PearlHanger 09

by Jonathan Gash

  "I can see you're off your frigging nut."

  "How dare you!" He quivered like a pointer dog. For a second I thought he was going to boot me into the water. "How dare you! You—tramp! You've lost, Lovejoy. Don't you understand? We're already spreading the word, saying your motive for killing Sidney was the pendant. Once the trade hears that, everybody will believe our products are genuine. Then we can sell fakes as genuine a hundred

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  times over—all under compulsory secrecy, to dealers and collectors from all over the world. It's beautiful. It can't fail, Lovejoy. Thanks to you."

  "I'd approve," I said, "if it weren't for Owd Maggie, Sid, me nearly getting topped. And Tinker."

  "You, Lovejoy," said this upper-crust example of gentlemanly enterprise, "are simply envious of my success."

  My baffled silence was still matching his affronted petulance when Ledger led the others across to say polite good-byes. Ledger told me to make sure to report in at the police station in the morning.

  "Aye, aye," I said irritably. "Oh, Kenneth."

  "Yes, Lovejoy?" He paused, still annoyed at me for not admiring his murderous cleverness.

  "I spoke to Owd Maggie today. You've not won at all."

  Chatto recoiled and actually moaned as he turned and blundered away. Ledger glanced, followed. I lifted a hand for Tom to pull me to my feet.

  "Look," I said, as they drove off. "I know I'm a pest, but is there any chance of a pint and a pastie? I've something on my mind."

  There was a big auction not far off. Maybe there was

  something we could put in. . . .

  »

  "Lovely. Between one and a half and three grains in weight."

  Tom was reminiscing and fugging the warm sleepy kitchen with his pipe. Vanessa was listening. Billy was sleeping upright on her lap, sometimes leaping into wakefulness with a startled murmur. I'd got the old bloke talking about his gamekeeping days as soon as we'd started on Vanessa's meat-and-potato, concentrating loosely on the local pearls of

  course. Natural pearls are measured by weight; four grains equals one carat. It's only cultured pearls that are measured in millimeters, because their center is a solid mother-of-pearl bead made from a Mississippi River valley clam.

  "Oh, some whoppers," Tom went on. "I've seen a perfect sphere brought out when I was a lad. Size of a sparrow's egg. My granduncle was a poacher," Tom explained disarmingly. "It was his pal culled it. Forty-one grains. He bought his house with that, Lowestoft way."

  "You'll not see them often, eh?" Pearl size is all important. Not surprising, really. It takes a poor old mollusc three years to thicken a pearl's coat a single millimeter.

  "Not likely. Twisted and bent. Fishbones. When I was gamekeeping there used to be six poachers, as secret as hell. Tinker's uncle was one, the bugger. They pass it down in families." Served me right for being too besotted with Donna to even talk with Tinker. Tom went on, "Since Deamer took the estate and fetched in his gamekeepers we've had two poachers go."

  "Go?" I said blankly.

  "Die. Accidental deaths. One drunk-drownded." He said drown-dead like they do round here. "One just lost. All open, like."

  "Of course." And it would be all open, like. Deamer would plan that, and Kenneth would execute it. An enormous depression settled on me. All along they'd proved themselves pros. No wonder Deamer thought I'd the brains of a ticket collector. Even Donna's tempestuous love-making had been planned. Anything, including murders, to protect their wonderful pearl mine.

  "February's best," Bill was saying. "Winter frost kills the weeds, see? Makes the mussels easier to find. But our onshore wind stirs up the silt."

  168 .

  "Saves a few innocent mussels, though."

  Tom grinned. "For an antique dealer you're too softhearted, Lovejoy."

  "For a gamekeeper you know too much about poaching."

  He was serious again. "Only way to beat them. After all, you're not allowed to ..." He broke off, fiddled with his pipe.

  "No," I agreed bitterly. "You're not allowed to eliminate people who misbehave. Only Deamer and Chatto are allowed to do that." I cheered up as one original thought blundered into my empty skull.

