the road only to have it pulsed back to reintensify the next chug. In the center of a growing nucleus of contained deep pulsation, the motor moved on between high hedges behind its great rods of beamed headlight. A moon ducked its one eye in and out of static cloud at me. It was one of those nights where moon shadows either gather in disquieting clusters or spread across moon-bright lanes making sinister pools where the ground you have to tread is invisible.

The probing lights turned across the hedges down by the chapel. Unfortunately nobody was about, or I could have bolstered my courage by giving them a lift. With a sinking heart I swung into the path and curved to a stop outside my door. The silence, no longer held back by the throb of the great engine, rushed close and paused nearby in the darkness. I switched my door alarm off, using the key, and went in.

Even the cottage seemed worried. The electric light had a wan air about it as if it too was affected by concern. I examined the miniature hallway for marks but found no signs of intrusion. My unease persisted. I pulled the curtains to and flicked on the living-room lamps to make it seem cozier. Putting the TV on seemed a wise move until I realized that I would be deaf to the sound of anyone approaching as well as blinded by the darkness. Easy meat for whoever was watching out there.

To encourage what resolution I had left, I made a rough meal I didn't want. I hit on the idea of putting the radio on for a few moments. That way, when I eventually switched it off it might seem as though I had begun preparations for bed. With another stroke of genius I turned the hall light out and cautiously opened the front door a chink, just enough to get my arm out and insert the alarm key in the raised box on the door alcove. I usually didn't bother to set the alarm when I was indoors, but it might prove one more thing to lessen my many disadvantages. With the door safely closed and barred again I felt pleased at my inventiveness. Nobody could now pierce my perimeter, so to speak, without Geoffrey being roused at his police house. It would admittedly take some while for him to come hurtling over on his pedal-cycle, but I could hold the chap until he came.

A braver man would have decided to be bold, perhaps take a weapon and stalk the blighter out there in all that darkness. I'm not that courageous, nor that daft. Whoever was outside would see me leave from either door, while I would be treading into the unknown. Let the cops pinch him if he tried any funny stuff, I thought. They get paid for looking after us. Geoffrey had had my break-in and two chickens with fowl pest, and that had been his lot since Michaelmas. Big deal.

I've never really believed very much in all this subliminal learning stuff they talk about nowadays. You know the sort of thing—showing a one-second glimpse of a complex map in semidarkness and getting psychiatrists to see if you can remember its details twenty years later. Nor do I go in for this extrasensory perception and/or psychomotive force, spoon bending, and thought transference. Yet as I forced my food down and swilled tea, my discomfiture began to grow from an energy outside myself. It was almost as if the cottage had been reluctantly forced into the role of an unwelcome spectator to a crime about to be committed. That energy was, I became certain, generated by the watcher in the copse. Either I was acting as a sort of receiver of hate impulses or I was imagining the whole thing and he was at home laughing his head off, knowing I was bound to be getting hysterical. My plan to flush him out by the advertisement and my inquiries had backfired. He was now forewarned, and I was set up for reprisal.

Humming an octave shriller than usual, I went about my chores, finished the food, and washed up. It was important not to vary my routine. I got my bed ready in the adjoining room, leaving the bedside lamp on for about half an hour to simulate my usual reading time. Then I switched it off together with the radio, and the whole place was in darkness.

Living so far from other people—a few hundred yards seemed miles now—the cottage always had alternative lighting about: candles, a torch, two or three oil lamps. It would be safe to use the torch only if I hooded it well, say with a handkerchief or a dishcloth, and was careful to keep the beam directed downward. There was no need of it indoors, because I knew every inch of every room, but there might come an opportunity to catch him in its illumination like a plane in a searchlight. I'd get a good glimpse of him and just phone the police. Notice that my erstwhile determination and rage had now been transmuted through fear into a desire for an army of policemen to show up and enforce the established law—another instance of Lovejoy's iron will.

The curtains were pale cream, a bad mistake. Anything pale is picked out by the moon's special radiance, even a stone paler than its fellows being visible at a considerable distance. Were I to pull them back from the kitchen window, the movement would be seen by even the most idle watcher. Still, it had to be risked.

I got the torch ready in my right hand and moved stealthily toward the window. Do everything slowly if you want your movements to go unnoticed, was what they used to tell us in the army. Not fast and slick, but silent and slow. Feeling a fool, I tiptoed toward the sink. By reaching across I could pull the curtain aside. There was no way to step to one side close against the wall because of the clutter in the corner. A derelict ironing board stood there with other useless impedimenta. The slightest nudge would raise the roof.

Holding my breath, I gently edged the curtain aside. The copse, set jet-black above a milky sheen of grass, seemed uncomfortably close. I hadn't realized it was so short a gap, not even pacing it out the previous day. Nothing moved. But I knew he was there. Exactly in the way I was peering out at him, so he was staring at me. Could he see the curtain? I'd moved it without squeaking its noisy runners, but there was the danger of the moonlight exposing a dark slit between pale material. I let the edges meet and exhaled noiselessly.

To my surprise I was damp with sweat. Peering eyeball-to-eyeball with a murderer was no job for a growing lad. Maybe the best course would be to telephone Old Bill. Then what if Scotland Yard arrived in force only to discover an empty copse without any trace of a lurking murderer? Imagine their annoyance when discovering they'd been summoned by a frightened idiot with a recent history of a nervous breakdown. That would be crying wolf with a vengeance. I'd have to wait until I had proof he was there.

The view from the other windows was the same quiet—too-quiet—scene. No breeze moved the trees, and shadows stayed put. I began to feel somewhat better, a little more certain of myself. No matter what he tried I was certainly a match for him. He was only one bloke. If he had a gun along with him, well I had a few too. On the other hand, if he was waiting for me to make another mistake, such as going out for a nocturnal car ride without remembering to set the alarm or something making another burglary easier, he was going to be sadly disappointed.

I waited another thirty minutes. Let him think I was sound asleep. My one bonus was my conviction he was out there. He, on the contrary, knew I was in the cottage but he had no way of knowing I was certain he was sitting on the tree stump and waiting. Sweat broke over me like a wave. What the hell was he waiting for? What point was there in watching a silent cottage when I was supposed to have retired for the night? Nothing could possibly happen until dawn when I awoke—or could it? My increasing nervousness took hold. It was ridiculous to let it, but I could not withstand the rush of adrenaline.

Shading the torch, I read the time on the wall clock. Ten minutes to twelve. A plan evolved in my mind. I would wait until dawn, when he was probably dozing, then rush outside, down the path to the lane, sprint across into my neighbor's drive, and hide deep in the laurel hedge. Of course I'd have a gun with me, maybe my Durs air weapon, which could shoot three, possibly four, spherical bullets without needing a further pumping up. With that relatively silent weapon I could prevent him leaving the copse from the far side. His bike would be useless.

This cunning plan had an undoubted risk, but there were two advantages. One was that it postponed any action at all, true Lovejoy style, so I needn't do anything dangerous just yet and maybe by dawn he would be gone. The second advantage was that in rushing out I'd set off the police alarm. He'd be trapped. All I'd have to do would be to sit tight and threaten him with the air weapon. He'd recognize it, collector that he was, with its great bulbous copper ball dangling beneath the stock. No mistake about that. Unfortunately, though, he might guess I would try a morning sprint and simply move toward my path. I wouldn't care to meet him face to face with him sitting ready and me disarrayed and running.

