Moonspender (25 page)

"Keep your fees, love." I shook the teapot, barely a
splash. You can't win them all. The dregs dribbled into the cup. "Promise
more tea and I'll talk to you alone."

She smiled suddenly, possibly her first real one since she'd been
a girl. "
Algie
,
Boysie
.
All of you down to the bar."

They left in various degrees of outrage. We did that curious
seated ritual dancing, ahemming and pretending not to be ready for a scrap.
Finally she broke.

"What are you up to?" she asked. "I can't agree to
anything illegal. I'm bound by the broadcasting mandate."

I went, "Tut-tut. That old thing."

Her smile was broad, brilliantly full in the lips. If ever this
harridan really learned to smile, a bloke would have to be on his guard. I
found myself smiling back, fool.

"About your program, Veronica," I began. "Listen .
. ."

Lize was delighted at the scoop. I tapped it out on her typewriter
while she fired questions. Yes, I conceded reluctantly, I'd made the marvelous
find on the exact spot where poor George Prentiss had met his death. We worried
over the wording.

"It sounds . . . deliberate, Lovejoy," she said.

"Like murder? Yes, I suppose it does."

She drew a sharp breath. "Do you mean it?"

"Aye, love. But I only want you to hint."

Then I drew from memory Ben Cox's sketch of that Roman leopard,
and let Lize have it.

"That's it; scoop number one. I'll give you two if you
promise not to be rough when ravishing me after supper tonight."

"Supper? I promise."

"Scoop two. Lovejoy, now manager of Ryan's Manor Farm
estates, revealed today that in the interests of conservation all campers,
ramblers, and vandals will be banned."

"True or false?"

I said airily, "Add a few paragraphs about Ryan's
determination to help animals and plants, him being an environmentalist."
Ryan'd go puce when he read that. It would stop his hiring out acres for
hunting and duck shoots. Still, you can't make omelets without a cracked shell
or two. And this way Enid and her crew would find out by tonight. "Want
scoop three?"

"Do I!" She was jubilant.

"Because Lovejoy's heart is in the right place, he will
rebury that precious object at the exact death spot, Saturday night. A memento
for poor old George, his friend."

She sat back on her heels. "Are you serious?" "One
other thing. Is your car mechanic bloke, er. . . ?" "Not tonight,
Lovejoy." She started to smile. "Well," I said. She finishes the
day's paper about five. I was meeting somebody—was it Mrs. Ryan?—at ten. Time
for at least a quarter of all I planned.

•
         
•   •       

Brainwaves come easy. The difficulty is carrying the ideas out to
good effect. I proved this by doing a bad thing. Like most such, it was based
on a totally good and benevolent assumption. I reasoned: Harold Ayliffe had
been punished by Ryan, boss of the local moonspenders, because he'd disobeyed
orders. On a dark night he'd disobediently gone out with his electronic miracle
stick hunting for archeological morsels without Ryan's express permission. He
is discovered. He is beaten up by the boss's minions.

So far so normal. These gang tiffs are like street-prostitute
arguments —this area belongs to one group, so other prostitutes steer clear or
else. Ayliffe had naughtily jumped the gun, so no wonder he'd finished up in
hospital. Things were coming together. Like, what if Clipper, the nongypsy
treasure-hunter, had found some common Civil War artifact? Ollie Hennessey,
that Civil War enthusiast, simply allows Clipper to "steal" his car
in payment. The
police'd
stand no chance of finding
the motor, not after Clipper's lads pulled a disguise job.

Ayliffe being safe in that clinic, I could easily prove Ryan the
nameless
bossman
. How? Why, simply threaten everybody
by phone, and the one who motored round to Harold's house in haste was boss,
right? I'd simply wait, watch, take his number. Naturally, I'd like it to be
that goon of a major, but he was too thick.

With a pocketful of coins, I started dialing. My voice isn't
particularly easy to disguise, so I was a slithery Lebanese, then a basso
profundo
Russian. Sir John got a falsetto Prussian.

