Dead in Devon

by Stephanie Austin

  I crossed the road to Duke and squatted, taking his great head in my hands. He let me have it, surrendering it to me as if it was too heavy and he was glad to be relieved of its weight. I stared into the dull fire of his amber eyes and we had a quiet word together while I massaged his torn ears. This was too much for Jacko, who was yelping and snarling, apoplectic with rage.

  ‘Will you shut up, you suicidal little dog?’ I hissed in his direction. If Duke turned on him he’d have no more chance than a rat. Fortunately, Duke wasn’t interested in terminating Jacko’s existence. His only object in life was to follow his master, who came out of the shop at that moment. Micky didn’t speak, he rarely did, but he nodded at me and gave what passed for a smile: a creasing of the wrinkles around his eyes, a movement in the grizzled fungus of his beard. Duke got to his feet and limped after him. Once he’d disappeared from view, Jacko deflated slowly like a bristling balloon and I went into the shop to buy Maisie’s lemon drops and mollify Mrs Singh.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘We go to view for auction tomorrow, me and Paul. Juno, you come with us, yes?’ It was Nick’s voice on the phone. I’d just come in from walking the Tribe and had to think a moment. ‘It’s Wednesday tomorrow. Am I not coming to work for you?’

  ‘No work, is viewing for auction. You like to come, yes?’

  ‘Well … yes,’ I said, warming to the idea, ‘why not?’ I’d never been to an auction, or a viewing. And I had to admit the prospect of Paul going too was an inducement. ‘Thanks. I’d love to come.’

  ‘Good. You come, one o’clock. We go. And Juno,’ he added devastatingly, before he put the receiver down, ‘wear dress.’

  So next day, after I’d walked the Tribe and delivered them all, I came home, changed out of my doggie-walking clothes, showered, washed my hair, conditioned it within an inch of its life, and put on the only dress I currently owned, a cream silk button-through I’d bought in a vintage charity shop in Totnes. Quite suitable for an antiques auction, I thought. There was a small rust mark on one sleeve but it didn’t show much. I left my hair loose and wore Cordelia’s amber earrings. I stared at myself in the one full-length mirror in the house. I didn’t look bad.

  Old Nick didn’t look his usual self either. When he opened the door to me, I took a step back in amazement. Instead of his cardigan and carpet slippers he wore a dark overcoat and highly polished, black shoes. ‘I bet you didn’t clean those with a toothbrush,’ I said.

  He laughed, donned an ancient trilby and proffered his arm for me to take.

  ‘Our carriage awaits,’ he told me, eyes twinkling. Up until that moment I hadn’t given a thought to how we were getting to where we were going, just assumed that we’d be travelling in Paul’s furniture van. But no, Nick informed me, we would be travelling in his own car. ‘Well, you’re full of surprises. I didn’t know you had a car.’

  ‘I keep in garage, round corner,’ he said, pointing the way.

  Of course, I should have expected an antique: a Riley, gleaming black on the outside, cream leather and a walnut dashboard within.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I told him. ‘How old is it?’

  ‘1953,’ he responded proudly. ‘Much older than you … ah, our driver!’ he added, as Paul appeared. Apparently, he hadn’t been asked to wear a dress. He was in jeans and an old blue sweater. He grinned at me as he took the keys from Nick and swung open the door with a mocking bow. As I slid on to the back seat I caught him running an appreciative eye over my cream silk.

  I’d assumed we’d be heading for one of the auction houses in Newton Abbot or Exeter, but in fact we drove up through Holne and Buckland, and on to the moor. When we suddenly swept in between stone pillars topped with griffons, and up the long drive towards a grand country house, I realised this was not going to be the sort of shabby local auction I’d seen on television antiques programmes, usually held in some kind of old warehouse with pegboard on the walls. This auction was going to be posh. Judging by the cars we parked alongside on the gravel carriage sweep, it was going to be very posh.

  We stepped into a marble hallway beneath a glittering chandelier the size of a greenhouse, where Paul collected a couple of thick catalogues from a pile on a table, and handed one to me. It contained lists of sale items, together with the auctioneer’s estimate of what each one was expected to fetch.

  ‘We leave you to wander, Juno,’ Nick told me. ‘There are things Paul and I must look at.’

