PearlHanger 09

by Jonathan Gash

  "Look, Ledger. I wouldn't do a bloke in for a dud."

  "Real gold. Real pearls, Lovejoy." He made a gesture of levitation. "You can all go. Thank you for your cooperation." He smiled at me. "Not you, Lovejoy."

  »

  My new cell was same as always. Same niff. Same screw with a million jokes about bars, keys, magistrates, and crimes. A real laugh. Same graffiti, some old hat, one witty line.

  Donna hadn't wanted me to leave. Hence the torrid love. And Sid Vernon had been in on her scam, hence all the deception at old Deamer's house. And Mr. Deamer himself was another accomplice, or he wouldn't have lied in his gums just now. Dear God, who wasn't?

  128 .

  16

  Maybe I'd dozed. There was a newspaper but I make up my own lies so I just lay there. Sometimes it seems that, however brightly a day begins, it ends with a choice of degradations. There was nothing going for me except innocence— good for a laugh, though they say it counts in heaven.

  You always get death on a coast. It doesn't have to be a Bermuda Triangle. Accidents happen. But presumably Ledger had found some blunt instrument? It wasn't much of a tumble for Vernon, the few feet down from the path, and mud's soft. Add this to Donna's bewildering behavior and . . .

  "You're sprung, Lovejoy. Out of it."

  Harder to wake up into daytime than night, and relief is hard any old time. The constable thumbed me down the corridor. They're not allowed to touch you—another guffaw—so he could only glower hatred as I emerged, blinking.

  "Good morning, Lovejoy." Lydia stood there. High- throated lace blouse, smart blue suit, seamed stockings, and strap heels. A goddess to the rescue. "Constable," she was

  . 129

  saying severely to the desk sergeant. "I want to complain. Lovejoy hasn't shaved."

  Tinker was snoring on the bench. A young couple huddled like kipping hamsters.

  "Er, look," I said in a panic, thinking, Christ. This just wasn't the time.

  The sergeant had had enough. Rolling his eyes at me he made me sign that I'd got all my things.

  "Is this why we pay our taxes?" Lydia was demanding as I bundled her out, hauling Tinker as I went. "This behooves a letter to our member of Parliament—"

  We didn't stop until I reached the corner by the old flax house. Lydia was still seething and behooving. The pub wasn't open so we sat on the memorial bench, safe among noise and shoppers and traffic. Bliss. I put my head back. You know that feeling when you've been through the mangle?

  Lydia told me how Tinker had seen me and Donna talking by the creek cottages. "I went down earlier to visit Tinker because he seemed so lonely on his own. I took him some things, made him comfortable."

  "Ledger took Tinker's word that I'd left there without seeing Vernon?"

  "No, Lovejoy. Tinker'd actually let part of the cottage off to two young campers. Very reprehensible—it isn't his property—but fortunate in the circumstances. They also saw you and were able to corroborate ..."

  By a whisker. "Good old Tinker."

  "But furthermore, Lovejoy," she said portentously through Tinker's snores as the traffic hurtled and surviving pedestrians shuffled, "I have something to say."

  Dear God no, I thought. Not now. She's going to say this is all too much. Laying about with Donna, murder

  charges. I wanted to crawl into a hole. What a frigging world. Everybody corrupt with rotten self-seeking.

  "Go on," I said dully.

  "It's—it's money."

  That really made me rouse and stare. "Eh?"

  She faced me on the bench. People milled by. Tinker snored.

  "Do you know how much I paid yesterday for mushrooms, Lovejoy?" She clasped her hands on her lap.

  "Er," I said, fascinated in spite of myself.

  "They've gone up fivepence, Lovejoy. Now, as you well know, I'm not one to complain, but..."

  She'd made a list of commodities, foods, and whatnots, to prove Lovejoy Antiques Inc. wasn't making enough gelt. It came from her handbag like a roll of wallpaper, endless and wide. I closed my eyes, suddenly weak. She rabbited on and on. That's all it was, her bloody wage. I hadn't paid her for months anyway.

  "Which is why," she explained, trying to be casual, "I've drawn out my savings." She delved and gave me a check. "Please regard it as a loan only. Until this terrible business is over."

