The Lies of Fair Ladies (16 page)

"Oil?" I cried, alarmed. "What oil?"

You use oil for motor cars and painting, not for Lovejoys. Though
there's one antique called an oil clock, where time is marked by the fall in an
oil reservoir as a flame burns—

"Stop
talking!
” She
was getting really narked. "Oil's for the massage, Lovejoy! For heaven's
sake
.”

I'd made Veil's inner sanctum by making an appointment for The
Great Marvella's services. There didn't seem any other way. A casual call meant
possibly running into her clients. For once, I wanted to avoid a big seduction
scene. Wondrous exalting, yes, but with death now dealt into the antiques game
I needed mileage. Fortune-telling meant looking into Geronimo's terrible
flat-headed gaze while he decided what the next month held for me. I also passed
on the para-psychologic analysis, because Geronimo did the analyzing with
Veil's demented ventriloquism. That left Reconstructile Autosynthetic Massage.
It sounded like a set of girders.

She started undoing my clothes. I tried to deflect her.

"This is ridiculous!" she cried, determined. "You're
like a child. Stand still!”

Hell of a way to get an interview.

"Listen, Veil." I struggled to keep my shirt. I’d
conceded shoes in token gesture of seriously wanting her bloody massage.
"I haven't really got any aches. Maybe if I do some gardening—"

She brushed a wisp of hair away from her forehead as we grappled
politely. "I think I must be mad, Lovejoy. I've given you open invitations
before now. And you've run a mile. Now you are here you're wriggling like
a—"

"I'm stripping! I'm stripping!"

I looked about for somewhere to put my shirt. She snatched it,
exasperated, and flung it on a couch. The inner sanctum had plenty of
furniture. It was a vaulted place, really surprising. Old roof beams quite
chapel-like. I mean, the little street hardly seemed to have anywhere to keep a
space this size. It must have been an old meeting hall from the seventeenth
century, when new sects came in grace abounding.

The massage table stood grandly in the middle, ready for a Lying
In State. She had heating, I suppose for her female clients. Women are always
on the search for draughts, real or imagined. They'd choose a different
masseuse with a different snake if it wasn't warm. She had a large expanding
divan, embroidered damascus cushions and everything, and some good Edwardian
upright furniture.

"Have I to get up on that?"

That left my trousers, no socks, and underpants. Clean on, as if I
was going to the doctor. I'd even done my teeth a second time, just as if I was
going snogging.

"Up, please. Remove all outer clothing before ascending the
Autosynthetic Rostrum."

These catchphrases are meaningless, aren't they? Delivered in an
even, bored tone, they sound full of weighty authority. Sheepishly I lowered my
trousers, folded them with defiant slowness, and dropped them on the floor. I
wasn't walking the thirty or so feet to put them on the clothes mane provided,
not with her looking. A bloke in underpants looks as daft as he does naked. No.
Delete that. He doesn't. Couldn't.

The raised table was like in Doc Lancaster's surgery. Pillow the wrong
thickness. A blanket, cream-colored, with a red stripe. No compound light
glaring down at me, thank God. If there had been, I’d have been off. I could
almost hear the sound of clinking instruments and the hiss of sterilizers.

"You lie, prone. I can't do a massage with you propped up on
your elbow like that.''

Prone, face down. Supine, face up. Right.

"Lovejoy. The blanket over your
feet
. Let
go!
”

"In a minute—"

She ripped the blanket away. "Lie still. Relax, please."

Some trolley trundled near. Bottles chinked. Her hands slapped.

"Only oil." Warm, her hands in the middle of my spine.
"It's unscented. Is this your first massage?"

"Mmmh." A lie, because I've been out East. I wanted to
get information out of her, not put information in.

"You'll be pleasantly surprised. People have wrong ideas. They
think sordid goings-on, instead of psycho-physical restorative con tactile
stimulus."

"Quite honestly, I think we do," I agreed. "Er,
forget the psycho-restoration, er, thing." I wanted to butter her up, get
her to talk. "Do you have plenty of sufferers?"