  I was still gaping like an idiot at my surroundings. ‘Fine,’ I told him. I wanted nothing more than a peaceful root around amongst the Aladdin’s cave of treasures I could see displayed in rooms opening off the hallway. I wandered into a ballroom where the chandeliers hanging from an ornate plaster ceiling were only half the size of the one in the hall, but there were six of them. Ricky and Morris were going to love it when I told them all about this.

  The ballroom was devoted to items of furniture, the room heaving with prospective buyers, the air fizzing with the kind of suppressed energy I’d only encountered in a casino or at a racetrack: big money was obviously involved. I looked in my catalogue. Lot 294: George I, small walnut bureau cabinet with moulded swan-neck cornice, circa 1720. £37,000−£45,000. I gave a silent whistle. A little later I found myself staring at a lot I recognised and hastily looked it up. Lot 298: An Edwardian, lady’s bonheur du jour in mahogany, with inlaid stringing and rosewood banding; marquetry roses inlaid. Circa 1850. £2,500−£3,500.

  My jaw dropped. The little writing desk might be small pickings compared to the grander lots on display, but I’d no idea it was worth anything like as much when I’d been on my knees, polishing it in Old Nick’s storeroom. I looked around to see if I could spot Nick or Paul, but they were not in the room.

  ‘Good God! What are you doing here?’ a voice demanded.

  I turned to see Verbena Clarke hovering by my elbow. Her eyes swept up and down my cream silk, although not in the same way that Paul’s had done. She was plainly not pleased to see me.

  ‘Hello,’ I responded, as pleasantly as I could. ‘I’m just here with friends.’

  ‘Oh!’ she muttered, an awkward blush colouring her cheeks, ‘I didn’t expect to see you.’ Possibly caught out by her own rudeness, and unable to think of anything else to say, she turned and stalked away.

  After a little more wandering among the treasures, I began to wonder what had happened to Paul and Nick. I hoped they hadn’t forgotten me and gone home. Through the long windows of one room I could see across a courtyard to some stables, which were also stuffed with auction lots, and I strolled across. Inside, I found humbler fare: scrubbed pine, old tools and farm implements. I also found Paul and Nick, talking in a knot of people, including, I saw with some amusement, Verbena Clarke. Resolutely I made my way towards them.

  ‘Good heavens,’ one of them exclaimed loudly. ‘It’s the Titian-haired beauty!’

  It took me a moment to recognise the man in an overcoat and trilby hat as the deliverer of Mrs Clarke’s dresser. He tipped his hat to me. ‘We met at Vee’s the other day,’ he prompted me as I joined the group, and introduced himself pleasantly as Tom Smithson.

  I shook his hand. ‘I’m Juno.’ I turned to Verbena Clarke, and added, as if I’d only just noticed her, ‘Oh, hello, Vee!’

  She responded with a stiff nod.

  ‘Juno is my assistant,’ Nick told them all. There was a touching note of pride in his voice.

  I found my hand being wrung by a tall, skinny man in a cravat and sports coat, who laughed loudly, showing yellow teeth like old piano keys. ‘She’s not Titian, old boy!’ he cried, highly amused with himself. ‘She’s Pre-Raphaelite, definitely Pre-Raphaelite.’

  I don’t like having my personal space invaded: Piano Teeth was leaning in much too close, lingering over his unpleasantly limp handshake, whilst his pale-blue eyes undid the buttons of my dress. It was like being clung to by a piece of damp seaweed and ogled by a cod.

  Paul was quick to pick up on my unease. ‘
Fancy a cup of tea, Juno?’ he asked. ‘There’s a tea room in the old dairy.’

  ‘Yes, you go, you two,’ Nick urged us, an obvious signal he wanted us out of the way, and we left him to his cronies.

  ‘So, you know Verbena?’ I couldn’t resist asking, as we strolled across to the tea room.

  ‘Not really,’ he answered, with what I took to be a pleasing lack of interest. ‘She turns up at sales and auctions now and again. She’s always on the lookout for bits and pieces.’

  ‘Being a designer, I suppose,’ I added.

  He nodded. ‘I’ve restored the odd bit of furniture for her.’