  The words blurred on the check for a minute. I looked away. Isn't it a good world? People are really generous and far-seeing deep down. It's only perceptive souls like me that recognize people's true worth. Money can't be bought.

  "And," Lydia said, "I've sent for the two, ah, boys. We need all the help ..."

  Several motor horns sounded. A falsetto screeched, "Lovejoy!" I prayed again, but it was. The Rover of many colors. Heaven knows what it is about me, but I've never had a prayer answered yet.

  "Lovejoy!" Sandy marched—well, minced—across the crowded pavement and stood, hand on hip, fluorescent copper-blue handbag swinging. "Your sweep what an absolute tremenduloso I mean what a fiasco! He plumped on the seat and gazed ardently into his reflection. He has tiny gilt mirrors on his gloves. I suppose I must have been a rotter in some earlier existence.

  "Er, Sandy. Your motor . . ." He'd parked it on the High Street's one pedestrian crossing. Mel sat stony-faced in the passenger seat. Another row.

  "Oh, you noticed!" Sandy rose, did a little skip and cried, "Mel, dear! Lovejoy adores the new wings." He whispered to me, "Tell him, Lovejoy! He's in rather a mood."

  "Er," I said nervously. "They're, er, great, Mel."

  The big old Rover was now adorned with two white metal wings projecting from the mudguards. Not, note, wings as in car, but as in angel. It was bloody daft.

  Mel glanced across. "Do you, Lovejoy?"

  "Really, Lovejoy?" Lydia said doubtfully, eyeing the car. "White's such a risk."

  "Well, dearie," Sandy trilled venomously at her. "We all know where your color sense goes in the winter time don't we I mean can we ever forgive that opal harness you wore over that plastic last Easter oooh"

  His screech made me leap a mile. Every head turned. He was pointing dramatically at Lydia's face. "You got it! Mel, dear. Come and seel! Lydia got that new flickershade eye luster ooooh!

  I thought, honest to God I can't stand much more. I'd just escaped the scaffold.

  Mel descended. "Lovely, dear," he said sweetly. "Let's hope you learn how to use it. The fashion might come back. One day."

  "Whose car's that?" A traffic warden, all I needed.

  132 .

  "Ours, dear," Sandy said. "D'you want a ride?"

  "What the fuck's it doing parked at traffic lights?"

  Sandy tittered. "Red and amber go with it, sweetie pie. But you're greenl"

  "Right." He pulled out his notepad, paused, looked at me. "Here. You the bloke as got done for murder?"

  "Murder?" Sandy screamed, faked a dramatic swoon. "Whose?"

  "Mr. Vernon's," Lydia said. "But it was a false charge ..."

  "Oh, him! Is that all?" Sandy ostentatiously returned his smelling salts to his handbag with a relieved flourish.

  "Right. I'm booking the lot of you," from the threatening warden.

  "You know Vernon, Sandy?" I asked.

  "Oooh, I love macho!" Sandy squealed. He stepped forward and gazed soulfully into the goon's eyes. "Promise you'll take my phone number, dear?"

  "And Chatto," Mel said. "He lodges with Deamer. They own that riverside estate down Salcott. His hair's quite wrong, of course."

  "Fancy that," I said faintly, thinking. So Chatto stayed with Deamer. No wonder it had all been so easy for them to plan. The low spit of land on which Deamer's house stood rose into my mind.

  "I love uniforms." Sandy's hand was looped in the goon's belt. The idiot, scarlet with embarrassment, escaped. Sandy's voice rose to a penetrating falsetto. "Must you go, dear? You can play with the gear stick ..." People were smiling. Everybody knows Sandy and Mel. They've got out of more scrapes than Pearl White.
This was just Sandy's technique.

  Abruptly I was on my feet, looking at them. My re-

  sources. Two oddities, a drunken barker, a specky prim bird hooked on health foods and properly aired underwear, and me. Still, it was the only army I'd got.

  "Look, troops," I said. "Where'll I get an airplane?"

  "That cow Vanessa," Sandy said absently, doing his eyes. "If you like blue."

