my explanation that the taxi I’d got from town had run over a badger, and that I’d insisted on taking the poor injured animal to the vet’s at Lexton. Naturally, I’d had to stay with the creature until I knew it was going to live. I was so moved by my tale I welled up. Finally she forgave me, and said I was just a lovely, sweet thing. Back on the right lines, thank God, I had the grub. In my honour she’d come off her perennial staples—whittled carrot and a lettuce-wrapped nut—and cooked food instead.
The passion began about one in the morning, and lasted to six-forty-five a.m. That’s when she gets up to feed her bloody horses and bully the serfs.
She barely had time to make my breakfast before she had to streak off in her Jaguar. And even then she forgot my fried bread. Women really nark me. All night to work out the right breakfast, and still she gets it wrong. Can you believe it? Typical, that. It’s time women learned to get organized. Probably comes from having nothing to do all day. I slept on, the sleep of the just.
CHAPTER FOUR
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My cottage is a short distance from town, slumped beneath thatch in its overgrown garden wilderness. Our village isn’t up to much. Historically a recorded failure over two millennia, it’s shown no improvement since King Cymbeline, another local loser, lost all to Rome. I don’t like countryside, but for once was glad to get back to my bare flagged floors even if I did have to pay the extortionate fare on the village bus. Almira would go berserk when she found me gone—I’d promised to wait until eleven, but once you’re awake you can’t just stare at the ceiling, can you? And I’d money in my pocket, my bonus from Gazza.
The phone was cut off, and electricity. Par for the penniless. This narks me. I mean, what if I’d been an old-age pensioner, shivering, wanting to call Doc Lancaster? Lucky for them I wasn’t, or I’d have pegged out and made them feel really sorry. The post was on time, eleven o’clock delivery. I brewed up as the post lass shovelled bills into the porch. She came in.
I’d built a fire of beechwood, starting it with yesterday’s unopened letters, and got a kettle on.
“Burning evidence, Lovejoy?”
“Some old logs, Mich.” They were beechwood. Two pounds of beech soot to a gallon of water, boiled briefly, then decanted and evaporated to dryness, is the ancients’ recipe for bistre, the pigment Old Masters drew with. A lot of forged antique drawings were due to appear in the next antiques auctions, after which my electricity and water supply might miraculously get switched on—if Fanny delivered the fake antique paper on time. Some local swine was testing my Old Master forgeries for the right antique watermark, using beta-radiography, so I’d had to pay Fanny’s exorbitant prices and she’d never even seduced me, the cow. I ask you. Beta-radiography’s simple: you put a radioactive source under any paper, with a film on top. Leave it a while. Develop the film. And presto! A photo of the paper’s watermark! It’s a cheap and simple foolproof test of antique paper (which is why, of course, antique dealers avoid it like the plague).
She was telling me off. “Michelle, not Mich. It’s our anniversary, Lovejoy. Don’t I get a card? Flowers?”
I stared. She laughed, a tiny sprite of a girl with a smile that makes you forget how hopeless the mail is these days. I like her, a red-haired pest.
“Two years I’ve been teaching you my name.” She disapproves of my habitat’s coarser features. “Never a word of thanks.”
“Who needs letters?”
“I’m valuable, Lovejoy.” She perched prettily on the divan, wrinkled her nose at its unmade condition. “You didn’t sleep here last night. Nor the one before.”
“So what? I was, er, busy,” I said lamely. Women make you feel guilty even when you’ve done nothing.
“You still with that rich tart, Lovejoy? You didn’t ask me why I’m valuable.”
“Why’re you valuable, Mich?”
“Because I’m a winged messenger. Tinker’s at the Treble Tile, very urgent. And a posh lady in a monstermobile is asking Dulcie where is Lovejoy Antiques, Inc.”
That would have been almost worth another stare, but the kettle boiled just then and I had to dash to find my two mugs. Michelle lay in an
“Tell Dulcie to get rid.” I held up the mug as a bribe.
“No sugar.” She smiled and waggled provocatively out, doing the trailing-fox-fur mime. I felt worn out. Not even noon, and already hunted. Is it me? Everybody else has such control.
Tinker’s my barker, a filthy shuffler who lives partly on ale and pickings, but mostly on me. He’s my rumour- ferret for antiques. The best in the business, he assimilates news by osmosis. I mean, he can stand in a remote village pub all day long, gradually getting more and more kaylied, then tell you just before he falls down paralytic at midnight what’s gone on at auctions in Ipswich, Norwich, even the Midlands. My part of the contract is to see his boozing slates are paid, every tavern in the Eastern hundreds. Magee’s Brewery should send me a turkey at Christmas.
Michelle came back inside, closing the porch door, I noticed. She’s almost a pal, as far as the Royal Mail services go. I gave her the cracked mug because it cuts my lip.
“Now, Lovejoy,” she said. “Blackmail time.”
“Who’re we doing over?”
“Me,” she corrected. “I’m blackmailing someone.”
That sprawl out of Manet’s famous painting was almost exact, except there was no Nubian slave, no black neck ribbon. And Michelle was clothed. I looked about for blackmailees. Me?