"
Messich
fur Sur
Chone
," I chanted to his cold but delectable
secretary. "
Harolt
siz
cum
tonicht
or he
vill
reveal
alles
. Repeat
messich
,
pleess
."

She told me it was already recorded and rang off, ice. I sighed
and dialed the hotel for Sykie. I told the entire known world to call round at
Harold's house tonight, or else. That was my good idea.

The bad thing was the result.

Ayliffe's house was small and terraced in a street of endless
doors.

The trouble with these old-fashioned streets is there's nowhere to
loiter. Lamps aren't those thin towering concrete pillars. They're the gas sort
you can climb up, Benjamin Hicks 1820s pattern, which posh executives buy to
ornament their barbecue pits. No front gardens, either, so you can't hide. Walk
down once and you're just an evening

stroller. Come back, and chintz twitches while some heavy
constable gets off his bike and feels your collar. No, it's no joke. This modem
spate of burglaries isn't due to social factors, folks. It's the design of our
modem streets. Old streets have a thousand eyes. I got there about eight. A
singer in a nearby
tavem
was wrestling a pop song
into a premature grave. I needed a super brainwave.

A pathetic substitute came in a flash—lurk in the yard! No lights
meant Enid was out stalking snapdragons, so I did the old rag-and-bone man's
trick of counting the front doors going up the street, the yard doors going
down the back alley. Then a quick glance at those houses showing lights, and
into Harold's yard with miraculous stealth. I fell over a bloody clothes prop,
the untidy swine, and walked into a bucket to set some dog growling. Panicking
and sweaty I got in, by rattling the tumblers over with a small crochet hook I
happened to have handy.

A car grumbling its way along the street, tires slow and
squeaking. I heard it and thought aha. I shuffled eagerly along the hallway
hoping to peer through the front door's letterbox to identify it. I was
praising myself for brilliant planning when I noticed two things
simultaneously, all in an instant. One was a woman's voice chanting upstairs to
a vague thumping. Ayliffe's old mum, perhaps?

The second thing I detected with my razor-sharp senses was all
hell let loose from this firebomb breaking the window and exploding in the
front room. I fell over, shoved against the wall by the blast, and slumped for
a second, winded. There was one nasty cough of foul petrol-fumed breath, and
flame whooshed into the hallway behind me. Slowly I climbed erect, stunned and
wobbling. I remember thinking, Where's that come from, for heaven's sake?

Then a car's tires really screeched and its engine thrummed.
Unbelievably, another cocktail splashed in a shower of glass into the room.
Lucky I was in the hallway, but even so heat stretched my cheeks and hands.
Fire shot along the floor into the hall after me. I heard myself squeal, and in
a mist found myself clawing at the front door. It wouldn't move. Locked. I
panicked, then tried to elbow the vestibule glass but failed, damned near broke
my bone on the safety glass, impenetrable. A second ago, stealth. Now this
pandemonium of flames and noise. It'd have to be a leap across the fire now
spreading along the walls—

I heard a scream from upstairs, a high screech of terror. The
stair side was aflame, a sickening bluish business, all swift aggression with
hardly a glimmer of yellow to light a coward's way out. I heard an answering
scream, me, and swore, cursing my festering luck to be here, and upended my
jacket over my head to blunder up. The stairs went on
for
ever
, took a Lifetime. My voice was booming out "
Ow
ow
ow
. . ." as I charged, knees and feet everywhere. I actually crashed the
door open with my head and hands together, always the idiot.

Enid was in the front bedroom screaming, when I battered my way in
still going "
Ow
ow
ow
." I stopped it from embarrassment and gaped. We
gaped at each other. Another
whumph
from downstairs
as the creeping blue fire got hold of something. She stepped away, hands out
protectively. Mind you, I must have looked mad, crashing in with my hands homed
up by my head, hooded in my jacket, with watery flames flickering behind me.
But she looked odder.

