The Grail Tree

by Jonathan Gash

  She was almost an hour and arrived breathlessly, carrying a thick brown envelope. It took another hour prising it off her. Still, it was effort expended in a good cause.

  There were maybe sixty names. Haverro was there, and Devonish, but no other I recognized. So, Thomas Haverro and Sarah Devonish’s late husband had been at Selward College as undergraduates when old Henry studied there. I drove south, angry at myself. I’m always like this when I’m worried sick about something, collecting facts that seem important but usually turn out no use at all. Thomas, Devonish and Henry Swan were old chums, but again so what? I tried to concentrate on the Satsuma-Jimmo problem but that only got me madder.

  Some sleuth.

  Chapter 13

  I RATTLED HOME, resisting the temptation to call in at Liz Sandwell’s place at Dragonsdale. Every light her shop possessed was on. Gimlet-eyed and stoical, I drove noisily past. Sooner or later, I’d have to see Liz made an honest man of me, as long as Margaret didn’t find out. And Betty. And Lisa. And Jean. And their tough male hangers-on. Thinking what a rotten unfair world it was, I eventually chugged into my garden.

  Once you try to put a thing out of your head, it only returns with renewed vigour. Ever noticed that? As I hotted my frozen grub and washed up enough crockery to make noshing a respectable enterprise, people’s faces kept haunting me.

  Sarah Devonish is the sort of woman a man can’t help going for. And J.H.C. Devonish was one of the names under the photograph of Henry’s class, though I hadn’t been able to locate which young smile had been his. Sarah must have been a lot younger than good old J.H.C. Yet for a forlorn widow she seemed particularly belligerent and nastily knowledgeable, which makes a bloke wonder why she’d been the main mouthpiece that day, telling old Henry to shut up and all.

  I cleared a couple of square inches of table free of debris to eat on. Hardly worth laying the table just for me. The kettle boiled. I made some evil coffee and sat waiting for the oven to signal that my tastebuds were again about to be tantalized. Thomas seemed utterly benign and apologetic, for all that he was a medical scientist. Well, even that’s still legal. The oven clicked but I telephoned Martha to ask about Dolly.

  I cut through the chitchat. ‘That day, Henry and I were er, sloshed, Martha. You said something about Dolly’s friends calling for her.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Her voice levelled from the tremulous. ‘It was rather shameful, Lovejoy –’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Which friends, Martha?’

  ‘The one with the big car. I find them somewhat . . . well, showy isn’t too strong a word, is it?’ She thought a second. ‘He has a funny name.’

  Big car, showy, funny name. Couldn’t be. ‘Honkworth?’

  ‘That’s the one. Though he was so kind helping Henry that one often wonders if indeed one is somewhat prejudiced . . .’

  ‘One does,’ I agreed. ‘Hang on.’ I went and put the oven back on to give myself time to think. The Dolly–Henry chain had suddenly lenghened by a few links it shouldn’t have had. ‘Er, helped? How?’

  ‘Giving him a lift back from the station,’ Martha explained. ‘Didn’t I tell you? He was so terribly late, and getting a taxi to meet the last train’s absolute hell.’

  ‘But you have a car, Martha.’ I had a funny feeling even before she said it that I’d missed something terribly obvious.

  ‘Oh, yes. But Henry never learned to drive, you see.’ Served me right for not checking.

  We went round and round this same conversation a couple of times before ringing off because I wanted to drive the main facts into my thick skull. My pasties were practically radioactive from the heat by the time I settled down. Honkworth had not only seen Sarah, Thomas and me at Martha’s house, but knew enough to be waiting in his flashy crate when Henry was stuck at the station. And give the old bloke a lift home, the crawler. Now supposing Henry had been carrying something precious, what then? A worm like the revolting Honkworth might be tempted . . .

  It was midnight before I locked up and pulled the divan out for a bed. Some problems are better slept on, I told myself piously, wishing Margaret would happen by.

  The police disagreed. Maslow rang at four in the morning and told me to get down to the Arcade fast. I never refuse an invitation, so I went.

  You can smell malice. The stench of spite pervades the very air you breathe and stings your eyes. It’s as horrible as that, something foul and stinking, exactly like the ancient mediaevalists sensed the corruption of evil. I nudged Tinker Dill awake at the High Street. He was already mad because I’d roused him from his drunken stupor and made him come with me.