  "Penny for them, Lovejoy?" Vanessa asked over little Billy's head.

  "Just thinking, love. I've been stupid. You know why? Because I went out of my natural element. Oh, sure, sure. You were great, getting me to Deamer's house. But this desperate stuff's not my scene. What happened to Tinker and Sid Vernon and Owd Maggie proved that."

  "What is your natural element, Lovejoy?"

  "Antiques, love." I hitched my chair closer to the table for my elbows' sake. "Any more tea?" I asked, and began, "Listen. Once upon a time a lady hired this antique dealer and took him to a seance ..."

  And my mind was working it out: a few weeks to the big auction at Montwell. It had to be then.

  22

  Seduction's not my greatest skill. Women are always there before me, though I try. The few times I've actually set out to make a deliberate ploy have been either abject failures— with the bird rolling in the aisles laughing and me narked as hell—or so astonishingly successful that you begin to wonder who's seducing whom. I remember one lovely bird, a woman with a wonderful dress sense and a brass Culpeper microscope, Burke and Jones of Bristol about 1780, the best. She had one of those porcelain faces and transparent skin. I sweated blood over her, spent a fortune on talcum powder and a new razor blade. When we'd finally made smiles she said to me along the pillow, "You know, Lovejoy, this is so overdue I was worrying what was wrong with me." See what I mean about them being there first? Makes you wonder what women really think about all day long. Different minds from normal, I suppose.

  But sometimes seduction's thrust upon you. So I came in from the rain like a drowned rat and stood dripping on the posh rugs strewn about the receptionist's office of Tierney's Auction Rooms, Ltd., in Montwell. Auctioneers

  are the easiest of all known "marks" for the con trick, being natural crooks themselves and therefore unable to believe it'll ever happen to them.

  "Hello," I said, beaming and making sure the inner office door was closed.

  "Good morning, sir. May I help you?" The woman did the eye trick, an up-and-down glance full of scorn. To women grotty means poor, and they hate poverty with fervor, wealth being their religion.

  "Yes, please," I said, deciding to be wealthy. I never have a plan. Spontaneity works best. "This is where the famous jewelry sales are?"

  "Certainly." She didn't quite melt, but her kilojoule of gratification was a giant step for mankind.

  I shook my plastic mac to irritate. Our relationship couldn't flower without tolerance. The sooner she learned some the better. "I've been sent to inquire into your firm's auction practice," I said.

  "Into our firm's . . .?" She was furious.

  "By Lord Eskott. I'm his confidential secretary. James, ah, Chester." She paused. "A private source may send an antique item in, you see." I hesitated, to indicate a faint distaste for commerce.

  "I see." Her mind logged: a peer of the realm, death duties, a fantastically valuable heirloom, shame at things coming to such a pretty pass. Her hand moved toward one of those button telephones that never work. "I'd better contact Mr. Tierney ..."

  "Ah, no. Confidential, you see." Snootily I looked about. "I'm first required to make an informal assessment. You do understand?"

  "Yes, yes," she said, now a little anxious.

  I pressed on quickly. "Outside the normal channels. It's somewhat sensitive."

  "Mr. Tierney usually takes, ah, significant visitors into his office."

  "Then we'll have to meet elsewhere," I decided, facing up to duty. "After work, possibly?"

  Loyalty and propriety battled for her soul. Neither won, with her being female. Curiosity and the faintest hint of sin carried the day.

  "Only to discuss confidentiality for specially valuable items," she affirmed carefully. There was to be no funny business.


  I looked her straight in the eye and smiled with utmost sincerity. "What else?"

  »

  My apologies to Lord Stanhope Eskott, if there's a real one, because I told Olivia things about the noble Eskotts that I honestly shouldn't have mentioned to a living soul. Of course I did the decent thing, made her promise not to breathe a word and all that, but as I warmed to my task over a dainty tea in Montwell's dainty tearooms I'm afraid that quite a few scandalous disclosures tripped lightly from my tongue. Lord Eskott's daughter Felicity was a slut, son Fanshawe a renegade, and as for her ladyship and that cowherd . . .

