The Gondola Scam (7 page)

I stood looking. Red.

The robin was the same size as the miniature microscope's tin can,
which had luckily been just right to hold the instrument. But so what?

"So the same holds good for picture frames, right?" I
said to the robin. "Sizes count as well as colors."

It cheeped in a rage and flicked onto my shoulder, so I got the
message. Time for the idle little sod's biscuit. I sighed and turned to go in
for one.

"What does a robin know about picture frames. Lovejoy?"

The light was draining fast from the day. Odd, though, that
Caterina should be framed the way she was in the sun's last glim. Some women
are enough to stop a man's breath without even trying. Things conspire.
"Eh?" I said, cool.

"What picture frame? You just told the bird."

'That conversation was private."

She came in and walked round the chair. "You're restoring it.
Nice. Late Regency?"

"Early Lovejoy." That shook her, made her think a
minute. "Your killer's got a posh car, Caterina. I'll bet he earned it by
doing fakes nearly as good, eh?"

The robin cackled and flew off in a sulk. No biscuit. I shouted
after it, "Give you two tomorrow," and explained to her, "He'll
be in a hell of a temper all week now. That's your fault. Trouble is, he
suspects blackbirds. One knows how to undo the catch on my breadbin, and the
robin's not tall enough. Gets him mad."

"Did you say my killer?" She'd gone all still.

"You know, the murderer you go about with." I was all
affable. 'The DeLorean. Old lemon shirt." I spoke quite conversationally
and started tidying up. "He owns the
Eveline
,
does he?"

Still and pale all of a sudden, so I'd struck oil. "I knew
you'd be trouble, Lovejoy. How did you guess?"

"The frame on that Webster seascape in your granddad's
hallway. You tried to lend that Carpaccio fake some authenticity by putting it
in an old frame before sending it to the auction. Then you realized your
mistake. Granddad missed it, so you had to try to buy it back. Something like
that?"

"Nearly. But go on."

"Feet." I began to sweep round the chair. She moved her
feet obediently, watching, listening. "Mr. Malleson went bid-happy and got
the fake against your bids. So you had him and Crampie killed by your tame
murderer, naughty girl. You told him to make it look like a routine motorway
cafe rumble." I emptied the workshop dust into the plastic bin and looked
round for her verdict.

"Almost, Lovejoy."

"Only almost?" I was so bloody sure.

There was a trace of bitterness when she spoke, but it was Crampie
and Mr. Malleson got done, not her. "You obviously think the worst of
me."

"Almost, Caterina," I said evenly, and went past her to
switch the outside light on.

"You won't go to the police, Lovejoy." No question
there, only the assured flat statement of a bird in charge of everything which
intruded into her world. "They already suspect you of any antique crimes.
They wouldn't listen to your wild suppositions."

So she had changed my accurate logic into wild suppositions. I
held the shed door for her to walk out, and locked up. We stood in the
darkening garden, each waiting for the other to speak.

"Your mistrust means you won't work for my grandfather, I
suppose?"

"Correct."

Oddly, she drooped as if accepting a still heavier burden.
"Then that's the end of it," she said resignedly. "Can you be
trusted to take no further action?"

"Where my skin's concerned, yes. But just remember, if my
robin goes off his grub, it's your fault. And I can be very narked."

"Are you never serious, Lovejoy?"

"Lady," I said wearily, "I'm serious all the bloody
time. It's everybody else that's jokers."

Nowhere. I'd got nowhere. I knew more or less how, why, and who.
And still I'd got nowhere, stymied in every direction. I was getting narked.

7

Speaking of sex, so many things puzzle me. Like a woman's all chat
immediately afterwards, then she zonks out an hour later. But the man's off
into a melancholy twilight doom-riddled world, a comatose grief from which he
only slowly returns to remember the ecstasy and delight. In particular, the
last thing he wants is his bird prattling gossip into his ear, like Connie was
doing to mine. The fact that she was only reporting the gossip I'd told her to
collect was no excuse.

