The Gondola Scam

by Jonathan Gash

  He knew this was disturbing. Even if my old Ruby can hardly raise a gallop, I had happened along pretty smartish, and yet Crampie and Mr. Malleson had died.

  "Margaret's out," 1 said.

  She's the only one of us who's respectable. Tell you about her if I get a minute. Helen's beautiful but hardly a gang leader. Linda was my old flame from the ring. The Manchester bloke was a regular and had his own turf. Big Frank was only interested in marriage, divorce, and antique silver—in reverse order. No suspects among that lot, but a witness is a witness. Jacko's wagon would be starting for town in half an hour.

  "Tell Jacko to wait. Tinker. I'll catch you up."

  'The Three Cups opens in an hour, Lovejoy." He ambled off—his idea of speed—cackling with enthusiasm.

  We trundled into town just as the pubs opened, with me still thinking. Something's not quite right, my imbecilic mind guessed. If they gave a Nobel Prize for indecision, I'd win it hands down.

  I gave Jacko another scribbled IOU and told him the fare was scandalous.

  "That why you never pay me, Lovejoy?" he bawled after, but I pretended not to hear. I'm sick of scroungers.

  We stopped at the comer of Lion Walk, the Three Cups obviously pulling at Tinker's heartstrings. "Okay," I surrendered, giving him his note. "Where's Patrick?"

  He thought hard. No mean feat this, when sober. His rheumy old eyes creaked open after a minute. "Patrick's with Elsie. They're in the Arcade."

  My heart sank. "Don't you mean Patrick and Lily? I thought—"

  "Nar, Lovejoy. He gave Lily the push last night over him seeing that sailor."

  "Ah," I said as if I understood.

  He shot into the boozer with my last groat. I plodded down the town's expensive new shopping precinct—think of redbrick cubes filled with litter—into the Arcade. This is a glass-covered alley. To either side is a series of tiny antique shops, only alcoves really, with antique dealers moaning how grim life is and how broke they are. Tinker was right. Someone emitted a screech.

  "Ooooh."

  I followed the shrill groans—the only known groans higher than top G. Today Patrick was in magenta, with purple wedge heels and an ultramarine sequined cap. As if that wasn't enough, he was being restored by Elsie, who was frantically patting some pungent toilet water across his cheeks. Margaret Dainty was looking harassed because Patrick had carefully selected her little shop to swoon in, slumping elegantly across a 1765 Chippendale Gothic chair in mahogany. I didn't even know she had one of these rarities.

  Awed shoppers were milling about. Understandable, really, because Patrick standing still's a ghastly enough spectacle. Doing Hamlet's death scene he's beyond belief.

  I decided not to ask Elsie about Lily. I’m no fool.

  "Ooooh!' Patrick moaned, false eyelashes fluttering.

  I crouched down, avoiding Elsie's cascade of eau de cologne. "One thing worries me, Pat. Why is it you always get bad news before anybody else?"

  His stare gimleted me in sudden recovery. "Patrick!" he screamed, giving me a mouthful of invective. "Pat's so . . » uncouth." He instantly reverted to a swoon. "Oooohh!"

  Elsie wailed, "Please don't upset him, Lovejoy!"

  "Mr. Malleson and Crampie," I prompted the reclining figure. "Who, when, and why, mate?"

  Patrick sobbed dramatically, beating his breast in anguish. "Poor Mr. Malleson! How many more catastrophes can I be expected to bear?" His voice went suddenly normal. "Mind my handbag, dear. It's handmade crocodile." And immediately went back to show biz. "Oh, woe! Oh, heartbreak! Oh—"

  I looked across at the distraught Margaret. She's a lovable friend, if you can imagine such a thing, though she's a mite oldish and limps a bit. Still, you can't pass up someone who loves you and has looks and compassion. Saints get beatified for less. Look at Czar Nicholas. "You tell me, love."

  "We haven't been able to get a word out of him—"

  "Right."

  I tipped Patrick off the chair with a crash. He screamed, which is hard to understand, because the Chippendale antique wasn't even scratched. "You perfect beast, Lovejoy! And you can stop drenching me in stink, you silly cow!"

  I'm sure Patrick only does all this to get an audience. God knows what he does when he's alone, probably just goes into suspended animation.

