The Tartan Ringers

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by Jonathan Gash


  ‘That there’s really quite a bit left. Right, everybody? Look,’ I said, halting in the photographer’s position. ‘I needn’t stay here. I can push off, leave you to it. You must at least help. Out with it, troops.’

  Silence. Elaine’s ferocity glowed, the radiance almost blinding. She was realizing she’d been had, completely, by this ultra-loyal mob of serfs.

  ‘All right, I’ll say it for you. You dispersed the remaining antiques among yourselves. When Elaine sent word for everybody to chip in any relevant saleables they had, you very carefully fetched only junk, and are keeping the authentic Tachnadray furniture, silver, God-knows-what, concealed.’ I could have told how Shona, realizing I’d begun to suspect, bribed me with herself, failed, then sent Robert to hunt me to my death on the dark moor. I’d have been a fell-walker, carelessly falling down some crevasse. They’d have all told the police the same tale, and cocooned Elaine from the truth. Again.

  ‘Bring it out, folks,’ I said. ‘Tachnadray needs you.’

  ‘Duncan.’ Elaine didn’t even turn her head.

  ‘It’s true, Miss Elaine.’ Duncan shuffled out of the line to address her, full face. He made to rummage for tobacco, put his pipe away, coughed uneasily. Nobody else spoke. ‘We indeed did that.’

  ‘I ordered everything sold!’ Elaine said.

  ‘You did, Miss Elaine. But it was selling out the McGunn heritage, despoiling your own—’ he choked on the word – ‘birthright.’ Well he might, poor man.

  ‘Permit me,’ I interrupted. ‘Bring the genuine stuff to the auction. You needn’t lose it.’

  Elaine rolled her wheelchair out, spun it with her back to me. ‘All of you. Go now. Tell the others. Bring everything – every-thing! – back. Forthwith.’ A sudden queen.

  They dispersed slowly, looking back at the blazing girl. While they were still within earshot she pronounced loudly, ‘And on behalf of us all, Ian, I apologize for your shabby treatment.’

  ‘Then can I go places on my own?’ I asked swiftly. ‘Without being confined, or Robert skulking on some distant hill?’

  ‘Granted,’ she said regally. ‘Wheel me outside. And get rid of that rubbish. It’s defacing the Hall.’

  ‘Ah, well.’ I pushed. ‘Old tat’s useful in the workshop.’

  That night I rang Tinker and told him to get Trembler up to the railway hotel in Inverness soonest. Antioch had nearly three dozen wagons ready, which news wobbled me. More would be loading up by dawn. It seemed only a few hours since I’d arrived at Tachnadray with all the time in the world. Now it seemed there wasn’t sure any left at all.

  Chapter 23

  TREMBLER CAME DOWN the stairs holding on to the banister like a beginner drunk. He’s of a tallish lazaroid thinness, forever dabbing his trembling lips with a snuff-stained hankie. I like Trembler. Always tries to keep up appearances, wears a waistcoat, though stained with last night’s excesses, and polishes his shoes. He tottered across the foyer from couch to armchair, from pillar to recliner, exactly as street children play stepping stones. He knew I’d be in the hotel nosh bar. A porter helped him down the three steps.

  ‘Wotcher, Trembler.’

  ‘Lovejoy.’ Shaking badly, he made the opposite chair and pulled my tea towards him. It slopped over the saucer as he sucked tremulously at the rim. His quivering upper lip was dyed snuff gold. Looking at this gaunt wreck, I wondered uneasily if Tinker was right. He looked a decrepit nonagenarian.

  ‘Had a good night, Trembler?’

  ‘Splendid.’ His rheumy eyes closed as a server clattered cups. ‘What day is it?’ he whispered.

  ‘You’ve a few days before the off, Trembler.’

  ‘Right.’ He opened his eyes, will power alone.

  ‘Grub’s in front of you.’

  Everything I could think of, including waffles, porridge, eggs in a slick fry-up, all on a hot plate. He focused and nearly keeled over. ‘Jesus, Lovejoy.’

  People began looking across to see where the noise was coming from as soon as he started. His cutlery fibrillated, his crockery clattered. He sounded like a foundry. Once he actually did tremble himself off his chair trying to pick up a fallen spoon. A kindly waitress came to ask if my father was all right.

  ‘Yes, ta, love.’ I gave her a soul-deep smile. ‘He improves with the day.’ I didn’t tell her Trembler’s age. He’s thirty-one. Wine and women have transformed him. Trembler recovered enough to lust feebly after her. Luckily his vision peters out at ten paces, a spent arrow, so to speak.

