The Gondola Scam (4 page)

He thought hard. No mean feat this, when sober. His rheumy old
eyes creaked open after a minute. "Patrick's with Elsie. They're in the
Arcade."

My heart sank. "Don't you mean Patrick and Lily? I
thought—"

"Nar, Lovejoy. He gave Lily the push last night over him
seeing that sailor."

"Ah," I said as if I understood.

He shot into the boozer with my last groat. I plodded down the
town's expensive new shopping precinct—think of redbrick cubes filled with
litter—into the Arcade. This is a glass-covered alley. To either side is a
series of tiny antique shops, only alcoves really, with antique dealers moaning
how grim life is and how broke they are. Tinker was right. Someone emitted a
screech.

"Ooooh."

I followed the shrill groans—the only known groans higher than top
G. Today Patrick was in magenta, with purple wedge heels and an ultramarine
sequined cap. As if that wasn't enough, he was being restored by Elsie, who was
frantically patting some pungent toilet water across his cheeks. Margaret
Dainty was looking harassed because Patrick had carefully selected her little
shop to swoon in, slumping elegantly across a 1765 Chippendale Gothic chair in
mahogany. I didn't even know she had one of these rarities.

Awed shoppers were milling about. Understandable, really, because
Patrick standing still's a ghastly enough spectacle. Doing Hamlet's death scene
he's beyond belief.

I decided not to ask Elsie about Lily. I’m no fool.

"Ooooh!' Patrick moaned, false eyelashes fluttering.

I crouched down, avoiding Elsie's cascade of eau de cologne.
"One thing worries me, Pat. Why is it you always get bad news before
anybody else?"

His stare gimleted me in sudden recovery. "Patrick!" he
screamed, giving me a mouthful of invective. "Pat's so . . »
uncouth." He instantly reverted to a swoon. "Oooohh!"

Elsie wailed, "Please don't upset him, Lovejoy!"

"Mr. Malleson and Crampie," I prompted the reclining figure.
"Who, when, and why, mate?"

Patrick sobbed dramatically, beating his breast in anguish.
"Poor Mr. Malleson! How many more catastrophes can I be expected to
bear?" His voice went suddenly normal. "Mind my handbag, dear. It's
handmade crocodile." And immediately went back to show biz. "Oh, woe!
Oh, heartbreak! Oh—"

I looked across at the distraught Margaret. She's a lovable
friend, if you can imagine such a thing, though she's a mite oldish and limps a
bit. Still, you can't pass up someone who loves you and has looks and
compassion. Saints get beatified for less. Look at Czar Nicholas. "You
tell me, love."

"We haven't been able to get a word out of him—"

"Right."

I tipped Patrick off the chair with a crash. He screamed, which is
hard to understand, because the Chippendale antique wasn't even scratched.
"You perfect
beast
, Lovejoy! And
you
can stop
drenching
me in
stink
,
you silly cow!"

I'm sure Patrick only does all this to get an audience. God knows
what he does when he's alone, probably just goes into suspended animation.

"Sorry, dearest," Elsie sobbed. "Now see what
you've done, Lovejoy!"

A bobby was pausing outside in the High Street to inspect the
swelling crowd in the Arcade. Things looked like getting distinctly out of
hand. I put a knee on Patrick's chest. "Tell, or I'll crumple your cravat.
You were there, weren't you?"

He wheezed as I pressed harder. "Yes. Three great
bruisers
out of a lorry did it. Wrenches
and things. They hit poor Mr. Malleson." His eyes welled with tears as he
sniffed out the rest of the story. "Crampie positively
begged
for mercy. It was
ghastly
, Lovejoy. They
snatched
that perfectly delicious
painting."

"Where were you?"

"In my car with ... a friend."

"What were they like?" I know it was night, but there had
been some light.

"Oh, quite
plain
,
really, though one could have
really
improved himself with the right suit. Quite young, rather light hair for a
foreigner . . . ghastly primrose leather jacket—"

"Foreigner? How do you know that?"

The bobby had decided to move into the Arcade. Sensing a bigger
audience, Patrick immediately shrieked his way into frank hysteria.

