The Lies of Fair Ladies (5 page)

Naturally, being a bird, Gervetta was all doubt. I had to show her
the simple glass trick. Put a fake antique glass down. Stand a brand-new glass,
bought today, next to it. Shine an intense light at both, equal illumination.
Look at the rims. The new glass rim seems whitish. So will a fake. The antique
glass shows lovely grayish crescents.

"Yours, love, are white. See?" She also had some Stuart
crystal, hohoho, engraving white as snow, edges sharp. "Born
yesterday."

"Me? Like the glass?"

She took it well, give her that. But women are fifty times more
practical. She wouldn't believe that all her "antiques" were duff.
She asked me to come and check. I said no.

"Why not?" She was outraged. "I have to know,
stupid!"

"Can't you see, you silly bitch?"

We were in the cottage. Her Rolls-Royce besmirched the garden.
Inside, bare flagged floor, no furniture, no fire, no light, bare windows. She
looked, the bewilderment of wealth.

"You said your Carolean bed was highly valuable,
Lovejoy."

"It's somebody else's, missus. Now clear off. I've done you
an expensive favor. Free. Now let me earn my next three meals."

That was when she hired me, and learned the ghastly truth about
her collections. Her real heartbreak was an antique David Wolff glass. He was a
Dutch bloke whose stipple-engraved glasses are famous. He worked on English
drinking glasses shipped to Holland, his tiny dots so fine you need a lens.
This fake {white dots is a giveaway) even had an English shilling of 1782 in
the glass as "proof." It's the oldest trick in the book.

Me hired meant we moved on to other kinds of linkage. The dealers
wouldn't speak to me for ending their spree. Women dealers were doubly
scathing. Females don't like other birds. Dunno why.

Gervetta and me were friends for almost a fortnight. She suddenly
sold up and went to live in Charlottesville, U.S.A., among the ineffably rich.
She left me a fake Ch'ien Lung tea-dust-glaze bowl, having paid a fortune for
it. The five phony certificates—British Museum, Sotheby's—were still stuck on.
You didn't need to check the absence of that curious green hint to the dark
brown glaze, or peer through a surface microscope to see the unnatural
smoothness. It felt dud. Poor—poorer—Gervetta.

The lesson? Bottomless wells take any amount of gelt and echo for
more. Parable ends.

•
        
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•

So I went to see Jeff. They call him a different nickname, but
he's Dalgleish. Geordie, from the Tyne. He lives with Eleanor, blind and bonny
since birth.

The bus got me down the estuary in time for dark. Jeff teaches
tense people relaxation. Antique dealers always do a spare-time catchpenny.
Jeff's was the easiest I've ever heard of. "Sit down, lady. Nod off.
Next."

"Wotcher, Jeff. I warn you I want a lift to the Bricklayers
Arms in a few minutes."

"Come in, Lovejoy." He called my arrival ahead. They
live in a cottage. He's leveled off every floor so there are no ledges, no
sudden steps. The lights are always apologetically dimmed, in self-rebuke for
Eleanor's misfortune. "Glad to see you."

Jeff has the lowered gaze of the blind minder, forever checking
protrusions. They never lose it. Eleanor on the other hand has the strange
merriment of the afflicted, her laugh straight poetry. She's lovely, vivacious.
Makes me wonder what the rest of us have done. She immediately was up to buss
me, hurrying to make tea. I always dawdle at Jeff's, never move anything. I'm
clumsy enough.

"Jeff. You sent a ring through Gunge Herod?"

"Yes." He looked too hopeful. I sighed inside.

"Take a hint?" He hesitated. I'd been right to come. He
had it bad, lured by some big scam. "Yes or no, Jeff?"

"Anything wrong, Lovejoy?" He glanced to the kitchen
door.

"I think so. Suspect," I corrected.

"I own the ring, Lovejoy." A guarded little speech.

"Jeff. Before Eleanor comes back." We both spoke softly.
"My guess is, you've been asked to put some money in a scam. Big.
Cast-iron. The money's needed fast, tomorrow. Am I right?" Silence.
"Cut out, Jeff."

He licked his lips. He doesn't have much savvy. I should talk.
He's the one with the gorgeous bird.

