About ten o’clock I was working my way through a bottle of white wine in my garret, racking my two neurones to see if I’d forgotten anything, when the stairs creaked.
Michelle came in with the woman’s purposeful complicity, placing her back to the door edge and closing it with hands behind her. This maneuver keeps the woman’s face towards the occupant. They have these natural skills.
“Come in,” I said. “Have a seat.”
“I… I just wanted to say that the catalog’s up to date.” She made to perch on the bed, rose quickly at the implications. I gave her my chair and flopped horizontal. “We only have this evening’s list to do. Mrs. Moncreiffe has proved a godsend.”
“I’m glad. Out with it, love.”
“How many more days before…?”
“Soon.” I didn’t want to be tied. “Michelle. Your son Joseph sent down an original antique, didn’t he? Shona sent Robert after it in the Mawdslay, Tachnadray’s one car.”
“Yes.” Her voice was a whisper.
“I don’t know quite what happened, but Joseph was fetched back. He’s hidden at Shooters, because he’s supposed to have killed that driver. Dispute over the money, was it?”
Michelle nodded bravely. “They… assumed so.” I watched admiringly. Women lie with such conviction.
“Tough for you, love. Torn loyalty and all that.”
“You’re… you’re really nothing to do with that London college, are you?”
“No.” I pretended anger. “Have you been phoning people?”
“No, no. I just… surmise, that’s all.” She regarded her twisting hands for a moment.
“You’re not police. And you talk to things. You’re a bit mad, yet…”
“Thank God for that ‘yet’—” I gave her a sincere smile. “Don’t worry, love. I’m on Elaine’s side. I’ll honestly do the best I can when the time comes.”
She nodded and stood, watching me. “I wish,” she got out eventually, “we’d met under other circumstances. Better ones.”
“We practically did.” I shooed her out. “I’ve got to think. Do Tinker’s call on your own tonight, love.”
Eleven o’clock I went with a krypton handlamp and a small jeweler’s loupe to look at the painting. It had gone. That told me as much as if I’d studied it for a fortnight in Agnew’s viewing room. One of the two figures gazing so soulfully in the painting had been Michelle. The other had been a man slightly older, but not Duncan. He’d looked in charge, attired in chieftain’s dress.
Which called for a long think to midnight. To one o’clock. To one-thirty. More deep thoughts for another hour.
Tinker was still swilling at the pub by the old flour mill. I told him to phone Trembler early tomorrow morning and just say, “Lovejoy.”
“Right,” he croaked, anxious. “Here, Lovejoy. When do we come? Antioch keeps asking.
There’s frigging trucks everywhere—”
“Now,” I said, throat dry. “Roll it, Tinker.” I lowered the receiver on his relieved cackle.
« ^ »
—— 24 ——
Economy’s always scared me. Or do I mean economics? Maybe both, if they’re not the same thing. I mean, when you hear that Brazil is a trillion zlotniks in the red, the average bloke switches off. Mistakes that are beyond one man’s own redemption simply go off the scale, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe that was why I’d run from Sidoli’s rumble. Plus cowardice, of course.
The books I’d got from Inverness, paperback reruns, showed Duncan a few more possibilities. He was hard to persuade.
“This pedestal sideboard from Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of 1833,” I told his disbelief.
“Plain as anything, simple. Never mind that architects call it cabinetmaker Gothic—”
“Make it? Out of new wood?”
“Out of that.” A wardrobe, slanted and damp-warped, leaned tiredly in the workshop.
“By suppertime.”
“What about those great pedestals?”
“The design’s only like a strut across two bricks,” I pointed out. “So cut those old stairs Robert’s trying to mend in the east wing. The wood’s good. The pieces are almost the right size, for God’s sake.”
We settled that after argument. Two new lads had come to help Duncan, relatives of relatives. One was a motor mechanic, the other a school-leaver. That gave me the idea.
Motors mean metal, which means brass rails, which with old stair wood means running sideboards.
“Make a pair of running sideboards. They’re straight in period, Duncan. All it is, three shelves each with a brass rail surround, on a vertical support at each end. Put it on wooden feet instead of casters, French polish to show it’s original, and it’ll look straight 1830.”