The front doorbell rang.

I dropped the torch from cold shock. A strange echo emitted from the walls about me, taking some seconds to die away. Fumbling along the carpet, I found the torch again and dithered, really dithered. Holding it in fear now, I peered out of the dark living room toward the door. The moon was shading the front of the cottage. Anyone could be there. My heart seemed to boom at every beat. Why does sweat come when you are cold from terror? The shelling I'd endured years ago had been nothing to this. It was somehow worse because whoever waited now at my door was in a sense unknown.

It could be Margaret. She might have sensed my fright and come to make sure I was all right. Why not telephone instead? Surely she'd do that, a far more sensible approach. Maybe she'd wanted to see for herself. I was on my way down the hall toward the door when the obvious flaw came to my mind—the cottage had been still as death. I'd been listening for the slightest sound for nearly an hour now and had not heard a thing. And the path outside was gravel. You could even hear a rabbit cross it. But not a clever, oh-so-clever, murderer. Nobody creeps up to a door, then rings the bell.

Sweat trickled from my armpits. It dripped from my forehead and stung the corners of my eyes. Should I call out, asking who was there? Not if he had the Judas guns with him, which might be used to shoot me down as soon as he located me.

I didn't dare creep closer to the door, in case he fired through. And if I crept back to the telephone for the police he'd hear the receiver go and me dialing. Would he honestly dare to break in? Panicking now, I slithered out of the hall and pulled the carpet back from over the priest hole. I needed no light to find the iron ring in its recess. Astride the flag, I hauled it upward and rested it against the armchair as I usually did. Cursing myself for a stupid unthinking fool, I clambered down the steps into the chamber. By feel alone I found the Mortimer case and extracted the duelers. The Durs air weapon might have been more useful, but I'd relied too much on having the upper hand. Positions were bitterly reversed now.

The slab lowered in place, I covered it with the carpet. Where was he now? Would he still be there at the front door, or was that a mere bluff to draw attention while he crept around the side and gained entrance there? I stood, armed but irresolute, in the living room. Waves of malevolence washed through me—all from the external source he represented. He was there outside, watching and waiting. It was all part of his game. His hate emanated toward me through the walls. I could practically touch it, feel it as a live, squirming, tangible thing. The pathetic unpreparedness of my position was apparent to him as well as to me.

Something drew me toward the kitchen window. Had he given up lurking by the front door and gone back to his place in the copse? I tried turning myself this way and that, stupidly hoping my mental receivers would act like a direction finder and tell me exactly where he was. Perhaps my fear was blunting the effect. If he was in the process of moving through the copse I might see his form. It seemed worth a try. If only it wasn't so utterly dark in the shadows from that treacherous moon.

The difficulty was holding the torch and the Mortimers. I finally settled for gripping one dueler beneath my arm and holding the torch with my left hand. Leaning across the sink, I slowly pulled the curtain aside.

For one instant I stood there, stunned by sudden activity. The glass exploded before my eyes. A horrendous crackling sound from glass splinters all about held me frozen. Behind me inside the living room a terrific thump sounded which made even the floor shudder. The curtain was snapped aside and upward, flicked as if it had been whipped by some huge force. I stared for quite three or four seconds, aghast at the immensity of this abrupt destruction, before my early training pulled me to the floor. There was blood on my face, warm and salty.

Something dripped from my chin onto my hands as I crawled on all fours back to the living room. I had lost one of the Mortimers but still held the torch. Broken glass shredded my hands and knees as I moved, a small incidental compared to the noise I was making. I rolled onto the divan to get my breath and see how much damage I'd sustained.

My face and hands were bleeding from cuts. They'd prove a handicap because they might dampen the black powder if I had to reload, but for the moment they were a detail. My handkerchief I tied around my left hand, which seemed in the gloom to look the darker of the two and was therefore probably bleeding more profusely. To my astonishment I was becoming calmer every second. The situation was not in hand but at least clearly defined. Even a dullard like me could tell black from white. The issue couldn't be clearer. He was outside shooting at me, and there was to be no quarter. Simple.

I crawled messily toward the telephone. Even as I jerked the receiver into my bandaged hand I knew it would be dead. The sod had somehow cut the wire. O.K., I told myself glibly, I'd wait until morning when the post girl would happen by and bring help. She came every day—rain, snow, hail, or blow.

Except Sunday, Lovejoy.

And tomorrow was Sunday. And my neighbors opposite drove to Walton-on-Sea every Saturday for the weekend.

Depressed by that, I set to working out the trajectory of his missile. Naturally, in my misconceived confidence I'd not drawn a plan showing the position of his stump relative to the window. That would have helped. Knowing it roughly, however, I peered through the gloom at the corner farthest from the kitchen alcove and finally found it sticking half buried in the wall. A bolt, from an arbalest.

Bows and arrows are sophisticated engines, not the simple little toys we like to imagine. An arrow from a longbow can pierce armor at a short distance, and Lovejoy at any distance you care to mention. But for real unsophisticated piercing power at short range you want that horrid weapon called the arbalest, the crossbow. Often wood, they are as often made of stone, complete with trigger beneath the stock. Their only drawback was comparative slowness of reloading. By now though he'd have it ready for a second go.

He was a bright lad. No flashes, no noise, no explosions, even if they'd been audible to any neighboring houses. And I was still no nearer guessing where he might be. My assets were that I was alive, was armed, and had enough food to last out the weekend and more. But I'd need to keep awake, whereas he could doze with impunity. I felt like shouting out that he could have the wretched turnkey.

At that moment I knew I was defeated. He had me trapped. And as far as I was concerned he could move about as he pleased, even go home for a bath, knowing I would be too scared to make a run for it in case he was still at his post. How the hell had I got into this mess? I questioned myself savagely.

Half past twelve, maybe something like five hours till daylight. Then what? I still wouldn't be able to see into the copse. And I would be that much more at risk.

I sat upright on the divan in the living room. The side window was paler than the rest, showing the moon was shining from that direction. I opened the hall door wide and, keeping my head down, pulled back the kitchen alcove's curtains as far as they would go. That way I'd be as central as I could possibly be, and he'd get the Mortimer first twitch if he tried to break in.

My spirits were starting to rise when I heard a faint noise. It was practically constant, a shushing sound like a wind in trees, not sounding at all like someone moving across a gravel path or wading through tall grass. Maybe, I thought hopefully, a breeze was springing up. If it started to rain he might just go home and leave me alone.

The noise increased, hooshing like a distant crowd. Perhaps the villagers had somehow become alarmed and were coming in a group to investigate. Even as the idea came I rejected it. People were not that concerned. Worried, I forgot caution and crept toward each of the windows to listen. The sound was as loud at each. I even risked approaching the front door, then the side door, but learned nothing except that the noise was ever so slightly intensifying as moments passed.

It was several puzzling minutes before I noticed the odd appearance of the side window. Shadows from it seemed to move in an odd way I hadn't seen before. The other window, illuminated blandly by moonlight diffusing through the curtains, cast stationary shadows within the room. My sense of unknowing returned again to frighten me. I couldn't even risk trying to glance out with that arbalest outside waiting to send another bolt trying for my brain.