Her hand smacked me smartly. "Clients, Lovejoy. I don't
inflict suffering."

"I meant clients. Honest." I thought only lawyers and
prostitutes had clients.

"Business picked up about a year ago." She was working.
"Even among your cynical profession." Profession was a laugh. Antique
dealers call rich antique-buying smoothies professionoils (oily professionals,
get it?). Sotheby's and Christie's are full of them. And TV nowadays, those
road-show people with antique shops syndicated on the side.

"Veil. I came on condition you don't tell."

She laughed. "Men all want confidentiality. Not the women.
And Sandy, of course. But he doesn't count. As if it mattered! Massage is
therapy, not something to be embarrassed about."

"I know, I know." Smooth, smooth. I think I meant that I
was being smooth, not that her hands were moving so pleasingly. I began to feel
sleepy. I could see how folk got to like this sort of thing. “It was Connie
suggested I came. I've been very, er . . ." Why did people come, anyway?
"Er, fed up, lately."

"I heard Tinker's away. And your little fat cow. Doing quite
well for herself. Selling wood, isn't she?"

"My apprentice? Mmmh." Veil hated Lydia. My erstwhile

apprentice had given her the sailor's elbow once in the Arcade.
Lydia's very beautiful, but if Veil wanted to bitch Lydia up, fine by me. Lydia
was seconded to an august antique furniture showroom off Bond Street for a
year. "Selling wood," as Veil sweetly described it.

"Arms extended. Over the end of the reclination."

Reclination? I noticed there was a blemish in the door, like for a
cat flap. The infilling wood was wrong. The door itself was lovely ancient
English oak.

"Had a flood?" We were on an upper floor.

She looked, laughed. "Oh, you know. Clients like to hear
tales. Geronimo—"

I shot up, shoving her away. "He comes in here?"

Veil shoved me down. "No, silly. He stays in his cage."

Calmed, I felt myself slipping into a quiet bliss. Veil was really
quite good at rubbing. I made myself come to.

"How do you advertise. Veil? I don't see your
postcards."

They're still called sixpenny cards, from thirty years ago. You
write out your advert on a postcard and a shopkeeper sticks it in his window.

"Honestly! What do you think I'm running, Lovejoy? I
advertise, when need be, in expensive magazines. Not in alleys."

"Course not. Big stuff, eh?" I was there at last.
"I know. Cassandra Almighty Clark."

Veil gave one of those half-embarrassed laughs that make you
wonder. "Cassandra and I are friends. Sort of. Except she went to a
different school."

A little bitterness there? I could imagine, though. Cassandra
Clark filthy rich. Veil peddling ventriloquism.

"Nice you've met up." Time for a shot in the dark. 'I'm
hoping to sell Cassandra some good stuff soon. But she's not bought much since
she arrived in the area." Meaning never. Not a piceworth. Yet I couldn't
remember an auction Cassandra Clark hadn't been at. How odd. A dealer groupie?

"You are?" Very guarded, all of a sudden. Had the hands
stilled a fraction before smoothing onward?

"I can lay my hands on a mountain of superb stuff."

She trilled an unconvincing laugh. "Cassandra might not like
them, Lovejoy. She's very discriminating."

"She will. I'm looking for a really wealthy, er,
client."

"Over, please." I could have sworn she was so sad; I'd
thought she was jolly. "Lovejoy. Stay in your own league. I know it's none
of my business, but—"

"Antiques are my league, love.” I smiled up at her. “The
others aren't on the scale I want. Hey, Veil. You're making me nod off. Is
there a surcharge if I do? I'll have to owe."

She was smiling in a queer way. "Thought as much, Lovejoy.
Wait." She went to the outer room. I heard her bleep some message service.
"No calls until further notice."

She returned and got on with her work. Refreshing.

It was three o'clock before I rose from her divan, bathed, found
all my clothes. She lay on the damascus cushion watching me go. It felt odd,
like farewell. Yet in one sense we'd only just met. But with women you can't
ever quite work out exactly what you should be exactly working out, if you
follow. I've often found that.

