The Grail Tree (18 page)

‘He’s delighted,’ she reported back. ‘He’ll come round.’

‘Check there’s no bloody fishing match,’ I told her drowsily. ‘I don’t want you nibbling some hairy angler’s bait.’

‘You can just stop that sort of talk, Lovejoy,’ She said. Her voice sounded smiley. Her shy fingers rubbed my forehead. I never thought fingers could be shy before, but they do funny things to skin. ‘What are we to look for?’

‘A pewter cup. In a miniature crystal, gold and silver tree. Boxed. Maybe, that is. I’m not really sure.’

‘I’ll tell Col. He’s good in the sub-aqua club. He won last month’s prize for . . .’

I dozed, dreaming of a sunken barge with its back broken over a small golden Grail.

Laughter is frighteningly close to terror. Time after time it comes to me that fright and giggling are nearer to each other than they really deserve. I mean, I almost rolled in the aisles seeing Col emerge from his estate car with his aqua gear on – flippers, mask, eyes goggling and a pole thing pointing heavenward from his mouth.
And Lydia hauling a few tons of cylinders and tubes. One glance at the water cooled my merry chuckles. It was deep and black. The barge’s front poked ominously up, still tied to the balustrade with one short rope but the steel hawser now trailing on to the grass. The rapidity with which Nature gets its own back scares me. The seeping willow was already encouraging long grass to cover the crescent of hawser about the foot of its trunk. The lawn was still muddied but starting to grass the denuded bits. It’s the sides of a sunken thing which unnerve me, going down and down.

I looked towards the house on the opposite bank. No sign of visitors or inhabitants. A fairly warm afternoon but no tea on the lawn today. Maybe no tea on the lawn any more.

‘Okay, team.’ I sat nearby on the pile of stuff. Col sank back into the water with a wave. He wore cylinders and had left the black stick with the ping-pong ball.

‘I wish you wouldn’t ogle me so, Lovejoy,’ Lydia reprimanded, fastening her bathing cap. ‘Think of Col’s signals.’

‘I can’t even see him. How the hell can I see his signals?’

‘You just aren’t trying.’

‘Anyway, I was only interested in your, er, valves and things.’

‘Oh. Really?’ She apologized for having misjudged me. I accepted with grace and listened attentively while she told me about air cylinders. Apparently, the mouthpiece is sometimes difficult. ‘There’s Col.’ The hull was being tapped. She stepped gracefully into the water and lowered slowly. For a few seconds she swam about the hull then dived. Once, I glimpsed her orange cap, then nothing.

The bushes along the river bank had spider’s webs shining in the dull sunlight. It’s the moisture glistening which gives you the outline. Scientists call it the Tyndall effect, where oblique light allows you to see particles gleaming against an empty background which therefore remains dark. Like the sawn end of the hawser lying over there on Martha’s lawn. The weak sun even picked up the severed end around the willow’s base. Probably when the firemen cut it they’d had to step back sharpish in case it snapped and flailed across the grass, injuring somebody. What a risky job.

Col and Lydia had been gone a minute, maybe two. I walked about a bit, seeing if any spider’s web was perfect enough to preserve. That may seem strange, if you’ve never seen one in a junk shop. Mostly, people don’t look when they come across this double square of glass sealed along the margins and possibly varnished. You may have to clean it free of thick brown copal varnish to see that, faintly retractile between the two small glass panes, glistens the outline of a spider’s web. I always feel it’s rather a gruesome hobby. They are made by waiting until the day’s dried out the web thoroughly, and in windless air carefully and
slowly
clapping the web between the glasses. Make certain it’s absolutely entire and not eccentrically placed. If it sticks to the glass skewed, give that one up and look elsewhere. You’ll never rearrange it in a month of Sundays. For Christ’s sake leave the spider to build again. Antique ones are mainly Victorian, about 1840 or so.

I screamed and scrabbled on my bum up the bank like a lunatic because a slimy hand shot out of the swirling water and grasped my ankle. Col was on the wrist end.

‘You bloody idiot!’ I screeched. My heart was thumping. ‘You nearly frightened me to frigging death, you stupid –’

‘About how big is this cup, Lovejoy?’ He stood there like a weedy Neptune.

‘How the hell should I know?’ I could still feel my face prickling from fear, the moron.

‘What’s the matter?’ Lydia streamed up beside him.

‘Keep on looking,’ I said disgustedly. ‘I’m going for a country amble.’