Then I smelled smoke.

The shushing sound was the pooled noise of a million crackles. My thatched roof had been fired, probably by means of a lighted arrow. A kid could have done it. A hundred ways to have prevented all this rose to mind, all of them now useless. I was stuck in the cottage, which was burning. Thatch and wattle-and-daub.

Madness came over me for a second. I actually ran about yelling and dashed to the kitchen window. Recklessly I pulled the curtain aside and fired into the darkness through the broken pane. I shouted derision and abuse. The copse, vaguely lit by a strangely erratic rose-colored glow, remained silent. I heard the slap of the lead ball on its way among the leaves. Maddened, I tried filling a pan with water and throwing it upward. It left a patch on the ceiling. Hopeless.

I had to think. Smoke was beginning to drift in ominous columns vertically downward. Reflected firelight from each window showed me more of the living room than I'd seen for some time. I was going to choke to death before the flames finally got me. The beams would set alight, the walls would catch fire, and the fire would extend downward until the entire cottage was ablaze. I'd heard that glass exploded in fires. There would be a cascade of glass fragments from every possible direction ricocheting about the place. Those, and the flames, but first the asphyxiating smoke would do for me.

It would have to be the door. I'd make a dash for it. He'd be there, knowing my plight. He'd let me have it as soon as I opened the door to step outside. And it would have to be the front. Going out of the side door, I'd just have farther to run to get out of my blind garden. Unless I ran toward the copse. But once in there, assuming I reached it, what then? He knew it intimately. Maybe he would even stay there, confident of his marksmanship and having me silhouetted against the fire. You couldn't ask for an easier target.

The smoke intensified. I started to cough. The walls began creaking as if anticipating their engulfment. Above, a beam crackled unpleasantly and a few flakes of ash began to drift downward. So far I couldn't see the flames, but their din was beginning to shake the cottage. Faint tremors ran through the solid paving beneath my feet. You die from asphyxiation in a fire, I'd heard somewhere, probably in pub talk. Then, dead and at the mercy of the encroaching fire, your body becomes charred and immutably fixed in the terrible "boxer's stance" of the cindered corpse. I'd seen enough of the sickening war pictures to know. Tears were in my eyes from the smoke.

"You bastard," I howled at the side door. "Murderer!"

If I was to dash toward possible safety with all guns blazing I would need guns to blaze. Spluttering and now hardly able to see as the cottage began to fill with curling belches of smoke, I dragged the carpet aside and lifted the flagstone of the priest hole. As I did the idea hit me.

For certain I was practically as good as dead. No matter which way I jumped he'd kill me. I had enough proof of his intentions to know he was going to leave me dead. There was no escape. So what if I hid in the priest hole?

I dashed back for my torch, finding it easily in the flickering window glow. The shaded light showed the cavity at which I looked anew. Could fire ever penetrate paving stones? Maybe heat could. On the other hand, how long would a cottage like mine burn? And how long would the heat take to cook me alive in there?

The sink. I raced back, filled two pans full of water at the tap, and hurried back. The smoke was making it practically impossible to see. I was coughing constantly. The carpet had to be soaked to keep the flags as cool as possible. If they were damp, though they might eventually burn, they would perhaps act as a heat barrier for a while. I poured the water over the carpet and dashed into the kitchen alcove again.

By plugging the sink and turning both taps on at full blast I might eventually manage to flood the cottage floor. I'd actually done it once by accident. I wedged a dishcloth into the overflow at the back of the sink, which was the best I could do. It broke my heart to leave the Mortimers, but since he knew I'd fired at him they were going to be evidence of my doom. Quickly filling two milk bottles with water, I grabbed a loaf and a big piece of cheese which would have to last me. I remembered the torch at the last minute.

The idea was to have the flag in place covering the priest hole with me in it and the wet carpet covering that neatly. Under a mound of ash and fallen debris there'd be little sense in searching the ground unless they knew of my priest hole, and nobody else did. But how to do it? I stood on the steps with my shoulders bracing back the flag while my fingers inched the carpet forward until it touched the floor. Then I lowered the flag by edging my way down step by step. The last step was done with the heavy paving stone actually supported by my head. Twice I had to repeat the maneuver because the carpet somehow folded inside and wedged the stone open a fraction. I couldn't risk that. I stepped down inch by inch. The stone finally clicked into place without a hitch. Now it was covered by the carpet, and above me the cottage was roaring like a furnace.

I was entombed. Ovened.

The vents showed a hazy glimpse of orange redness to either side. Fine, but there was smoke starting to drift in from the direction of the back garden. My water and food I placed for safety on the lowest shelf, where I couldn't possibly knock them over. I swiftly took stock of what I had to fight with. First, his ignorance of my priest hole. Second, the weapons I had available.

There were the powder guns, but black powder is notoriously unstable. Even the modern version such as I had got from Dick Barton could not be completely free from capricious behavior. Weapons already loaded could easily explode in heat. I'd heard of it happening. Still, if I loaded a couple of pistols and left them cased and carefully pointing along one of the vents, there might not be too much risk, and they'd be cooler. I stuffed my shirt into a vent and shielded the other with my body. I switched on the torch.

I decided on the Barratt pair although they were percussion. The sight of my bloodstained hands frightened me almost to death. I was glad I hadn't got a mirror, because my face was probably in a worse state still. Shakily, taking twice as long as usual, I loaded the pair of twin barrels and slipped valuable original Eley percussion caps over the four nipples. Half-cock. .Then I loaded the Samuel Nock pair. They were more of a danger in this growing heat, being flintlock, as the powder in the flashpan was external to the breech and so more easily ignited. For what it was worth I laid them flashpan downward in one of the vents.

The heat was greater now. Smoke was still drifting from one vent. I must find some means of creating an increased draft from one vent to the other, perhaps bringing in cooler fresh air from outside to dilute this hot dry air inside the priest hole.

Barrels. Barrels are tubes. The longest barrels I had were on the Brown Bess and the Arab jezails. Perhaps, I reasoned, if I drew in a deep breath facing one vent and blew it out down a barrel lying along the other vent I would be all right with the faint draft it was bound to create. But I'd need to take the breech plugs out. The tools were handy, which was one blessing.

As I worked I stripped naked. The heat was almost intolerable now. I used up a whole bottle of water wetting my shirt and using it to cover my head. The barrels together would reach about half way down one vent, so they'd have to be bound in sequence. I did this with an old duster soaked in my urine, binding the rag around the junction of the two barrels to make it as air tight as possible. Because the priest hole was so narrow I had to complete the job standing on the steps with one barrel already poked inside the vent's shaft and the other sticking out past my face. By the time it was done I was quivering from exhaustion.

I tried my idea of blowing but the heat was beginning to defeat me. The air entering my lungs was already searingly hot. From above, my head came frantic gushing sounds, creakings, and occasional ponderous crashes, which terrified me more than anything. The walls would be burning now, and the beams would be tumbling through the living-room ceiling. Twice I heard loud reports as the glass windows went. It must be an inferno. I was worn out and dying from heat. Too clever by far, I'd got myself into the reverse of the usual position. I was safe from smoke and being cooked in an oven. If only I could bring air in.