  ‘Nip down to the post office,’ I told him. ‘Keep an eye on me, for Christ’s sake. If the Old Bill haul me off you know what to do.’

  ‘Bloody four in the bloody morning,’ he muttered. One thing, incredible to relate, he looks better in the daylight. He shuffled off into the darkness, merging with the gloom across the way. I parked the Ruby with flamboyant defiance on the main street. Just let Brenda or Jilks give me a ticket, I thought piously. Two police cars were parked by the Arcade, disturbing the peace with radios and blue lights irritating. Half a dozen bobbies stooged about wishing there were cameras on the go.

  ‘Can’t you manage without us civilians, Maslow?’ Always start as you mean to go on, I thought, watching him pause at hearing my well-loved voice. I got a jolt by noticing that the activity seemed centred on Margaret’s place. Lights blazed. They’d rigged up two spotlights to shine through Margaret’s window on the antiques, what was left of them. A tired man photographed inside the shop, over and over. Lisa and Woody were there talking to Jimmo and Marion. The bobbies had called out everybody they could think of.

  ‘Not really, Lovejoy.’ Maslow gave me a bleak smile. ‘We need you.’

  ‘What did you let them do this time?’ I asked, telling myself not to get talked under.

  ‘You have a chance to shine, Lovejoy.’

  ‘At . . .?’

  He pretended surprise. ‘Why, at what you’re good at, knowing exactly what went on.’ His smile became more aggressive. ‘When the rest of us don’t know anything of the kind.’ He tapped me with his pipe. One day I’ll lose my wool and he’ll go about left-handed. I can see it coming. ‘Take a gander inside, friend.’

  Margaret was speaking in a flat undertone to a scribbling constable. A policewoman was having difficulty with a portable tape recorder whose microphone wouldn’t fit. Typical. The place was wrecked.

  Porcelain pieces crunched underfoot. Chairs and cabinets had been hacked to splinters. Margaret’s collection of dolls were smashed and torn. I choked on fumes.

  ‘Acid, Lovejoy.’ Maslow actually sounded pleased. ‘On the antique medallions. Ruined.’

  The main window was broken, probably done last in case of the noise. A lovely Ince and Mayhew Pembroke table was fragmented. I found myself on my knees trying to fit pieces together.

  ‘No use, Lovejoy. No use at all.’ Maslow motioned me outside into the covered way. I gave Margaret a hopeless wave to show I’d stay around and followed.

  ‘Which of these nerks,’ I asked, ‘was on the beat when it happened, Maslow?’ I pointed to the lounging constabulary.

  ‘None. We’ve withdrawn the beat constable.’ He liked the question as much as I liked him. ‘He can cover the ground in a car much quicker.’

  ‘And in twice as much ignorance.’

  ‘Look, Lovejoy.’ He did the fire trick while I watched hopefully. They say it’s bad for the health. ‘Until now you and I haven’t seen eye to eye.’

  ‘Oh, but we have. You try to push me about. And I tell you to piss off because you’re useless.’ I could see him struggle for control. A constable within earshot started getting out of his mobile rest-room but Maslow gestured angrily and he retired into the car all hurt at not being allowed to play. ‘Maslow,’ I said. ‘If I emerge with a few broken bones, a certain friendly barker watching eagle-eyed in the shadows will give my Member of Parliament a rude awakening.�
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  ‘I’m . . . I’m prepared to admit,’ he tried to say evenly, ‘we’ve made very little progress.’

  ‘You checked the boatyard,’ I said encouragingly. ‘Quite bright.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I used the clever electric talking machine and asked the foreman.’

  ‘Okay, Lovejoy. A truce.’ We thought about it for a while. ‘Whatever’s going on seems to do with antiques. And you.’

  ‘Not me, mate.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ He nodded. ‘And you, mate. Your friend here gets her place done over. Your old pal Reverend Swan gets his boat blown up and goes early to heaven. And busy little Lovejoy’s been sniffing around old colleges, hasn’t he?’ Oho, I thought. Cambridge.

  ‘A casual call,’ I said airily. ‘My old alma mater.’

  ‘Tomorrow – by which I mean early dawn, lad – you’ll call casually on me.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘And enter into a partnership with us,’ he went on, tough now. The uniformed man was out of the car and stayed out this time. ‘You’ll disclose all you know or suspect. If not, I’ll arrest you by six this evening. Understood?’