  She was fascinated. Not of course by the happy bits. The tragedies and scandals went over really great.

  "You mean Leandra ran away7." She was out of breath, her cheeks red spots and spoon absently stirring her empty cup and driving me mad.

  "Look, Olivia." I was all stern. "It isn't for us to judge." The reproof established me as a pillar of rectitude.

  "Why, of course not," Olivia cried softly. "We can't, shouldn't . . ."

  But we did. We agonized over young Bertie's commission in the Household Cavalry now he'd met that actress: Was she worth the risk? We were outraged by cousin Maltravers' behavior, going off like that. We prayed that Clara wouldn't turn out as all her mother's side had done. Those Cornish Penhaligons had bad blood.

  "One thing after another," I sighed. "You can appreciate my difficulty."

  "Oh, yes!" she breathed. "The scandal if word got out! But Tierney's confidentiality ..." ·

  I put in anxiously, "But are the personnel reliable?"

  "Ah." Olivia wagged a finger. "I can see you don't understand how trustworthy auctioneers operate."

  "No indeed," I said truthfully. Does anyone?

  "I'll go over it right from the beginning ..." »

  That was on Monday of the week after my nonraid on Deamer's house. Five weeks till the big Montwell auction. I began experimenting the very first night back in my own dowdy cottage.

  Once I get going I'm quite lost in intensity. Creative art is all very well, but successful forgery has to be executed with skill, like all murders.

  Love creates art; precision makes fakes.

  23

  Work's not all beer and skittles.

  What I said about art and forgery is true, yet these pinnacles of human endeavor do have common ingredients. The most important is enthusiasm, plus I'm a great believer in impetus.

  One trouble was Tinker. He was really narking me. The surly old burke was living the life of Riley in hospital, chatting up the nurses and grousing whenever I called to see him. He wanted to stay abed, when I now desperately needed his help. After all, I'd almost saved his life—well, nearly almost because it was Tom's return that stopped Chatto having another go, but I'd meant well.

  Lydia was another pest, and Sandy and Mel fourteen more each at least. I kept being hauled from my workshop to referee arguments on percentages and pricing the antiques from my sweep. Mel had managed another few items as they'd gone along, the prize being a beautiful Fuller's measurer. This rarity—think of rolling-pin-sized ivory cylinders covered in ruled lines and numbers—was a unique calculating device in its day, and now costs the earth. And so it should, because nowadays we've only got grotty computers.

  Between these rows I did trial after trial until the work- shed's floor was littered with discarded Siren-shaped test pieces, dashed in town to see Tinker, hurtled to our pathetic library to be told there was no demand for the books I demanded, and between times got on seducing Olivia from her tenacious loyalty at Montwell. I was knackered. Well, even Don Juan had off days.

  Still I plowed on with instinct my sole guide, desperately worried about time.

  Seven trials was my minimum, seven pieces of jewelry whose central piece was a huge baroque "pearl," Italian Renaissance style. Six could be honestly duff, but one had to

  be perfect, as near the original pendant as dammit.

  »

  Two vital points about money.

  The law says "forgery" only has to do with coinage and documents. Much it knows. Legally, however, anybody can make a "reproduction," so you can safely copy the Mona Lisa (for purely artistic reasons, of course). But "forgery" and "counterfeiting" and "fake" the world over mean you intend to deceive, you rascal you. And it's no good claiming that only King John's signature is phony on that beautiful Magna Carta you've just made, that the rest of it is genuine parchment, ink etc. Worse, the judges play hell even when there is no original, like if you forge your Uncle Basil's will and never had an Uncle Basil. Some counties in Scotland aren't quite so bad. For weird historical reasons they let you forge what you like, as long as you don't actually profit from it. The rest of our scatterbrained kingdom's laws cheerfully convict you twice: once for the forgery and again for passing it. See the risk? A harsh old world.