I forced myself to think as the blaze above my head reached a crescendo. What could make air move? Propellers, windmills, waterwheels? A fan. A jet engine. A ship's screw. A paddle device. What had they used in prisoner-of-war camps when digging those tunnels? Bellows, conveyors of buckets, paddle engines? Bellows.

Below me, on the shelf near my precious bottle of water, was the air gun. I had a pump for it, but at what rate did it actually pump air? It usually needed about four minutes to fill the gun's copper globe going full pelt, and that was tiring enough. I took the implement and gave a couple of trial puffs. The force was considerable, as it indeed would need to be, seeing that the eventual ball pressure was enough to propel a fourteen-bore lead sphere some thousand yards or so. I clasped it to me and put the screw nozzle against the open gun breech projecting from the vent. With some difficulty I began pumping. Almost immediately I felt a marvelous gentle breeze against my back from the opposite vent, but there came an unpleasant inrush of smoke with it. I would need to blow air out in the opposite direction. There might be less smoke that side.

The barrels were easy to swap over as the vents were of a height. I simply slotted them in, having to mend the junction on the way across. That way around it was easier to use the pump, because I found I could use the wall as a support and one of the shelves as a fulcrum for my elbow. This time I was rewarded by the cool air on my shoulders without very much smoke. I guessed that a faint breeze must be blowing the fire and smoke in the direction I was facing.

There was a certain amount of squeaking from the air pump, and its leather bellows flapped noisily, but in the cacophony from the fire above nothing I was doing could possibly be distinguished from the other noise. My only worry was if he saw a steady current of air somehow piercing the slanting smoke from somewhere in the grass. The shifting firelight would help.

As minutes went by I improved on the system. Once it became obvious the system was working, I started settling down to a less frantic rate. I might, I reasoned, have to do this forever. You see fires still burning days after they've started, don't you? I counted my rate at about twenty pumps a minute. By stuffing my shirt into the vent around the jezail barrel I improved the motion still further by preventing any back draft. All incoming air was from the opposite side. Occasional gusts of smoke frightened me now and again, but they weren't too bad.

I tried pausing for two consecutive beats to listen. Was there shouting from above? I dreamed—Was it a dream?—I heard a big vehicle revving, followed crazily by a sound of splashing of water. But the bastard might be trying to pretend the firemen had arrived. Twice I was near screaming for help. Drenched and demented, I resisted and pumped on, haunted by the memory of the stables which had burned down behind the old rectory. Submerged by the low evening mist, horses and stables were found as just ashes a full day later. And worse still I had no way out whether it was friends or foe on the other side, except through the flames.

For some daft reason it seemed vital to suppress hopes of people like Margaret and Tinker Dill, those smug bastards in comfort somewhere who were believing I wasn't dying. The smarmy pigs, all of them. I sobbed and sobbed, pumping crazily on amid the lunatic noise.

One really monumental crash interrupted me about an hour or two after my life-supporting system had been started. That would be the central longitudinal beam, I thought. The whole cottage was down now, with the exception of maybe part of a wall here and there.

After that, nothing but the faint shushing roar, the ponderous crumblings and tremors all about me, and the steady slap-click-pat-hiss of the ancient bellows pump wafting beautiful cool air over my shoulders and out through the old barrels.

Nothing but my arms moving, the pump handle slippery from sweat and spurts of blood as a cut reopened briefly. Nothing but leaning one way for a hundred pumps and another way for another hundred to ease my tiredness, nothing but the hiss of outgoing and the gentle coolness of incoming air. The question of survival receded. I became an automaton.

There was nothing in my mind, no thought, no reasoning, no plans, virtually no consciousness, nothing but to continue pumping forever and ever and ever and ever.

Chapter 16

It must have rained about ten o'clock that Sunday morning as far as I was able to tell. All that did was make the wretched ashes cool a little faster than they'd otherwise have done.

As time went on the noises above lessened somewhat, though the intolerable heat reached a peak some hours after the sounds of the fire had faded. The first improvement I noticed was that smoke wasn't coming in anything like as frequently as it had. My breathing was difficult from the heat, though, and once I cried out in pain when, shifting my cramped position on the steps, I inadvertently touched the flagstone above my head. It burned my arm, and stinging blisters rose swiftly on my skin. As I resumed my pumping they burst and serum washed warm patches down my arm and onto my knee. I'd been going some eight hours at a guess when I finally decided to chance a minute's rest.

Numbly, I forced myself to work out the time by counting. The vent was showing that daylight glow. I could actually hear the cracklings of the settling ash mixed incongruously with faint twitters of the birds. No sound of revving engines now, no faint shouts either real or imaginary. If the firemen had come at all, they were gone now. And a wise murderer returns to see his job's properly done. Maybe he was already sifting through the embers for the turnkey. I know I would have done just that. God knows, I thought wearily, what the robin thinks of all this. I drank about a third of my water and endured the discomfort as the heat rose while I sat down. The ache was almost pleasurable. Sitting and eating dry bread and cheese seemed almost bliss after the horrible efforts I'd expended at the old bellows. Within two or three minutes, however, the heat rose again and I had to resume my action with the air pump to cool the cell down and allow me to breathe properly.

Throughout the morning I drove myself into forming a scheme. I would pump for about five minutes, then rest for as long as I could tolerate the heat, upon which I'd resume pumping. Limping along in this fashion for a while, I soon realized I'd overestimated the rate at which the incoming air cooled my prison. I reluctantly had to increase pumping time to about half an hour or so, which gave me sufficient coolth for about five minutes. There was an additional danger here, in that I was tempted to fall asleep while resting. I had to prevent this by standing up.

With time to think I became bitter. Where the hell were the fire people? And the police? And my lazy, swarmy, self-satisfied bloody friends? Why weren't they calling frantically for me, digging through the ash with their bare hands? I would. For them. But Lovejoy's nearest and dearest let him have a private bloody holocaust. The swine had all assumed I was shacked up elsewhere with some crummy bird. Could life be so outrageous that I'd been trapped by an armed maniac and so-say roasted alive by him in my own bloody home, and the entire country was just not caring enough? I wept from frustrated anger at the insult. All life in that moment seemed utterly mad. No wonder people just set out determined to simply get what they could. Who could blame them? The proof was here, in ashes above me. And I, honest, God-fearing Lovejoy, finished up buried underneath the smoking ruins of my own bloody house, cut, filthy, bleeding, weary, and as naked as the day I was born.

My elbows were like balloons full of fluid, swollen and soggy. My wrists were more painful still but not so swollen. Despite them and the blisters I had to resume at the bellows.

As time wore wearily on I became aware of lessening temperature. In rest periods I could hear rain on grass and a faint drumming. Could it be rain on the old Armstrong? My rest periods were becoming longer and safer and the need of cool air was not so absolute. I was able to risk sitting down and having a rough meal.

Eventually there came a time when I felt it would not be risking total extinction to fall asleep. I lodged myself upright on the steps and was into oblivion within seconds.

You'd never seen such a sight. The cottage was a pile of smoking cinders and ash. In the dusk the garden seemed so small without the cottage to make the plot seem a little more imposing. The whole scene was pathetic. Where the kitchen alcove had been the ash was knee deep, perhaps the result of my water trap. Water was seeping from below, there, probably from a damaged rising main.