I knew enough about layby scuffles to realize it was hopeless
getting anything more definite. I kissed Margaret so long and said I'd honestly
see her soon. She told me to be careful and to come for supper one evening. I
promised to and managed to say "honestly" twice more as I shot out.

I'm not much on the police force. Its useful bits are mostly
hooked on its own problems, and the rest is a monstrous anachronism. Ledger'd
tell me nothing, so they were best forgotten.

Instead I got hold of Tinker and told him to drum up news of any
antiques, genuine or fake, resembling the painting. He was narked at that
because the boozer was still open, but I gave him the bent eye and said get
going. The lazy old devil went shuffling off, a couple of brown ales clinking
in his shabby overcoat.

Then from the phone box by the war memorial I rang Connie and
asked her to lend me a few more quid and could she please fill her motor up
with petrol and let me borrow it. I had a secret notion to impress the blond
bird instead of being embarrassed in my old Ruby. She hesitated. I said,
"If you don't I’ll make you do all the sky bits in my next jigsaw
puzzle."

"Sadist." Then she sweetly added she'd come along too,
because we didn't want Lovejoy using borrowed wealth to pick up some boneheaded
young tart, did we? Bitterly I agreed that we didn't want that, and stood
miserably by the traffic light near the Castle Park entrance thinking of her
bloody cheek. Women have no trust in their fellow man, that's what it is.

4

"Suss this out, love," I said to Connie in the torrid
heat of her vast motor. We were parked among the trees by the football ground
for secrecy. One other good thing about Connie is that she loves gossip.
Attentively she sat in her pale apple costume, with pearl necklace and earrings
revealing class. I gave her Patrick's account. As far as I knew, it added
nothing, but Connie with her devious woman's mind instantly saw a crack.

"Why didn't the police ask Patrick all this?"

"They did. He wouldn't tell them."

"Why not, if he told you he'd actually seen those three
brutes?"

"Well, er, he was, er, with some bloke. You see, love, erm,
Patrick's, erm—"

"Another queer," Connie said, nodding briskly. "So
now we must find his lady friend."

I had my doubts. "Elsie? No use, Connie. I heard she was in
Ilford until late. And Patrick had some row with Lily last night."

She got excited. "Don't you see? Lily must have learned about
Patrick going to meet his friend and followed."

"So Lily maybe knows something extra about last night?"

She gave me a sweet smile. "You're learning, darling. Close
that car window. There's a draft."

Lily was partway through a bottle of gin by the look of things,
and dark blue gondolas of sorrow hung fleshily beneath her eyes. Worse, she
instantly took against Connie, even when I'd introduced them with my best
Edwardian gallantry. Plainly she would reveal nothing while a strange woman was
in the house, so I had to ask Connie to wait outside. She left Lily's hallway,
managing to slam three doors on her way to sulk in the car.

"Come through, Lovejoy. My husband's abroad again." I
breathed a sigh of relief and followed her in. The telly was on. Lily's living
room was a fug of fag smoke. "Have you seen Patrick?" she asked
wistfully. "How is he?"

"Upset," I said lamely. I'm not much good at these sort
of things.

"Is he?" She looked up hopefully. "I suppose that
crabby geriatric rat-bag Elsie Hayward's smarming round him." When I said
nothing she grew aggressive. "Now you tell me the truth, Lovejoy."

"Yes. In the Arcade."

"Bitch. She's had more false starts with men than all the
tarts in Soho. He'll come back to me, Lovejoy—won't he?"

“Erm, quite possibly."

She subsided onto an armchair. "Oh, Lovejoy. What a mess. Why
can't he see that it's me he needs?"

"Last night, Lily. You followed Patrick."

"Mmmm. He'd got some man in his car." She looked
piteous. "It's only a weakness, Lovejoy. This phase."

"Sorry, love," I said helplessly. "But you
saw?"

"Yes. It was that horrid sickly sailor man he usually—"

"I mean the goons, Lily. Patrick said one was foreign. What
accent?"

