The Armstrong didn't share my enthusiasm. Maybe it knew how far we had to go. I fed the robin, waiting for the engine to recover from an attempt to start it before half past nine. It usually functioned best about dinnertime. Oddly enough, it was also seasonal, preferring winters to summers and rain to sun.
I'm not a sentimental person. You can't be about a mere scrap heap, can you? But I have a liking for the old banger simply because it's the only time my bell's been wrong. I took the motor car in part exchange for a group of four small animal bronzes from a Carmarthen chap who, poor misguided soul, was interested in bronzes. Some people love them. Heaven knows why, as very few are attractive. Incidentally, always look underneath a bronze figure first. If it has a four-figure number, it may well be a 'liberated' piece which arrived here after the war. 'depose GESCHUTZT' or some such stamped in front of this number can lend weight to your suppositions. The value of most bronzes has increased eight times in the last couple of years among dealers alone.
I was on about my Armstrong. It is an open tourer with big squarish headlamps sticking out and a top that you pull over by hand. Nothing's automatic. The starter's a handle at the front, and you have to work a finger pump from the front seat before it will fire. The brake's outside, and a noisy exhaust runs like a portable tunnel from both sides of the long hood, which is held down by straps. It looks badly old-fashioned and clumsy, but it's sturdy as hell and safe as houses, which is the main thing. As I say, the fuel consumption is terrible. All along where the dashboard would be in a new car there are switches, handles, and a couple of mysterious gauges I've always been too scared to touch in case it stopped altogether. For such a huge car it is weak as a kitten, but once you get it going it is usually fine. The trouble is it seems to have only one gear, because there's no gear handle. Other motorists often blow their horns as they pass in annoyance at my slow speed. I only have a rubber bulb-type honker I never use.
It made a successful running start eventually. As I drove at maximum speed I worked my journey out. Margaret had given me the names of three places, Minsmere in Suffolk, Blakeney Point and Cley in Norfolk. I would say I'd been to Minsmere if anyone asked, and, engine willing, would look at the other two places in one go. I would reach home before opening time. I had the six significant addresses with me to consider one by one.
I was frankly disappointed with the bird sanctuaries, not that I knew what to expect. Quite a few cars were around when I drove up to Cley. A few folks, Rommelized by great binoculars and businesslike weatherproof hats, stood all forlorn in attitudes of endeavor staring toward acres of desolate muddy stuff where nothing was happening. Occasionally they murmured to each other and peered eastward. Perhaps they placed bets among themselves to make it interesting. As well as being disappointed I was puzzled. I've nothing against birds, feathered or not, but once you've seen one sparrow you've seen the lot, haven't you? Occasionally, one particular one might become sort of family just by sheer persistence, like some around the cottage. That's different. Unless you know them specifically it's a waste of time, like people. I asked one bloke what they were all looking at.
'Oyster catchers,' he said. I stared about, but there wasn't a boat in sight.
'Oh,' I replied, and honestly that was it.
There were no stalls, cafes, not even a fish-and-chip shop. As a resort it was a dead duck, if you'll pardon the expression. I talked the Armstrong into life and we creaked away on ye olde greate mysterie trail. I had more birds in my garden than they had on all that mud. I was frozen stiff.
Now brilliant Lovejoy had made a plan. Muriel's memory being what it was, I was down to guesswork—scintillating, cunning brainwork of the Sherlock type.
To post a case you need a post office, right? Sniggering at my shrewdness, I drove around trying to find one, lurching along country lanes where hedges waved in the gales and animals stooged about fields being patient as ever.
I eventually gave up and some time later drove through Wells into Blakeney, where there was a post office. I was dismayed. What do private eyes do now? I couldn't just bowl in and say 'What ho! Who posted a heavy box about a year ago, give or take six months?' My plan hadn't got this far. I inspected it from a distance and then drove to the Point. More desolation, with some different shaped birds bumming around aimlessly, all watched eagerly by enthusiasts. No shops, no stalls, no real scene. I departed shivering.
All this countryside was dampening my earlier high spirits. It's nice from a distance. A few trees and a sparrow or two can be quite pleasant sometimes as a diversion. But you can't beat a good old town crammed full of people milling about on hard pavements, street after street of houses, shops, antique merchants, cinemas, pubs, the odd theater, and lots of man-made electricity. Bird sanctuaries are all very well, but why can't they share them with people?
I drove around Blakeney. In case you come from there, I'm not knocking it. Charming little joint, with the odd tasty antique shop and a place I had dinner near a tavern. But it's not a metropolis, is it? And it had no coastal holiday resorts nearby, either. From the way Muriel's postmistress had spoken, I wanted something like Clacton. That cold wind started up again. I decided there were no clues in bird sanctuaries and drove south. What dumps those places are, I thought, feeling a witticism coming. Those places, I sniggered to myself, are for the birds.
I like antique dealers. We may not be much to look at, but scratch us and we're nothing but pure unadulterated antique dealer all the way through. Everything else comes second. This means you've only to put us, blindfolded, anywhere on earth, and we home instinctively on the nearest fellow dealer. When I'm driving, I swear my banger guides itself along a route that has the highest number of dealers along it.
Trusting my Armstrong, I was at my ninth antique shop asking for nothing in particular, when the name 'Lagrange' accidentally caught my eye. The shopowner, a doctor's wife, Mrs. Ellison, full of painting chat, had gone into the back to find a painting I'd heard of, alleged Norwich School, and to fill in time I was leafing through her invoice file. Lagrange had bought a pistol flask from her about a year before, and paid in groats from what I saw.
I was safely near the door hovering over a box of copper tokens when she returned with the painting. It was a water-color, not an oil, which was a measure of her knowledge. David Cox had signed it, so the name said. I held it. Good stuff, but not a single chime. I showed a carefully judged disappointment and turned to other things. David Cox taught a lot of pupils water-color painting, and had an annoying habit of helping them with little bits of their work, a daub here, a leaf there. If their final painting pleased him
I bought a score of her copper tokens, to pay for my journey's expenses. They are cheap, rather like small coins. Merchants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, times when copper change was in short supply owing to incompetence at the mint among other causes, made their own 'coins' as tokens in copper. These were given for change, and you could spend them when you needed to go shopping again. It must have been a nightmare, because some shops would refuse all except their own tokens, so you might finish up with perhaps thirty