The rain had ceased. Smoke still rose from the debris in places. You can't help wondering at the curious consequences of physical events, almost as much as at biological goings-on. Why, I wondered, had that particular crossbeam, lying half charred among the ruins, not burned all the way through as the rest appeared to have done? And why was part of the wattle-and-daub wall still standing to a height of about three feet close to where the front door stood, with the rest in ashes?

It had taken me a full hour to extricate myself from the hole. The weight of smoldering debris had made the slab difficult to lift. Still, I thought grimly, the murderer can't push even his phenomenal luck too far. Quick-to-burn stuff makes light ash.

I placed the time at about nine o'clock Sunday night. The grass was wet from the rain. I had the sense to kick ashes back onto the paving over the priest hole to obscure signs of my escape, and I skipped swiftly onto the damp grass because my trousers were smoldering. With the same facility of the previous night I knew he'd gone. I had the Nock with me and slipped it to half-cock for safety.

The car was a wreck, the tires shreds of charred rubber, the paint gone, the metal twisted, and the trimmings burned to blazes. I hadn't a bean. Except for the few items down in the priest hole I was bust. Dizziness forced me to rest a few minutes. I sat in the darkness beneath the hedge to recover and bathed my face with wet grass. There was nothing for it but to ask for help, but from whom?

My neighbors didn't get back until Monday as a rule, so they weren't about yet, assuming I'd guessed right about it being Sunday evening. Other people up the lane couldn't be approached. I knew hardly any of them, and anyway I would send them into screaming fits by heaving out of the darkness like a charred scarecrow. I would have to phone somebody. Muriel? Margaret? Jane? Tinker? Dick or Brad? Who was safe?

There were signs people had come. Great marks were gouged in the gravel path. Several bushes were crushed. A fire engine, probably. Foot hollows in the grass were filled with rainwater already. A small crowd of well-wishers, half disappointed at not seeing Lovejoy crisped, the rest busy speculating which bird it was that had luckily seduced me away from the danger. Friendship's a great restorative.

The idea of a telephone seemed bizarre. You just pick up the receiver, dial, and have a perfectly normal conversation with whoever's at the other end. After a night such as I'd spent? I'd heard somewhere that people rescued from bizarre episodes full of danger—like sailors on a raft for days—weren't allowed back to normal life immediately but were put into solitude until the idea of rescue became a tangible reality. Maybe human brains can't accept too much relief all at one go. Not knowing if I was doing right or not, I compelled myself to sit there beneath the darkening hedge watching the ruins smolder, trying to keep my relief from dominating my thoughts.

The proper thing to do would be to walk through the gathering dusk to the policeman's house. It was only about a half-mile. Nobody would see what a state I was in. He might lend me some clothes. I was wearing socks, shoes, trousers, and a shirt, all filthy and torn. Caked as I was with grime, ashes, and dried blood, I couldn't be a pretty sight, cut and blistered. Or perhaps the telephone booth? Our one public phone was always lit and stood by the village pond in front of the Queen's Head. We have no street lamps, but the place was too prominent.

After some two hours or so tasting fresh damp air, I rose creakily, holding on to the hedge to keep myself upright. It proved difficult even to walk, to my surprise. I kept to the verge of the gravel path so as to make no noise and examined the lane before limping quickly across, carrying the two-barreled pistol now at full cock should my premonitions let me down.

My neighbor has two cottages knocked into one and extended to the rear. Like me he has a curving gravel path up to the front. I ignored this and crept slowly through his garden to the rear of the house. To help in harvesting his apple trees, he has two extending ladders in an open shed there. I laboriously carried one to the house and climbed to an upstairs window. Anybody can get in modern catch windows. Within minutes I was blundering about downstairs in the darkness and on the phone.

I dialed Margaret. Mercifully she was in.

"Thank God!"

"What's He done to earn gratitude?" I snapped. "Look. Have you your car?"

"Yes. Did you know—?" she began.

"I know. I'm still in it."

"What?"

"Come and get me, please." I rang off.

I'd cleared away any trace of my trespass in the house as best I could and was back in the shelter of my own hedge by the time her Morris approached. Funny how bright the headlights seemed.

"Lovejoy?" Her voice was almost a scream as she slithered to a halt on the gravel. The cottage really did look like something from a nightmare.

"Here."

I stepped from the hedge and she really did scream before I could calm her.

"It's only me, Margaret."

"My God! Are you—?"

"Sorry about the fancy dress," I said wearily. "Calm down."

"What's happened to you? The police phoned me. I came around. We've looked everywhere. The fire brigade was here. It was terrible. Somebody said you'd gone off with—"

"Turn the headlights off, there's a good girl."

With her help I got in and leaned back feeling almost safe. She slid behind the wheel. I could see her white face in the dashboard's glow.

"Shouldn't I phone Geoffrey, or—"

"Disturb him at this hour?" She didn't miss the bitterness.

"I'll take you around to the doctor's."

"No," I snapped. "Are you on your own at home?" She nodded. "Then can I come there, to clean up?"

"Yes." She started the engine and backed us down to the lane. "Did you manage to save anything?"

"One thing." I said, lying back, eyes closed. "Me."

Bathed and in some clothes Margaret happened to have handy—perhaps from the estranged husband—I examined myself in the bathroom mirror. I'd have been wiser to stay filthy. My face was cut in a dozen places. An enormous bruise protruded from my temple. My left eye was black, a beautiful shiner. I'd lost a tooth. My hands were blistered balloons.

She gave me a razor to shave with, a messy job with more blood than whiskers.

"Your husband's?" I asked.

"Mind your own business," she said.

She made a light meal and I went to sleep on her couch with the television on. I couldn't get enough of normality. She sat in an armchair close by to watch the play.

"Let me take that."

I hugged the Nock close and refused to give it to her. "I'm, trying to make the pair," I said, a standard antique dealer's joke.

She didn't smile.

Chapter 17

The day dawned bright and brittle. For an hour I could hardly move a joint and tottered about Margaret's house like a kitten. A bath loosened me up. I felt relatively fresh after that. Just as well, I thought, as it was going to be a hard week.

The telephone rang about eleven, Tinker Dill asking if I'd been located. I told Margaret to say I'd gone to London for a couple of days with a friend. She didn't like this but went along with it. The story was that the post girl had seen the cottage afire. She'd called the police, the fire brigade, and an ambulance —a thorough girl. I made Margaret ring Dandy Jack to say she wouldn't be in to the arcade for a few days and to let prospective customers know she'd be back soon.

I also got her to ring Muriel and say there'd been an accident of some description. She told her about the cottage and what she'd heard over the phone. Muriel seemed dismayed, Margaret reported to me. Real tears, as far as one could judge.

"Well, some people love me anyway," I cracked, leering with my gappy grin.

"God knows why," she said.

They gave me a column and a picture—of the burned cottage, not me—in the local paper on Tuesday evening. Police, it said, were making inquiries. Arson could not be ruled out. My own whereabouts were not known, but speculation was that, in the throes of a depressive illness, I had accidentally started a fire and died, or else I was staying with friends. It was made to sound fifty-fifty, and who cared anyway. Too bloody casual by far. The ruins were being searched for clues. It was widely known that I was mentally disturbed after the unfortunate accidental death of a close friend. By Thursday I was written off from public awareness, which suited me. The local paper went back to the more important foot-and-mouth disease. On Friday I asked Margaret to take me for an evening drive.

