Moonspender (20 page)

The estate manager's place was set obliquely behind the manor
house. By a lucky fluke Mrs. Ryan had the key. She went ahead, switching lights
on: "And there's a built-in cupboard ..." sort of thing, all for a
chance eavesdropper's benefit. I tried to interrupt, daft because I'd only my
canvas bag. Mrs. Ryan shushed me, not looking, pursing her lovely mouth.
"Walls have ears, darling," she whispered, then loudly: "The
upstairs bathroom is . . ."I followed meekly. That Walls Have Ears poster
from World War II is worth a fortune, mint. Dillon's do dangerously good
copies.

"There, Lovejoy!" We were in the bedroom. Her eyes were
bright, her tiny figure poised. "Satisfied?" Pause. We drew breath to
speak, didn't. "Isn't this where you offer me a drink, Lovejoy?"

"I've got none, love."

"The downstairs bureau." She extinguished the lights and
marched away. She seemed exasperated.

She said with asperity as we settled carefully in opposite
armchairs.

"The farm staff will observe that we are having a living-room
talk about your duties over a welcoming drink, Lovejoy."

"Er, about duties, Mrs. Ryan."

She crossed her legs, enjoying herself. A foot dangled its shoe, a
slight high-heeled affair with one aslant strap. And a slimming dark blue
fitted velvet dress. Was this how ladies strolled farmyards? "Don't you
know those, darling?"

"Well, er, there's an orchard I haven't seen. And cultivated
blackberries." Asparagus was also rumored to be beavering away out here,
hard at it.

"The estate, Lovejoy?" She spoke dismissively. The
subject bored, enterprise could go to the dogs.

"What'll Councillor Ryan say if we go broke?"

My worried words prized her eyes wider. "He concurs,
darling."

"And Sid Taft, God's gift to agriculture?"

She stretched with delicious enjoyment. "Need you have
damaged him, darling?"

"Yes. Do I meet Councillor Ryan?" I'm so resolute.

Her glass was empty. "Not yet a while, darling." She
rose, carefully not glancing at the window's parted curtains. "You, ah,
meet his wife instead—in the large bedroom. No lights."

"Look, Mrs. Ryan," I tried. "I'm scared of
bankrupting your estate. Shouldn't we talk over a plan of action?"

"What a good idea," she murmured. She didn't break step
on her way upstairs.

Getting on for ten o'clock that night I was explaining over a
leisurely pint with Tinker. The estate manager bit set him off coughing. He
ended on crescendo, hawking phlegm into a spent mug. Two ladies over by the log
fire went green and reeled out. The old devil glued himself together, wiping
his stubble on his grease-stained mitten, his rheumy old eyes streaming
merriment.

"Great, Lovejoy!" he graveled out between cackles.
"Keep shagging her
arse
off and we can take Ryan
to the cleaners!" He has this elegant turn of phrase.

"No, Tinker. I'm there to get out of being sued. And because
of what you're going to tell me."

Once he starts grumbling he never stops, the miserable old sod.
"Everybody is chiseling the estate, Lovejoy. It won't last long."

"Eh?" That made me all ears. The sly old wretch saw he'd
miraculously scored a point and gazed piteously into his glass. I flagged Ted
to keep them coming. "You mean go bust?"

He scratched, rose to reach his fresh
pint
over. A sickening slurp, a fetid gasp, and he was ready. God, he was a mess.
"Everybody knows that."

I gaped at him. "Do they?"

" 'Course. Old Munting said it often, miserable bugger."
His criticism probably meant that my predecessor was too wily to be fooled by
staff or poachers. Or employers? Tinker cackled reminiscently. "Always
having rows with Ryan
hisself
."

"How did he die. Tinker?"

He stared at me, then his small frame convulsed in its disheveled
greatcoat. I waited impatiently. A laugh usually takes a minute, then two more
for coughs. Then another minute to roll a fag with one of those hand machines
that never work, though the early prototypes are collectible items. You can
still get them for nothing; folk chuck them out.

"Lovejoy." Billiam slid into the seat next to Tinker
with a waft of turpentine, a
shopsoiled
rainbow.
Between literary masterpieces he does portraits on oil paper. They're pathetic.
"Caught you."