  "Sorry, dearest," Elsie sobbed. "Now see what you've done, Lovejoy!"

  A bobby was pausing outside in the High Street to inspect the swelling crowd in the Arcade. Things looked like getting distinctly out of hand. I put a knee on Patrick's chest. "Tell, or I'll crumple your cravat. You were there, weren't you?"

  He wheezed as I pressed harder. "Yes. Three great bruisers out of a lorry did it. Wrenches and things. They hit poor Mr. Malleson." His eyes welled with tears as he sniffed out the rest of the story. "Crampie positively begged for mercy. It was ghastly, Lovejoy. They snatched that perfectly delicious painting."

  "Where were you?"

  "In my car with ... a friend."

  "What were they like?" I know it was night, but there had been some light.

  "Oh, quite plain, really, though one could have really improved himself with the right suit. Quite young, rather light hair for a foreigner . . . ghastly primrose leather jacket—"

  "Foreigner? How do you know that?"

  The bobby had decided to move into the Arcade. Sensing a bigger audience, Patrick immediately shrieked his way into frank hysteria.

  I knew enough about layby scuffles to realize it was hopeless getting anything more definite. I kissed Margaret so long and said I'd honestly see her soon. She told me to be careful and to come for supper one evening. I promised to and managed to say "honestly" twice more as I shot out.

  I'm not much on the police force. Its useful bits are mostly hooked on its own problems, and the rest is a monstrous anachronism. Ledger'd tell me nothing, so they were best forgotten.

  Instead I got hold of Tinker and told him to drum up news of any antiques, genuine or fake, resembling the painting. He was narked at that because the boozer was still open, but I gave him the bent eye and said get going. The lazy old devil went shuffling off, a couple of brown ales clinking in his shabby overcoat.

  Then from the phone box by the war memorial I rang Connie and asked her to lend me a few more quid and could she please fill her motor up with petrol and let me borrow it. I had a secret notion to impress the blond bird instead of being embarrassed in my old Ruby. She hesitated. I said, "If you don't I’ll make you do all the sky bits in my next jigsaw puzzle."

  "Sadist." Then she sweetly added she'd come along too, because we didn't want Lovejoy using borrowed wealth to pick up some boneheaded young tart, did we? Bitterly I agreed that we didn't want that, and stood miserably by the traffic light near the Castle Park entrance thinking of her bloody cheek. Women have no trust in their fellow man, that's what it is.

  4

  "Suss this out, love," I said to Connie in the torrid heat of her vast motor. We were parked among the trees by the football ground for secrecy. One other good thing about Connie is that she loves gossip. Attentively she sat in her pale apple costume, with pearl necklace and earrings revealing class. I gave her Patrick's account. As far as I knew, it added nothing, but Connie with her devious woman's mind instantly saw a crack.

  "Why didn't the police ask Patrick all this?"

  "They did. He wouldn't tell them."

  "Why not, if he told you he'd actually seen those three brutes?"

  "Well, er, he was, er, with some bloke. You see, love, erm, Patrick's, erm—"

  "Another queer," Connie said, nodding briskly. "So now we must find his lady friend."

  I had my doubts. "Elsie? No use, Connie. I heard she was in Ilford until late. And Patrick had some row with Lily last night."

  She got excited. "Don't you see? Lily must have learned about Patrick going to meet his friend and followed."

  "So Lily maybe knows something extra about last night?"

  She gave me a sweet smile. "You're learning, darling. Clo
se that car window. There's a draft."

  Lily was partway through a bottle of gin by the look of things, and dark blue gondolas of sorrow hung fleshily beneath her eyes. Worse, she instantly took against Connie, even when I'd introduced them with my best Edwardian gallantry. Plainly she would reveal nothing while a strange woman was in the house, so I had to ask Connie to wait outside. She left Lily's hallway, managing to slam three doors on her way to sulk in the car.

  "Come through, Lovejoy. My husband's abroad again." I breathed a sigh of relief and followed her in. The telly was on. Lily's living room was a fug of fag smoke. "Have you seen Patrick?" she asked wistfully. "How is he?"

  "Upset," I said lamely. I'm not much good at these sort of things.

  "Is he?" She looked up hopefully. "I suppose that crabby geriatric rat-bag Elsie Hayward's smarming round him." When I said nothing she grew aggressive. "Now you tell me the truth, Lovejoy."