Time I went down the estuaries. But not with Luna in her snarly
two-tone. I didn't want Drinkwater wondering what sorts of motors Mayor
Carstairs and his wife possessed, in case he lucked onto some report of her
near Prammie Joe's place. I should have thought of that beforehand, but you're
sometimes too scared to go to some places on your own. I've often found that,
as well.

"Lovejoy, dear. Old scrubber Luna is positively
charming!
I told her
everything
about your dreadful
past!"

"Hello, Sandy."

He came gushing to welcome us. "Oh, here she very is,
Lovejoy! Woolworth's, dear, your wig? A bargain seconds?"

"Sandy," I warned, uncomfortable. Luna didn't seem to
mind.

"We got on very well, Lovejoy. Didn't we, Sandy?"

"Like my outfit?" He drew Luna inside. He looked loony.
A long Eastern caftan, a decorated print blouse, pearls, and mirrors on each
fingernail. "Wait!"

He snapped his fingers. The fireplace rotated. A bar, complete
with stools, pivoted out. "You worship? Admire?"

"I'd rather have the fireplace." It wasn't anything
special, but Carrara marble and nineteenth century is something you don't see
every day of the week. It made me think of pricey house furnishings. Cornish
Place would make some dealer a prince.

Sandy fluttered his eyelashes at Luna. "Isn't he the one?
Nothing
but antiques. He must adore you,
Luna! Are those still your own teeth?"

"Now behave." Luna was smiling. Women always seem so
well adjusted to, well, Sandys.

We hadn't had time to do much. I'd been preoccupied. Luna was
relieved we were moving into antiques. I'd given her a session on jewelry.
Costume next. Riches to rags.

"Sandy told me that antique dealers use delaying tactics for
payment, Lovejoy.”

"He did?" I said, while Sandy did his eyes in another
ton of mascara. The lashes were like bats' wings, stuck out a mile. "Let's
hope he pays The Great Marvella on the nail. She has a snake for a debt
collector."

"Isn't Geronimo perfectly sweet?" Sandy crooned, pouring
a vodka and vermouth in a glass with a five-foot stem. It stood on the floor
alongside him. "So erotic! Visual! Drinkie-poos?"

Luna asked for orange juice. I had nothing.

"Question One!" he announced. "Who used a wineglass
exactly like this in a film?" He tapped Luna playfully. "You ought to
guess this, dear. He too wore a blonde wig!"

"Dirk Bogarde. I loved the Mediterranean terrace!"

Sandy's smile vanished. ''Aren't we a clever cow, then?"

"Sandy has a pal," I explained to Luna. "Spoolie.
He's showbiz ephemera. The Ghool Spool. He's not long out of jail."

Sandy eyed me. "That doesn't make him a bad person."

Luna frowned. "Rod Steiger? Played a multiple murderer?"

I yelled, "Shut up, Lune." She thought Sandy was playing
his famous film quotes game. "Which jail, Sandy? Parkhurst?"

"Not the same," Sandy said quickly. Which meant he'd
already been on the phone to Spoolie, discussing Prammie Joe's demise. The
rotated fireplace was one I'd seen auctioned some time since, so nothing
suggestive there.

"That's good," I said. "See, I want a place
burgled."

Quietness supervened. Sandy's face set to mutiny. I looked at a
breakfront bookcase. It was a really pleasant fake. I'd done it myself out of
an elderly wardrobe.

"Luna. Come and look. Remember I was telling you about
fakes?"

"Fake?" Sandy shrieked so loud I reeled, but kept
doggedly on. Time to stop mucking about. I wanted help, not tantrums.

"There was an old furniture man in antiques called Crawley.
He published a number of maxims. He had records of fifty-three thousand pieces
of furniture he'd worked on over twenty years. Either altered, or complete
fakes. That shows the size of the market."

"I think it's lovely."

"Thank you, love. I made it. Of course it's lovely."

"You?" Sandy shrieked.
''You?"
He burst into tears, to Luna's consternation. She
rummaged for a hankie. I wearily made her desist and listen.