Moonspender (18 page)

"Sir John?" I was poisonously hearty.

"That fake." He looked down at me from his monster
vehicle, and I swear he actually tried to smile a winning smile. Like a prune
with
bellywark
. "It's my Rembrandt print, isn't
it?"

"Is it?"

He swallowed. I was close to being exterminated for insolence.
Winstanley dithered in the road. I saw the chauffeur's eyes framed in the
mirror. "I've had experts in, Lovejoy."

"Sack them. They're wrong. Your print's great." I gunned
my revs to a slow drift. "One antique confirmed every visit. Sir John. At
this rate you'll have to live to six hundred and eight to find the dud.
Cheers."

"Tomorrow, Lovejoy!" As I chugged off he was leaning out
of the window outraged and purple, yelling after me with Winstanley frantically
trying to calm him down.

Mrs. Ryan was waiting at the cottage, in a worse fury still. I thought,
what the hell, and went forward to give her a hug.

"Darling," I said, exhibiting sincere delight. "I
heard you were here and hurried after you. Come on. I don't want to be
late."

"Heard? Late?" she said, rage suspended.

"Come 
on
, my doowerlink," I urged.
"Today's the day I start as your estate manager, isn't it?"

"You mean you're actually. . . ?"

"Of course! I've been looking for you all morning, slow
coach." I leapt gaily back into the Ruby. "Race you."

"Wait, Lovejoy. There's something I must explain—"

"See you there, doowerlink." I swept the Ruby round and
out. I wondered what an estate manager's pay was. Anything would be an
improvement. With Sir John charging me for breathing I didn't know if I could
afford one boss, let alone two. Still, I was quite happy, and sang Tallis's
"Dies Irae" all the way over to Manor Farm.

Bad choice.

14

". . . All staff to give our new estate manager all possible
assistance," Mrs. Ryan ended. We were in the yard, an acre of
loaved
cobble rimmed by barns.

The assembled mob managed not to break into rapt applause. I got a
few nods, and a sly inspection from the females as they dispersed. One was
luscious, a dark beauty given to giggles. It's difficult to imagine a woman in
working clobber that isn't enticing, aprons, headscarves at the bakery,
waitresses, nurses. There's a current vogue for collecting early photographs of
working women. In fact photographers in 1875 got so hooked on girl coalface
workers in Midland mining villages that . . . Hello, I thought, here's trouble.
A young stalwart swaggered out. I'd noticed him hating me while Mrs. Ryan spoke
her piece. Obviously displaced lover and/or promotion hopeful.

The diaspora stopped, except for Mrs. Ryan whose nag clopped away
with her.

"The new boss, eh?" said Handsome Jack. "Know much
about drainage, stetches, tree grafting, insecticides?"

"Not much, no."

"Lovejoy," he said, doing his smirk, "you're an
ignorant bugger."

"Correct."

An old gaffer muttered a warning but Handsome Jack wanted a scrap.
"He admits it!" The nerk must read the Boys' Own. and him a grown
feller. He shoved me so I stepped back. He teased laughs from the girls,
winking to show there was more subtle wit on the way. "At least old
Munting wasn't an idiot." He crunched his knuckles. "I'm Sid Taft, B.Sc.
in estate management." The punch line was coming. "Better
qualifications than you, Lovejoy—shagging your way to the top."

"You're fired, Taft," I said, and asked the old farmhand
who'd tried to make peace, "What was this cretin's job, dad?"

Then I hit Taft in the belly. He doubled with a whoosh, eyes
goggling in disbelief. Reluctantly, because I knew it would hurt me, I bashed
my fist into his left biceps. He used his next proper breath for a moan as the
terrible ache spread through him. Then, with my hand smarting, into his right
biceps. He'd be armless for a fortnight.

Nobody else moved so I pulled the antique giant knuckle-duster off
my hand, going, "Ouch." They made very few of these heavy Victorian
brass objects. It's wide, with a solid brass cylinder thick as a roll of coins.
A knife projects four inches from the hypothenar side, but mercifully I hadn't
needed that. They're valuable collector's items, especially when stamped with
the name of a London ward like this, Cripplegate. It's hellish heavy, stings
like hell. Taft was retching, on his knees.