"You heard about Boothie?" I asked. "And I'm sorry
about your pal Cox."

He was on edge, fidgety. "Yes. I'm scared, Lovejoy. First
George Prentiss. Then Ben. Now Booth. Lovejoy, Ramparts Comer's miles from
anywhere." It's not really, but I knew what he meant.

"Sorry, Bill, but what the hell can I do?"

"You're the estate manager. Send a couple of blokes. My
ground rent's paid to the estate."

"Hang on." My brain whirred as logic entered in.
"Your house? On the estate, like Boothie's?"

"Since before the Conquest," Billiam said scathingly.

"Look, Billiam. I'm in enough trouble. Send farmhands to hold
your hand? They'd laugh me off the place."

"Only ..." Billiam jumped in panic as the taproom door
crashed open and a noisy mob of football lads shoved in. "Lovejoy, I'm too
feared. I might clear off."

"Very wise, Billiam." He was making me feel uneasy. I
didn't want the population thinned round Pittsbury Wood. I wanted more allies,
even loony writers like him.

"I’ll remember this, Lovejoy." He left, blaming me.

But what could I do? I was at least as scared as him. "I'm
back, Tinker," I said. "The joke being. . . ?"

"How old Munting died." He struck a match and fired his
latest creation. I leant away from the carcinogens. "Munting's playing
darts behind you, Lovejoy. He'll miss double twenty."

My astonishment set him off falling about. I turned and inspected
the thickset elderly man on his last arrow. A pipe-smoker in an
Aran
, twill trousers.

He missed double top, like Tinker said.

Tinker's last watering hole is the Stranded
Barque
on East Hill, where they drink longer after their legal closing time than
before it. I ran him over there in the Ruby as he finished his report.

"It's funny, Lovejoy. There's no local things."

"Why not?"

"Dunno. Word is Sykie or somebody's soaking it up. And
everybody's shifty-scared." He hawked, spat at the gutter, reached only to
the half-door. He blotted the phlegm with his sleeve.

At least I could make the farm lads give the Ruby a good clean
tomorrow. "Odd we never noticed it." I pulled in at the pub.

"Not really, Lovejoy. There's plenty of antiques about. It's
only local stuff that's gone missing." He meant that new finds were
vanishing before sale. "It's Like . . ." his alcohol-soaked mind
searched for analogy . . . "like we lived in Australia, somewhere the
bleeding Romans, old Brits, and them never got to." He hawked again. I
elbowed him out onto the pavement to narrow the dirty old devil's range. He
graveled, spat, missed. "Odd, seeing everybody in the Eastern Hundreds is
out moonspending all frigging hours. Know what I think, Lovejoy?" He
blinked up at me in the street light, his tatty old beret askew.

"No. What?"

"I reckons somebody's got everybody nobbled."

From Tinker this was
Napierian
logarithms. "But who's got that much gelt?"

"Aye. True." He sighed a thirsty sigh. I shelled out a
note.

"Keep sussing. Tinker. Bronzes, iron, anything. Get into yon
boozer and start ferreting."

He squared his shoulders and said, a real martyr, "Right,
Lovejoy." Toffee had gone to kip when I arrived at Henry's, but I
collected her on principle. Cats and farms seem to go together in nursery
rhymes. Why not in real life?

When I phoned the White Hart Sandy and Mel were in. I told them to
redesign the exterior of Suzanne York's grand restaurant in Victorian Gothic
decorative brickwork. I cut short Sandy's squeals of delight, and had an
important think—my last resort. Came midnight and Councillor Ryan's big Rolls
hadn't returned to the big house, so as an act of self-preservation I shut
everything off and drove home to my cottage. I had too many plans on the front
burner to risk Ryan catching his missus and me in Position One. A lucky
decision, this, because an early visitor called in defense of all living
things. She excluded me, quite typical.

16

The telly went off about one in the morning, leaving its hypnotic
little dot whining away. I brewed up, put the radio on. A chap talking nineteen
to the dozen over pop music, never letting records run full length.

