He donned his motor-bike leathers. I pushed him forcibly into the dark garden.
'I expect you're letting me off early because I was doing so well,' he said merrily. He believes every word.
'Sure, sure.'
'Will you please inform Uncle how successful I was with those sugar ladles?' he asked at the door. 'He will be so hugely delighted.' His uncle pays me for teaching the goon.
I wonder where all my patience comes from, honestly. I'll tell him you're making your usual progress, Algernon.'
'Thank you, Lovejoy!' he exclaimed joyously. 'You know, eventually I anticipate to be almost as swift as your good self -'
I shut the door. There's a limit.
Normally I'd stroll up to the pub to wash all that Algernon-induced trauma out of my mind. This particular night I was too late to escape. There was a knock at my door.
'Nichole. What -?'
'Kate,' she said. Her smile made it the coldest night of the year. 'The wicked sister.'
'Oh, come in.' She was slightly taller than Nichole but the same colouring.
'No, thank you. You're Lovejoy?' I nodded. You feel so daft just standing holding a door open, don't you? You can't shut it and you can't go out or back in. 'I want to ask you not to help my sister,' she said carefully. 'She… her judgement is sometimes, well, not too reliable, you understand.'
'I haven't helped her,' I explained. 'She wanted a sketch and some -'
'Some rubbish,' Kate cut in. 'Uncle was a kindly man, but given to making up fanciful tales. I don't want my sister influenced.'
'About his other belongings,' I began hopefully.
'Very ordinary furniture, very cheap, very modern,' she stated, cold as ever. 'And now all sold. You do understand about Nichole?'
'Sure,' I said. She said goodnight and drove into the darkness in an elderly Mini. I sighed and locked up. I seemed to be alienating the universe.
I've told you all this the way I have because it was the last quiet time there was in the whole business. I realized during the rest of that evening that something was rapidly going wrong in my humdrum normal life. Looking back, I don't see to this day what else I could have done.
The murder honestly wasn't my fault, and I don't think the other deaths were, either.
Honest.
CHAPTER VII
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JANIE HURTLED IN early next morning. Her husband had been called away to the city for the day, the early train. It wasn't any good, though. The feeling was still on me. I sent her packing. She was wild and refused to go but I picked her up and chucked her outside in the porch. She even tried scratching my eyes as I slammed the door. To be fair, I hinted I'd work to do, quite politely. She even rushed round to the back. I reached the bolt first, pulled the curtains and with Janie banging on the door hauled up my paving. She'd be mad for days. She'd brought a picnic basket, as if there's time for that sort of thing.
Down in the priest's hole the cardboard box's contents seemed even more pathetic. I unfolded the small ledged Regency table, a godsend in these days of wobbling warping junk, and poured the buttons out. I started on them with a lens and prism. It takes time. The photos were 1930s, old churches, a beach, a boarding-house. An hour later I reached the first medal, the old 'ration gong' of the War. Ordinary. There seemed not a single hint among the lot.
I have twenty shoeboxes full of what history got up to, but I couldn't find a trace of any Lady Isabella. The books showed nothing special under the microscope, no microdots, no secret inks, no oiled-in watermarks. I cleared up and got ready to leave. The box was better left in the hidden cellar. When I came out into the garden I found Janie had driven off in a huff. Now I'd have to walk up into the village and wait for our single market bus about noon. Why have women no patience? I had no more cheese for the robin. I borrowed some budgie seed and told them I owed it.
'The message is in the words,' I told the robin. 'And they're only a list of places, right?
All you need to do is visit each place and you'd find where he's put the Roman stuff. It should be obvious. Easy.'
Easy. Even if they were in the Isle of Man, and me only with the bus fare to town. I'd walk back. Still, things were definitely looking up for Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. At least I'd a ray of hope now.
I’ll go and do a bit to the painting,' I told the robin.
Inevitably the phone rang.
'Lovejoy. I hope you don't mind?' Nichole.
'No. Glad to hear you.'
We held the pause. There's a sudden affinity between two people sometimes when nothing really needs saying.
'I… I was ringing to ask your help. The sketch and the rubbish from Uncle James.'
'Dandy Jack has them,' I told her carefully. 'I did some work for him but he wouldn't part with the sketch.'