  The tea room, which seemed to have been set up especially for the day, was a deep disappointment. After the grandeur of the house, I was expecting white tablecloths and fine china, hoping for dainty sandwiches, scones and serious slabs of cake. But the tea came out of an urn, set up on a trestle table and was served in plastic cups. We sat at a table sticky with spilt grains of sugar from torn paper packets, and grabbed the last two biscuits from a solitary plate. They were slightly soft.

  ‘Not exactly National Trust standard, is it?’ Paul asked, grinning. ‘I suppose they don’t feel they need to make an effort.’ He nodded across to the house. ‘The sale’s what it’s all about. That’s what the people are here for.’

  ‘I’d no idea that it was going to be such a grand affair,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t realise Nick dealt in such expensive stuff.’

  Paul shrugged. ‘Mostly, he doesn’t. We don’t come to this kind of sale very often. I just help him out from time to time with repairs and restoring things. We’re not really in business together.’

  I wondered if he knew anything about Nick’s back-door dealings, specifically about Vlad, but I didn’t ask. ‘But you deal in antiques as well?’

  ‘I suppose you’d call it that. I restore furniture. I don’t seem to sell much.’ He shrugged. ‘I rent a space in Ashburton Art and Antiques Bazaar.’

  I knew the place. This rather pretentiously named emporium was an old market hall that had been renovated, then divided up into units, which were rented out to individual traders, creating an odd mixture of antiques, arts and crafts, and local foodstuffs. I had an artist friend, Sophie, who starved there on a regular basis. I realised I must have seen Paul’s things there, though not necessarily Paul himself. The traders took it in turns to look after one another’s units, so they didn’t all need to be there every day.

  He sighed. ‘I’m thinking of pulling out soon.’

  I was about to ask why when Nick appeared in the doorway of the tea room and began shuffling in our direction. He was looking tired and a little grey and refused the offer of tea. ‘We go home now,’ he announced and I sensed the outing had been too much for him.

  I threaded my arm through his as we walked back to the car. ‘I spotted the bonheur du jour. It looks so different in this setting, really lovely.’

  Nick chuckled. ‘Hope it make lovely price. We see.’

  ‘I didn’t know you knew Mrs Clarke,’ I added casually.

  ‘Mrs Snooty Bitch,’ he grunted, and I laughed.

  ‘Will you come back for the auction?’

  He shook his head. ‘I watch online.’

  ‘Will you be bidding for anything?’

  Nick waggled his hand in a way that suggested perhaps. ‘I see a few nice things.’

  Then he turned to me, wicked eyes twinkling. ‘See, Juno, selling, it is easy. Knowing what to buy’ − he tapped the side of his nose knowingly − ‘that is the difficult part.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘I have good idea.’ It was Nick on the phone, again, next morning. ‘You come round and see me, yes?’

  ‘I come round and see you, no,’ I responded. I’d just got back from my morning’s travails and was trying to grab a sandwich before I had to go out again. I was only listening with one ear, the phone tucked into the crook of my neck whilst I sorted through that morning’s post − all highly uninteresting − a pile of bills and a mystery package, a free gift from an overseas charity. ‘I’m busy,’ I told Nick firmly, extricating the contents of the package, which turned out to be a cheap pen with my name embossed on it in gilt lettering. If the charity thought I was going to use it to write them a cheque, they were out of luck. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘No tomorrow,’ he insisted. ‘Come today.’

  ‘What’s it about?’ I asked crossly.

  He chuckled down the phone. ‘You see.’

  I gave in with a sigh, abandoning all hope of a sandwich. ‘Oh, all right. See you in ten minutes.’

  ‘Is good,’ Nick responded, and put the receiver down.

  I was still muttering grumpily to myself as I approached Nick’s door, but it was opened by Paul and my bad mood vanished as he smiled and stepped back to let me in.

  Nick was standing in the corridor leading to the storeroom, next to a pair of beautiful, Edwardian balloon-back chairs made of a dark, glossy wood, with deeply buttoned seat cushions of rich green velvet, edged with a fringe.

  ‘Those aren’t the same chairs!’ I cried, gaping.

  Nick chuckled and nodded. ‘Paul do good job.’

  ‘He certainly has.’ I turned to look at him. ‘What will you do with them?’

  ‘They’re Nick’s chairs,’ he said, ‘but I’m taking them to—’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ Nick interrupted him excitedly, ‘that is why I want you, Juno … come upstairs … we talk!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Paul murmured in my ear as we followed him up, ‘I’ll make the tea.’