I’d told them the general layout of the longboat as far as I could remember, where cupboards were and where Henry and I had sat when tippling that time. Pausing only to rifle Lydia’s purse for small change, I hurried down the bank towards the village. It’s the little things that worry you, isn’t it?

There’s a telephone kiosk near the tavern. I rang the fire station. The head man was an age coming to the blower.

‘Are you the one who gave evidence at Reverend Swan’s inquest?’ He said yes, cautiously. ‘My name’s Lovejoy.’

‘I see.’ He’d obviously been warned by Bloodhound Maslow, but I’d had enough smarm to last a lifetime and cut in.

‘Never mind what Maslow said about me, Chief,’ I said in my most pleasant voice. ‘Why the hell did you make your firemen saw through the barge’s mooring hawser?’

‘We released the stern rope only,’ he said after a pause.

‘And
then
sawed through that great steel hawser?’ I heard a rustle of paper. Somebody had got the file out for him.

‘It was already fractured when my men arrived.’

‘You sure?’

‘It’s here in the report, Lovejoy. Now, one moment.’ His voice went sterile again. ‘State the exact purpose of these questions –’

‘Ta.’ I plonked the receiver down and hurried back along Martha’s side of the river. They hadn’t looked as carefully as I had. Not fractured.
Sawn.

Bubbles were still rising in the water around the wreck when I climbed on to Martha’s wharf. The hawser was thick enough to have moored a cruiser. An explosion tends to rip and fray the toughest steel ‘rope’ and blacken it. But a hacksaw cuts through a steel hawser leaving it shiny, with the serrated marks showing clean and gleaming. Now, why cut? Well, a hacksaw’s silent.

I walked down to the balustrade and peered down into the river. The longboat’s prow was about ten yards off. I kicked the hawser until Col’s head emerged.

‘I’m over here. On this side.’

He de-goggled, treading water. ‘What are you doing over there? You gave the wrong signals.’

‘Is Lydia all right?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Can you look at the front end where this hawser’s tied?’

‘I think we should finish –’

‘No. Right away, Col. Both of you. See if there’s a cupboard or a space where something could be hidden at the hawser’s join.’

I was thinking, now supposing a longboat was securely moored and can’t move away. Why go to all the trouble of having a huge steel hawser between the bow and a nearby solid tree?

‘Hey, Col,’ I shouted.

‘What?’ He was climbing up the sloping deck, steadying himself by holding the gunwale.

‘When I kick the hawser, what happens underwater?’

‘I get the message you tap out. We use a variety –’

‘Great. But is it just a vibration or do you actually hear a sound?’

‘Both.’

‘And if it’s a rope that somebody taps?’

‘No use, Lovejoy. Ropes dissipate the vibration. We’d not hear anything.’

Metal carries sound. Ropes do not. I stumbled back up the bank, suddenly breathing hard. It had to be
in
the frigging tree. The reason you have a steel hawser wrapped round a tree is to keep safely locked a hollowed-out space in the trunk. And the slightest touch on the hawser quivered vibes into the world’s largest sounding-box, Henry’s old metal-sided barge.
It was all just one big receiver.

I streaked over to the weeping willow. The hawser had been round the trunk so long that the bark had begun to grow over the outside of the metal, almost as if it was eating into the living wood. Quite high up, though, which explained why nobody had noticed the faint squared mark on the bark once the hawser was cut free. I scrambled up, clung to a low branch and dug my comb into a crack. A square section of bark fell out on to my face. The hollow had been very crudely dug out, maybe big enough to hold a small dinner plate. Empty.

I replaced the square tidily and signalled to Col and Lydia.

‘We haven’t finished looking underneath the front,’
Lydia called. ‘What are you doing to that tree?’

‘There’ll be nothing there. Dress up and collect me on the bridge.’

I waited a few minutes before Col’s estate car drew up. Somebody had cut through the hawser to get Henry’s precious Grail, which was hidden in the hollowed space in the tree, protected by the steel binding. Henry had been awakened by the vibes. Martha had said he was a light sleeper, always up and down in the night listening on his wires for animal sounds. A convenient covering hobby for somebody with the Holy Grail stuck in a tree.

So somebody had been sawing away, been caught by Henry. Maybe even been recognized. Henry was injured after a brief struggle or a sudden blow. He’d been lifted into the longboat. Then petrol or oil. A match, and run like hell to where a car was waiting, clutching . . .? It fitted.

