Faces in the Pool (4 page)

A proposal, and it wasn’t even a Leap Year? Barmy. I trudged into town to find Tinker at the Welcome Sailor, a dingy East Gates pub. My barker, Tinker, susses antiques out by osmosis. The barmaid, Dodie from Watford, sent him out.

He came, coughing, and stood blearily in the postern doorway. ‘Lovejoy?’ he bawled. Secret as Radio One.

As always, he wore his tatty greatcoat from God-
knows-what
-war, mittens encrusted with food, and has corrugated teeth like a derelict graveyard. My one loyal helper – Lydia excepted. Beggars can’t, can they?

He cackled a laugh. ‘Getting wed, eh? Want the herd word?’ He swigged with relish from a bottle of unspeakable liquid. ‘They say Ted Moon killt some lass. Habby corpy got him off.’
Habeas corpus
. ‘His wife Laura got the lottery and a Lincoln bint owffed him from Stanstead on the great white bird.’

‘I heard he’s in Derby. Did Laura and Ted live near here?’

‘Fellinsham, down Salcott-cum-Varley. Horrible estuaries,
lazy winds.’ His rheumy eyes leaked despair. ‘We don’t have to go there, do we? I got rheumatics.’

A lazy wind is one that goes through you instead of going round. ‘Tinker, get me some money. Borrow. I’ll wait out here.’

Lately, I’ve found I lie a lot. Well, Marilyn Monroe once said that if she’d behaved, she’d never have got anywhere. He finally emerged with a couple of notes.

‘I sold Griff from Aston three silver Saxon coins found in Manningtree. OK?’

‘Gawd, Tinker. Hammered silvers, 1200 years old?’ Since the discovery of massive coin hoards in Holland and England, the price had tumbled.

By two o’clock I was in Fellinsham Post Office asking for directions to the Moons’ house.

The postmistress’s face clouded. ‘I’m sorry, but the Moons no longer live here. There was…difficulty.’

Going for lies in the interests of efficiency, I explained, ‘I’m an artist. I was told to paint their, erm, cottage for charity.’

She eyed me. The god of fibs revealed my sensitive soul. ‘I’ll brew up. I can listen for the shop bell.’

Peggy did good Eccles cakes, but her raspberry jam was a bit runny.

‘I can’t really let Ted down,’ I said, woeful.

‘Everybody liked Ted. Supported the babies’ school, too, despite his wife’s, well, it’s a weakness, isn’t it?’

‘Definitely.’ Weakness? Laura didn’t look weak.

‘The TV said there’s treatment for it,’ she went on. ‘Do you think so? Ted was a saint. That missing girl almost ruined the village.’

‘Well, it would.’ I was quite lost.

‘My husband Vic backs a horse in the Derby, but everybody does that. We pick nice names.’

Aha. Gambling was Laura’s affliction? I agreed with Peggy about everything. ‘Thanks, Peggy. I’ll make a start. Light, you see.’

I made our farewell meaningful, holding her hand until she went red. Forty minutes later I was painting by the Moons’ overgrown gazebo, when an elderly couple came out.

‘Have you got permission?’ the old man demanded.

‘Yes,’ I told them. ‘A definite order.’

That took them aback. ‘Who from?’

‘The owner wanted a memento.’

‘When?’ Tweedledum and Tweedledee as one. ‘He said nothing about it to us,’ said the lady.

‘He didn’t answer my letters either, missus.’

It was then I recognised the elderly lady. Simultaneously she clocked me, and her face clouded with suspicion. She was Mrs Caulfield, who gave talks on embroidery. I’d heard her. She’d claimed the Tricot Stitch was easily adapted to complex crochet, when I knew – ta, Gran – it used to be called Railway Stitch because it was ‘only for straight work and lazy fingers’. Gran called it the Idiot Stitch.

‘Look,’ I said as if giving in. ‘I can see I’m worrying you. But if Ted phones, tell him you sent me away, OK? You know what Laura’s like. Tell Ted I came. Still in Leicester, is he?’

‘Lancashire now,’ the lady said, quickly realising her gaffe and adding, ‘If he contacts us, that is.’

Might as well have consciences hanging out of their
pockets. It finished my sleuthing in Fellinsham. I got the village bus. In olden days a river barge plied through, but that was before potholed roads and hopeless trains. The point was, Laura was a creature of heavy addictions. Who was the vanished girl?

Carrying my stuff, I reached home on the 66. I hardly had time to go to the loo before Laura barged in. Mrs Ellen Speed-Dater Jaynor glared from the motor as if sighting a field gun.

‘You shall meet my contract lawyer, Lovejoy,’ Laura said briskly. ‘You receive a week’s salary immediately.’

