There weren’t many Latin phrases I knew but that was one of them. “To my mind it’s more a case of caveating Trading Standards or even the police.”
“Oh, dear one, you can’t use caveat like that,” he sighed. “But you’re right about the legal implications. To my mind, the only question is how much Piers knows about it.”
“If his genes are anything like Lord Elham’s, a lot. But we need proof: You and I know there’s something wrong, but neither of us could stand up in a court of law and say what these stones actually are. And surely, Griff, in that thick Filofax of yours, you’ve got the number of a—whatsit—a jewel expert.”
“Gemologist, angel heart. Yes, I’m sure I have. One, moreover, I can trust implicitly. Now, that chicken should be cooked to perfection.”
Over supper we debated long and loud what we should do next. My initial impulse was to pack up the pendant and earrings and send them straight back to Piers. With both gorgeous rings. But if we did, he’d certainly try to palm them off on someone else less canny than us.
“Equally, of course, Piers might be an innocent dupe of someone to whom he’d innocently taken old items to be cleaned,” Griff observed resignedly. “And it’s the cleaner who’s at fault.”
I pulled a face. But it was of course true. “So how do we find out—any of this?”
* * * *
I might have known who would do the dirty work. Yours truly, of course. Well, not for anything would I have put Griff at risk. His arthritis was better since he’d cut down the drink and was downing measures of an evil-looking liquid prescribed by an alternative therapist, but he tended more and more these days to let me go to sales while he stayed at home and ran the shop. That way he had more energy to go to the very taxing antiques fairs we set up our stall at. So there was no argument. Especially as I didn’t tell him what I was planning.
He and Lord Elham had disliked each other at sight. Lord Elham loathed Griff’s campiness, Griff Lord Elham’s dishonesty. At bottom, I suspect Lord Elham wanted to wrest me from Griff’s care, for no better reason than that he needed a skivvy. Griff wanted to keep me with him because he loved me. There was no point in forcing them into each other’s company: I’d sussed out that getting to know each other would only make matters worse. The main reason why I’d spend occasional days at Bossingham Hall was because Lord Elham had rooms full of the most amazing junk, some of it extremely saleable. Since his favourite tipple—indeed, his only tipple—was Champagne, my skill in sorting out items I could sell for him was called for quite often. This time, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, I popped round at a time when daytime TV was at its nadir, taking with me a couple of homemade casseroles he could warm up in his new microwave. He looked worse than ever: Though he was ten years younger than Griff, his complexion was purply-grey and very dry looking. At least since I’d come on the scene his hair looked better: He’d seen some terribly expensive product in a TV advert and I now bought some whenever I shopped for his Champagne. If only I could get him to exercise something other than his zapper thumb and drinking elbow.
“Piers Hamlyn!” he exploded. “Going to marry Piers Hamlyn! And why didn’t the young bastard seek my permission?”
I ignored the term “bastard,” quite restrained of me in the circumstances. “I don’t think young men do, these days.” It was one thing wishing I’d asked Griff to vet my choice, quite another letting Lord Elham in on the act. “In any case, I said I was engaged to him, not that I was going to marry him.” I explained about the dodgy diamonds.
He slammed his fist on the Sheraton occasional table beside his chair. I winced. “Any young man who puts fake diamonds on my daughter’s hand will not marry her.”
All that Champagne was making him a bit slow. Or it might have been his diet, mostly Pot Noodles, with the odd frozen ready-meal thrown in.
“He doesn’t know I know they’re fake,” I said, taxing his limited abilities.
“If you say they are, they are,” he declared loyally, topping up my 1860 cut-crystal flute.
“I need to prove it. And I want to know if it’s his scam, or if he’s a victim, like me. He’s brought a few things for me to sell—from the collection of Lady Olivia Spedding, he says.”
“Olivia Spedding! Good God! I didn’t know she was still alive.”
“Fallen on hard times; having to sell bits and pieces. Would she have had a few stones replaced here and there?”
“More likely to have the whole lot exchanged for paste,” he mused. “You sure she’s still alive?”
“He ought to know: He’s her nephew. Great-nephew.”
“Is he indeed? That must mean I’m related to her. Are you sure?” He peered at me, then, more hopefully, at the bottom of his glass.
“It’s what he says. Anyway, what shall I do?”
A familiar expression of piggy greed settled on his puffy features. “Sell that sauceboat for me and I’ll make a few enquiries.”
It may have looked like a sauceboat, but it was in fact an eighteenth-century ladies’ urinal—a vessel for ladies to wee into during long sermons or ceremonies. But that made it more, rather than less, valuable. I hoped that the women in the family had more sense of hygiene than my parent, or I couldn’t have sworn that anyone had washed it before it had come to its present use.
* * * *
Even with my ten-percent commission, I was able to return a week or so later with four cases of Champagne.