"I didn't pay much attention. I was frightened. The van had
been waiting for Mr. Malleson and Crampie. They hit them, really hit them,
Lovejoy. Then the young man shouted, 'Get the painting!' The men didn't care.
They jumped in the van."

"And you rang the police, Lily?"

She shook her head. "No. I just sat there and watched. The lorry
drivers came running, but the van went."

"No other facts, Lily?"

"He was continental, Lovejoy. Maybe Austrian, that sort of
accent. And flashy." She shivered and pulled her dressing gown tighter
round her. "Lovejoy," she said, heartbroken. "He was laughing.
The young one, in bright colors. Once they had the painting he ran back and hit
Mr. Malleson and Crampie. While they were on the ground. Oh, they lay so
still."

I consoled her as much as I could, saying thanks and Patrick was
sure to come back soon. She asked tearfully did I really think so, and I said
sure, just you see. I felt I'd been through the mangle when I escaped.

Connie was freezing but excited to know what Lily had seen. I told
her all of it, hoping she might do her helpful guessing trick again.

"Didn't she tell Ledger any of this?"

"And get Patrick in trouble? Ledger would ask what she was
doing herself, parked in the night hours near the scene of an antique robbery.
After all, she's an antique dealer herself—on good days."

"Darling. Who would want the fake so badly? It doesn't make
sense."

"That bird."

"In the auction?" Connie's mental radar blipped hatred
into her mind. "That one trying to attract everybody's attention in the
car park with the wrong hairstyle?"

"She bid a fortune for the fake even though she knew it was
duff. Mr. Malleson went bid-happy so she ducked out." Maybe she had
decided to acquire the painting by the most decisive of all methods—armed
robbery. Thugs are easy enough to hire anywhere these days, God knows.
"Drive me to High Street."

"Only if you take your hands off, darling. Your fingers are
freezing."

"How else can I get them warm?"

We argued all the way back to the cottage. The rest of the day was
full of pleasure, and therefore uneventful.

5

It was coming dusk when Connie finally left. I was in good time
and ready when the bird called. I cranked my zoomster's engine and lit its
lamps while she went on at me.

"You're not coming in that thing?" The blonde leaned
from her perfumed cocoon and gazed down at me. "We'll take all
night."

"Race you," I said with dignity.

Her car rolled, sneering, up the lane. My crate clattered
reproachfully in its wake. It hates being out after dark. The bird was waiting
by the chapel, deep engine thrumming and her fingers doubtless tapping
irritably. Pricey motorcars like hers are all very well, for a year or two.
After that they go wrong and decay in forgotten yards. It's filthy little heaps
like mine that keep going. Grandeur tends to rapid obsolescence. Unaware I'd
reasoned my way to a conclusion which ought to have warned me of impending
danger, I drove through the dark village. Wheezing, backfiring, creaking at
every joint, Lovejoy Antiques, Inc., was on the move and full of confidence.

Sometimes I'm just pathetic.

Fingringhoe's one of these straggly villages a stone's throw from
the sea. You can scent the sea lands. Many of the inlets are reserved for birds
and mice and whatnot to do their respective thing, making a crashing bore of
the whole soggy area. I mean not an antique shop for miles, a few scatterings
of houses along lost lanes, a field or two with yawning cows, and that's it.
Our diligent conservationists are busy keeping it that way. They've a lot to
answer for.

Following the blond bird's car in my horseless carriage was like
rowing a coracle behind a liner. I kept coming upon it, lights at every
orifice, revving impatiently at dark crossroads, but I kept cool. I've been
humiliated by experts in my time, so degradation at her hands meant very
little. We turned left at the pub. She tore into the black countryside behind
her monstrous beams and I puttered after.

We were close to the sea when she hurtled into a gateway set back
from the lane. Apart from a distant low gleam of the sea horizon and the bright
windows of the Georgian house beyond the beeches, there was nothing to guide
you. The drive was paved, if you please, not merely graveled or tarred, proving
that pride had not yet vanished among the country set. Nor had scorn. She gave
me some derision free, airily walking through the porch and leaving me to park
my knackered heap and hurry after.