"You don't understand, Lovejoy." He indicated Eleanor's
trilling. "I'm her mainstay. I'll need help as we grow older. A nest egg's
vital."

"What if the nest egg's a myth, Jeff? You in clink?"

He searched my face. I've seen that look a million times, the
ineffable hope of the wistful buyer.

"You two conspirators done?" Eleanor came swishing in,
carrying a tray. I think she hears everything, and pretends not to.

"Yes, Ellie." Jeff smiled, as if she could see him. Did
she feel smiles? "Lovejoy's come to warn us. No unwise investments.''

I felt rather than saw her hesitation, speaking of feelings. She
said evenly, “Thank you, Lovejoy."

And the chat turned from antiques to innocence, which is never
worth reporting. Over and out.

The Great Marvella and her talking snake is (you'll see why the
singular in a sec) an institution. We've had our wizards, sure. But TGM and HTS
hit us like a typhoon. Nobody quite believed her, until they actually clapped
eyes on. Then, worryingly, some people did. And she was made.

Jeff dropped me at the door, by St. Botolph's Priory, one of the
ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit. I could see torchlights among the
gravestones—a local amateur drama, rehearsing towards catastrophe. I bumped
into Acker Kirwin. He's an affluent buyer from Nine Arches, village of
specialists in tax evasion. He carried something that pulled my bellrope. My
chest went
boiiiing
.

"Acker!" I cried, shoving him into the lamplight to see.
"Great to see you! Musical box? Nicole Freres?"

"Shhh, Lovejoy, you burke!" Acker's the only dealer who
always sounds furtive. He wore an alpaca overcoat, lined by camel velvet. Done
up like a dog's dinner. Women say he's a handsome devil, with his Errol Flynn
tash. To add insult to injury, he deals money in your hand. I don't like him.
He has connections among the grim, same as others.

"Is it mint?" A musical box in mint condition's worth
four times the amount you'd get if it has a tooth missing from its comb—the
metal bit that plucks the tune from prongs on the revolving drum.

This box was just over two feet long, the right size. Get one with
a fat cylinder, with the names of classical pieces on the lid's escutcheon, and
you've found a genuine long-playing "overture" box. Top value. They
are wound by a simple key.

"Yours for a year's wages, Lovejoy."

"Eh?" I gaped at the price. We talk in fractions of the
nation's average annual wage—monetary values being the shifting sands they are.
I mean. King William III—of William and Mary fame— bought all Kensington Palace
for fourteen thousand quid. See what I mean? "That's robbery!"

Acker sniggered. "You know it's a steal, Lovejoy." Acker
means a.k.a., "also known as." He uses aliases.

If he wasn't going to sell me the Nicole Freres box for a song I'd
annoy him back.

"Marvella in? Had a chat with her snake?''

"Not seen her, Lovejoy,” Acker said, and strolled off.

Odd. The only doorway with a light on was The Great Marvella's.
I'd seen him emerge from it. I'd never heard so many lies in one day before. A
record even for the antiques game.

A buzz on the door's voice box got an aloof "Who?"

"Never mind who's out here. Veil," I rasped back.
"Who've you got in there?"

The grille laughed fit to burst. "Geronimo's caged, Lovejoy.
Promise."

"Okay," I said, peeved. All very well for the silly cow
to laugh, but a snake's a snake. "Good evening, Marvella," I began
again, politely. "It's Lovejoy. May I come in?"

Five

Stairs are the most boring structures on earth. You can't do a
thing except go up or down. Sometimes what's at the top is less than pleasant.
I mean Geronimo, not The Great Marvella.

Her upstairs flat is over a florist's, facing the chip shop.
(Fantle's chippie. Not bad, but it's gone curry-with-pasta and other
uncontrollables. Plastic spoons are the end of civilization.) It was still open.
I'd no money. The aroma wafted in after me and clung. A pause is always wise at
a top step.

"Hello?" I knocked. I'm pathetic, but snakes are
definitely not my scene. Although I remember an auction duel over a stuffed
cobra that brought the house down. "Come in. Coward."