‘What for?’ I hadn’t said come in, but she plonked herself down, wrinkling her nose. ‘You mean your fraud?’

That smile again. ‘Not fraud,
manoeuvre
. Here is his card.’

‘Funny thing, Laura. One of the villagers thought she recognised you.’

‘No more independent thinking, Lovejoy. I shan’t warn you again.’

I didn’t wave them off. I’d done enough serfing for her and Ellen Jaynor. For light relief from those two phoneys, and to find out more, I went to Whorwood’s tea auction, where rules must never be broken.

Profit needs three things: decision, a willingness to ignore the law, and money. One extra: bidders break your legs if you baulk the system. I hurried. You don’t come late.

You’d assume it was as docile as its name suggests. Except your word is your bond. So you
must
keep your word. Excuses do not wash. The benefit? You put your Auntie Jane’s superb Bonnington watercolour up for auction at three o’clock, you get your money at teatime. Buy, you slap ready money down in full.

More horrendous still, honesty reigns. Unbelievable. Bidders call bids out, whereas in Continental and London auctions they can wink, signal or wave a numbered paddle. You can see why tea auctions differ from the malfunctioning ‘reality’ of New York or London’s Bond Street. Dealers joke, ‘Never mind, mate. Paris and Austria are worse.’ The quotation has entered folklore.

‘Wotcher, Lovejoy,’ Eunice Whorwood said as I came in.

‘Tyling today, Eunice?’ Tyler is the door guard.

‘Yes. Easy peasy. I just count them in.’

‘I’ll have a look.’

I went for a cuppa, the tea auction’s concession to gentility. Eunice is the size of a malnourished shrimp, but that hardly matters. A tyler simply reports defaulters and they suffer.

‘Brought the wife, Lovejoy?’ Eunice jibed.

By tradition, the eldest Whorwood girl is always named Jane, the younger girl Eunice. Historians will spot the reason: King Charles the First, imprisoned on the Isle of Wight before his execution in 1649, was minded by one Mrs Jane Whorwood. She gave the ‘martyr king’ provisions and, rumour has it, certain extra comforts. Royal letters survive in Eunice’s family, ’tis said. Romantics speculate. I say let them be. If Eunice’s great-great-whatever grannie gave Charles One passionate solace, good for her.

‘Ha ha. What’s worth nicking, Eunice?’

She’s a bonny lass with flaming red hair (another clue:
red
hair). Seats all faced the organiser, Eunice’s dad, Charles (nudge-nudge). A couple of antiques vibrated at me with such intensity I had to sit down, Eunice shoving me quickly into a seat and tutting the way women show exasperation, like I go whoozy just to annoy.

The little statue of Minerva was prominent on a plant stand. This Roman Goddess of Crafts and Arts eventually made the top-of-the-pop charts of Rome’s soldiery. She became Goddess of War. Her statuette stood no taller than a hand. It was muddy grey, owing to its excavation on North Hill, only three hundred yards from where we were. Archæologists bragged about finding it to TV cameras. Local forgers were soon turning out fakes like Ford cars, 
claiming cast-iron authenticity for them all.

‘Exquisite, love. Isn’t that the original?’ (Me, playing dim.)

‘The one and only. It’ll go for a fortune.’

‘Always to the undeserving, love.’

She laughed. I scanned about for the other antique that made me feel queasy. The tea auction is virtually ye olde open-skies market auction. Buy something in ‘market overt’ and pay on the nail, then it stays yours
wherever it came from
. Even if nicked. By market overt rules original owners have no claim. Think of Statute of Limitations joyously reduced to zero, and that’s it. So, sell an antique in a street market that you nicked the night before, and you’re in the clear.

The tea auction perpetuates the ancient market overt. Tea auctions are nowadays highly illegal. But has anyone ever heard of attenders, auctioneers, organisers, vendors at
any
tea auction being arrested, tried, charged, found guilty? Neither have I. Once you’ve bought your stolen ancient British gold torc from 100 BC found last week in a farmer’s field on the north bank of the River Deben (and I’m not making these up) you’re the legit owner. Is that what the High Court says? Not exactly. Law says it’s illegal and practised by utter cads. But the tea auctions of Merrie England believe honesty only operates down among us scavengers where old rules apply. The law doesn’t understand.

There are risks, sure. The vendor must bring his antique to the tea auction, or describe it accurately. You may get arrested while carrying your stolen Rembrandt down Norfolk’s leafy lanes. Priceless items from Baghdad’s
stunning museums turn up in Home Counties’ tea auctions, and they were looted to the floorboards in April, 2003. Only the Kingdom of Jordan behaved honourably – their vigilant Customs and Excise men traced
forty-three
looted paintings from that shambles. The rest of the world’s antiques hunters simply raked the money in.

