The Gondola Scam (6 page)

Granddad smiled then, his face like crumpled kitchen foil. "All
Venice's art can be made into many such parcels, Lovejoy. And it is certainly
about to fall into water. Lovejoy."

I thought about that. "You mean . . . ?"

"Piecemeal." There was a pause. He added, "Bit by
bit," as if I didn't know what piecemeal meant. "A UNESCO
expert—"

'They're cretins."

" —says that every year Venice loses six percent of its
marble treasures, a twentieth of its frescoes, three percent of its paintings,
and two percent of its carvings."

'That's not the sea, Dad. It's collectors."

"Which proves my scheme can be done."

Voices were raised outside. The bloke and Caterina were having a
dust-up in the hall. One thing, consistency was her strong suit. She'd take on
anybody.

I gave the old fool a fresh appraisal. "That's an awful lot
of bits, Dad. One parcel's fine. Two's not beyond belief. But three's just
asking for trouble. And nobody on earth could nick four of Venice's precious
antiques without all hell being let loose."

"Ah," he said, as if spotting some troublesome little
flaw in my argument. "You're apparently assuming, Lovejoy, that we don't
replace each, ah, bit by the very best reproduction that money can buy.
Paintings, stonework, carvings, statues. You'll no doubt remember your own
escapade in the Vatican?"

I wished he would give over about that. I'd made my own repro to
do the Vatican rip, so I'd known it was up to scratch. What this old duckegg
was suggesting meant trusting a load of other forgers to be as perfectionist as
me, and that was definitely not on. You can't trust just any faker.

"You'd need an army of superb forgers. I can only think of
three." What worried me was the Carpaccio fake that Crampie and Mr.
Malleson had been murdered for. As soon as I got a satisfactory explanation for
that, I'd be off out of this loony bin like a shot and he could do what the
hell he liked with Venice or anywhere else as far as I was concerned.

"That's no explanation!" The sporty geezer was arguing
with Caterina in the hallway. He said the words completely separately, like
aggressive teachers used to in school when they thumped you on every syllable.
"Listen when I'm trying to tell you!" good old Caterina shot back
angrily. I honestly believe she thought she was whispering. Some birds are
always in a temper.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my mouth had gone dry.

"I see you're beginning to understand, Lovejoy,"

Granddad said. "There are many, many more than three. And I
do assure you they are being produced at a Dunkirk rate, Lovejoy. Money no
object."

"But where and how?"

"Ah." He pondered, grimaced, creakily raised a finger
and said knowingly, "Are you in or out?"

"In or out to do what?"

"You will check the authenticity of the items involved in
our, ah, scam. We've lately had one or two unfortunate events." A frown
crinkled his face worse than ever. "One point. I sought the derivation of
that word scam: 'scamble' is hardly convincing, yet it's modern currency . .
."

I waited for a bit. The old criminal had nodded off.

I cleared my throat. "Dad?"

He partly roused, muttered, "Ammiana . . . Ammiana . .
."

"Eh? You awake?"

No sound. Outside, the gaberdine bloke and Caterina were still
playing hell, but now their voices were receding. The old man was snoring, a
squeak of a distant bat. I poured another glass and had a think.

6

Joyce the serf found me padding around the upstairs landing. The
first I realized she'd caught me was her abrupt "Downstairs,
Lovejoy!" Just shows how sly women are. She led me to the kitchen—takes a
serf to spot a serf—and brewed up some repellent broth designed to "warm a
man's blood." A learner grannie if ever I saw one. But her tea was good,
and from the vestibule window I could see a gilt-framed George Webster seascape
in oils hanging on the stairs, so it wasn't all wasted time. The frame, a quite
early plaster-gilt job, worried me. Maybe I'd seen one rather like it recently,
maybe in an auction. . . . Joyce had an open kitchen fireplace and a lovely old
cast-iron Mason's grate of about 1865.

"I was only looking," I told the interfering old cow, in
case she had the wrong idea.

"You put the map back?"