  ‘How much do I know, Lovejoy?’

  Funny how glad hearing your own name makes you. ‘It’s a weird place, Trembler. Near derelict. They keep three rooms to impress visitors. The owner’s a lady, seventeen, in a wheelchair. There’s a few retainers still. All are suspect. So far I’ve a heap of rubbish which I’m transforming into saleables.’

  Trembler nodded his understanding, as far as I could tell. He quakes so much normally it’s difficult to distinguish a nod in his version of immobility.

  ‘Where’ll you get the stuff, Lovejoy?’ he quavered.

  ‘Tinker’s organizing a convoy.’ I hesitated, giving him time for the unpleasant bit. He managed to slop half a yolk-dripping egg into his mouth. I looked away, queasy. ‘I want no whizzers who’re in trouble, Trembler. Sorry.’

  Normally an auctioneer, crooked or straight, has the final say on staff. Whizzers are those blokes – scoundrels to a man – who hump antiques about. An auctioneer’s whizzers stay with him for life, part of his team, so I was asking for heresy.

  ‘I heard it was special, Lovejoy.’ He resumed his idea of eating, with distaste.

  ‘Margaret sent me the list.’ I passed it over. ‘You’ve only two who’re holy enough for this, Trembler. Agreed?’

  ‘A sad reflection on modern morality.’

  It’s amazing what good grub and a job’ll do for a man. Before my very eyes Trembler was filling out. His eyes were clearing, dawn mist from an estuary autumn. He drank another pint of tea. I gave him more, sent for another ton of toast, marmalade. Years were starting to fall from him with every mouthful. Even his voice, the querulous whine of an ancient, was becoming the measured and tuneful instrument of a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Auctioneers. I watched admiringly. He only looked fifty now. A couple more breakfasts and he’d be down to a sprightly forty, maybe make thirty-five.

  ‘So far, Lovejoy, you’ve told me nothing.’ He dabbed his mouth with a napkin, rearranged the condiments, crockery. All really good signs. ‘Are you bringing in valuers?’

  My laugh made people smile across the tables. ‘Who on earth can afford five guineas per cent, Trembler?’ Valuing is robbery, money for jam – indeed, for not even jam. He’s the bloke who comes to value your precious old table, guesses a guestimate (always wrong) and you pay him a huge percentage of that guess, for nothing. No, never let a stranger into your home, especially if he’s a valuer. They are the antiques game’s equivalent of politicians. ‘There’s some pinning to be done.’

  He smiled. ‘Thought as much. Who’s the mark?’

  ‘Are,’ I corrected. ‘Tell you nearer the day.’

  ‘Pinning’ is a noble art practised by auctioneers ever since time began. It means manipulating the bidding so as to land a particular lot on a poor unsuspecting member of the public who doesn’t want it. When the Emperor Caligula auctioned off his dud antiques – he’d wasted a fortune buying forgeries – he ordered his auctioneer to pin Aponius Saturnimus. This rich Roman had nodded off during the bidding. He woke up poor.

  ‘And I want a phone bank. Two.’

  ‘Right-ho.’ He knew I meant false ones, because otherwise I’d have asked the phone people. Big bidders phone live bids in as the auction progresses.

  ‘About the money, Trembler.’

  He shed another two years. ‘I’ve put this hotel on my credit card, Lovejoy.’ He carries only phoney credit cards, but he was trying to help me by deferring the cost of his stay.

  ‘Good lad. Y
ou stay here and enjoy the . . . facilities. Now, Trembler, when I call, there’s to be no delay. Get it? Ten minutes’ notice, you move out. There’s a code word. It’s Lovejoy.’

  ‘Your name’s the code word?’ He was puzzled.

  ‘That’s because I’m under an alias; Ian McGunn.’

  He repeated it to prove he was back among thinking men. ‘One thing, Lovejoy. Can I bring my own tallyman?’

  ‘No, Trembler. Sorry.’ Trembler always picks some gorgeous tart without a brain in her head. I saw him once at an auction near Southwold where he’d hired a bird who actually couldn’t count or write. Talk about a shambles. ‘I’ve already got you a tally woman. She’ll need training in, the day previous.’

  He brightened. The deal done, we had another breakfast each to celebrate, seeing it was getting on for coffee time. Then I rang Doc the genealogist and had my suspicions confirmed. Couple of good bookshops in Inverness. I got some paperback reprints for Duncan’s benefit.