Once Toffee had settled I was restless. The novel I'd got from our
library van—no mean feat—proved dull, full of CIA and KGB, big themes in
limerick. I nodded off. It slipped from my grasp. Toffee raised her head
irritably at the thud. I sang, "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" but got
the pitch wrong and finished up breathless and annoyed before the end. Then
Mrs. Ryan returned, which made me breathless and annoyed before the beginning,
as it were. She left in great stealth about three o'clock, saying things like
Oh God, do I have to return to that and so on, the usual, which is
time-consuming and unproductive but par for the course. I made the necessary
rejoinder, Be careful, doowerlink, and till tomorrow, switart. My lips felt a
foot thick from work soreness. Night tea needs sugar, I find. Daytime tea can
do without. Odd, that. I ought to ask Doc Lancaster if I'd made a fantastic
medical discovery, but he's a bad-tempered swine who wants me to exercise. He
smokes and drinks like a fish.

I thought some more. What did I have?

George Prentiss, electrician, feeble collector, and scared of the
dark, is gored to death in a field. He carries a cheap erotic book. Enter Ben
Cox, archeologist. He's worried sick about his county being robbed blind of its
treasures, especially ancient bronzes. In particular, a Roman feline. He gets
done; his matchbox office is pillaged.

Meanwhile, back home, that wise poacher Tom Booth is found query
dead, query. And vanishes. I get the blame—normal, since Ledger blames me for
solar eclipses and weather. Leaving aside various impending lawsuits, and the
minor problem of Billiam's terror at Ramparts Comer, Mrs. Ryan's tiring need of
me as estate manager, Councillor Ryan's financial fiddling, and Rowena's
forthcoming marriage to Big Frank, there was the problem of me. Because I
figured in the bad bits.

For example Sir John and Sykie, that lopsided partnership of
equity and the beast, who shared interests in local archeological finds. I was
the link in the chain there, for reasons Sykie'd explained. That's the trouble
with rich collectors—sooner or later they have to trust somebody. Sir John had
decided to trust Sykes, the London antiques middleman, who of course would be
amply paid after each deal. Sykie I know is not a bad bloke inside. He simply
thinks double. I'm just glad he's not a politician. In this fiasco. Sir John
was the mark, the one who'd get rooked, and Sykie would be that much richer.
Simple, no?

Certainly, if you forget George, Cox, and Boothie, RIP cubed. The
rest—Rowena's decision to be Mrs. Big Frank VIII, Suzanne York's posh caff, my
current battle with Goldie of telly quiz fame—could hardly be blamed on the
local yokels. Equally, I thought with feeling, they weren't my bloody fault
either.

Having sorted out absolutely nothing, I read Clark on
civilisation
. He always cheers me up, because he gives top
marks to Erasmus, my hero. Now, there was a bloke who was always troubled by
localities—I mean having to leave Holland because the Dutch were always boozed
blotto, flitting about England and Europe one breathless step ahead of the
black death. I knew how he felt. No longer alone, I slept the sleep of the
just.

When gray-eyed Enid called, six-thirty, I was up feeding the
robin.

It was one of those windswept days. Today women's stocking seams
would be askew, their hair uncontrollable. Men would realize for the first time
that they could no longer bear the chill. All football teams would lose seven-nil.

"That's wrong," Enid said, sitting on my wall.

"Feeding the robin?" I was amazed. "He'd
starve."

"There's worms. We must maintain nature's balance."

"Ah, well. I'm weaning him off worms. Tea's up."

A minute later, her hands were round a hot mug. I sat in the porch
out of the gale.

She was an open, rather dreamy looker. Today's mode was jeans,
muddy boots still ruined by blackened leaves at the welt, and a hooded duffle.
The frontier image. A stoned doll dressed as Trapper Jim.

Irritably I moved the milk. Speedy Gonzales had slipped in and
neatly drilled the foil cap. "Blue tits," I explained. What with the
robin, the
spadges
, Speedy, and the morose Enid, it
promised a spirit-sapping day.

"You visited my Harold. You're the new estate manager?"
A blackbird came
ascrounging
, perched on my shoulder.
I like him, but he sings down your earhole. I'll be deaf that side before I'm
much older. "We need your help."