I felt absolutely calm. The Nock just fitted the glove compartment, wrapped in a dry duster to prevent scratches. All anxieties and fears vanished in the calm that certainty brings.

Margaret had been marvelous during the week. We'd chatted about antiques and I'd been pleasantly surprised at how stable my thoughts were, and how I enjoyed her company. She'd taken the full account of my escapades at the cottage quite well. The only point where I differed from the truth was the invention of a hidden tunnel beneath the sink out to the back of the copse. After all, the honor among dealers is bendable, and my remaining stuff was still down there. I'd partly paid my keep by authenticating some musical seals of about 1790 for her, lovely they were too.

"You're not going to do anything silly, Lovejoy?" she asked as she drove.

"People keep asking me that."

"And what do you answer?"

"Women do keep on, don't they?" I grumbled.

"I'm waiting, Lovejoy."

"Of course I won't do anything silly."

"Then why the gun?"

"Because he'll have two, and a crossbow."

The car slowed and she pulled in, angry as hell. "Who?"

"The murderer."

"Is that where we're going?"

"Yes." There was a prolonged silence. For a moment I thought she was going to make me get out and walk.

"Does she know?" she asked after a while.

"No."

"Certain?"

"No." I paused. "But she might have guessed. You know how people guess the truth sometimes."

We resumed the journey.

"Aren't you going to tell me?" she said.

"Lagrange, the Reverend gentleman from near the wrong bird sanctuary."

"So that's what all those lies were about stuffed birds?"

"Well, the odd white lie," I mumbled.

"You mean it was him? The shooting? The… Sheila's accident? Everything?"

"And poor Eric Field."

"And you?"

"And nearly me," I corrected.

"But he's a… a reverend."

"Borgia was a pope."

I told her how my suspicions gradually rose about Lagrange. Who had the best opportunity of learning of Eric Field's find? Who couldn't afford a car yet would need a small put-put for frequent local visits in a rural community? And what was more natural than a woman's bike for somebody who occasionally had to wear priestly garb? An authentic collector-friend of Eric Field's, he'd started revisiting Muriel's house. Collectors, like all addicts, need money. He was with Muriel in her posh gray Rover when Sheila gave me the turnkey at the war memorial. Muriel had blossomed with his feet under her table, and he'd started watching me from then on, using Muriel's place as a base. Not a lot of trouble with a small motorized bike and only a narrow valley to cross.

I'd stirred things up and reaped the consequences.

It fitted together.

"Are you… fond of this Muriel?" Margaret wanted to know.

"I suppose so."

"More than that?"

"I'm always more than that where women are concerned," I said starchily, then added, "She's just a child, gormless and bright."

"Poor Lovejoy," Margaret commented in a way that told me I'd had my lot. You can tell from how they say things, can't you?

She asked if Lagrange would be at Muriel's. I said I couldn't be sure.

"He's her boyfriend, though," I said sardonically. "The gardeners set me off thinking the other day, by being embarrassed at the odd innocent cussword. Thought I was him for a moment. He's a cool customer. Insists on having tea in the same room where he killed poor Eric Field stone dead. A right nutter."

"Couldn't we get the police—?"

"Not just yet."

After that I got a dose of the thick silence they give you as corrective when you've transgressed. Nothing short of a miracle would make her smile on me again.

There was a small blue motorized bike to one side of the Field drive, no surprise. We rolled to a stop.

"Lovejoy?"

I paused, already at the door.

"Is there no… jealousy in this?"

"Jealousy?"

"You. Of him."

"No." Nothing had ever seemed so true. She accepted it and came with me.

"Good heavens!" Muriel, open-mouthed, was in the doorway. Her reaction was a disappointment to me. They are supposed to faint or at least go white, but then she hadn't felt quite so gone over me when I was alive, so I couldn't really expect too much.

"You remember me, Muriel?" I'd planned a much cuter entrance line and forgotten it like a fool.

"Why of course, Lovejoy!" She drew me in. "We heard the most dreadful things about you. The papers said you'd had a frightful accident! Do come in."

"I'm Margaret."

"I'm Muriel Field— Oh, you telephoned. I remember. Please come in. What a perfect nuisance the newspapers are!"

"Aren't they!" The bastard would be in the study glugging tea from the Spode. Hearing my name would have made him slurp.

"What's happened to your face?"

"The odd crossbolt," I said airily. "Nothing much."

"Look, Mrs. Field," Margaret started to say, but I cut in sharply.

"Where's Lagrange?"

Muriel looked blank. "How did you know he was here?"

"His scooter, and a good guess."

"Hello, Lovejoy."

He was standing in the doorway to the study, pale but polite as ever. For some strange reason he was actually glad to see me.

"You bastard," I said. "You killed Sheila."

"Have you brought the police?"

"No. They'll have to wait their turn."

"Just one witness." He nodded at Margaret.

"Don't fret," I snapped.

"This is the man, Lovejoy," Margaret said to me quietly.

"Eh? What man?"

"He came to the arcade asking about you some time ago. I tried to tell you but didn't see you for days." The phone message to ring Margaret I'd not followed up.

"Darling what is this?" Muriel went to stand by Lagrange.

He shook her from his arm impatiently. "Nothing of any importance, my dear." He was even beginning to talk like a squire.

"He killed your husband, Muriel," I said. "He used the Judas guns your Eric had found. Some 'accident' while Eric was showing them to him, probably. Then he stole them for himself, only he couldn't quite make up the set. The turnkey was missing. I got it from the auctioneers. He saw me and Sheila. You remember coming out of the car park and seeing us by the war memorial. Then he killed her and tried to do the same for me."

"That set of sharks—incompetent sharks!"

I understood his anguish and rejoiced. "You'll never get it now, Lagrange."

His eyes blazed. "Won't I?"

"Lovejoy, what did you mean?" Muriel glanced from me to Lagrange. "What does he mean?"

"He killed Eric," I explained. "Then he realized your brother-in-law had asked me to find the Judas pair. He assumed Sheila'd kept the turnkey in her handbag for safety when his burglary at my cottage proved fruitless. So he snatched it and he pushed her under the train."

"No!" Muriel stood facing me practically spitting defiance. No compassion for Sheila now, I observed.

"Yes," I said calmly.

The pig was smiling. "Well, yes," he admitted, shrugging.

"You must recognize the truth, love," I told Muriel gently. "He's mad, a killer. He tried to kill me with a crossbow, and he burned my cottage down."

"I knew you'd get out," he said regretfully. "There wasn't a trace of you. I had a suspicion you were still around, an odd feeling you were there. Know what I mean?"

"Oh, yes," I said bitterly. "I know."

"Lovejoy," Muriel said.

"What?"

"He is my husband."

"Eh?"

"We were married three days ago." I swallowed but it was too late to change things.

"Don't be tiresome, my dear," Lagrange said to her. "You'd all better come into the study. No use standing in the hall."

I uncovered the Nock and brought both flints to full cock. "Stay where you are."

