PearlHanger 09

by Jonathan Gash

  For authenticity Vanessa said we would take a wide sweep upriver and then do a long run down, out into the bay and curl in towards the promontory where Deamer's house stood.

  The riverbank rises there, half a remote mile inland,

  ... 153

  where trees crowd down to the water. Engine noise banged back at me from the steeper banks. We came near the narrows. We'd have to turn there or there'd be no more space.

  Tom signaled, arm out, and I leaned to take up the curve. Vanessa said some skiers could do it without skis, even in bare feet. To my astonishment I saw a figure standing knee-deep in the river, bent over with his face in a bucket, would you believe. Like children apple-bob, faces in the water. I missed him by a yard, silly sod.

  He was suddenly aware of the boat's passing commotion, and wobbled over. I was so startled I yelled out in alarm. The figure wore a tatty overcoat. I was bawling abuse even as I realized it was Tinker. We were past and skittering downstream before I wondered what the hell the stupid goon was up to. Probably drunk as an autumn wasp, as usual. I'd strangle the fool when I got back, frightening me like that.

  It was only the coldish wind and spray that was making my teeth chatter. I saw Tom's arm lift and sink, heard the engine rise to a low bellow. The waves beat faster, the rope a taut stick. The motorboat's wake shifted out of my way to a wider angle, thank God. The wooden jetty glided past at some speed, little Billy waving, and we were out into the estuary heading for the bay.

  The day was definitely leaning out of the light now. Astonishing how static the whole world seemed. Really weird. The promontory stood there, looming in the fading light. The house was not quite end-on, probably built for views. A distant yacht was moving into the little marina, and one other waterskier was raising a white arc further out than us. Other than that we had clear water. A few cars were switching on their sidelights leaving the marina's car park.

  154 .

  Only the spray proved we were shifting at such speed. The big house turned slowly. Its windows angled, thinned. The blank aspect came wider.

  I let go of the bar, kept my angle, slowed, and sank gracefully onto sand. A following wave nudged me over, but I didn't mind.

  All over bar the shouting.

  2Q

  Before I mutated into an antique dealer I used to have these dreams of suddenly being changed: a dazzling actor, famous explorer, brilliant physicist rising to tumultuous applause to explain his boring new subatomic particle. But I was thankful to wake palpitating into relief, because an actor must know his lines and in my dream I never did. And an explorer has to know how to survive in a blizzard, and I don't. And a physicist must be able to say something to that sea of expectant faces. . . . Suddenness, you see, is a killer. Knowledge is the survival factor. Only stupid people find themselves suddenly somewhere, ignorant of what to do.

  On my hands and knees without knowing how I'd finished up in that position, and waves splashing gently at my wrists. A dog was watching, crouching breathlessly in hopes of a game. I swore it to boredom and it trotted off, sniffing.

  Nothing was broken. I clambered out of my skis and left the damned things there on the shore. Tom had been right. He'd bragged he could land on a tanner, but surely it was my own brilliance that had glided me to this precise spot facing Deamer's house's side wall? Anybody would agree. It's the intrepid young man in his flying machine that matters. Proudly I unzipped for freer movement. Now a quick trot over to Deamer's house, grab the evidence that he and his mate had killed Owd Maggie and Vernon, then as soon as it was pitch dark, cross the tidal path to where Vanessa would wait with her car as arranged.

  Presumably there would be guards around. Silence was needed. Or was it? Nobody was on guard that I could see. They could be indoors, or sheltering under the trees, of course. Like a fool, I cleverly decided to outwit them, and wasted half an hour skulking around outside the house. By the time I'd got back to my starting place, narked and scratched and muddy in my underwear, it was completely dark and I'd not seen or heard a soul. Deamer's mansion didn't seem guarded at all.

  Many oldish houses have a conservatory. They're always a weak spot, plenty of windows and access through to the house. I was getting cold. It took me a while to nick some trellis wire from some plant too bone-idle to stand up on its own.