The question was offhand, but I smarted inwardly. Women nark me,
always suspecting the worst. The hand-colored map, by the Dutchman Dirck Jansz
van Santen, was dazzlingly illuminated in gold. The silver had oxidized a bit,
but that's only to be expected for something done about 1690. (Tip: Look for
deep precise printing—showing the map was an early print from the engraved
copper—and the more embellishment the better.) The thought of nicking it
honestly never crossed my mind. No, I'm really being honest now.

"You're just like old Mr. Pinder," she told me. Praise
indeed.

"Me? Like Granddad?"

"Mad about stupid old things." She wet her wrists and
started to attack the pastry. "Of course, Mr. Pinder's so taken with
Venice these days he's useless for anything else. Him and Caterina's stepmother
alike." Her tone was disapproving. 'Things would have been different if
her real mother were still alive, God rest her. This house is like Piccadilly
Circus some days. You wouldn't believe the sorts of folk get fetched here.
Long-haired layabouts in fast cars, foreigners from boats, every language under
the sun."

"What does Caterina do?"

Joyce gave a sharp inquisitive glance. "Helps Mr. Pinder to
run the estate."

"And Mrs. Norman?"

"You'll need more tea, ducks."

"Er, ta." I knew a shutout when I heard one. Caterina's
stepmother was clearly not to be discussed. "Does the old boy kip most of
the time?"

She glanced at the hour, a highly sought Lancashire Victorian wall
clock with the familiar keyhole stage and cased pendulum. Five years ago you
couldn't give them away as ballast.

"He'll sleep till teatime now. Are you going to help him with
this foreign thing? Like Mr. Malleson?"

Like Mr. Malleson?
Well, I thought,
let's see if her idea of "this foreign thing" is the same as old Pinder's.
"Yes,” I lied.

"Then be careful. Mrs. Norman has altogether too many
hangers-on if you ask me. Though I must say Mr. Pinder's pleased at how she copes
with the big house there, Palazza Whatsit."

"How long do you think he'll want me to go for?"

"You'll have to ask him, dear."

"Can't Caterina decide? She seems in charge."

"Doubt it." Joyce's lips thinned. "That end's
always left to Mrs. Norman and her ..." She petered out, maybe
deliberately. The old shutout again.

I said I'd better be off unless she had designs on my body, and
got another smile. I like smiley women.

"Can I leave Mr. Pinder a note?" Without letting Joyce see
the words, I scribbled Thanks, but the task wasn't quite up my street, and
maybe some other time, and told Joyce it was private and she wasn't to look
inside the minute I was gone, which made her cuff me amiably.

"My husband will run you down the road.'

She gave me an Eccles cake to be going on with, laughingly scorned
my offer of thirty quid for her aspidistra— they're genuine antiques
nowadays—and shouted her husband from the stables.

Mr. Lusty drove me all the way into town, chatting laconically
about the Pinders, benevolent support of poor artists. It seemed the old
gentleman ran a sort of complicated trust, which was quite interesting, but not
as interesting as the shortcut we made as we left the Pinder estate. A cart
track ran down to the waters of the estuary. Mr. Lusty was so proud of the new
stone wharf that he stopped the car to show me. He explained that a sizable
ship could come up-river from the sea reaches. I said I'd no idea it was such a
responsible job, and was duly amazed at the size of the two boat sheds. There
were two biggish yachts moored out in the tiderace, the bigger with two masts.

"Yes," Mr. Lusty said, all modest. "The
Eveline
came in two nights back. A young
painter. Be gone tomorrow. Sometimes we're so busy we can't keep up with the
routine estate work."

"Is that so?" I walked onto the wharf.

"It's dredged," he said, seeing me peer over into the
river. "The real thing, big dredgers up from the Blackwater."

"It must cost a fortune."

"All comes out of the trust, you see."

"And these artists train here, I suppose, eh?" We walked
back to the car. The wind was whipping at us from the sea lands. Beyond the low
banks and sedge lay the North Sea and the Low Countries.

"Heavens, no, Lovejoy. Most of them just pass through, except
when Mrs. Norman's home. Then maybe her, erm, erm . . ."He coughed.
"A right motley mob they are, too. But Mr. Pinder's a perfect gentleman.
Always gets himself wheeled down to every boat that calls, even if he's not
feeling so good."

