thinner ice than I'd assumed. And even more desperate for gelt.
21
DAWN RAIN CAME swirling up the estuary on North Sea wind. The instant I'd tottered home I washed, naked as a grape, at my garden well. I still felt polluted. Odd, seeing that not long before I'd been narked because Sorbo wouldn't give me a drop of his hooch. I used rain to do it again, scrubbing like a maniac with soap homemade from ashes and candle fat.
You mustn't miss breakfast, most important meal of the day. Porridge made like Gran used to, with water alone, fills you longer. Then a biscuit the mice hadn't found, greedy little sods. I went into my cellar hidey hole, moving the divan and lifting the flagstone on its ring. I used a candle, electricity not making it, and descended into bliss. I too keep records. A carder man like Saunty sells to whoever will buy. I would visit him and his merry lass later.
They're in boxes, no real order. Scraps torn from magazines, photos nicked from dentists' waiting rooms, cyclostyled run-offs stapled in remote Norfolk sheds, it's all here. I crouched to go through what I had, realized with fright that I'd assumed the same hunched position in Sorbo's front garden, so sat instead on the ladder step.
Some people can assimilate without effort. I'm like that, but can't for the life of me classify the stuff. It's haphazard osmosis. I'm no gardener, for example, but I'm in the happy position of being able to inform the world that a perfectly nourished tomato plant can attain a height of twenty feet, six whole metres. Further, those unable to sleep for wondering who was our very first car fatality can now nod off - it was poor Bridget Driscoll, a London lady in her forties, who in 1896 was watching a strange new horseless contrivance at Crystal Palace. See? No rhyme or reason.
But I did the best I could, with my head spinning and Sorbo everywhere. Despite lingering horror, I amazed myself. As I read, I calmed. With this many weird happenings, surely there was one way to hook a killer and then do what? I shelved the answer - do I mean the question? - and rummaged deeper.
Some scams leap like kids in class: me, teacher, me! The primo scam these days is always caches of antiques and Old Masters looted in wartime. I'd thought of this, but binned it as corny. I mean, walk down London's famed Duke Street, look up, and you'll be gazing at a window that conceals one such, the Menzel Mystery. Ten a penny but fascinating for all that.
Adolphe Menzel isn't really ancient or famed. It's been maybe a century since his passing. Worth considering, though, when a stranger drops in to sell half a dozen Menzel sketches, which is what truly happened. Imagine a dealer's horror when he later opens a rare book - and sees them illustrated among stolen sketches. This honest - no kidding - dealer zoomed them back to grateful old Dresden, which said, Ta muchly, but does anybody know who has the remaining 1,550, please? I pondered this contender, because that huge number includes Durer, Cranach, Altdorfer et al.
The mystery doesn't end there. The Soviets in 1945 hoovered antiques up - they returned over a million to Berlin in the fifties - and at least that many are still on the lamm. In round numbers, a million - except Dr Johnson says, 'Round numbers are almost always fake.' See the temptation? If Gluck the Greedy were offered a load of valuable paintings, sketches, whatever, I was sure he'd bite, even though they'd been looted from some Bavarian castle. It's the eternal question: If your Grampa left you a priceless sketch that he'd picked up in wartime, would you pop it in the post to somebody who claimed it was theirs? I don't wish to offend, but I suspect that maybe you might tell them to get lost and hug it to your bosom.
Continental museums sob that, okay, the German Statute of Limitations expires at thirty years, so you couldn't go to prison. I still think that maybe you'd cry, It's mine, all mine!
and let international relations go hang. Why shouldn't you? There's no reliable international law. Common European Market laws likewise stay silent. They know greed.
'No.' I spoke to myself. I was freezing. Cellars are cold. 'It's been done.'
I wanted an original scam that would hook Snob Gluck. He'd killed Arthur for a grand estate plus an antiques firm, missing out on the ancient lordship tide because of the existence of young Mortimer, whom he'd presumably not known about. And killed Sorbo over the intaglios I'd heard of. Gluck was desperately short of money. And murderously evil, but not dim. With the right scam, I'd protect Mort, and rescue Colette from her bag-lady hell.
An hour or so later, still surging on, I heard someone moving about in my cottage. I always pull the flagstone to when I'm down there, on account of debt collectors or rival dealers after money. Wisely I kept the candle burning - nothing's so pungent as a smoking candle wick - and stilled until they'd gone. It might have been Dosh, wanting answers at last. It might have been police. The cottage door lock never works, and anybody can wander in.
When my candle had guttered to a one-eyed glow, I gave up and cautiously crept into daylight. The place was empty, the door pulled to. There was a note: Dear Lovejoy,
The canal where you fell. Teatime. Sincerely, Mort.
That made me think about time. I hurried down the lane to Eleanor's house - I babysit for her Henry sometimes - and borrowed her bicycle. I set off to the carder man's house. I'd kill him if he wasn't in.
Ever since I realized that Eve's apple wasn't the whole story, sex has worried me. Not my own, you understand. I mean people's, like Saunty's. His activities would baffle the Archbishop of Canterbury.
He's a simple-looking bloke, listens to new orchestral music all day long. Once, he was deputy mayor somewhere. It's a famous local tale, how he was in an important council meeting, when to his own astonishment he heard himself go, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to announce that politics is crap.' And upped and offed. His wife divorced him, his shamed children marched out. He was left destitute but happy. A psychiatric nurse assigned to correct that wayward politician, please, arrived, and promptly moved in.
They 'behave abominably', say our local newspapers. Outraged people are forever ringing the police because Saunty and his nurse are yet again copulating in the garden.
The nurse, Yamta, tells magistrates that she and Saunty are a 'living sculptile'. I don't know what it means either. One wry magistrate asked coldly, 'Do you imply, madam, that this sculptile is for sale?' and fined her a hundred zlotniks. Rotten sports, magistrates. What harm do they do, sculpting away? Heaven's sakes, it's Saunty's own garden. And villagers who don't want to be outraged can walk down a different lane, but don't. Saunty's lane is a well-travelled thoroughfare. Everybody passes by, to be outraged some more.
Which is why I began ringing the bicycle bell two furlongs off. They were in the garden laughing at yet another court summons. I pulled my trouser turn-ups from my socks, and walked in trying to look like everything was normal. They were naked, having coffee and sloe sherry Yamta brews. Purple drinks always look Wicked Queen to me, but I accepted. I felt really odd sitting there fully clothed.
'Aren't you cold?' I asked, curious. It's my experience that women always feel a draught. Boil them alive, they'd