She was gowned to the floor in midnight blue. A dark candle stank
the place rotten. No bed here, only marks on the floor. Spangles, shiny radii,
a kind of writing. Oddly she held a stick and a scroll. A voice yelled outside
in the street. A door slammed.

"The bloody place is on fire," I shouted, countertenor.
She didn't move, staring.

"Come on, you silly cow," was my next contribution to
constructive discourse. No movement, so I slapped her stupid wand aside,
stepped among those daft scribbles, kicking them all over the place, and
dragged her to the top of the stairs.

A roar met us. Smoke gouged my lungs and scraped sight from my
eyes. I recoiled. Every staircase hides a hellhole that stores paint, vacuum
cleaners, brushes, and the flames had reached it. The noise increased. I was
badly frightened now and dragged Enid by her hair into the back bedroom,
slamming the door behind us on that
huthering
heat.
Smoke seeped quite pleasantly up from the floorboards. I tried the light
switch. The bulb
ht
for a second, exploded. The
window.

It was the old sash-and-sill sort, thank God. I hauled Enid onto
the sill, her legs dangling. Opening the window had set the fire roaring like
in an old draw chimney. Flames were actually tonguing under the door, horrible
swines
. Smoke clouded out over our shoulders. We set to
coughing, having to hunch over to breathe.

My streaming eyes cleared enough to see how close safety actually
was. I was so elated that, before I thought, I'd reached, swung round the
drainpipe to stand on the tiled roofing over the back door, and dangled
joyously down to the ground in a trembling sweat.

"Please," I heard some pest scream.

Crazy Enid was still sitting up there, smoke billowing out around
her. She was choking, swaying to breathe. I yelled a mouthful of obscenities
and rushed about dragging buckets, a wheelbarrow, anything to stand on to climb
back on to that decorative tiling. I grabbed the drainpipe to keep myself
safe—it was only about fifteen feet to fall—and extended a hand. She tried to reach
but failed. She recoiled, clutching the sill and spluttering.

"Enid," I said to the silly bitch, calm now I was safe.
"Enid. Let go. Grab my hand as you fall."

"I can't." She was weeping. "I'm not that degree of
perfection, Lovejoy."

"Eh?" Degree of perfection? I thought, she really is off
her nut. She was going to get burnt to fucking death in a few seconds. I could
hear the bloody fire growling, gathering itself. A pane beneath us exploded as
the obscene glow of unstoppable flames diffused over the yard. We'd all go any
minute, and here she was nattering balderdash. How the hell do you talk to a
mad woman? Join them.

"Indeed you are not, Enid," I agreed calmly. "But I
am. Jump. You will fly—"

The silly cow took me literally, closed her eyes and leapt sideways,
arms and legs wrapping me in a spider-hold that tore the drainpipe off"
its mountings and tumbled us both down the tiles, me cursing. I wedged a foot
in the gutter and stopped us plunging headfirst miles to our doom —well, a few
feet, maybe even more. I prized her free and lowered her, followed, and cracked
her across the face. "You stupid bitch!"

People were everywhere now, fire engines with bells, gongs, the
whole paraphernalia of hysteria mixed with nuisance. Enid was gaping at me, but
smiling in her gape, if you know what I mean. Lights were going on. Sirens came
closer.

"Magister. Your anger is just." Enid spoke with the fire
reflected on her face. She wore an expression of exaltation mixed with, well,
I'd say awe if I had to choose a word. Doubtless some trip she'd been on. High
as a kite. I mean, in her nightie singing to a candle?

She gazed rapturously at the house with that demented smile.
Flames were gusting out of the upstairs window. The frames were spurting,
blistering, sagging. I shook her hand off" and edged away. I hadn't
realized fires were so noisy, the force so tremendous. The damned wall might
fall on me. I moved further, faster. The firemen arrived as I reached the gate,
bursting in with axes and grim intent.

"Magister." Loony Enid was trotting alongside.

"Anybody inside?" a yellow-helmeted officer man yelled
at me.