‘Look, pals,’ I said. ‘We know now what we’re looking for. We haven’t quite obtained it, but I owe you both a favour.’

‘What –’ Col began, but I shut him up.

‘Only please don’t ask for your favour immediately, unless it’s desperate. You’re in a queue.’

‘How sweet,’ Lydia said, smiling.

I wish women wouldn’t keep saying that. Col dropped Lydia and me at the cottage. She had a bath while I made some notes on people I’d met recently. Such as Honkworth, Leyde, Dolly, even Martha, Sarah and Thomas. Though sorely tempted, I didn’t include Maslow. While Lydia trilled a trendy folk song in the bathroom there was a knock at the door.

‘Hello, Lovejoy.’ Jean Evans was smiling there. ‘I called to make up,’ she was saying when her smile
froze. We listened attentively to splashes and singing. It was one of the Vaughan Williams adaptations of a Wessex melody, if I remember. Jean had a new book in her hand. It had every appearance of a peacemaking gift. ‘I see,’ she said witheringly. You can just see a corner of a rumpled divan from the doorway. I’d never realized that before.

I thought I might as well say it, if only for the record. ‘I can explain, Jean,’ I said.

‘Typical!’ she blazed. ‘Absolutely typical.’

She stalked back to her car and roared off. Gravel in Lovejoy’s face again.

‘Who was that at the door?’ Lydia emerged, wrapped voluminously in my dressing gown. It’s odd how their shape shows through.

‘Only the postgirl,’ I said. ‘Tea?’

T
HE RANGE OF
possible murderers was getting smaller. I’d have to be more active. I went to town next day, counting suspects. Tinker said the massive Satsuma vases first arrived via Selly’s shop.

Selly’s antiques shop lies, symbolically enough, between the Cups tavern and a graveyard. It is remarkable in not being Selly’s shop at all. He’s the underdog of a team of three dealers but, as is often the case with underdogs, he’s the only one that matters. The actual owners are two elegant enterpreneurs called Terence and Christine, who oscillate between Woody’s and the Three Cups. The antiques game’s full of this sort of person, good company but very low productivity.

‘Rumour has it,’ I said, putting my head round Selly’s door, ‘that Christine and Terence once visited here. Correct?’

‘Wrong,’ Selly answered without raising his head. ‘A mirage.’

I’ve a lot of time for Selly, who’s straight out of Dickens. He resembles the elderly benign desk clerk and wears those specs you have to peer over to see anything at all. He’s no teeth, bald as a badger on top
with tufts of white hair dangling over each ear. I went in and watched him sort a pile of old gloves. Selly always sits at an old-fashioned counter on a tall Victorian stool in bad lighting. I have a shrewd suspicion it’s all a set-up, a really quaint scenario of bottle-glass windows, stained oak panelling and unsuspected nooks. What amazes me is that I’ve never yet called at Selly’s shop and found him out, or even off his stool.

‘Look at this lot, Lovejoy.’

He never seems to go out buying. His antiques come by a sort of osmosis. Either that or kindly hob fairies leave them by the fireside.

Ever thought how fascinating gloves are? People tend to forget gloves. Look for especially embellished Tudor pairs, but only at reliable auctions. They’ll cost the earth. If you get your hands on – or indeed in – an authentic pair you can often locate the original owner from the insignia embroidered on the dorsum. The chances are it will probably be some important historical figure because gloves were a traditional gift to monarchs. Queen Bess got one measly pair for the cold Christmas of 1562 (when nobody needed to take much notice of her) but over two dozen lavishly jewelled pairs on New Year’s Day in 1600 (when everybody had to).

This heap of gloves on Selly’s counter was lovely. Colours are a reliable guide. Typical nineteenth-century colours are fawns, greens, buffs and creams, depending on what the gloves were for. Good Regency colours are sky blues and rose pinks.

‘Any boxes?’

‘One.’ Selly fetched a paste-cardboard box decorated in panelled green with lacquered shells and lavender-backed lettering:
GLOVES
.

‘Beautiful, Selly.’ I let him open it, and held my breath. Sure enough there was a pair of ivory stretchers fastened to the purple satin lining of the lid. Imagine a pair of scissors without finger-holes or sharp blades. ‘Flask?’

‘Eh?’

That was disappointing, but you can’t have everything. Needless to say, even gloves had accessories. You know what the Victorians were like. Button-hooks are the commonest for pearl or decorative buttons, and folding mother-of-pearl-handled button-hooks are especially collected nowadays.