  Michelle was working flat out now. Letters were coming in so fast the postie had graduated to a van. She was becoming conscious of the pressure. Each night we phoned up the list of antiques et al. from Tinker. Next morning we sifted through them, and next night she’d tell Tinker which I’d accepted and which were refused. Tinker gave her nightmares: ‘He doesn’t seem to make any notes!’ she complained. I’d go, ‘Mmmh.’

  There was a growing body of cards filed in old shoeboxes, a card for each collector writing in, and a spare list of antiques for which people, mostly genuine collectors, were writing urgently wanting special lists. These are almost always coins, medals, hand weapons, clothes or paintings. Then there was the catalogue file, the biggest. Michelle tried talking me out of one card per antique, thinking she’d discovered a quicker way. She tried the wheedle, even the vamp, to no avail. I made her stick to my scheme. I also made her keep an nth file, of those antiques which I’d told her to reject. She again played hell. ‘What’s the point of recording details of antiques we’ll never see—?’

  I clapped a hand over her mouth. This was the alluring lady who’d so joyously rushed to find me when the first letters came. Now we were inundated she was falling behind and inventing ever-dafter ways of ballsing up the documentation. A born administrator.

  ‘You, Michelle, are attractive, desirable, and rapidly becoming a pest for other reasons, too. Get help if you like, but do as I say. And hurry up.’ I let go. I had to sort the last of Tachnadray’s genuine stuff out in the Great Hall. ‘I’ve a job for you to do, later.’

  This time the items arranged at the far end of the Great Hall were superb. Among them I recognized Shona’s – well, Elaine’s – double snuff mull. Some things make you smile. The silver wasn’t plentiful. One triumph was a bullet-shaped teapot. Not a lot of people admire the shape (‘bullet’ meaning spherical as an old lead bullet), which is a ball with a straight spout. The lid completes the roundness, with a mundane finial topping the lid off. They were made from the late 1700s for sixty years. The engraved decoration of these characteristically Scottish teapots is one pattern carried round the join of lid and body. It sat among the rest glowing like, well, like Elaine smiling. Edward Lothian of Edinburgh, 1746, before the fluted spout came in. There was also a silver centrepiece. These so-called épergnes (it’s posh to give things French names) usually weigh a lot, so you’re safe buying one by weight alone, never mind the artistry. This was 1898, Edinburgh, a dreadful hotchpotch of thistles, tartan hatching, drooping highlanders, wounded stags. It was ghastly. It’d bring in a fortune.

  The furniture was dominated by a genuine Thomas Chippendale library table. It was practically a cousin of the mahogany one at Coombe Abbey, mid-eighteenth century, solid and vast. I honestly laughed with delight and clapped. You see so many rubbishy copies that an original blows your mind. Five Hepplewhite-design chairs (where was the sixth?) with shield backs and an urn-pattern centre splat were showing their class. A few good Victorian copies of the lighter Sheraton-style chair were ranged along one wall. In the catalogue I’d call them something like ‘Louis Seize à l’anglais’, as Tom Sheraton designs were termed in Paris at the time. Only I’d be sure to put it in quotation marks, which would legalize my careful misattribution. It’d give Trembler a chuckle.

  Predictably, the porcelain was anything. The retainers had clearly preserved what impressed them most. They’d gone for knobs and colours, hoarding with knobs on, so to speak. A few times they’d guessed right. A royal blue Doulton vase, marked ‘FB 1884’, indicated that factory’s famous deaf creator whose wares Queen Victoria herself so admired. It might not bring much, but it’d ‘thicken’ the rest. A lone Chelsea red anchor plate in the Kakiemon style – here vaguely parrot-looking birds, brown and blue figures on white and flowers – would bring half the price of a car, properly auctioned. I loved it, and said hello, smiling at the thrilling little bong it made in my chest. The stilt marks were there, and those pretty telltale speckles in the painting. The rest were mundane. Sadly, sober George the Fifth stuff. Not one Art Deco piece among them. That set me thinking.