He gave me an amused glance. "Don't you be tiresome, either," he said, and walked ahead of us all into the study. That's the trouble with conviction. It can be as crackpot as anything, like the great political capers throughout history, but if it's utterly complete even sane people become meek in its presence. We three followed obediently. He paused at the desk and gestured us to be seated. I remained standing as an act of defiance. The swine actually smiled at that. "Now, Lovejoy," he said conversationally. "What to do about all these goings-on, eh?"

"Police," I said.

"Rubbish. Act your age."

"I'm going for them now. And I'd advise Muriel to come with us for her own safety."

"You're getting more fantastical every minute." He put his fingertips together, a thin burning little guy intense as hate, certain of success. How the hell had he got Muriel under his thumb? "I shall simply deny everything. And you, Lovejoy, aren't exactly the most convincing witness, are you?"

"You'll never get away with it."

He snorted with disgust. "That the best you can do, Lovejoy —a line from a third-rate play?" He grinned. "I already have, you see."

"I… I don't understand." Child Muriel was at it again.

"I'll explain everything to you later," he said calmly. "Well, Lovejoy?"

"Margaret," I said desperately. "We're both witnesses. We heard you admit it."

"Certainly," he said. "A man forces himself into my house carrying a loaded gun and accuses me of murders, burnings, robberies I'd never heard of—wouldn't anyone try to humor him into reasonable behavior? Especially as he's known to be… mentally unstable?"

"Lovejoy," Margaret said gently, "come on home. He's right."

"Then I'd better kill you now," I said.

"Alternatively…" Lagrange said, and pulled out from his desk a case. He placed it on the leather writing surface with pure love shining from his eyes. "Alternatively, Lovejoy, there's a means here to settle your obsessions once and for all."

"Is that…?" My voice choked and my chest clanged and clanged.

"Oh." He feigned surprise. "Would you care to see them?" He turned the case so the keyhole faced the room and gently opened the lid.

Never in all my life. I mean it, never, never. They lay dark and low, glowing with strength. Their sheer lines were hymnal, the red felt imparting on their solemn shading a ruby quality setting them off to perfection. I practically reeled at the class, the dour elegance of the pair of flintlocks embedded in the shaped recesses. Not an atom of embellishment or decoration marred their design, not a hatch on either butt, yet there was the great maker's name engraved in the flickering luminescence of the casehardened locks. A silver escutcheon plate was set into each stock, but no monogram had been engraved on either. The only jarring feature was the empty recess for the turnkey. Murderer or no murderer, I thought, reverently taking out the missing item from my handkerchief and passing it over. For once he lost his composure.

"Thank you, Lovejoy," he said, moved. "Thank you. I'll remember that."

The set was complete.

"What are you going to do?" Muriel was shaking me.

I emerged irritably from my reverie to hear Lagrange say, "Do, my dear? Why, we're going to resolve poor Lovejoy's delusions permanently."

"How?" I asked, knowing already.

"Duel," he replied. "We have the perfect means here already to hand. And the motivation."

"You can't!" It hurt me to hear Muriel's cry for him. "You might be—"

"Not I," he said calmly. "Impossible."

"Is it really?" my voice asked from a distance away.

"Oh, yes. I'm afraid so."

"Lovejoy, come away!" Margaret dragged at me, but I couldn't take my eyes off the Judas pair.

"He won't, my dear," Lagrange said gently. "He has to know, you see. Don't you, Lovejoy? Also, let's all four contemplate the benefits of a duel—no loose ends for a start. Either way, I'll gain by knowing Lovejoy won't one day lose his composure and come to kill me with that rather splendid Samuel Nock he's waving, and should matters inexplicably go right for him he'll have the satisfaction of knowing justice was done. And nobody can be blamed afterward, can they? I'll explain to the police I was made to fight a duel by this maniac here, and alternatively Lovejoy will have the proof of the means of poor Eric's death."

"Please, Lovejoy!"

"No, Margaret." That was me speaking, wanting to duel with a monster. I could hardly stand from fear at what I was doing.

"There's no choice," Lagrange said kindly to her.

"But—"

"No, Muriel." He pointed to a chair and she crossed meekly to sit down. "There's absolutely no danger. It will all come right. Now." He shut the case and carefully lifted it. "If you will excuse me."

"Where are you going with that?" I demanded. He looked pained.

"For black powder," he said. "I have it in another room. Surely you don't expect me to leave these in your tender care?"

"You might…" I dried, not knowing what he might.

He smiled. "I'll bring the powder back, dear boy," he said. "You can load them any way you like, I promise."

His bloody certainty dehydrated my tongue and throat. I could feel my forehead dampen with sweat.

The door closed.

"Muriel, you have to stop this." Margaret shook her shoulder roughly.

"Will he be all right?" was all she could say.

"You stupid woman!" Margaret cried. "Don't you care that he killed your husband? And Sheila? He's going to do the same to him!"

Even paralytic with fear I felt a twinge of resentment that everybody was speaking of me as if I was an odd chair. I spent the few minutes waiting, while Margaret went on at Muriel and me alternately, trying to think and failing hopelessly. The terrible idea emerged that it would happen too quickly for me to understand. I might—would—never know.

"Everyone all agog?" He came in smiling, as though to one of his little tea parties. "You'll find everything in order, Lovejoy. Oh, and I thought we shouldn't put too many finger marks on such lovely surfaces. Here's two pair of white gloves."

"I know."

"I'm phoning the police." Margaret rose, but Lagrange stepped between her and the door.

"No, my dear. Lovejoy?"

"Er, no," I managed to croak.

"Lovejoy!" she pleaded once, but I already had the gloves on. He offered me a piece of green velvet to rest the flinters on as I loaded.

I became engrossed. Their sensual balance, vigorous and gentle, almost brought them to life. Their quality sent tremors up my fingers as I poured black powder from the spring-loaded flask. Tamp down. Then bullet, then wadding. Test the vicious Suffolk flints for secure holding in the screwed jaws of each weapon, flick the steel over the powder-filled pan only after ensuring the touchholes were completely patent. Interestingly, I noticed one had gold stock pins and the other silver. I'd never even heard of that before.

Ready. Lagrange was waiting at the desk. Throughout the loading he had watched intently. I'd been stupid. Only now it dawned on me that I'd fallen for every gambit he'd played. Being so distrustful of him fetching the powder I'd been tricked into loading. Now here I was with the obligation of having to offer both to him for his choice under the rules. No wonder the bastard kept smiling.

"Ready, Lovejoy?" If only he didn't sound so bloody compassionate. I nodded.

"No!"

"Get away with you!" I snarled at Margaret, and offered both weapons to Lagrange after making a clumsy effort to swap them from hand to hand to confuse him.

"Thank you. This one, I think." He took one and weighted it in his hand. "The study's not quite sixty feet, Lovejoy, I'm afraid."

"That's all right."

All this stuff about ten paces is rubbish. It was usually ten yards each way, carefully measured, making twenty yards in all.

"Where would you like to stand?" he asked pleasantly.

"I want both of us to sit at the desk."

His eyebrows raised. "Isn't that a trifle unusual?"

"There are precedents."

"So there are." He wasn't disconcerted in the least.

