The Judas Pair

I patted the Armstrong-Siddeley's hood. 'Let's risk it, love,' I said, set it rolling with the outside handbrake dropped forward, and jumped in.

Mercifully, it coughed into action just as it reached the gate. The engine kept grinding away while I swung the gate open, and we trundled grandly out onto the metaled road, all its remaining arthritic twenty cc's throbbing with power. I pushed the throttle flat, and the speedo sailed majestically upward from walking pace into double figures. The jet age.

Practically every town nowadays has an antique market, mart, arcade, call it what you will. Our town has an arcade of maybe ten antique shops. Imagine Billy Bunter's idea of the Sun King's palace, built by our town council, who'd run out of money before finishing the foyer, and you've got our shopping arcade. It's given to seasonal fluctuations, because people from holiday resorts along the coast push up summer sales, and the dearth of winter visitors whittles the arcade's shops—stalls in—down to five or six. They throw in a cafe to entice the unwary. Dandy Jack never closes.

I parked the Armstrong illegally, sticking the card on the windshield saying 'Delivering,' which could be anything from a doctor to a florist. It often worked. The cafe had a handful of customers swilling tea and grappling with Chorley cakes. I got the cleanest cake and a plastic cup. Within five minutes they were popping in.

'Hello, Lovejoy. Slumming?' Harry Bateman, no less, of Wordsworth fame.

'Hiyer, Harry.'

'Hear about my—?'

'Remember the Trades Descriptions Act, that's all.'

He gave me a grin and shrugged. 'I thought I'd done me homework that time. Bloody encyclopedia you are, Lovejoy. See you later.'

'It's Lovejoy. Going straight yet?' came a second later.

Margaret Dainty was perhaps a useful thirty-five, tinted hair, plump, and prematurely matronly of figure. She was cool, usually reasonably griffed up on her wares, and tended to be highly priced. There was a husband lurking somewhere in her background, but he never materialized. An unfortunate childhood injury gave her a slight limp, well disguised.

'Hiyer, Margaret. How's business?'

'Not good.' This means anything from bad to splendid.

'Same all around.'

'Interested in anything—besides Jane Felsham?' She sat opposite and brushed crumbs away for her elbows.

I raised eyebrows. 'What's she done wrong?'

'One of your late-night visitors, I hear.'

'Word gets around—wrong as usual. Daytime. Accompanied.'

'I'm glad to hear it, Lovejoy,' she said, smiling.

We had been good friends, once and briefly. I'd assumed that was to be it and that she'd developed other interests.

'Now, now, young Dainty,' I chided. 'You don't want an aging, disheveled, poverty-stricken bum like me cramping your style.'

'You are hard work,' she agreed coolly. 'But never dull.'

'Poor's dull,' I corrected her. 'Failure's dull. That's me.'

'You're determined not to risk another Cissie.' Cissie, my erstwhile lady wife.

'There couldn't be another. It's one per galaxy.'

'You're safe, then.' She eyed me as I finished that terrible tea. 'Coming to see my stock?'

I rose, bringing my unfinished Chorley cake with me. Frankly, I could have gone for Margaret badly, too deeply for my own good. But women are funny, you know. They keep changing, ever so slightly, from the time you first meet them. There's a gradual hardening and tightening, until finally they're behaving all about you, unmasked and vigilant, not a little fierce. It's all made worse by the crippling need for them that one has. There's an absolute demand, and women have the only supply. I prefer them before their shutters and masks come down. Not, you understand, at a distance.

She had a bonheur de jour—lady's writing desk—eighteenth century.

'Sheraton?' Margaret asked.

'No. His style, though.'

'Why not?'

I shrugged in answer. I couldn't tell her about my bell's condemnatory silence. 'Doesn't seem quite right.'

Tip: look for neat fire-gilt handles, that lovely satinwood, tulipwood, and ebony, and never buy until you've had out the wooden runners which support the hinged writing surface. You'll be lucky if the baize is original. Look at it edge-on to see if it's standing high or not. High: modern replacement. Low: possibly original. Forget whether it's faded or not, because we can do that on a clothesline, washing and sun-drying repeatedly, day in, day out for a week. It's only stuck on.

'Good or not?' she pressed.

'Pretty good.' Which satisfied her.

She showed me two pottery birds, all bright colors, and asked if I liked them.

'Horrible.'