Her voice is unnaturally whispery, a come-on, maybe past trauma.
You don't ask.

Slo-o-o-wly I entered. There she was, sixty inches of female,
flowing dark hair, dressed only in a man's buttonless jacket. That's only. Not
even shoes. She was reading elegantly on a sofa. She pointed to the table.

Geronimo's cage, Geronimo coiled inside. I sweated relief.
"Look, Veil. Can't you put him away?"

She raised her eyebrows. "What
are
you suggesting?"

Cages look secure. But snakes can wriggle, can't they? And climb.
Ugh.

''Don't muck about. Lock him away. Veil."

She asked, "What d'you think, Geronimo?"

The snake replied, "If he'll come in with me, Marvella."

"Geronimo agrees, Lovejoy. On one condition—"

"I heard, I heard." It's only Veil's voice-throwing act.
She says she was on the professional stage, really quite famous. We don't
believe her. Ventriloquists aren't, are they? I mean, you can always see their
lips move. They're embarrassing. The audience all want the act to end.

"Going to stand there all evening, Lovejoy?"

There's nowhere to sit. A straight chair, opposite her couch.
Perching on the table was definitely out. She has a bedroom and a kitchen,
sumptuous by comparison. But this was her intro room for clients. She tells
paranormal fortunes in her inner sanctum, the Marvella Revivification Clinic.
She revivifies by massage and asking Geronimo what next, and other symbolically
penetrating questions. Unbelievably, people actually pay money. They bring real
problems— about Auntie's cancer, should the daughter get the cottage, is he
sincere, the wide world's moans. The snake diagnoses. Veil interprets, to
satisfying massage.

Many antique dealers, Connie among them, have regular
appointments. My reason for risking Geronimo.

"No, Veil. I'm just going." I shuffled uncomfortably.
She was all but naked, the big jacket hopelessly inadequate. "Heard of any
big antique scam, love?"

"My clients' disclosures are confidential, Lovejoy."

That old one. Everybody—insurance companies, charities,
governments—claims your secrets are "confidential." They mean they
stick your precious secrets into files clerks read for a laugh when the office
is slack.

"Did Acker Kirwin say owt?"

Puzzlement on her brow. Quite good acting. Maybe she had been on the
stage after all.

"Come to bed and I'll tell you, Lovejoy."

"Er, ta. Veil. But I'm . . ."

"Running for a train?" Getting mad. Not my fault. I'm
the one should be narked, not her.

It was from a time she and I nearly made smiles. We'd met at an
auction. I'd actually sold her a lovely circular supper canterbury, 1810,
beautiful mahogany though not Sheraton. I'd mended the railing round the top
myself. Four legs, and very rare, with two drawers in the railed drum layer
between the legs. Castors original. She'd got in my way when I carried it into
Wittwoode's. I got narked. She made slighting remarks back. She and I swiftly
became polarized as well as passionate—until I knocked over a cage on her bed
table, reached down to pick it up. And found myself staring into the stony eyes
of Geronimo while his tongue flicked in and out. I was off like a cork from a
bottle. I’d babbled, hurtling out of the bedroom door, that I was running for a
train. Veil's hated me ever since.

"Sorry, Veil." I backed out, eyes on Geronimo.

"Don't be stupid, Lovejoy." She rose, her bottom
dragging my eyes. She strolled indolently to a wall hutch—modern crud, veneered
chipboard—and poured some wine. "I thought it was only me scared
you."

"I’m not scared." I declined the wine. "Got
anything to eat? Snake and onions?"

"Cut that out, Lovejoy," the snake said. Veil's throat
moved, her lips stiff. I wish she wouldn't do it.

"The chippie's open," Veil said. "Nip out and get
some. We can chat."

"No. I won't bother."

Her eyes shrewded up. "Broke, Lovejoy?"

Women nark me. Nothing but criticism. Like when you're ill. It's a
real excuse for them to go to town bullying you back to health.

"No, I'm not." Her accusation stung.

"No," she agreed quickly. "I know you're not broke.
I meant you'd forgotten your wallet. Look." She brightened. "I've not
had anything yet. I'm peckish. Would you slip over to Fantle's? Fish and chips
twice."