  ‘Marvellous man, your inspector,’ I said to the constable. ‘Useless as the rest of you, but goes after the innocent like a tiger.’ I put my head round Margaret’s shattered door. ‘Coming, love?’

  ‘She’s needed here,’ Maslow said curtly.

  ‘I’d better stay, Lovejoy,’ Margaret called, looking up from a list. Maybe something to do with insurance.

  ‘Okay.’ I meandered across to chat to the others. It took about ten minutes of muttered asides to vanish into the darkness with Lisa. The Ruby’s oil lamps were still flickering when we reached it. Tinker emerged from the darkness abusing everything.

  ‘What the bleeding hell’s going on, Lovejoy? Wotcher, Lisa.’

  ‘They’ve done Margaret’s over.’

  ‘Christ!’ His groan was as much criticism of my extra passenger as sorrow at a dealer’s plight. ‘Did they break them two matching devs?’ He meant the small devotional soft porcelain fonts, Continental, eighteenth-century and valuable.

  ‘Yes.’ They were the first things I’d noticed.

  Lisa was furious.

  ‘Charming,’ she snapped. ‘Is that all you two can think of, antiques? Neither of you so much as asked about Margaret.’

  Tinker rolled his eyes heavenward.

  ‘Er, how’s Margaret, Lisa?’ he tried courageously, but Lisa was mad and wouldn’t reply. ‘What about that little Ukrainian ikon?’ he asked me in a hoarse undertone.

  ‘Ruined. Some sort of acid. On her medallions, furniture, on the bloody walls.’

  ‘Christ.’

  We were finally crammed in somehow and zoomed off down the hill. The pong from Tinker’s horrible gear was indescribable. I remembered to stop off and let him out on North Hill.

  Which left Lisa and Lovejoy. Well, it’s an ill wind and all that.

  Lisa is trouble. That doesn’t mean I don’t like her. You can classify women only two ways: trouble, and very much trouble. The first kind’s Lisa and Margaret. They’re moderate trouble no matter what. Wherever you are, they’re in the background being vaguely irritatingly troublesome, like a gentle rain that trickles down your unsuspecting neck. The VMT model’s the Betty, Jean Evans and Lydia kind. As soon as you clap eyes on them it’s a shouting match and pistols at dawn. The first sort you never get free of and sets up immediately as a sort of chronic niggling part-time pest. The VMT is nonstop Typhoon Emma. Meet one at a vicarage teaparty and you finish up pinned in a corner like a baddie in Zorro. It can be very tiresome because you’re knackered every single minute of every single day while one’s about. I have difficulties with both kinds.

  Next morning, Lisa made the bed and swept up. She fried things and flung the doors and windows wide, then had us both breathing in time to a broadcast tune some maniac was tinkling on the piano before the eight o’clock news. By the time she’d taken the curtains down to soak I was in the garden, thinking. Lisa came out to bang a rug on my unfinished wall and pollute the lovely smog with dust. For a second I became quite interested.

  ‘I didn’t know I had that rug, Lisa.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said curtly, slamming back in. So much for the friendly approach.

  The robin came on my arm for its cheese. It listens while I think aloud but has unnecessarily cynical views judging by the glances I get. I ran quickly over recent events starting with my Cambridge run and the vandals doing Margaret’s place over.

  ‘But suppose,’ I said softly, ‘it wasn’t a casual mob, eh? Suppose it was done deliberately to get at me – I’ve no antiques, so they do over Margaret’s place. Somebody in the antiques game, who knows that she and I were pretty close.’ I thought a bit more and told it about the big bad London dealer who wanted his two Neanderthal brats educated. It gave me the bent eye, mistrustful little sod. But I obviously had to visit Sykes and have a brief word. I’d start politely with a gentle request and go on from there. Sykes and his merry men were a hard lot. I knew that. On the other hand, I can be very, very treacherous indeed.

  One thing was worrying me. I’d have to call on Margaret. I needed an estimate of the damage the Sykes lads caused, otherwise I’d have no way of balancing up. It’s called retribution.

  Lisa called, ‘Lovejoy, I need some help with this divan.’

