The Lies of Fair Ladies (18 page)

"My antiques, Lovejoy. Can you fuff them?"

"To what?"

"Double what you divvied?"

That made me swallow hard. The fuff is a con trick. You pad out a
number of genuine antiques to make a larger number by adding some more. Except
there's one small detail: The additional "antiques" are fakes,
lookalikes, sham. Now, don't get all indignant. Prestigious auction houses the
world over do this. Of course, they catalogue the fakes, replicas, the false,
in eloquent vagueness that makes the bidders think they too are genuine. The
auctioneers, who can't ever be trusted, may even point out that there's been
"controversy" over this "interesting" item. . . . Read the
words carefully and you'll realize the auctioneers are being their own glib selves,
pulling a con.

Luna listened to my explanation, trying hard not to be so appalled
she could hardly keep the motor on the road.

Connie kindly added her pennyworth. "It means buying or
creating fakes, Luna. Or multiplying them somehow. Lovejoy's the expert."

"But you already have so many, Connie ..."

"Why us?" I put in. "Because buyers, on this sort
of scale, will believe the lot if I authenticate a few."

Luna colored even more when I'd said "us," pleased.

"And you'd do that, Lovejoy?"

"No. I'll fuff, all right. But passing them all off as
genuine antiques is the buyer's responsibility. Correct, Connie?"

"Yes.” She wanted me to say I’d do it all, but I wouldn't.
Too many things were going on in this drab old countryside for me to start carrying
the pots and pans. I’d already decided before she asked. That didn't mean I’d
carry out the whole sale. Fair's fair.

Another thing. Until I knew exactly what was going on, I was a
swinging compass, no direction.

"Any particular antiques you want?" I asked casually.

"Anything, Lovejoy. Furniture, silver, jewelry, clocks,
weapons, furnishings, treen, instruments, microscopes, household, dolls,
ephemera ..." Onward, ever onward.

The list pleased me. It included household furnishings. So she
wasn't in on Prammie Joe's scam after all. Her voice hadn't even wavered. So
she was going it alone. I could tell she was a very worried bird. As worried as
Rye Benedict. Had she been trying to borrow money off Rye, knowing he had the
profits from the sale of his market-garden estate? That didn't quite ring true,
somehow. She'd asked my help—"urgently" by phone, sending Gunge
looking.

"How soon?" That's the only problem with a fuff job.
Dealers want it done yesterday.

"As possible, Lovejoy. On the drip feed."

When they become available. "Local, or abroad?"

"Oh, overseas." Easier still. Local fakes sell afar, as
far fakes sell near. It's a saying. The point being that real antiques sell
anywhere.

We dropped her in the old station yard, where nobody waits for
buses anymore. "To seem unassociated," I explained to Luna.

We went among heavy traffic—two buses and a brewer's dray—towards
the village. Coming off the station roundabout a tall, precisely dressed
gentleman—you couldn't simply call him a bloke—stepped out into the road,
bowler hat raised politely. Luna felt obliged to stop.

"Good afternoon," he said in the window, smiling.
Military tash. Old Etonian tie. Pinstripes, patent leather, a symphony of
upper-crust wealth. "Have I the honor of addressing one Lovejoy?"

"And one Luna," I said, smiling in spite of myself. His
sort usually narks me. I was surprised. "Whom does one have the honor of
addressing one?" That Old Etonian tie was no sham, I bet myself.
"Osbert Sitwell said he'd been educated entirely in his holidays from Eton."

He chuckled. "Sandy said you would be odd, Lovejoy. How d'you
do?" Odd from Sandy was rich. He got in with swift grace.

Which was really strange, because I distinctly remembered locking the
rear door. He'd slid in as if it was wide open.

I looked at him in the rearview mirror. "Delia?''

"Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Luna opened her mouth to say something, but I gave her the bent
eye, and all was well.

Sixteen

Thanks, Delia. Sure you can get a lift?''

"No,” he chortled, straight from those children's comics
where everybody always chortled. "Better to walk. Opportunities."

"Well, do my drainers first, eh?"

"Wilco, old bean."