  ‘Do you know what this is about?’ I whispered.

  ‘I do.’ He looked a bit sheepish. ‘I’m afraid it’s my fault.’

  Nick started as soon as I sat at the kitchen table. ‘Juno, I have great idea. Paul, he go to—’

  ‘Have you heard of Somerset’s Summer Antiques Fair?’ Paul interrupted, setting the kettle on the stove and then turning back to look at me.

  ‘Vaguely.’ I knew a fair was held on some disused airfield in the middle of the Somerset Levels each year, but I’d never been.

  ‘Is big market!’ Nick interrupted. ‘Famous! People come from all over country …’

  ‘It’s a great place to sell,’ Paul went on, opening cupboard doors in search of mugs. ‘In fact, it’s difficult to get a pitch − you have to apply months in advance and go on a waiting list. This year I’ve managed to get one, only an outdoor one, but …’

  ‘And that’s where you’re taking the chairs?’ I still didn’t see where I fitted in.

  ‘Is good pitch,’ Nick told me. ‘Double size … So when Paul tell me, I say I pay half rent, he put things on for me …’

  ‘That’s a good idea!’ I said innocently. Looking back, I can’t believe how blindly I fell into his trap.

  ‘Is good!’ he agreed, chuckling. ‘So, you go? Yes?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You go fair, with Paul. Sell stuff.’

  I gaped at him. ‘Just a minute …’

  ‘I’m sorry, Juno.’ Paul had finished fiddling with the tea things and he sat at the table. ‘I can’t do it on my own. It takes two to run the stall all day. The friend who was going to come with me can’t make it. I’ve asked around but I can’t find anyone who’s free on Friday—’

  ‘We’re talking this Friday. Do you mean tomorrow …?’ I interrupted.

  ‘No, no,’ he reassured me, ‘next week. Nick’s obviously not up to it, but when I mentioned it to him, he thought that you might be available.’

  ‘Well, that’s because Nick likes to forget that I work for anyone other than him!’ I responded, narrowing my eyes at him.

  Nick just chuckled. ‘But you like it, Juno. Is fun.’ He patted my hand. I could cheerfully have slapped him. ‘You take only few things for me. Rest, you choose.’

  ‘What?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘You choose, from junk. Take things you like. Sell. We split money. Fifty-fifty.’

  ‘I can’t
.’

  ‘But you will like, Juno. I know.’

  ‘That’s not the point, Nick. I can’t let my Friday people down.’ I frowned. ‘Why can’t they hold this fair on a Saturday?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s traditional.’

  Paul was pouring tea by then. He waggled the can of evaporated milk at me, dark eyebrows raised questioningly. I shook my head. ‘Why don’t you give Juno a chance to think about this?’ He slid a mug of tea towards me. ‘Let us know if you can work things out. If you want to, that is,’ he added, grinning at me warmly. Strangely, I did want to, and it had nothing to do with selling Nick’s junk.

  ‘Nick’s right, it can be a lot of fun,’ he went on. ‘But it’s a long day, out in the open and if the weather’s bad, and you’re not selling, it can be bloody grim. The other thing that he hasn’t mentioned is that we’ll need to set out about four in the morning.’

  ‘Why?’ I demanded crossly.

  ‘We need to get there early. We have to park the van immediately behind our pitch to unload. Later I’ll have to move it to the car park, but it takes quite a while to set the tables up and be ready in time.’

  ‘So, you go, Juno? Yes?’ Nick asked.

  I glowered at him. He had a bloody cheek, expecting me to sacrifice a day’s work, and inconvenience my Friday clients, just to earn him a few rotten quid on his junk. On the other hand, it could be an adventure and the thought of spending the day with Paul had its attractions. ‘I’ll think about it,’ I muttered. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ I added as Nick opened his mouth, and made my escape before he could press me any further.

  By evening I’d worked out that if, the following week, I did Maisie’s shopping on Thursday afternoon, instead of Friday morning, I really only had one problem left. I trotted down the stairs and knocked politely on my landlord’s door. Adam answered.

  ‘Good evening,’ I said sweetly.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked, eyebrow raised in suspicion.

  ‘Depends. How would you feel about taking a few dogs for a walk?’