I said, "You've made my hand really sting, pillock. Out.
Now." I told two older blokes to get him home.

"What's your name, please, old 'un?"

"Robie, they call me." The wise old man had enjoyed it.

"Set everybody about their proper graft, then find me. I'll
be in there having a cuppa, if yonder gossips know how to brew up."

Two elderly women watching from the doorstep of a whitewashed
building tutted inside as I left everybody to it and went to soak my hand. I
felt really narked. I'd come to help Manor Farm. You try to show kindness, and
what thanks do you get? I'm a martyr to generosity.

St. Michael's church ruins at Chapel Lane stood a yard proud from
the field's contour. I climbed into the rectangular recess where the nave had
been. Robie waited in biblical silhouette against the watery sun.

There's something really horrible about ruins. I don't mean the
ruins themselves. They're splendid things, evidence of man's creativity. No, I
mean what happens after a building has tumbled. Rain works steadily into
cracks. Frost splits the stones. Moss slithers with hideous stealth over lovely
stonework, and worms undermine. Soon, oblivion. All that remains is a paler
shadow cast from the setting sun, a taller ring of standing wheat, an obscure
legend. It isn't that lovely time-enrichment that ages women. With ruins it's
sinister. I looked about.

"This on our farm, Robie?"

"Yes. Angel Field, it's called. Used to be good grazing land
afore government subsidies."

"Who was Angel?"

He spat in derision. "Them as fly, you silly sod."

I'd not seen many hereabouts. "Why did the church
finish?"

He nodded at remembered history. "My grandfather's day. Folk
didn't Like it. Still don't."

There was a black smudge against the old altar stones. East? I
glanced around, trying to work out the way of the world. I'm no good at
directions. They change too often for my Liking. Now, you can't bum stone. And
if they'd wanted to bum the crops they'd have started their fire outside the
recess, right? Stupid vandals, or practiced
nonvandals
?
I peered over at the field. Chapel Lane's copses and hedgerows were dark
against the sky. Beyond lay the village, my cottage's fawn thatch one of the
distant cluster.

"Does Manor Farm get a lot of trouble from vandals,
Robie?"

"Not much. There's ramblers. Them nature folk. Them . .
." He'd been about to jerk his head left toward the wood, but had stopped
himself "Poachers," he said.

He'd been going to say somebody else. Ta, Robie.

Up out of the ruins and we started for the edge of the field. This
side, the estate boundary followed the river. On the far right the countryside
descended in pallor toward the sea. Left, the trees shuffled close and became
Pittsbury Wood.

"Wasn't it there some nerk saw a UFO?"

Robie chuckled. "Aye. Spaceship from Mars. They'm
barmy."

"But nice countryside, eh, Robie?" I said.

"Some say," he answered. Silently I completed the old
soldier's cynical rejoinder for him: 
And others tell the truth.

We trudged an hour, along paths by field margins, through
thickets, across brooks. Old Robie led by the field where Charleston the bull
stood frowning, then Little Tom Field where his herd ripped grass. The wood was
always at our shoulder. Funny, but it made me uneasy. I felt as if the bloody
thing was turning, watching us as we passed. Robie said nothing, except
occasionally giving the names of fields.

"Dry Wells, good grazing. Yonder's Stonebreak, a bad wheat
but good barley."

"What's in it?" It looked like wheat.

He spat. "Wheat, o'course. Subsidy." We eventually
coursed round Billiam's patch at Ramparts Comer, to Pittsbury Wood, to the old
gravel pits. At the top of the long slope was a dew pond. A few village lads
have illicit swims in it. We'd done the whole perimeter.

The White Hart providentially crossed our path. Robie drank
bitter, me anything wet.

"Eleven fields, Robie. All growing wrong stuff."

"Aye." He kept filling his pipe with black shag.
"Government, Lovejoy. They pays us to grow daft."

"Could we make a profit, if we grew, er, not daft?"