And off he strode. I shut the door, and we sat and looked at each
other. Luna was sitting on the divan, her head on one side.

"You told him to burgle The Great Marvella. And to watch out
for the snake?" It'd take too long to explain, my sigh told her. ''And Mr.
Benedict's watermill shop, Lovejoy?"

"Look. If you're going to pick on every little thing—"
She became heated. "Every little thing? For heaven's sake, Lovejoy! I'd no
idea it would be criminal! I mean, I've even started lying to Oliver! I'm never
deceitful!"

"No? What about when . . . ?" I saw her eyes widen in
apprehension, then calm down as she got the joke. She smiled a bit. "Be
serious, Lovejoy. Oliver's not only the mayor. He's a lawyer. Secretary of the
local bar association and everything." She flapped her hands helplessly.
"And now I'm an accessory. I'm embroiled. Burglary. On commission. I don't
mind the money."

I'd had to borrow a bit from her to pay Delia his earnest penny.
Uncomfortably I totted up what Luna had paid for lately, and gulped. I always
cut corners adding up what I owe.

“I’m sorry, Luna.” I was so sincere. If I’d not had to flog my
phono I’d have put on hearts-and-flowers. "I honestly am. I'm not usually
like this."

"That's not
it
,
Lovejoy." Then why mention money? To lead into obligations, that's why. “I
just don't know where I stand."

And miraculously the door thumped. I leapt, joyously reprieved, to
welcome Big Frank. He entered, darkening the world for miles. Luna gaped, never
having seen his like before in her august circles. First Gunge, our gungey
giant. Now a clean one. Thank God he was smiling. I introduced them.

"Oh, you're the gentleman on the phone!" Luna was so
pleased. "Miss Jenny was lovely. We had such a lovely chat. I'm so glad
you and she—" She halted, stricken. She wasn't supposed to be glad about
Big Frank's impending marriage, because he was still wed to Mrs. Big Frank.

"Thanks, missus. Silver, Lovejoy?"

"None, Frank." He sat on the divan so he could adjust
his head to the vertical. Normally he stoops anywhere within twenty feet of any
doorway.

"Lovejoy. I want you to help Jenny."

"What with, Frank?" More help? From me again?

Abruptly I too wanted to sit on the divan of a sudden, but there
was no room. Already Luna was tilted high in the air from Big Frank's weight
compressing the universe.

"She's got something really big on. I mean, really ginormous.
Bigger than anything in the Eastern Hundreds, Lovejoy."

Another? My cottage was headache city. I've already explained that
East Anglia isn't given to mega blitzes, nor scams of international
proportions. We're more your actual one-offs. I cast about for the kettle,
finally gestured for Luna to brew up. She smiled happily, as Big Frank gave it
out.

"Lovejoy, she won't even tell me."

"She won't tell you? But you're going to be . . ."

"Husband and wife." The great goon's face melted into
soppy fondness. If I hadn't been his best man so often, my own face would have
melted too. "But she's right, Lovejoy. The sums are fantastic."

"Fantastic?" Now I really did slide down the wall and sit
on the bare flagged floor. "Look, Frank ..."

The best dance of all, the exit shuffle. If it had been one silver
chalice, fine. Big Frank could at least recognize some makers' marks, and knew
to assay silver content. But that had taken him thirty years to learn, from
birth. The silly loon was so infatuated with his Jenny that he was willing to
step outside silver to serve her whim.

"No, Lovejoy. Straight up. She only needs a few more days,
and it'll be England.'' He beamed at the image. "Then we can spend forever
on antique Georgian silver."

His eyes glazed at the very thought of unimagined paradise.
"England" is antique dealers' slang for perfection, the triumph of
profit. Comes from the sailors' cry when leaving foreign ports on the journey
homeward: "England, home, and beauty!" Meanwhile, my mind had gone
dreamy too, wondering what on earth was possessing us all. Scams so huge, with
money so vast, that the national debt would shrink if the chancellor could get
his hands on the wadge? Barmy.

