The world restored normality when Tinker caught me up and dragged me into the Ship Inn. He had Steve Yelbard waiting, victor of the Portland Vase competition.
“Hello, Steve.” I let my delight show. “Congrats. Your glass-work’s beautiful. Here, let me get these…” I ordered ale for the three of us, which was numerically equal to six—four for Tinker, one each for Steve and me.
We spoke for quite some time. He was a nice bloke, not able to tell me much. Genuine, as far as I could tell. More interested in glass than breathing. An enthusiast after my own heart. I asked if he’d visited anywhere locally besides Long Melford where he was staying, was told no.
Steve told me about Jan Fotheringay. “I got a note saying he had a commission for me, copying some varied- knop bell-mouthed wine glasses, but he didn’t show.”
“Newcastle, eh?” I sighed. Even a fake 1734 vintage glass, with its knops shaping the stem with lovely variation, yet in exquisite proportion, would send me delirious. Newcastle’s glass has never been bettered—and I do include Venice. They are nearly priceless. “You do your own wheel engraving, Steve?”
“No. Got a Dutch bloke.”
I laughed. “Traditionalist, eh?” Even that long ago, our glasses were sent to Holland for engraving. The real difficulty is making sure the air-beaded ball knop isn’t a fraction too large. Some glass-maker fakers run amok when they try for the most valuable—“Eh? What, Steve?” He’d said something.
“Jan. Terrible luck.” Steve tutted. “His motor home. Didn’t know he was a drinker. You can’t tell, can you?”
“Mmmh,” I went. I’d get it from Tinker later.
And that was that. Steve knew nothing about Phoebe Colonna, despite strong views on her morals, substituting a Victorian replica for one of her own. Unscrupulous, he called it.
“An American trait, Lovejoy. Spreading all over the world.”
So we parted, me and Tinker waving off this pure-minded forger who’d discovered America was to blame for all our wrongdoing. God knows what the Old World would do without the Yanks to blame for everything—blame our horrible old selves instead, I suppose.
“Tell, Tinker,” I ordered.
“Dry old day, Lovejoy.” He threatened a rumbling chestiness. I flung a couple of pints down his throttle in the nick of time. “That poofter Jan lives in a motorized caravan. Its engine caught fire driving through Archway. He lost the lot.”
“What’s this about drink?”
“Pissed as a newt, Lovejoy,” he said inelegantly. “The Plod checked his blood. Insurance’ll shell him like the bleedin’ plague. Out of hospital, magistrate’ll chuck the book at him.”
“That bad?”
The long hand of Fortune? Or the longer, more decisive hand of Big John Sheehan, Corse, both?
I remembered then I was going to Barlfen with the lovely Almira, and made a run for it. From my chat with Steve I was practically sure there was no connection between the Portland Vase competition and this Troude bloke. And sure too that Almira was only pretending she had no investments in the Nouvello venture in Ladyham. After all, she might have an old flame on the board, and simply be doing him a favour, right?
It came on to rain about then. I saw no new omens.
CHAPTER EIGHT
« ^ »
That evening was straight out of
“Lovejoy, darling.” Almira was all for cottage work again. “It’s time to go.”
I’d had her pudding, disappointingly non-filling sorbet stuff. She’d seemed to expect me to eat it, the way women do. “Wait, doowerlink. Please.” I pretended to temporize, slipped in an order for profiteroles. “I have something to say.”
“Yes, darling?” Women love appetites in action. Almira was happy to see me nosh. I waited for the discreet serf to retire. It took longer than I wanted, because I’d had to wrestle the waitress to the best of three pinfalls for enough cream.
“Our holiday,” I said. I wanted to appear soulful, but you can’t when scoffing your third pudding, so I let instinct guide me along. “France. Next Friday. Can you get away?”
“France?”
She went faint. Her hand crept to her lovely throat. She was wearing genuine amber—orange-coloured, not Chinese red, no trace of that ugly sectoring that gives amberoid mock-ups away in oblique light. Lovely thick complete beads, matching near as amber ever can. Low-cut, her swan neck without a blemish. No wonder women rule.
“I checked. There’s another flight next Thursday. I paid a deposit.” I looked proud.
“But Lovejoy…”