“That Piers Hamlyn chappie still sniffing after you?” he greeted me, though his eyes were on the cardboard boxes in the back of our van.
“He’s in Ireland,” I said. “Doing a few sales.” Which was unlikely, come to think of it, given his stock in trade, which last time I saw him included a couple of Ty Beanie Bears. If he’d taken me, with my divvy skills, I’d have made us a mint. But for some reason he’d never suggested it, and I was too sure I didn’t want to marry him to ask. And then I cursed myself for being so damned moral—maybe Ireland was where he got his dodgy gems.
Lord Elham sniffed. “Not good enough for you, my girl. Not good enough.”
Not good enough for the illegitimate daughter of a drunken old lecher like him? Griff referred to him fastidiously as a reprobate, which sounded nicely eighteenth-century.
“The man’s a fraud. At least that tosh about Olivia Spedding is. Popped her clogs years ago: no stamina, those Speddings. So wherever he’s getting it from it’s not Olivia. In any case, she spent all her dosh on the gee-gees: never wore a diamond in her life. You sure you got the name right?”
I didn’t see how I could have misheard a name like that, but until I got all that booze into his domain and a glass of it in his hand, I’d get no more sense out of him.
When he was settled at last, I asked, “Has Piers any other relations who might have asked him to sell the jewellery?”
“That was the respectable branch of the family. Have you met Hamlyn’s family yet?”
I shook my head. I had an idea it was because he was afraid I wouldn’t pass muster, and would start dropping aitches and eating my peas with a knife. Or was it only the middle classes like Griff who worried about such niceties?
“Or his friends?”
Another shake of the head.
“Are you sure he’s kosher?”
I looked him straight in the eye. “That’s what I’m hoping you’d tell me.”
He took the sort of pull on his Champagne that I can only manage on water, and then it gives me hiccups. “Tell you what, you sell those plates for me and get me some more bubbly, and I’ll see what I can do.”
I nodded. I knew of old that the plates were a pretty tatty collection, mostly more Piers’s sort of price range than mine, but for the information he might come up with I’d buy him a case of fizz myself.
In the event, I didn’t have to. I found a red anchor mark Chelsea plate at the bottom.
* * * *
“Ireland!” Griff repeated, when I reported back our conv
ersation as word for word as I could make it. “Why didn’t you tell me the little rat had gone to Ireland?”
“Because I know you don’t like me talking about him, and I thought you’d think I was upset not to be invited.”
He frowned as he worked out what I meant. That was the trouble with not finding words easy: Sometimes they shuffled themselves into clumsy lumps. “And you weren’t upset?”
“Glad not to be. I wouldn’t want to sleep with him under false pretences.”
“God knows where you got your moral principles from—not Lord Elham.”
“Mostly from you!”
I could see he was pleased. But he added, quite seriously, “On the other hand, think of the stuff you could have picked up over there. Anyway, Ireland. And Dublin in particular. Diamond merchant.”
“Not Amsterdam? Or Hatton Garden?”
“We’re not talking about real diamonds, are we, petal? Not according to my contact.” He touched his nose.
“They are fakes?”
“As true as a six-pound note. As we always suspected.”
“But that doesn’t get us any further forward with Piers. For my own satisfaction, Griff, I need to know if he’s running the show or if he’s a dupe. I may suspect ... but I need to know.”
“For that, my love, unless you wish to involve the police, you may have to rely on Lord Elham.”
“Set a thief to catch a thief, you mean.”
* * * *
“Not in your trade vehicle!” Lord Elham insisted.
“I’m not going to turn up advertising it’s me, am I? We’ll do what Griff and I always do if we want to go to London. We catch the train, and after that take a cab. There’s nothing more incognito than a cab, surely.”
“And you’re happy to lurk outside the establishment—in that cab, for preference—while I Do the Deed?”
I wasn’t, but I didn’t see my getting admitted into what called itself a massage parlour but sounded more like a high-class brothel, except as an employee. And I’d always drawn the line at that, even when I was at my lowest, before Griff came to my rescue.
So when the day came, and Lord Elham had had the nod and the wink he’d hoped for, I collected him in my Fiesta and drove us to Ashford International Station.
“Travel first class? Dear me, I can’t afford that!” was his reaction to my offer, but I could tell he was sacrificing himself. However, he perked up considerably when he saw even the second-class areas were comfortable and our seats even had a little table on which to place our Champagne, which I was determined to ration. To my amazement, he showed me how to tackle Sudoku, rattling through the Times’s fiendish puzzle as if he were a child with an abacus. The journey passed surprisingly quickly.
“Now,” I prompted him, “you remember how that little tape recorder works? And you won’t have more than one bottle?”
“Shampoo at six hundred pounds a pop? You jest!”