  "Yes. In the Arcade."

  "Bitch. She's had more false starts with men than all the tarts in Soho. He'll come back to me, Lovejoy—won't he?"

  “Erm, quite possibly."

  She subsided onto an armchair. "Oh, Lovejoy. What a mess. Why can't he see that it's me he needs?"

  "Last night, Lily. You followed Patrick."

  "Mmmm. He'd got some man in his car." She looked piteous. "It's only a weakness, Lovejoy. This phase."

  "Sorry, love," I said helplessly. "But you saw?"

  "Yes. It was that horrid sickly sailor man he usually—"

  "I mean the goons, Lily. Patrick said one was foreign. What accent?"

  "I didn't pay much attention. I was frightened. The van had been waiting for Mr. Malleson and Crampie. They hit them, really hit them, Lovejoy. Then the young man shouted, 'Get the painting!' The men didn't care. They jumped in the van."

  "And you rang the police, Lily?"

  She shook her head. "No. I just sat there and watched. The lorry drivers came running, but the van went."

  "No other facts, Lily?"

  "He was continental, Lovejoy. Maybe Austrian, that sort of accent. And flashy." She shivered and pulled her dressing gown tighter round her. "Lovejoy," she said, heartbroken. "He was laughing. The young one, in bright colors. Once they had the painting he ran back and hit Mr. Malleson and Crampie. While they were on the ground. Oh, they lay so still."

  I consoled her as much as I could, saying thanks and Patrick was sure to come back soon. She asked tearfully did I really think so, and I said sure, just you see. I felt I'd been through the mangle when I escaped.

  Connie was freezing but excited to know what Lily had seen. I told her all of it, hoping she might do her helpful guessing trick again.

  "Didn't she tell Ledger any of this?"

  "And get Patrick in trouble? Ledger would ask what she was doing herself, parked in the night hours near the scene of an antique robbery. After all, she's an antique dealer herself—on good days."

  "Darling. Who would want the fake so badly? It doesn't make sense."

  "That bird."

  "In the auction?" Connie's mental radar blipped hatred into her mind. "That one trying to attract everybody's attention in the car park with the wrong hairstyle?"

  "She bid a fortune for the fake even though she knew it was duff. Mr. Malleson went bid-happy so she ducked out." Maybe she had decided to acquire the painting by the most decisive of all methods—armed robbery. Thugs are easy enough to hire anywhere these days, God knows. "Drive me to High Street."

  "Only if you take your hands off, darling. Your fingers are freezing."

  "How else can I get them warm?"

  We argued all the way back to the cottage. The rest of the day was full of pleasure, and therefore uneventful.

  5

  It was coming dusk when Connie finally left. I was in good time and ready when the bird called. I cranked my zoomster's engine and lit its lamps while she went on at me.

  "You're not coming in that thing?" The blonde leaned from her perfumed cocoon and gazed down at me. "We'll take all night."

  "Race you," I said with dignity.

  Her car rolled, sneering, up the lane. My crate clattered reproachfully in its wake. It hates being out after dark. The bird was waiting by the chapel, deep engine thrumming and her fingers doubtless tapping irritably. Pricey motorcars like hers are all very well, for a year or two. After that they go wrong and decay in forgotten yards. It's filthy little heaps like mine that keep going. Grandeur tends to rapid obsolescence. Unaware I'd reasoned my way to a conclusion which ought to have warned me of impending danger, I drove through the dark village. Wheezing, backfiring, creaking at every joint, Lovejoy Antiques, Inc., was on the move and full of confidence.

  Sometimes I'm just pathetic.

  Fingringhoe's one of these straggly villages a stone's throw from the sea. You can scent the sea lands. Many of the inlets are reserved for birds and mice and whatnot to do their respective thing, making a crashing bore of the whole soggy area. I mean not an antique shop for miles, a few scatterings of houses along lost lanes, a field or two with yawning cows, and that's it. Our diligent conservationists are busy keeping it that way. They've a lot to answer for.

  Following the blond bird's car in my horseless carriage was like rowing a coracle behind a liner. I kept coming upon it, lights at every orifice, revving impatiently at dark crossroads, but I kept cool. I've been humiliated by experts in my time, so degradation at her hands meant very little. We turned left at the pub. She tore into the black countryside behind her monstrous beams and I puttered after.