"Darling! It's so interesting! Mr. Pinder's daughter, Caterina's
mother, passed away. Her stepmother, Lavinia—"

"Who?" I reared blearily out of coma.

"Lavinia married Geoffrey Norman. He's hopeless and she's a
tramp."

Rear and blear. "Who? Caterina?"

"No, silly. Lavinia. I keep telling you, darling. Eventually
she got so bad the village shunned her. Scandal, the lot. Lovely, darling!
People are sorry for Caterina and Geoffrey Norman. . . . Old Mr. Pinder runs
some sort of arts foundation ..." Her voice faded. My mind went into
neutral, and the world went away.

That old man had been on my mind half—if not all— the night.
Clearly he was a nutter. Even if he and his syndicate were worth a king's
ransom, a nutter's still off his rocker any way you look. What with Caterina's
hatred and Granddad's whispery voice, his scam seemed more unreal.

"The steps leading down to Venice's lovely canals were for a
lady's descent to the gondolas," he'd said, eyes glistening. "But the
bottom steps never emerge from the water now. And the Piazza San Marco itself
is underwater in the great yearly tides from the Adriatic Sea. The ground
floors are thirty inches above sea level. Oh, the tourists pour in and see the
Queen of the Inland Seas resplendent there in all her ancient glory. But they
go, and the sea again takes over. Only each year Venice is lower and the sea
more rampant. Politicians promise. Engineers measure. But the duck-boards, the
passerelle
, are left out now, to
disfigure the loveliest of cities.

"And do you know what is the most shameful thing of all,
Lovejoy?" he concluded, his cracked-flute voice embittered. "Our
belief in our own permanence. We little know that what passes for
permanence"—he paused a second, wondering whether to be pleased at a possible
pun, waved it away—"is only a gift of constant endeavor. Man's priceless
art treasures must be ceaselessly protected, or they vanish. Like Venice is
emptying of treasures and people."

"How can one man—" I'd interjected, but he washed out my
objection derisorily.

"There are many of us in my syndicate, Lovejoy. Finance is no
problem. Let me tell you a story. Vivaldi's church stands on the Riva—the
lagoon waterfront—and contains the most pathetic memento you could ever
imagine. A marble rectangle set in the floor, inscribed that the church's
Tiepolo painting was restored by American money." He paused to allow the
world time to prepare for his next utterance. "Is that immortality?
Lovejoy, the entire flooring, which records in immutable marble the generosity
of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation of New York, U.S.A., will soon have settled
forever beneath the waters of the Adriatic."

"But it's a try," I found myself protesting.
"Worthwhile."

"Pointless patchwork, Lovejoy. Darning the cabin curtains on
the
Lusitania
. Only success is worthwhile.
Don't you see?"

Eventually I did see. The love, the old man's conviction had swept
me along. I almost forgot he was bonkers.

Which was all very well. In the cold light of day.

That same noon, Connie, Tinker, and me held a council in the White
Hart.

"You first. Tinker,” I told him to be quick about it, because
Connie was supposed to be on her way back from a shoe-buying trip to
Northampton.

"Nowt, Lovejoy." He took a note and got another pint for
himself. Connie leaned away as he shuffled back. Some days he's worse than
others.

"Eh? I told you anything Venetian, Tinker, you burke."

"Don't blame me, Lovejoy. Worn my bleeding feet orf, I
have." He slurped his pint dry and spoke with feeling. 'There's not a
single frigging Venetian antique—real, fake, nicked, bent, or just passing
through—in the whole frigging Eastern Hundreds."

He rose to shamble off for another pint. "Ted," I called
to the barman wearily, "keep one coming or we'll be here all day." I
beamed a rather worried look at Connie, because she'd have to pay and I owed
her a fortune already. By her reckoning, I possibly owed very, very much more.
Quickly sensing she was one up, she immediately asked Ted to stop the drafts,
which were positively whistling through the pub, and to please turn up the
heating while he was at it and put more logs on the fire.

I concentrated. "None? That's impossible. Tinker."