  Wire goes through putty and round corners. You loosen the putty, then shove the wire through it. Bend the wire to an angle, direct it into one of the holes so conveniently punched in the window's handle, and pull. A moment's wait for a clamor of alarms, then slide yourself in.

  Somebody else's house always has a strange feel, so I stood stock still, letting the lovely old place talk. Quietness and feelings are the two most underrated commodities these days—probably because you can't bung them in a bottle and charge a guinea an ounce.

  People were inside. I felt them and the house didn't mind me. It was safe to move.

  The communicating door was unlocked. I remembered that long hallway, the corridor. A feeble sea glow defined the stained glass window and was reflected back from the delicious old panels. I dropped on all fours and got to the corner. Voices.

  People were talking in the study. The old serf had left the light on down the cellar stairs, which was a mercy because enough light cast on the walls and heavy furniture.

  "You see, my dear," Deamer's voice was saying, "there are risks and risks. Some are unnecessary."

  "And what risk is he?" Donna's voice.

  "Pathetically small."

  There was a smile in the old man's voice. I found myself smiling with him. So he too thought little of Ledger. Smugness warmed me. I'd done wonders getting here unseen. A hundred percent effective. Good old Lovejoy, a real winner. And Donna already here trying to investigate on her own, the dear girl.

  "We shouldn't underestimate him," she said.

  A glass chinked. Decanting more sherry perhaps. I'd love a drop.

  "He is a murder suspect, Donna. He has a police record. He has no resources, no finance. Where's the risk?"

  Here, I thought, working it out. Hang on.

  "I've been with him, Donald. He's erratic, gets distracted by sudden sentiments. Of course he's easily fooled. But there's a streak of violence in Lovejoy that..."

  In Lovejoy? Me?

  Old Deamer: "The unfortunate demise of Sidney was necessary when he became so threatening after the event with Mrs. Hollohan. Lovejoy is still the prime suspect for both. You agreed at the time, my dear. Don't develop misgivings now."

  158 .

  Wrong. All this was wrong.

  "If it hadn't been for that filthy old man . . ." Donna sounded really regretful. She meant Tinker.

  Don't say any more, my mind pleaded with her. The phone rang in the study, very close. I jumped, by a miracle not knocking anything over. Deamer's old man's steps came nearer. I even heard him wheeze. They meant me, me the fool, me not worth a light. And Donna was no poor innocent. She was actually deploring that Tinker had sprung me from the nick when they'd done her husband in.

  Deamer was saying calmly, "And he's what?"

  During which pause I felt queasy. Not because all my nonthinking stupidity had finally proved itself, but because I was here high and dry and somebody else was . . .

  "Then he has to go, Kenneth," Deamer said. "Weren't you supposed to be following Lovejoy?"

  Oh, Christ. I was sickened. Between the salt water and the seashore all right.

  My dozy cortex yawned itself awake and nudged its alpha rhythms. Ken Chatto had been following me. He knew I was out behind Tom's boat. So why was he now phoning Deamer so urgently? My heart thumped once in fright as realization struck. Tinker.

  "Very well." The receiver went down. A scraping sound, old Deamer laughing. "Good news, my dear. The old man you detest so much is poaching in the forbidden area. Kenneth saw him near where Lovejoy was waterskiing. Kenneth is arranging an accident. It will be the usual sort. Two birds with one lucky stone. Marvelous."

  Then Donna
said, "Lovejoy wouldn't go waterskiing, Donald. Never in a million years." She was thinking, working it out. "Unless ..."

  I moved, gliding like I'd never done in my life before, out of breath with my heart banging and legs quivering. I fell down that bloody step into the conservatory and scrambled moaning through the window into the fresh dark cold.

  Then I ran, down the drive and across the path now flooding ankle-deep in the tide. I didn't even think of sharks and giant sea monsters. Of course I'd be too late. The knack of idiots.

  160 .

  21

  She was there, bless her, reading—reading—a book in the car's interior light when I fell in and gasped for her to drive to the jetty.

  "What is it, Lovejoy?"

  "Go, go!"