  We were close to the sea when she hurtled into a gateway set back from the lane. Apart from a distant low gleam of the sea horizon and the bright windows of the Georgian house beyond the beeches, there was nothing to guide you. The drive was paved, if you please, not merely graveled or tarred, proving that pride had not yet vanished among the country set. Nor had scorn. She gave me some derision free, airily walking through the porch and leaving me to park my knackered heap and hurry after.

  The house inside was beautiful. The inner chimes from the antiques all around reverberated in my chest so strongly I had to pause and clutch at the doorway for support.

  "This way." The bird was narked by the delay. Impatiently she waved away a motherly-looking serf who was coming forward to process this stray nocturnal visitor. There was a world's wealth of antiques everywhere on walls and floors and furniture. Mesmerized, I advanced reverently over the Isfahan carpet which partly veiled the mosaic hall floor. It was hard work. A Turner watercolor radiated its dazzling brilliance on the wall, and you can't say fairer than that.

  In contrast, the study was not well lit. Panels of original oak (none of your modem imported Japanese stuff), shelves of books with delectable white parchment covers, a Gainsborough nude drawing, furniture mainly by Ince and Mayhew, and a real Canaletto I failed to recognize but which finally fetched out of my anguished throat that moan I'd been hoarding.

  The old man in the chair, Mr. Pinder, was pleased.

  "You are impressed by my possessions, Lovejoy," he piped. His voice was a pre-Boehm glass flute, sonorous yet

  high-pitched and miles off. "I cannot convey how gratifying your response is."

  "Are there people who puke at fortunes?"

  He tried to roar with laughter, actually falling about and swaying in the great leather chair. His roar was practically inaudible. I've heard infants breathe louder. Politely I waited while he choked and the bird resuscitated him with well-meaning pummels between his shoulders. She had to blot his eyes, blow his nose, find his specs, and generally cobble the old geezer together. It took a hell of a time. I was drawn to a jeweled snuffbox set on an illuminated covered stand. It looked very like Frederick the Great's cartouche-shaped favorite which Christie's sold for nearly half a million quid. The Emperor was a great collector of them, but this thing was never one of his famous three hundred. It was a clear fake. Not a tremor of love in it.

  Somebody gripped my arm, broke the spell.
/>   "Sit down when you're told." The bird, clearly an apprentice matriarch, shoved me at a chair. "Grandfather shouldn't have to suffer your rudeness."

  "Caterina." The gentle reproof was enough to shut her up and leave her seething with irritation. I sat and waited humbly.

  Sometimes it's difficult not to grovel. If the old man's task for me was pricing the mixed antiques and fakes I'd seen so far, I was in for a windfall. Obviously this geriatric was the owner of a significant chunk of the antique universe. The situation called for the classic whining Lovejoy fawn.

  "I am astonished you are not older," the old man said.

  "I'm trying."

  "Mmmm. Caterina recounted your behavior at a village auction." There was a pause. Good old Caterina had flopped across an armchair somewhere behind me. Her irritation beamed straight onto my nape. The pause lengthened.

  I gave in. "You want me to say anything in particular?"

  "Mind your language," Caterina snapped. "Just remember the gentleman to whom you're speaking could buy you and your village."

  The old man winced at her bluntness and flagged her rage down with a tired gesture. Money was beneath mention, which meant the bird spoke the truth.

  "Can you account for your perception, Lovejoy?"

  "You mean about the painting?"

  "Of course, dolt!" from the sweet maid behind.

  "Is there," the old man fluted, "is there really such a person? A ... a diwie? You can detect antiques unaided?"

  Oho. Caterina had taken the trouble to suss me out pretty well.

  "Yes. I'm one."

  He asked the girl to offer me sherry. She slammed about and glugged some. I was scared to touch it. Maybe it was polite to let it hang about an hour or so. Better wait till he'd slurped his, if he was strong enough to lift the bloody thing.

  "How is it done?"

  "I don't know."

  Caterina snorted more free scorn.

  "Six out of six dealers with whom I have discussed the matter, Lovejoy, pronounce you to be an authentic . . . ah, divvie."