I brought a chair and sat as close as I could, opening my legs wide for balance. He sat opposite.

"Closer, please."

"As you wish." He hitched forward until his chest touched the rosewood. We leaned elbows on the top and waited.

"We need your assistance, Muriel," he said calmly. "Over here, please, with your handkerchief."

She came and stood by the desk.

"Hold your handkerchief up above us," he told her, watching me. "When Lovejoy tells you, let it fall."

"But—"

"Do as you're told, my dear," he said patiently. "It won't take a moment. You'll be quite safe. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she quavered.

It was now. No matter what I did, how fast I was, how good my aim, I would die the instant I pulled the trigger. He needn't fire at all. Yet I'd loaded both meticulously. There couldn't possibly be any trick.

I pointed the beautiful Damascus barrel. His gaped back at me. Behind the cavernous muzzle his calm, smiling face gazed into my eyes. We held position, brains and barrels inches apart, me sweating in terror and him enjoying the last few moments of my life. In a blur I saw the single line of awareness—his eyes, his barrel, the black muzzle, then my own ribbed barrel and, in a blur nearest me, the blank silver escutcheon plate just showing above my hand gripping the stock. The silver plate set in the stock. All in a line, from his mad hating brain to my terror-stricken consciousness. Eye to eye, in a line. And, nearest of all to my eye, the silver escutcheon plate. In line with my eye.

"Now," I said.

The handkerchief fluttered down. I turned my flinter around as the handkerchief fell, pointed the muzzle of my own gun against my forehead, and pulled the trigger.

There was no explosion, but the recoil snapped the barrel forward against my skull and nearly stunned me from the force of the blow. As if in a dream I saw Lagrange's eye splash red and gelatinous over his face. His head jerked back. He uttered a small sound like a cough as he died and the flinter in his hand clumped heavily down onto the desk, firing off as the hair trigger was hauled back by his convulsing hand. The ball sent glass flying from a shattered window. I was missed by a foot or so.

It seemed an hour before the echoes died away and the screaming began. My senses slowly came creeping back.

It was logical. Your eye's in line with the barrel. So if it's your own gun that shoots you through your right eye, aiming it frontward at your own right eye will shoot your opponent. But how?

Amid the moanings and the tears, as poor Muriel wailed and screamed on Lagrange and Margaret tried some hopeless first aid, I examined the pistol I held. It was the one with the silver stock pins—that was probably how to tell them apart. Lagrange had picked the gold-pinned one. Yet mine was still loaded.

I got the green velvet and the case and set to work while somebody phoned the police. It's always important to unload a gun first, no matter how old it is. This I did safely, then dismantled the lock. Any flinter enthusiast lifts the lock out to look. It does the piece no harm and the mechanism's everything.

It was exquisite, delicate as a lady's hand. There were not two lock mechanisms inside as I'd guessed. The standard firing mechanism was actually unworkable. The trigger activated a small air chamber which worked by propelling a missile along a reverse concealed barrel toward the eye of the person holding the weapon. The missile pushed up the silver escutcheon plate on a minute hinge unlocked by the trigger. Highly ingenious. The better your aim the more likely you were to shoot your eye out.

But what was the missile? What exploded into his eye with such force? Clutching the parts, I went out into the hall. An old crone—the one I'd seen on my previous visit—was sobbing information into the telephone.

"Excuse me," I said politely, taking the phone from her to calm her down. "When the Reverend came out of the study a few minutes ago, where did he go?"

"Into the kitchen for some ice," she said, red-eyed, and at last I knew.

You crushed a piece of ice into a sphere in the bullet mold, inserted it into the concealed chamber, and made sure your opponent got the silver-pinned pistol. No wonder the pathologist had never found the bullet. The ice had pierced Eric Field's eye, penetrated his brain from there, and instantly melted away from his body heat, just as the ice ball was now doing in La-grange's silent skull.

Yet… I sat at the hall table examining the weapon further. Who on earth had had the gall, not to mention the authority, to compel the world's greatest gunsmith to make a treacherous pair of weapons like this so long ago? Dueling was crackers, but it was supposed to be an affair of honor. Somebody had wanted to be bold and dashing around the Regency clubs but was unwilling to run any actual risk while going about it. I inserted the turnkey and rotated gently against the spring's weight.

The locks came out and showed their secret beneath the recess. There, engraved in gold was my revelation: REX ME FECIT. The King made me.

It brought tears to my eyes. I had a vision of the old gunsmith in his darkened workshop, all his assistants and apprentices sent away for the night, as in obedience to royal command he fashioned the brilliant device alone. Yet he was determined his complaint should be recorded for others to realize in later years. The old genius had made the Judas pair. They bore all the characteristic features of his consummate skills. But he cleverly recorded the customary Latin inscription to tell the despairing truth why he had: the King had made him. That deranged sick man George the Third, or the Prince Regent, wencher and gambler? Probably the latter.

Before the police arrived I'd substituted a pair of officer's pistols, Joseph Heylin of London, quite well preserved in an altered cutlery box, for the Judas pair. Lagrange's small collection in the morning-room cabinet was easy to find and he'd left the key in. I whisked the Heylin pair outside, where I burned a little black powder in one and loaded the other. Amid the general alarms and excursions nobody took much notice of me wandering about. I swapped both pairs. Going out to wait for the police to arrive, I tucked the Durs case on top of the engine of Margaret's Morris beneath the hood—carefully wrapped, of course, and wedged in good and proper.

And when the pathologist couldn't find the bullet? I was suddenly unutterably weary. I decided to let them all guess till they got tired, as they had of old Eric Field and Sheila. When the Old Bills came hurtling up I was back in the study wringing my hands with the others. I was clearly very upset.

Three weeks later Margaret was quizzing me again. I was just back from George Field's.

"What did he say when you told him you'd found the Judas guns?"

There'd been no mention of Margaret's husband. We'd just taken up together, going into her arcade shop daily and scratching a living. Naturally, the inevitable had happened, as it always does when a man and a woman live in one dwelling, but that was all to the good and it was long overdue anyway, as we both knew.

The trouble was this conversion gimmick they have. That I was quite content to drop in to my old garden and still hadn't started clearing away the cottage's ruins obviously niggled her. She'd let several hints drop, asking what plans I had for rebuilding and suchlike. You have to watch it.

"Lovejoy!" she complained. "You're dreaming again."

"Oh. He said he didn't want anything to do with them, said it was poetic justice."

"And then?" she pressed.

"He shut the door."

"I don't think he likes your instincts very much, Lovejoy."

"I'm surprised," I said. "I'm really quite lovable."

"Won't you offer them back to Muriel?" was her next gem. Sometimes I think women have no sense at all.

"Of course," I said, thinking, That's not poetic justice.

"When?"

"Well," I said after a long, long pause. "Well, maybe later."

"Lovejoy!"

"No, look, honestly," I began, searching desperately for some way out. "It's honestly a question of time and personal values."

"Lovejoy! How could you! It's stealing!"

"Honestly, love, judgment comes into it," I said. "I'd take them back this very minute but—"

"You've absolutely no excuse!" She started banging things about.

"Maybe in time, honestly," I said. "I'm only thinking of her."

Women have no tact, no tact at all. Ever noticed that?