Paid and Loving Eyes

through no fault of my own. I realized after an hour that I should get on, hoover up more antiques, and rose to go. I hesitated.

“Look, Miss Fabien. Might I give some advice?”

“Indeed. I should be grateful from one so knowledgeable.”

“Please. Tonight, remove your antiques. To a storeroom, any borrowed pantechnicon.”

She looked at me, at the street. “But why?”

“I have a hunch, that’s all.” I said my goodbyes, telling her to be sure to give my tardy assistants a receipt.

And that was that.

I did thirty-one more shops, not counting the brocanteurs which had mostly duff stuff except for an orrery I picked up for a song. “Orrery” after John Rowley made a model of the solar system for the Earl of Orrery in 1713. They look like those mobile hangings that were so popular ten years ago, except stuck on to a small stand. It was cheap, the brocanteur told me, because the ivory base was all bent and split to blazes. I pretended hesitation, though I was almost sure it was pre-1781 because that was the year Herschell discovered the planet Uranus and there was no sign of it on this orrery’s whirlies. With an actor’s reluctance, I paid him four-fifths of his asking price with a scribble. Straightening old ivory’s the easiest thing in the world: steep the ivory in dilute nitric acid for some days, judging it as you go. It slowly becomes astonishingly bendable, and translucent. Gently force it into shape, then let it dry. That’s all there is to it. An old orrery’s worth a fortune.

Congratulating myself, I mentally thanked Paris for a marvellous day. I went and stood at the corner of the oblique X intersection of the Rue de Rennes and the Rue d’Assas. As obvious as a spare tool, it was still a full hour before Guy the Prat leapt on me, snarling. He was shaking badly, teeth a-chatter. He’d missed a dose.

“About frigging time,” I said. “Here.” I shoved the shoal of promissories at him. “You’ve an hour before they close. Better split them with Veronique or you’ll miss some. See you at the hotel.”

“Lovejoy!” It was a howl. I’ve never seen anybody so enraged, so desperate. Across the road Veronique was shrieking abuse at a taxi and some motors trying to cut from the Luxembourg Gardens. Jesus, what a durbar. “Come back!”

“Bon chance, Guy.” I strolled off with a wave, pointed to an imaginary wristwatch.

With the sun setting, shops closing, motors getting madder, the driving crazier, I sought out a restaurant and had a whale of a time noshing everything in sight. The waiters finished up laughing at me for my misunderstandings of the menu, but were thrilled at my hunger. Well, I was starving, hardly eaten a thing all day. I felt restored, made whole again from contact with lovely antiques. I drifted about the darkening city, then retired for the night. Guy and Veronique weren’t back yet. Still chasing up my antiques? Or, my smile dying, catching up on their vital dosage somewhere? But the antiques had made up for everything. And not a single one had made me feel ill, though I’d seen hundreds of polished surfaces, fake, genuine, phoney, simulants, look-alikes, copies, filiations, shams, authentics twindled into double, marriages of scores, hundreds of pieces. Which makes you think that something was more than radically wrong with Colonel Marimee’s scam, whatever that might be. And with Guy and Veronique’s assistance, whatever that might be.

And even with Cissie’s death, W.T.M.B.?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

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Not that?” I heard myself exclaim, swiftly returning to ingratiate, “Quite, er, splendid!”

The famous Paris auction centre is a mess. Imagine Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams, the rest, together in one new building like a corny copy of a provincial bank. It tried to emulate the nearby bourgeois facades. I beamed falsely at Veronique and Guy.

“It’s marvellous,” Guy bragged as we approached. “Space for four hundred cars, every-hour parking.” He would think of motor cars.

“We need antique auctions,” I reminded. I didn’t want Colonel Marimee getting on at me. “I did my bit yesterday.”

“You bastard, Lovejoy. We did all the work!”

“Oh, aye.” I went all laconic. “So why’d you need me?”

He growled, his sign of wanting to land me one.

“I’ll show Lovejoy round,“ Veronique swiftly told Guy. “You see Dreyfus. Fifteen minutes.”

I watched Guy shoot into the building. I didn’t like him to be so zingy, behaving like he had stars round his head, and asked, “He okay, love?”

“He’s fine.” She halted so I bumped into her. “No more questions like that, Lovejoy. Today we begin.”

Like what? I asked myself, narked. All right, maybe I’d sounded full of mistrust about his crazy stare and dynamite style. I’d only been trying to help, in a caring sort of way.

“Thank God. Where are they?”

We entered the place. She spoke offhand to three blokes who accosted us, beckoned me with a tilt of her head. I felt a sneaky pride in being with somebody so lovely.

“For a start, Lovejoy, this is the Hotel Drouot.” I nodded I’d heard of the great focus for Paris’s auctioneers. Not a hotel at all. “Rebuilt in 1980. Sixteen salerooms, each with storage space, three selling floors from central foyers.