"Maybe in part."

Food for thought. I rose to the bar for Robie's refill. Ted the
barman had a million messages. Tinker was looking for me. Sandy and Mel had
swept through in twin tempers. Big Frank wanted me urgently. Rowena Ray said
please phone. Ledger had been in, smiling; ominous because nobody likes a happy
bobby except in songs. Billiam Cutting, my writer friend, had asked for me
urgently. Helen of the exquisite legs was in and waved to me with her
fagholder
, all symbolism. Liz Sandwell glowered punitively
from the saloon bar—what had I done now? Margaret Dainty limped over to show me
a faded box.

"Christmas crackers, Lovejoy. Dated. Hand-colored."

Robie watched me take her box. Ladies in bonnets, coaches, and
Little Nell shops in the background. The six crackers were bleached by time—not
much time, of course. The name of a Covent Garden printer adorned the label,
1840.

I said reluctantly, "Change the date to 1870 and you'll pass
them off."

"Fake? Oh, dear." She sat despairingly.

"Christmas crackers were invented, love. They didn't grow
like holly. Tom Smith did it, all on his little lone, 1847 or so."

"Oh, Lovejoy." She didn't quite fill up, but it was
close. "We're going through a bad patch, aren't we?"

"Rubbish. There's always a good side." The bloody
crackers couldn't sue me, for one. "George Manners in Brightlingsea'll
alter the date for you, but he's an expensive old devil. Promise him a
percentage."

"Thank you, Lovejoy." She paused for the woman's exit
line. "Are you all right?"

"Fine, babbylink."

And there she went, all the grace of the older woman and honest as
the day is long. I knew she'd label her antique box, "Uncertain
Date." Honesty's a nuisance.

Robie said sourly. "Too nice a lady to be in your trade,
Lovejoy. It's all money."

"Like farming?" I said innocently, making him snort.

Yet he had a point. Greed. Money. It called to mind Sir John and
the stealthy Winstanley. Money motivated Sykie. And Mrs. Suzanne York? And Mrs.
Ryan? And the killer of George, Ben Cox, the attempted murder of old Boothie? I
thought I'd hit on something.

"Robie," I said, watching him. "Was Manor Farm
profitable?"

He harrumphed like old country men do, setting his head bouncing.
"Not these ten years, son, since Mrs. Ryan owned it."

Ownership of Manor Farm a tax dodge? My anxiety eased. Greed's
great. I love it. I mean, it's the banker's vitamin. It's erythrocytes to the
vampire, the company man's throb for promotion. And in antiques it's that
enzyme that makes swains of us all.

"All greed coincides somewhere." I'd said it aloud
before I realized Robie was listening. No chatterbox, but not dim.

Money's odd stuff. It changes all the time, yet doesn't, if you
follow. For instance, King Edward III actually bought Chaucer out of a French
prison for sixteen pounds, whereas you'd not get a flyleaf from the
original 
Canterbury Tales
 for that now. And all these
would-be-rich women were too much for me, clouding the problems. So different,
such extremes.

Sitting there, staring into the taproom fire, it was hard to see a
pattern. One important thing: Brainy women are sensible, whereas brainy men are
daft. Take the brilliant Mrs.
Aphra
Behn
, for example. She reigned as the society hostess of
seventeenth-century London while writing best-sellers—sensibly keeping up
appearances, because she was the secret head of Charles II's spy ring. See what
I mean?—a brainy woman's sensible. Yet Count Tolstoy's idea of a secret
pilgrimage was to dress as a peasant—and have servants walking behind lugging
suitcases of clean linen. See? Brainy but barmy.

Lesson: Either some clever woman was being sensible, or some
brainy bloke was being daft. I cleared my throat to speak, but Robie got in
first as Ted called time.

"What is all this, Lovejoy, you being manager?"

"Exactly," I said. "Words out of my mouth."

On our way back, two of our men were mending a fence by the old
gravel pits. Robie swore some foul oath.

"Bloody fence been sliced again," one yelled across the
pits. "Every sodding week."