  ‘Coming, love,’ I said, putting the robin down. I tiptoed away, quickly cranked my minuscule zoomster and rattled out into the lane towards town.

  Lydia was already clearing up in the Arcade. She told me Margaret was asleep at home, having had a tiring night. There were barbs in them there undertones. A score of dealers and barkers were assembled to ogle Margaret’s misery. They were concealing their heartfelt sorrow so effectively you couldn’t tell they weren’t actually delighted.

  ‘I go to the Smoke tomorrow,’ I informed Lydia. The mess was enough to make you weep. ‘You’ve a job to do for me, love.’

  ‘Very well.’ That flinty voice again. She’d fetched a pinafore, dusters and polish, dustpan and a set of brushes.

  ‘Er, sorry.’ I’d been staring. She really was a lovely shape. God knows why it seemed to dismay her so much, but she did her utmost to hide it.

  ‘I think you ought to know, Lovejoy,’ she said, facing me bravely, ‘that I called at your cottage earlier.’

  ‘Er, great.’ A significant pause. ‘Why didn’t you, er, knock and stay for coffee?’

  ‘I could hear . . . two voices.’ Lydia’s face was scarlet.

  ‘Er, two voices? The radio, probably.’

  ‘Not the radio, Lovejoy. Lisa’s.’

  ‘Now I remember.’ I laughed a light airy laugh. ‘She’d called with a message from Tinker.’

  ‘I told a lie for you, Lovejoy.’ She was saving porcelain pieces in a cardboard box.

  ‘Er, well, thanks, love.’

  ‘Don’t thank me! I should have done no such thing.’

  ‘Course not, love. Er, what was it incidentally?’ I had to ask. Truth can always wait a little, but lies can be very important. She avoided looking at me, busy.

  ‘I advised Woody that Lisa was unable to come to work.’

  ‘Bless you, Lydia.’ Good old Lydia. Trust a woman to be devious and full of clever little falsehoods. I tried to show how pleased I was but she was all prim and disapproving and stepped back.

  ‘I realize your . . . disposition to carnality is not altogether your fault, Lovejoy,’ she went on, getting more steamed up, ‘but you really must acknowledge –’

  The rest is lunacy of the sort only Lydia’s ilk can invent, about being less reprehensible and suchlike jazz. I listened as long as I could stay meek and mild, then interrupted when I’d had enough.

  ‘Love, go to Lennie’s. A pair of Satsuma vases. He’ll have bought them at yesterday’s auction. Say we’re interested, but tell him the price is too much –’

  ‘How do you know
without having seen –?’

  ‘It’s always too much, love. Put a few quid deposit.’

  ‘Why?’ She was looking at me with that look.

  ‘Well . . .’ I hesitated, exasperated. She was so charming. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they’re cheap and nasty, Lovejoy,’ she said with asperity. ‘Those . . . the strange gentlemen said so.’ She must mean Mel and Sandy, judging from her sudden bright pink face. She pointed to a volume resting on her handbag. ‘And that.’

  ‘You’ve been reading what I wrote!’ I said indignantly. She’d got hold of my bloody book, the one I’d written on faults in antique collecting.

  ‘If I’m your pupil –’ she began severely.

  I slammed out in a temper. Lydia had the makings, I decided angrily, of a very treacherous woman. Women are never straight. That’s their trouble. It’s a terrible way to be.

  I wanted to find Honkworth. Maybe if I rang Martha and asked where Dolly would be I’d scoop the pool and get Honkie and the slimy Leyde too, but I’d bothered Martha enough.

  ‘How do, Lovejoy,’ Woody yelled through the smoke. I settled at a table, peering about for Tinker Dill. The place isn’t big enough to swing a cat but I’ve never yet managed to see all the way across to the opposite wall.

  ‘Tea, Woody,’ I shouted through the hubbub. ‘And a fresh table napkin. This one doesn’t match your Nantwich lace cloth.’

  Jason and Marion laughed. Hello, hello, I thought, where’s Jed this sunny dawn?

  ‘Morning, Lovejoy,’ Marion said. ‘Watch it. Woody’s in one hell of a temper. Lisa’s off.’

  ‘Tut-tut,’ I remarked. ‘Nothing too serious, I trust?’

  ‘You seen Lisa, Lovejoy?’ Woody belligerently splashed a chipped cup of oily liquid down before me.