Paid and Loving Eyes

Drouot auctions, down the yellow path, and the zillion fakes—which merely meant any others—down the black. I didn’t feel proud, perched there saying “Yellow”, and “Black” with the blokes sweating and lifting, trolleying the pieces in the viewing area.

Except it got easier when we resumed. The small items started coming sooner than I expected. But there was a mistake. It happened after I ordered a restart. The whifflers placed a plant stand, quite well made but modern and therefore dross, in the circle, and stepped away while the disc rose like an ancient cinema organ from the floor until it reached my eye-level, four feet away. Steps raked alongside so they could reach up. Then they brought in a small box I didn’t recognize. By which I mean I really truly did.

It sat there, smiling, mystic, wondrous.

Dilemma-time. I’d not picked this little box out in Paris, at Monsieur Jacques Dreyfus’s auction place, at the antique shops when I’d gone ape and bought everything genuine I could see. Therefore it should be fake, right? That was Monique’s and Marimee’s infallible plan. Me to buy the genuines, the syndicate to manufacture fakes. By separating the genuine antiques from the mass of fakes, I’d earn my percentage of this superb, flawless scam pay- out time. I’d got it right, hadn’t I?

Now this box.

Onward shipment, the antiques I’d earmarked in Paris, right? All of which I’d seen, right? Therefore, I should recognize each and every single genuine antique, right? No problem.

The box looked at me. I looked at the box.

And, the Troude-Marimee-Monique scam scenario went, Lovejoy would funnel the fakes one way, and the genuine antiques, all familiar friends, the other. Okay?

The box sat there, waiting.

Now, I had my orders so firm I’d no doubts about what would happen if I disobeyed. Look at poor Baff. Look at poor old Leon. Look at Jan. I didn’t want it to be look at poor Lovejoy. The rule was, make no changes. Monique said so. Guy and Veronique had been terrified out of their drug-sozzled wits when I’d bent them ever so slightly. The rule? Genuine antiques, ship; the fakes, storage.

The box smiled.

Genuine, pristine, beautiful, antique—and I’d never seen it before. It ought to be fake, so chuted down the black conveyor. Except it was genuine. So down the yellow. Except I’d never clapped eyes on it. So down the black. Except I recognised it. So yellow.

The box beamed. I smiled back. Watcher, Jamie, my mind went. “Monsieur?” a puzzled vannie said.

“Sorry, mate. Un moment, please.”

A snuffbox, the colour of old tea, decorated with a simple engraved leaf. Not much to look at, maybe, but the genius that made it was one of the most lovely souls who ever lived. Yonks ago, it was the fashion to go and visit this crippled lad—legs paralysed as a child —in Laurencekirk. He had a great circular bed, and thereon he was stuck, for life. It had shelves, lathes, tool racks, a workbench, all within reach. There, this game youth made these boxes, plus others for tobacco, tea, needles, wools. He even made furniture, and unbelievably cased some clocks, worked in metal and engraved glass. His dander up, he stormed on making violins, flutes, even nautical instruments. A veritable ball of fire, was little crippled lame game James Sandy of Laurencekirk on his circular bed.

Even better, children used to bring him birds’ eggs from the surrounding countryside—it’s between Montrose and Stonehaven in what I, and others who also haven’t yet lost their wits, still call Kincardine. Spectacularly, James Sandy used to hatch these eggs with the warmth of his body, then feed the fledglings and release them to the wild. Can you think of a more beautiful life? Especially considering how oppressed his dauntless spirit must have been?

“Monsieur?”

“Sorry, pardon, entschuldigan—er, I’ve a cold coming. Un malade.” I coughed, came to.

Jamie Sandy invented an invisible wooden hinge held by a small transfixing brass pin. Practically airtight, it was highly prized, since your pricey spice or costly snuff never lost its flavour. Eventually, their manufacture centred on Mauchline in Ayr under the Smith brothers during the Napoleonic Wars. Whole societies of collectors now fight over napkin rings, pipes, ring trees, walking sticks, all Mauchline ware in sycamore. But the real gems are these originals, made plain by little James Sandy in Laurencekirk. Okay, so they were only copies of touristy trinkets filched from Spa in Belgium. And okay, so it was a deliberate act of head-hunting when Lord Gardenston enticed a Spa souvenir-carver from the Low Countries to show the Laurencekirk locals how. But what’s wrong with that? It produced one of the loveliest geniuses in that age of geniuses. It’d even be worth going to boring old Heaven one day, just to meet James Sandy.

This wasn’t one of your machine-mades. Nor one of the Mauchline ware sycamores with their nicotine-coloured varnished transfer-prints of Skegness. This was exquisite, by the original hand of an immortal. I looked away, uncomfortable. My duty was to stick to Monique’s rule: fail to recognize an item, label it a fake and chute it down the black conveyor to storage.

And call James Sandy’s work fake? Bloody cheek.

“Yellow,” I heard myself say calmly. Yellow for genuine, authentic, superb. Hang the cost. I could argue the genius’s case any day of the week, even with Monique Delebarre and Colonel Marimee, Philippe Troude. And sighed as the bloke nodded and made for the ramp carrying Sandy’s wondrous skill. Once a fool, as they say.

“Next, Monsieurs,” my voice went through a great calm. And so signalled the death of somebody I knew, somebody I shouldn’t have killed at all, among the rest.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

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We were given a splendid tour. That is, we were finally shown our own stuff in