"I know, Lovejoy. It's bleeding true. I went down Brad's,
Ernie's, Jessica's on Mersea Island . . ."

With Ted rolling his eyes in exasperation and Connie enjoying
herself giving him anti-chill orders all over the saloon bar, I closed my ears
to Tinker's mumbled list of negatives, and thought: One or two negatives, fine.
A whole East Anglia of negatives is serious cause for concern.

Mostly for me.

There and then, my mind made itself up.

Until hearing Tinker, I'd assumed that sooner or later Ledger
would find the three blokes who did Crampie and Mr. Malleson. Now it was all
too clear that things were beyond reach. It was too big. Think of the resources
to clear out every special item from East Anglia. It took expertise, men, time,
knowledge, and money, money, and more money. Old Pinder and his syndicate were
not so daft after all, just wealthy and obsessed. I half listened to Tinker's
boozy drone. ". . . then Liz at Dragonsdale, who reckoned she'd seen an
early Venetian black-letter book eight weeks back, but ..."

Which left the question of what the hell I was worrying about.
Caterina's warning was crystal clear: Keep out of it, and Lovejoy will not be
troubled in the slightest. Honestly, I wasn't feeling guilty. No, really
honestly. It was nothing at all to do with me. Admitted, Mr. Malleson wouldn't
be dead if I'd dissuaded him enough. And Crampie wouldn't be dead if I'd maybe
stopped, insisted on giving him a lift. Or maybe I shouldn't have shouted all
over the pub car park that the Carpaccio was a fake. I can shed guilt like snow
off a duck. Anyway, I always find it belongs to somebody else. No, I was
absolved.

'Then I went to Jim Morris at frigging Goldhanger—"

"Oooh, your poor thing! It must have been freezing!"
From good old hot-blooded Connie. By now she'd got us all hunched over the pub
fire. My mind was busily doling out absolution, mostly to myself. "I was
freezing, too, in the library," she said.

That reminded me, and I opened the book she'd brought. It was the
wrong one.

"But darling, the library was freezing—" "I
distinctly said a history of Venice, you stupid—" "It's a book on
Venice, isn't it? It's not my fault." Of course it never is with women. I
tried to sulk as she drove all the way to the Colne estuary but got interested
in the look in spite of myself. The index listed Ammiana, the name old Pinder
had mentioned. It was an island, one of the many which make up the Most Serene
Republic of Venice. A thriving center of culture, of religious activity, eight gracious
antique-filled churches—until it had sunk beneath the waters, never to be seen
again. There were others. Reading in a car makes me unwell, but it wasn't just
that that made me feel prickly.

"It's perishing in here, love," I said. "Put the
heater on.

She did so with delight. First time we'd ever seen eye to eye.

8

"I'm so frightened, Lovejoy."

"Don't worry, love. Just do it."

"When do I put the money in?"

Connie and I were crammed in the phone box. One of her stockings
was tight over the mouthpiece. We'd had a hell of a time getting it off her
lovely leg in the confined space, pretending we were doing all sorts so people
wouldn't stare. She was shaking from fear.

"You don't need money for an emergency call."

I dialed, pressing close. Connie whispered, "Darling, this is
no time to—"

"I'm only trying to listen!" I whisper-yelled, thinking,
Swelp me. I'd do a million times better without help.

"Police, please," Connie intoned. I'd tried training her
to speak low and gruff, but she was hopeless—thought that pursing her mouth
into a succulent tube made her into a baritone.

"Mr. Ledger, please. Constable," Connie boomed falsetto
into the mouthpiece.

"And don't keep saying please! You're supposed to be a
criminal!" I spread the crumpled paper for her to read from.

"Hello?" She turned a pale face to me, eyes like
saucers. "He's answered, darling!"

"Read it! Read it!"

"Erm . . . get this. Ledger, mate," Connie read in her
tubular voice. I closed my eyes. It was like a bad dream. "I'll only say
this once. Go down the estuary, please. Off the old Roman fort there's moored
the seagoing yacht
Eveline
. She's
full of fake antiques . . ." Her voice faded.