Luna brewed up while Big Frank and I thought our mutually
excluding thoughts. I was helping Connie, from past love. I was also helping
Prammie Joe, if you can call it that, from sorrow. I had the feeling somehow
that I should be helping Rye Benedict— correction, please. Delete that. I ought
to be helping myself. It was me that was broke, not his load of deadlegs.

"Help how, exactly, Frank?" As if I didn't know.

"Lovejoy. How many divvies are there?"

"Me," I said miserably. "I did hear there's an old
dear near Saxmundham for porcelain—"

"One, Lovejoy." Frank's voice is so deep you sometimes
have to actively listen out for it, like the deepest bell. "You. I want
you to be there when Jenny accepts the antiques."

Plural. Plenty, again? "Frank. I'm pushed at the minute. How
about a dollop broker? I've heard there's a really superb one around these
days."

"Yes, she's great. Jenny'll be using her."

She again. Same one. Sooner or later I was going to have to think
about this mysterious person, and tell Luna what a dollop broker actually is.

"If your Jenny's working up a dollop, and you know a dollop
broker, then where's your problem, Frank?"

He stared at me sadly. "Tracing the seller, once the money's
been handed over. That's the problem, Lovejoy."

So the vendor was foreign? Crikey. Jenny, soon to be his wife,
wouldn't even tell him who was going to sell her all these valuable antiques?
For a brief instant, as Luna dished out tea and biscuits, something occurred to
me. Something wrong, but notably right, if you follow. I tried to hang on to
it, but it was gone.

"It's sensible, Lovejoy.” I stood, to look out of the window
and think a bit. Frank rumbled on. "I mean, who tells anybody?"

Except a fiancée wasn't just anybody, if she was going to be his
eighth—ninth?—wife. Maybe that feeling I’d nearly had was the dawning
realization that I was in greater demand than I’d ever been.

"About the old soldi, Lovejoy. I'll see you get a fee."

"You will?" Big Frank is quite a good payer. But never
up front.

"Up front," he promised. Queererer and queererer.

"Right, Frank. I'll go and see her. If it's okay?"

"Any time, Lovejoy." He looked down into his tea and
didn't grimace. "Your bird here will show you the way."

He left, politely thanking Luna for the hospitality. Which would
have left me food for thought, if I hadn't been thinking what it was I’d almost
been thinking about.

"A dollop broker?"

We were going to nosh in a restaurant, to celebrate Luna's first
ever sale of an antique at auction. She'd got word from Wittwoode's that she'd
made a week's wage on the bubby pot. Of course I threatened fire and slaughter
if the lads dared to ring it. They'd thoughtfully stayed out of the bidding. I
didn't tell Luna that I'd asked Jeff to bid it up. I didn't want Luna
disappointed, first time out.

"Is it an antique dealer, Lovejoy?"

That was a laugh. "No, love. All they do is hide stuff for
you."

"Hide? Not sell?"

"It works like this, love. If you're going to jail, or having
to do a runner—that is, leave the country for any reason—you use a dollop
broker."

It was dark. We were under the station bridge, queueing at the
traffic lights so commuters could come staggering off the train in droves.

"There is none in the phone book." So she'd looked.

"They aren't legal, love. They store stolen antiques, any
quantity, for you to recover when it's safe for you to come home. Or out of
clink. Or when the statute of limitations has expired—in Japan it's only a
short time. Give you an example. You pinch paintings, say, from France,
anywhere. You give your dollop of stolen paintings to a dollop broker. He
guards them until you come for them, maybe years hence, and gives you them
back, against a fee. You take your stolen paintings, whatever, to Japan. And
sell them."

"Why don't you hoard them yourself, where it's safe?"

I stared. Why can't people see the obvious?

"Well,” I explained as we started to move on the green.
"Just think. You're inside jail, ten years for robbery, right? You have
dolloped up—that is, given into the hands of a dollop broker—your loot, your
valuable sculptures nicked from the British Museum. If you'd hidden them in
Friday Wood, you'd have to wait until you got out. You'd be old, right? But
with the loot in the hands of a dollop broker, why, you can sell the loot. To
any other crook you wish to name. Bill of sale and everything. The loot is
described somewhat differently than if they were coming up, say, at
Christie's—in some code you've previously agreed with the dollop broker."