  »

  We left Tinker and Lydia. They drove me off, arguing about their new fiber-optic screen wipers. ("But, Mel, how else can we wave at friends?" from Sandy). I tried explaining that I wanted to land secretly near Deamer's mansion house and burgle the place to see who'd murdered Donna's husband and Owd Maggie and bubbled me to be hanged, and find out who was pulling a pearl scam. Surely it wasn't too much to ask? They didn't really listen.

  "That peroxide bitch is behind it all," Mel said.

  Sandy tittered. "Dear Donna wears such canopies over those gaswork hips I mean she could be hiding anyone1."

  "You know Donna too, Sandy?" I asked.

  "Doesn't everyone, cherub? I told her the other week at Madame Blavatsky's you remember Mel I had fits over her coral red shoes—"

  "Walter has a plane," Mel cut in. "Let's try him. He flies really well."

  "Only when he smokes those strange powders, dear," Sandy said, giggling.

  My headache was back. "Sandy," I got out. "Donna Vernon."

  Sandy had his powder compact out. "Desperate Donna poor hag calling up all possible supernatural forces!" I tried to get a word in edgeways because there were a million clues here in full flight.

  "Don't mock the afflicted, Sandy dear," from Mel.

  Sandy giggled. "Mel's furious because he took a shine to her fancy man with the curls. Groper Chatto, poor lamb. A mystery, Lovejoy. She's so plain."

  This morning with the police Donna had looked quite distracted. No wonder—she'd not realized the danger I was in on account of her testimony. She was only in Chatto's scam because she was coerced. That was transparently plain. If Deamer and Chatto came croppers in the process it'd just be their hard luck. Well, whatever happened I'd still be the same shape in the bath tomorrow.

  "Wake me when we're there," I said, and nodded off, bushed.

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  17

  Dolly, whom I knew once, used to say that my life style was an embarrassment. In fact it's the other way about: Embarrassment's my life style.

  Luckily Boxenford's remote, one of those flattish areas of East Anglia where squadrons were stationed during the war. Occasionally our local paper carries pictures of American veterans returning to see how far downhill it's gone since they left.

  Airports don't bring out the best in me. I dislike them—correction: I hate them. I always get a wheelie that wants to go counterclockwise and the tickets are baffling. Other civilizations left Lindisfame Gospels. We'll leave a Dan-Air counterfoil. Airports to me mean spewing tots, and blotch-faced sleepless aunties plodding between loos and the duty-free. Airports are anonymous hotels, Levantine staff in brown and maroon talking Peter Lorre English, croissants instead of breakfast, and only the hotel flag logo ever changes. Travel used to mean the joyous experience of places. Once.

  "We're here, Lovejoy."

  136.

  Rousing, I looked out. The harbor. We were outside Beatrice's cottage. "What's going on?" I asked.

  "Time for your seance, Love joy," Sandy said. "Mel will fix your flight with that cow Vanessa while you're at it."

  "Give Cardew my regards," Mel said. "He's nice." »

  It's women, not men, who go for mystery, not to mention mystique. They're hooked on Meanings and What's Foretold and all that jazz. You can't blame them, I suppose. Nothing else to do all day. They've got to fill their time somehow.

  Once, I knew this bouncy dark-haired bird Angelina who was a zodiacal astrologist, whatever that is. Her bed crawled with embroidered signs. She ran her life to a starry timetable that had no relationship with planet earth or us inhabitants. Some days were great for this or that. Others were death. Oh, I'm not knocking it. Don't get me wrong. There's this London professor (though only psychology, so maybe he's a nut too) who's proved all Olympic gold medalists are Aries or something. And women's magazines are full of it. I'm simply open-minded, even about rubbish, as long as there's gelt to be made out of it. Anyway, this bird Angelina was a raving, er, friend. We'd met doing battle over a Cromwellian chair—solid square panel back, arms dead horizontal, legs bobbin-turned, brass-nailed leather covering the seat and back. (All those romantic movies are wrong, showing people sitting on chairs when they should be on stools; stools were twenty times as common.) Angelina outbid me. "It was in my prediction for today," she told me afterward. We were enthusiastic friends for two months, then she discovered that she'd misread our horoscopes and gave me the push. Apparently we'd been

  erroneously enjoying incompatibility all along. I've not forgiven her that chair, though. I never did get it.