  You wouldn't think that barely two miles would take an age. My chest was burning and my throat raw. I honestly thought I was dying from panic and effort. That's what comes from being unfit and running blind. Vanessa was pale, driving down this ordinary rural road, peering ahead in the dashboard's glow. A car coming the other way shot past in a dazzle, the crammed occupants singing boisterously. Trees, signposts, colored bulbs strung across a gate for holiday caravans.

  "Sound your horn!" I reached across and pressed on the wheel, blaring the car's horn into the beams. What was S.O.S.? Three longs, three shorts, three longs, or the short blasts first? At least disturb them, tell them I was coming.

  "What are we doing, Lovejoy?" She was suddenly

  scared of me. We'd only known each other for a day. Much I cared, didn't even reply.

  We shot down the hedged lanes making a fearsome racket. The occasional strollers now turned to stare. Honestly, I was thinking we'd made it when a maniac white van squeezed terrifyingly past on a narrow bend. I'd cursed it before the significance of its red cross hit me. Hand off the horn then. The blue strobe blinked busily ahead, heeled into the lane leading to the jetty.

  "It's an ambulance," Vanessa said, her face chalk. "Billy?"

  "No. Tinker."

  A vacuum flask and a sandwich box rocked away on the rear seat. That was a kindness. She was doing me a kindness. I part dressed, grubbily, falling over.

  Tinker was being carried into the ambulance when we arrived. The driver had driven through a hedge to reach the jetty and was morosely eyeing the gap for his sedate getaway. A nurse was bullying two blokes to be careful with the stretcher. Tinker looked battered, but his face was uncovered.

  "He's still alive," little Billy complained.

  "Tinker. You all right, mate?"

  "You're bad news, Lovejoy," the nerk said. I bent to listen to this abuse. "A white boat ran into me like you did."

  "Me?" That really narked me. Friends don't strike friends. And I'd actually come to rescue the bad-tempered sod. "Who were they?"

  "They'd have done for me if Tom Connor hadn't happened along, Lovejoy."

  "Leave the patient alone," the nurse said.

  The ambulance driver lit a fag, stared. "Here," he said. "Why've you no socks or shoes on?"

  162 .

  We watched the ambulance crush slowly back through its homemade gap and depart down the track.

  "Did you win, Lovejoy?" Vanessa asked. She had her arm through her dad's, from relief.

  "At the house? No, love." I'd lost Donna. I now knew everything but had no proof. Nothing I could do except watch Deamer make a fortune from his scam and see my lovely murderess Donna ride off into the sunset with murderer Chatto to share the spoils. "Lost everything."

  The sandwiches were still there, and the flask. I brought them across to where Tom and Vanessa were standing, and perched on the edge of the wooden jetty.

  "Keep up our strength," I suggested, unwrapping the grub in the gloaming. "There are pearls, aren't there? In the river."

  Tom sighed, plumped down with a grunt. Vanessa sat on her heels, still recovering from her fright. "How did you know?"

  "My superb powers of reason," I said bitterly. Billy had nicked one of my sandwiches. I pulled the rest closer.

  "You nearly took his head off with your skis, Lovejoy," Tom said. "I went back to warn him off. It's an unlucky stretch of river, that. A white motor yacht had clobbered him."

  "Not accidental I presume."

  Tom shrugged. "Who knows? I shouted. They took off toward the estuary. I fished Tinker out and raised the alarm."

  "Ta, Tom," I said.

  "Deamer has men all along the banks through his estate, day and night. He says it's to stop anglers after bream, but. . ."

  "You do it with a bucket thing, right?"

  "Pearl fishing? Yes. A mask, made out of any old tin.

  ... 263

  Put leather round the rims, shaped to your face, and bend yourself into the shallow river."

  "Freshwater mussels are secret," Billy explained. "Nobody's to tell."

  I said, "Real pearls? This far south?"

  "Them musselbones are here all right," Tom said. "Except, ten years ago there was a sudden plenty."