"Where do they come from?" "Oh, all round the
coast. You name it." He drove us beside a few acres of reforestation and
we emerged on the Fingringhoe road, but as we pulled away I couldn't help
looking downstream across the marshes. The Roman Empire had shipped its
products up this very river. Somebody could ship things the other way, right?

I caught the bus. I'd pick up my rattletrap the next day. All the
way back to town I kept wondering about Mrs. Norman and her Erm-Erm, who
together seemed to be responsible for the Venice end of the whole scam—if it
existed.

One thing was sure. Everybody trod very, very cautiously round
Mrs. Norman.

The next two days were hectic. I sent Connie to dig out the Pinder
family gossip. She's a cracker at collecting gossip—God knows how, because she
never stops talking long enough to listen to anything anyone else says.
Tinker's job was to ferret out local antiques which were possible fakes of
anything Venetian. My own contribution was to think, read, and find why my
private antique world was spinning off its wobbly little orbit.

The best way to think about crime is to work, preferably at
something slightly less than legal.

Connie was only able to stay with me the first afternoon, so I had
a lot of solitude. We got up about teatime and put the divan away, with still a
sizable chunk of the day left. At the moment I was making an
"antique" papier-mâché chair. Don't laugh. In its time, papier-mâché’s
been used to make bedsteads, tables, practically any sort of chair you can
imagine, picture frames, boxes, vases, clock cases, even parts of coaches.
Elderly Frenchwomen came into mid-Georgian London to chew (literally: chew)
cutoffs from stationers into a gooey mash for pressing onto a metal framework.
Varnished, pumice-stoned, and decorated, it can be beautiful as anything.

In this cruel lying game of antiques, you take all stories with a
pinch of salt. Respectable history's a pack of lies. I mean, an
eighteenth-century bloke called Clay reckoned his papier-mâché hot-mold stoving
process was new, but it's only the same old system speeded up. And that
carver-gilder Duffour, who worked from a Berwick Street pub in Soho, even
claimed he'd invented papier-mâché. That's rubbish, too; the Persians were
making it donkeys' years before he got into bad company in The Golden Head Pub
in 1760. You can forge anything from papier-mâché.

There I was, in my workshop—actually a grotty shed deep in garden
overgrowth—honing down the chair with pumice. It was to be a cane-seated
drawing-room chair with a spoon-shaped back splat. Oh, I know quite well that
this sort of chair's the favorite of the modem faker, but I have two secrets up
my sleeve which can make a three-day-old fake look an original 1762 piece from
Peter Babel's place down Long Acre.

The robin had followed me in because it knows I like silent
company. It stabbed its cheese on the workbench, cackling angrily to warn
possible intruders off its patch. Very like women. I wear these leather gloves,
or your hands wear off. You need
many
varnishings and honings. I intended to japan the whole thing because black
lacquer's easiest to make antique-looking. You do it with an electric Sander,
but for God's sake remember to replace the emery paper with a rectangle of
buffing cloth. Buff the lacquer
anywhere
on the chair a human would normally touch
, until the lacquer's worn thin.
Then take a two-kilowatt hairdryer and from a distance of two feet blow hot air
at every part of the chair a human
wouldn't
normally touch—underneath, the legs, the lot. My favorite bit is a touch of
class: a spoonful of house dust at all the intersections before your hot-air
bit gives an unnervingly authentic appearance under a hand lens. Then buff
(shoeshine action) the seat edges and the splat's top until the undervarnish
begins to hint through. All that's my first secret. The second's the way a
fake's f)earl-shell inlays are dulled from their brilliant newness to a
century-old opalescence—

"Sceeeeech!"

"Sorry, mate." I'd reached out for the red tin in which
I keep my McArthur microscope and inadvertently got the robin. "Well,
you're both red. Same size. No need to carry on like that." I put the
disgruntled robin back on the bench. It stood dusting itself down, glowering.
The red tin was almost exactly the same color as the robin. Not far from a
Carpaccio red, actually.