Heaven knows why police antiques squads don’t just visit tea auctions.
Unless, of course, they know all about tea auctions anyway and quietly ignore what really goes on.
Though I do believe in the total honesty of our police. I mean that most sincerely.

My divvy gift lacks direction so I had to look. The second antique was silently pulsing away on a small footstool – odd choice – by the auctioneer’s chair. A genuine early decanter.

Eunice gave me an anxious look. ‘It really is genuine, isn’t it?’

‘Genuine, yes.’ I put my tea down.

Decanters came in during the end of the seventeenth century. Early American ones are lovely, but you hardly ever see them. English and Irish are hunted most. This poor thing was tapered, like trying to resemble a lady in a crinoline dress. It was about 1820, English, with the sort of milled neck rings crystal collectors lust after. Its original stopper quadrupled the price.

‘It’s described as mint,’ Eunice told me, nervous. ‘Is it?’

Stooping to glance obliquely at the metal – as dealers call glass – I tilted the decanter. A vague flicker of light showed. Somebody, worried by a corroded rim round the interior, had cleaned it with hydrofluoric acid. This dangerous stuff completely removes corrosion. Trouble is,
it leaves a strange effect French crystal experts call the
peau d’orange,
‘orange-peel skin’.

My rule is this:
hydrofluoric acid ruins antique glass
. Walk away and go for a quiet drink instead.

‘Price now? Getting on for nil.’

Quietly I explained to her stricken look, ‘The white deposit is the giveaway, a snowy rust. Who was so desperate?’

She looked stricken. ‘Sandy.’

Normally I wouldn’t bother if they got in trouble. Now, I began to wish I hadn’t come.

‘What should I do, Lovejoy?’

‘God knows. Call him?’

Eunice clicked at her mobile and returned, pale. ‘No answer.’

No chance then, unless Sandy regretted his deception and came hotfoot to withdraw it.

‘Any collections in, Eunice?’

‘Everybody’s asking that. What’re you after?’

‘That Laura’s husband Ted is a collection nutter.’

‘No. Dealers are squirreling cash away ready for some big spend. They’re all at it. We start now.’

Geraldo, the auctioneer, arrived on cue. He carries an empty brief case of Italian leather, pretending he’s about to unload vital documents. Then he scrutinises his watch, speaks to the tyler, counts the antiques. Then gets down to the serious business of polishing his spectacles.

He’s a prematurely wizened, dapper gent so diminutive he would be lost in a school play. He closes his eyes and waits for the town clock to strike, then the game’s afoot.

It crossed my mind that I could bid for the decanter
and save Sandy’s skin, except I would abet Sandy’s deceit and incur his punishment. Sorry, pal, I thought, friendship ends here.

The clock struck. Geraldo roused and began.

‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Item One is a blue glass pendant of triangular shape just smaller than six centimetres, two-point-four inches. An Art Deco fish, but no letter R in the
Lalique, France
signature…’

That showed it was after 1945, when the great designer died, so not antique. Those factories made over eight million pieces. Blue-Lalique anything is always more highly favoured – though a little of what you fancy does your wallet untold good. I listened as the lots were sold on a curt rap of Geraldo’s gavel. All twelve antiques were quickly sold. A portly bloke I didn’t know bought Sandy’s decanter for a giddy sum. His obvious delight made me cringe. Big Frank from Suffolk won a silver tray inscribed with golf engravings. He’s mad on silver, so he’d be the one to ask about collectors in that field. Big Frank also collects wives, and was soon to be married to his umpteenth. I hated being his best man, and helping bigamous unions becomes boring. He always says, ‘You’re always my best man, Lovejoy! It won’t seem a proper wedding…’ and so on. We were due to arrange it at the Welcome Sailor.

The rest were big-gelt visitors from the north. The man who bought Sandy’s decanter asked after me, but Eunice said she’d not seen me.

‘Do you know Lovejoy’s address? I would be obliged.’

‘Sorry, I’ve my father to see to. You might catch Lovejoy at The Ship taproom on East Hill.’

‘Thank you, miss.’ He paused. ‘How may I recognise him?’

‘Average everything,’ Eunice said sweetly, ‘except more down-at-heel.’

He was as staid as any city gent, wearing George boots – made of one piece of leather.

‘Ta for the character reference, love,’ I told Eunice. ‘Who was he?’

‘Tea auctions are confidential, Lovejoy.’

She told me on the way out, though. Mr Hennell, stock broker and antiques maniac, was known to wealthy private buyers in the Eastern Hundreds and had recently become Sandy’s backer in developing a marina. Mr Hennell’s purchase of Sandy’s decanter was nothing more than a private scam. I erased him from my mind. Mistake.