  What I mean is that the future's guesswork, isn't it? Otherwise it wouldn't be future. So, while futurists might be really brimful of worthwhile data, the rest of us wait disbelievingly for a translation.

  And don't think there was any significance in that odd line from the old folk tune, between the salt water and the seashore. Songs aren't psychic. You'd go off your head if you let coincidences worry you. I was only after proof that Chatto'd killed Owd Maggie and Sid Vernon to liberate my lovely Donna. Anybody who knows me will swear I'm not given to vengeance. I was only after justice. Honest truth.

  Keeping calm, I went in. Mel had wanted to come too but Sandy wouldn't let him. Barney was out piloting the ocean wave. Beatrice was there, Sandy, me, that plump middle-aged bird I'd liked at Owd Maggie's seance, her dried-prune husband, two nondescript grannies, and a serious old bald geezer who had to contemplate alone for a few minutes before the whistle. Bea told me she'd brought her friend Seth, but I was damned if I could see him. There were eight chairs.

  "Does it have to be so hot in here?"

  "Shhh, Lovejoy. Don't be afraid," Beatrice said, patting my hand.

  Stupid woman; wrong end of the stick again. Afraid? I ask you. The only thing on my mind was to get the hell out of here and put the finger on Chatto by raiding old Deamer's house . . .

  "Hands," the plumpish lady was saying to me. We were supposed to stretch our hands out flat.

  "Will it rock about?" I whispered to her. "Only, on the pictures once ..."

  138 .

  "Shhh."

  "Seth," Beatrice was saying, her eyes closed and breathing rhythmically. We'd all promised to concentrate. Bea's cleavage drew my eyes, honestly accidental. Eyes have got to look somewhere, haven't they? That's their job. The room should have been darkened at least. Or is that for fortune-telling? Faith-healing? "Seth," Bea went. "Please speak to me."

  "Doesn't she mean Cardew?" I whispered.

  "Seth is Beatrice's spirit guide. Shhh."

  It was all so mundane. I couldn't imagine anything less spiritual than a sexy friend tuning in among a motley crew like us. A right sham. Everybody else was switched on all right, a picture of concentration. And Bea was doing her stuff, calling for Seth as if he were an overdue boat on some distant pleasure pond. I looked round. The grannies smelled of lavender mothballs. The plump bird was inflating with awe while the silence brought out the ticking of her prunish husband's fob watch. I wondered if it was antique. Baldie communicated with the infinite under a frosting of sweat. It was really gripping, like Wimbledon tennis and telly cricket, and other interminable yawns. My mind drifted. Old prints of so-called sports have soared in value. Don't take any notice of those silly newspaper articles saying half of the oil paintings in club houses are fakes. Since when did newspapers ever say anything right about art?

  "Do you mean Lovejoy, Seth?" Beatrice said. Nobody had said anything, not even Seth.

  "Here, love," I said nervously. Well, not nervously, really, because I'm a cool customer and don't get
spooked.

  "Shhh," everybody went, probably Seth as well I shouldn't wonder.

  "Madame Blavatsky, Seth. Is she well?" Bea spoke

  . 139

  conversationally, none of that phony falsetto voice which Owd Maggie had used.

  "Which Madame Blavatsky?" I whispered, and got a communal ballocking for interrupting. That narked me, because how can you interrupt a nonconversation?

  "Madame is happy, friends," Beatrice announced, smiling.

  Some of us murmured appreciation and relief. I didn't, though I've nothing really against deception. It's been pretty useful even to me.

  "Seth. Why was Madame struck down?"

  This was the crunch. We all saw Beatrice's head nod to some inner affirmation. Silence. My hands were damp, but only because it was so damned hot.

  "Because of the message," Beatrice said, as if repeating. "Seth. Please ask Madame what it was."

  "Look, love," I whispered to Beatrice while people glared. "I'll wait outside, have a stroll for a minute."