* * * *
All three faces were serious as we sat around Griff’s dining table. He’d made a huge effort, not to impress Lord Elham, but to show me how generous-spirited he was, entertaining a man he still saw as his rival under his own roof. To be honest, the delicate soup, tender guinea fowl, and exploding meringues were wasted on my father. But he too was on his best behaviour, praising as judiciously as if we didn’t know that Spicy Beef Pot Noodles were his real preference, and gossiping about the famous faces he’d seen at the brothel. I’d spotted, from the depths of my cab, a further couple he’d missed. One face we’d both seen was Piers Hamlyn’s.
At last Lord Elham extended a spatulate finger and pressed the Play button. We could hear Piers’s voice quite clearly, against the chink of glasses and the raucous voices of the rich. He was boasting about his fence, how it was like taking candy from a baby.
And then we heard Lord Elham’s voice: “Young man, it happens to be my baby from whom you are taking the confectionary. My little girl Lina. She will not be marrying you, of course. And, unless you want an exposé that would shock even your family to the roots, I suggest you listen very carefully to what I say...”
* * * *
“The Falklands!”
“I do wish, my love, you wouldn’t squeak,” Lord Elham reproached me, just as if he were Griff. “Yes, the Falklands. I believe he will find his niche out there: sheep or mineral rights, whichever interests him more. Not forever. Just long enough for you to mop up all the fake gems he’s scattered about the country.” He laid a wad of notes on the table. “That should suffice. You will keep any change.” He looked at my ringless finger. “You should find enough there to purchase genuine stones for the two rings in your keeping.” He sat back, belched, and looked as his watch. “Now, I always watch Big Brother at this time. And then, my child, you can run me home.”
<
* * * *
THE PREACHER
Kevin Wignall
Hector could see that one apology wasn’t going to be enough. Either that or the old man hadn’t really believed his first apology, which was understandable because it hadn’t been genuine. But then, Hector had only been flippant because he’d thought the old man had to be joking. Because who took offence over stuff like that in this day and age? Hector’s grandmother was nearly ninety and she could probably teach this old guy some new words. Even so . . .
“Hey look, I really am sorry, man, I didn’t realize. I’ll be more careful.” He didn’t get a response so he looked across at him.
“Just keep your eyes on the road.”
Hector faced forward and made a show of looking out at the night-time streets.
Sidney, the old man, had the feeling he and the young punk wouldn’t become friends. It wasn’t just the cursing and the profanity, it was an air the punk had about him, like no standard was too low. And he just didn’t shut up, either - he just never ran out of things to say.
Of course, Mr Costello had asked Sidney to take him under his wing, felt he just needed a little guidance, that he’d come on with the right role model, so here they were, driving out to Nolan’s house to sort out a little company business. And because Mr Costello had asked him to take the punk along, he was taking the punk along, that’s the guy he was.
He could tell the punk was thinking about something now, that he was itching to speak yet again.
Hector had kept turning the word over in his mind, the word that had upset the old man. Having said that, the old man was such a stickler, he probably got upset if someone pronounced “oregano” in the wrong way. But the word that had actually upset him also upset a lot of people, and the more he thought about it, that hardly seemed fair, because it was a good word.
“You know,” said Hector, “that word I just used, you know, the word you didn’t like, I mean, the F word . . .”
“I know which word you mean,” snapped Sidney.
“Yeah, well that one. I mean, why is it a bad word? I don’t mean, why is it like a curse word, I mean, why do people use it to talk about bad things, because it’s a good thing. You know, to fu . . . What I’m saying is, to do that thing is a good thing, enjoyable, so why do people use the word to describe bad things?”
It was a twenty minute drive to Nolan’s place, forty minutes there and back, and Sidney wasn’t convinced he’d be able to do the whole trip without shooting the punk just to shut him up. He wouldn’t mind if he said anything that made the slightest bit of sense, but it was all this rambling stream-of-consciousness weirdness.
“Are you on drugs? I mean, are you high right now?”
Hector laughed and said, “I’m serious, man. You know it’s like . . . well, let’s call it the C word, you know, to describe a woman’s er . . .”
“I know which word you mean.”
“I would hope so,” said Hector with a knowing smile that made Sidney want to slap his face. If the punk hadn’t been driving he’d have done just that. “It’s a bad word, the worst word, but it describes one of the greatest things ever. Haven’t you ever
wondered, why that is?”
“No, Hector, I haven’t, just like your parents probably never wondered why you didn’t get into Harvard.” Sidney thought he’d try to change the subject and said, “How d’you end up with a name like Hector, anyway?”
“My dad was half Spanish.”
“Which half?”
“On his mother’s side, obviously.” He glanced across at the old man and said, “My name’s Murphy.” The old man nodded his understanding and pointed forward, telling him to keep his eyes on the road.
Best British Crime 6 - [Anthology] Page 14