“Cost you, Lovejoy.” A trace harder now, but still octaves above top C.
“What?”
She contemplated that for a full five minutes. When I first knew her she was quite soft-hearted and had a dog called Frobisher, but it got killed when somebody ran over it. She abandoned business for a six-month, then resumed with a heart of flint and a disguise to match.
“There’s a young artist I know, Lovejoy,” she shrilled. I leaned away, hoping my auditory acuity would survive. “Has an old bike. My cousin, actually. He needs money for art school. Is there much of an antiques market in old bikes, Lovejoy?”
This was the squeeze. Forna always wants to help her cousin’s lad who’s always manfully striving to better himself. Her bloody cousin must breed like a frog, the number of times I’ve helped him with antiques. Were there other clients, bankers helping this same unfortunate striver with fiscal problems, clerics helping him over theological humps, engineers giving useful tips about his gas turbines?
“Bike? Tell me, and I’ll tell you, Forn.”
“No, dear,” she screamed. “You run down the different sorts. I’ll stop you when you get to the one he wants to sell.”
“A German baron produced the first bicycle, a walking machine with a steerable front wheel, back in 1817. Your, er, cousin can’t have one of those, just on probability,” I began. Give her her due, Forna listens intently, takes it all in.
“Wood, were they?”
“Mostly, but very popular. A Dumfrieshire bloke invented workable levers to drive these walking machines about 1840,” I said, watching for a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. Nothing. “You’ll know the velocipede, Forn. Pierre Michot made about two hundred a day in the 1860s, but sold out for filthy lucre. They’re not too rare, but cost.”
Her eyes sparked. “Maybe it was one of those, babbikins?”
“The penny-farthings are the best known,” I went on, heart sinking at the price I’d have to pay, but I desperately needed to know more, and I’d scraped the barrel for information. “James Stanley was the genius, a little Coventry chap who made fixed pedals for the front wheel.” I got carried away. “Posh bicycle clubs became all the rage, with bright uniforms and personalized bugle calls. Labourers were barred—muscular strength was unfair, you see, to effete aristocrats in the team.”
“I think maybe it was one of those,” Forna said, eyes now brilliant with pleasure. For pleasure read financial relish.
“His brother’s son, John Stanley, made the one you’d recognize today, Forna. Equal wheels, chain drive, brake and bells. These Safety Bicycles were a terrific advance, highly sought among modern collectors. The Rover design was the pattern…”
“That’s it!” Forna cried. I heard no more until I’d watched the midnight cops-and-robbers film while she searched her records in some secret cupboard with a whirring door. I kept wondering where I’d get the price of one of John Stanley’s original Rover bikes from. Of course, the bike itself wouldn’t show up. I’d pay for it, then she’d promise it, promise it, promise… Then, by mutual agreement, the antique bicycle and her artistic protege would turn into slush and vanish down the gutters of time. For a bird who lived on hard news, Forna’s income fed on fiction.
“Here, babbikins!” She emerged and sat, pouring a new drink.
“Jay for Jervis Galloway, Lovejoy,” she shrilled. “A Parliamentarian, not going to stand at the next election—an expected large windfall from some unspecified new business. Politician of mediocrity. Turncoat. Conservative to Social Democrat to Labour. Wealthy by his missus, a dick-struck cow who fox-hunts.”
“That it?” Almira would love her description.
“No.” Her voice sank a little. “Heavy money into coastal development, Lovejoy. A syndicate of antique dealers funnels money through him into Mentle Marina. Philippe Troude I know.” She smiled. “He buys more love potions than a wizard. Stuck on some French woman with high connections.”
It matched, but added a little. “He your client, Forna?”
“Did I say one bike, Lovejoy?” she cried. “I meant one of those velocipede things as well!”
“Good heavens,” I said evenly. “What a lucky lad your cousin is! Troude your client?”
“Has been since he opened his marina complex, Lovejoy. No harm in the man, not really. Pays on the nail, pleasant with it.”
She told me his foibles, bedtime idiosyncrasies, tame stuff really. I hardly listened. Four in the morning she was still wide awake, answering some incoming call. I left knackered, wanting to kip.
Yet back at my cottage I couldn’t rest. The parcel delivered by a relenting Michelle was inside the door. I’d passed it a couple of times, reeling from the bonging but too worried to’ve taken up its challenge. Now, I opened it with care. Very small, an ovalish velvet box that barely covered my palm. And a note saying sell it on commission in London, not anywhere local. It was from Baff, RIP.
The velvet case contained fifty mica (thus transparent) oval slivers. At first, I couldn’t work out what the parts of faces and bits of apparel and hats and wigs were painted on them for. Then I saw on the bottom one, painted on solid heavy copper, a Cavalier-like gentleman looking at me, dated 1641. It bonged me stupid. A spy-master’s set of disguises! I’d never seen a complete set before. I picked one mica slice at random, superimposed it on the oval miniature portrait, and the Cavalier had changed into a swarthy turbanned Turk. Replace it with another mica oval, the miniature became an exotic bewigged blonde lady with exquisitely huge breasts tumbling from her bodice. No playing cards these. My hands trembled so badly I had to set them down.
In troubled yore, disguise mattered. A spy-master—like Mrs. Aphra Benn, the heroine I keep on about—wants to send, say, a message to a secret ally. But letters could be opened, like Mary Queen of Scots’s, and you’d be for it. Carrier pigeons could be hawked on arrival, then all was lost. Messengers were intercepted, bribed, waylaid. A