  The paintings were ridiculous recent portrait travesties, some modern body’s really bad idea of what a gen-yoo-wine Highland chief would have been wearing. Talk about fancy dress. These daft-posh portraits are so toffee-nosed they become pantomime. The one painting I did take note of was a little scene of Tachnadray, done with skill in, of all things, milk casein paint. These rarities give themselves away by their very matt foreground. (Be careful with them; they watersplash easily.) You let skim milk go sour, and dry the curd out to a powder. Then you make a paste of it with dilute ammonia (the eleventh-century monks used urine) and it’s this which you mix with powder paint. ‘Pity you’re very new, though,’ I told it. The painter had varnished it to make it resemble an oil painting. This is quite needless, because casein is tough old stuff. You can even polish the final work to give it a marvellous lightness. It’s brittle, though, so you paint on rigid board . . . I found myself frowning at the painting. Two figures were seated on the lawn, quite like statues. Modern dress, so there was no intent to antiquize.

  A wheelchair’s tyres whispered. ‘What now, Ian?’

  ‘I think some painters must have frigging good eyesight, love. This casein-painting’s too minute for words.’ Casually I replaced it. ‘Pity it’s practically new.’

  ‘Is it any good?’ She was oh so detached.

  ‘High quality. The artist still about?’

  ‘Me.’

  I nodded, not surprised. Now I knew it all. ‘You’re a natural, love. Who taught you about casein paint?’ No answer, so under her steady stare I decided to swim with the tide. ‘Your dad? Or Michelle?’

  ‘Yes. Michelle.’

  And egg tempera? You’ve a great career ahead of you, love. Copy a few medieval manuscripts for me and—’

  ‘Stop that!’ Michelle came in. ‘I’ll not have you inveigling Miss Elaine into your deceitful ways!’

  With Elaine laughing, really honestly falling about, I escaped into Duncan’s workshop for my stint with the panelling. Michelle had come a fraction too late.

  Later that day Mrs Buchan brought up two candidates to help Michelle in the office. One was a plump lass, fawnish hair, beneath a ton of trendy bangles and earrings, lovely eyes. The other was Mrs Moncreiffe, an elderly twig scented with lavender and mothballs.

  Michelle chose the twig.

  About ten o’clock I was working my way through a bottle of white wine in my garret, racking my two neurones to see if I’d forgotten anything, when the stairs creaked. Michelle came in with a woman’s purposeful complicity, placing her back to the door edge and closing it with hands behind her. This manoeuvre keeps the woman’s face towards the occupant. They have these natural skills.

  ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Have a seat.’

  ‘I . . . I just wanted to say that the catalogue’s up to date.’ She made to perch on the bed, rose quickly at the implications. I gave her my chair and flopped horizontal. ‘We o
nly have this evening’s list to do. Mrs Moncreiffe has proved a godsend.’

  ‘I’m glad. Out with it, love.’

  ‘How many more days before . . . ?’

  ‘Soon.’ I didn’t want to be tied. ‘Michelle. Your son Joseph sent down an original antique, didn’t he? Shona sent Robert after it in the Mawdslay, Tachnadray’s one car.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was a whisper.

  ‘I don’t know quite what happened, but Joseph was fetched back. He’s hidden at Shooters, because he’s supposed to have killed that driver. Dispute over the money, was it?’

  Michelle nodded bravely. ‘They . . . assumed so.’ I watched admiringly. Women lie with such conviction.

  ‘Tough for you, love. Torn loyalty and all that.’

  ‘You’re . . . you’re really nothing to do with that London college, are you?’

  ‘No.’ I pretended anger. ‘Have you been phoning people?’

  ‘No, no. I just . . . surmise, that’s all.’ She regarded her twisting hands for a moment. ‘You’re not police. And you talk to things. You’re a bit mad, yet . . .’

  ‘Thank God for that “yet”.’ I gave her a sincere smile. ‘Don’t worry, love. I’m on Elaine’s side. I’ll honestly do the best I can when the time comes.’

  She nodded and stood, watching me. ‘I wish,’ she got out eventually, ‘we’d met in other circumstances. Better ones.’

  ‘We practically did.’ I shooed her out. ‘I’ve got to think. Do Tinker’s call on your own tonight, love.’

  Eleven o’clock I went with a krypton hand lamp and a small jeweller’s loupe to look at the painting. It had gone. That told me as much as if I’d studied it for a fortnight in Agnew’s viewing room. One of the two figures gazing so soulfully in the painting had been Michelle. The other had been a man slightly older, but not Duncan. He’d looked in charge, attired in chieftain’s dress.

  Which called for a long think to midnight. To one o’clock. To one-thirty. More deep thoughts for another hour.

  Tinker was still swilling at the pub by the old flour mill. I told him to phone Trembler early tomorrow morning and just say, ‘Lovejoy.’

 

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