  I'd heard this kind of thing. Sometimes pearls suddenly vanish from a river, then just as abruptly become plentiful, one mussel in every four. A pearl epidemic. Deamer had bought the estate when the owner died, and had a ready- made source of pearls for faking antique jewelry by the ton. I should have realized when Tom said that Deamer let the woods rot, yet guarded the river with obsessional fury. So whatever Deamer wanted had to be in the river. I'm thick.

  "Local pearls used to be little funny-shaped things, until they came plentiful. Now they're marble-big. Some bigger, even."

  Christ. No wonder. Worth anybody's murder, almost. Guiltily I canceled the thought. Deamer had a real winner here. Enough fantasy-baroque pearls to copy practically every famous historical brooch and pendant known.

  "The river must have had an outbreak of a parasite that stimulates the mussels to make whoppers. Any fancies?" Fancies are unusual colors, deep golds to greens to purples to blacks. But be careful. Absolutely jet black pearls are difficult to sell. It's the nearly blacks—brown blacks, greenish blacks and blue blacks that bring in the collectors and jewelers like wasps to fruit.

  "Only now and then," Tom said.

  "Lovejoy. What has Deamer to do with you?" Vanessa's voice was quiet. Tom glanced back up the track where a car's lights were jolting toward us. "Were the pearls so important

  164 .

  that you'd send Tinker poaching them while you went to burgle Mr. Deamer's house?"

  "Oh, aye," I said. No good explaining to women. "I'm to blame sure enough."

  The car stopped. Doors slammed. Torches flashed. Somebody said, "This where they pulled him ashore?" and a servile at-attention voice fawned, "Yes, sir."

  Another man was saying, "I couldn't avoid him, Ledger. The river hereabouts is so narrow."

  "So it is, sir." Ledger's voice, all assurance. They paused then, because they were upon us.

  "Wotcher, Ledger," I said, friendly to break the ice.

  "Lovejoy? What're you doing here?"

  "You're a duckegg, Ledger," I said. "This the gentleman that creased Tinker?"

  "Accidental, Lovejoy," Ledger said. "We have an independent witness. A gamekeeper from Mr. Deamer's estate."

  "Oh, aye." I looked at the pale-haired man beside Ledger. "Chatto, I presume?"

  Good old Ken Chatto was taller than I remembered, and happier than a murderer has a right to be. But then he'd won the fair lady and the fortune. He and his avaricious old partner Deamer could now turn out fakes till doomsday and be in the clear.

  "Never forget a face, Kenneth." I ignored the outstretched hand. "What were you doing dashing upriver so fast?"

  "It's a tenancy rule," Chatto said. "I must assist in patrolling the river with the employed gamekeepers."

  Ledger had marched to the end of the jetty and stared at the water for clues. He came back, nodding. "Nothing here for us," he announced. "Show me the boat you brought Dill in with, Tom. And you, miss."

  "Will you be all right Lovejoy?" Van
essa asked me. Chatto had made no move, and the bobby was following Tom and Ledger.

  "Yes, ta. I'll shout if Kenneth annoys me."

  We watched her follow them, me sitting on the jetty and the murdering woman-stealing bastard standing beside me smiling in the gloaming.

  "Well, Kenneth," I said finally. My tea'd gone cold in all this. "Pity about Owd Maggie and Vernon, eh?"

  "It was rather." I stared up at him. He actually sounded sincerely sorry. "You see, Lovejoy, Maggie'd received a spirit message. Donna overheard you phoning. There was no other way."

  So he was the nut. "Tut-tut," I said. "Forced into it, eh?"

  "I'm glad you understand." He sighed, all the cares of the world. "And I never did get on with Sidney. Especially when Donna chose between us. Did you know we were at school together? He was quite sound as a youngster, victor ludorum and all that. But spineless in later years. He lost his nerve over the old woman. Positively weak." He sounded merely mildly put out, an elderly vicar when tea's late.

  "And you did him in, so they'd arrest me?"

  "Why, certainly. I had to. Mr. Deamer has every right to expect reliable service. You can see that, Lovejoy." He sounded so bloody earnest.