  Luckily, most antiques aren't documents. So you can make and even wear reproductions of the Crown Jewels for all the police care. But carrying those same repros in a sack at midnight makes the peelers suspect you're going to swap the originals. Then you're for it. Intent to deceive, you see?

  The other vital point is that everything can be copied, faked, forged, reproduced, and counterfeited. Sometimes it's respectable, like that famous ex-presidential candidate who recently made a bomb from fakes in the U.S., legitimately of course. Respectability's an elastic little word. The trouble is that blokes like me, already under police surveillance, shouldn't even dream of doing anything risky. So it would have to be the path of righteousness. Worse, it would also have to be very, very legal.

  Now, hand on my heart, I wasn't going to deceive a single soul and that's the honest truth. Except Lydia, and Olivia. And maybe Mel and Sandy, Deamer, Chatto, Donna, and a few score antique dealers. But you can't count any of these, because they're in the trade, and that's normal.

  ♦

  "Sandy," I said carefully one morning when they arrived to do the bookwork. "I want you to go to the harbor and with all possible secrecy bring me ten stone of herring. Soon as you can."

  He fainted a bit and screeched, then got the giggles. "But, Lovejoy! People will stare!" And him in a feather boa and cavalier hat. Mel would have nothing to do with it. Typically, neither asked what I wanted them for.

  I'd no idea how much a stone of fish actually was, but

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  it sounds a lot. I tried working out the ancient measure: fourteen pounds to a stone, say two herrings to a pound . . . hopeless.

  "If our lovely fringes go stinky-poos, Lovejoy," Sandy threatened, still tittering. "Not Brightlingsea?"

  "Not necessarily from Brightlingsea, no."

  Once Sandy'd had a tame beetle called Francisco. On a black day in Brightlingsea an itinerant picture dealer had accidentally stood on Francisco. Sandy'd made local headlines petitioning the town council for a day of mourning. The council refused. Sandy still raises opposition to the mayor every polling day. I shrugged and went round the side of the cottage to my workshed. It's only a battered old garage, but it's where I do all my forgeries—I mean my restoration work.

  The first step to forging a pearl is making the pearl's shape. Easy for "classical" spherical pearls, but difficult for baroques. Go in two stages. First, make the "bead," as pearl fakers call it. Traditionally this was a simple drop of glass. Nowadays clever sinners use epoxy resins and plastics because you can adjust the bead's weight (and thereby its overall relative density). Then coat your bead with pearl. A mollusc does it for nothing, but has all the time in the world. It would have to be essence d'orient.

  Cultured pearls are often dyed; a cotton strand dipped in hydrochloric acid shows the dye when you touch a cultured pearl with it. The best way to detect artificial pearls, on the other hand, is by pressing them to your sensitive upper lip—cold means real, warmish means imitation. Spain perfected the manufacture, hence the nickname for artificial pearls, majjies, from Majorca, after the island. Two vital don't's: Women's magazines are forever preachin
g the pin test—imitation pearls show the pinprick—and (something equally daft) drying pearls with a hot-air hairdryer when you wash them. The best ways of ruining your pearl necklaces anybody could imagine.

  The Siren was easy to shape in plasticine. The surface needed to be flawless. Naturally I'd got photographs of the genuine piece, from the 1971 sale when Sotheby's sold the original.

  In faking antiques, shapes are simple. For speed, I settled for the faker's friend. Silicone rubber sets swiftly, doesn't need heat or separating chemicals, gives terrific detail.

  While it was setting round my Siren-shaped lump of plasticine I strolled across the side lane to Kate and arranged for her to come and help me with all those bloody fish. She's one of those gnarled old coast women who know how to do things.

  "Scrape herring?" she said. She was washing in a dolly- tub with a wood posser that had been used so much it was bleached, skeletal, and furry.

  "I want their scales. Ten stone, Kate."

  "God save us! You're a rum un, Lovejoy, no mistake." She fell about laughing and making jokes about feeding the five thousand and all that while I waited patiently. She's really hilarious, silly old crab. "All right, son. Give me a call."