to keep friends with everybody, but some are just too much. 'See you, Sandy. Tara, Mel.'
'Come and see us, Lovejoy,' Sandy trilled. 'We'll sell you your ghost painting.'
That froze me in mid-flight. The actors bumped into me like dominoes.
He smiled, wafting his robe to and fro as photographers clicked away. 'We'll only charge you a hundred per cent commission.'
'Mel?' He had the grace to look sheepish. 'What ghost picture?'
'You did several, Lovejoy. This one was Vestry's. Sandy pre-empted it at the box sale last week.'
'Deal,' I croaked, making my exit. The lich-gate leads into the High Street, traffic and supermarkets, pedestrians thronging. I almost walked under a bus but Tinker hauled me back in time.
'Tinker, get us to Saffron Fields manor by three o'clock.'
'Right, son. It'll be Jacko's coal lorry. Here, Lovejoy.' He sprayed the concourse with a cough that momentarily stalled the vehicles. 'We in trouble?'
'Vestry.' I drew him aside for secrecy. My actors stood, gazing back at Sandy glittering in the churchyard. 'What was it exactly?'
'Vestry hanged hisself in his barn, didn't he? Month since, down the Broads. FeelFree and Horse found him.'
'Find out what you can, Tinker, okay?' I smiled at the team. They didn't look much.
'Don't you remember?' his foghorn voice gravelled out. Half the High Street heard Tinker's whisper. He thinks that by leaning at an angle – nothing new – he becomes the soul of confidentiality. 'Vestry hung hisself while you wus framing that neff portrait. He wanted it reframed.'
'Thanks, Tinker.' I could hardly see for the migraine thumping my sight sideways. 'Keep it secret, okay? You lot, see you later. Remember – be convincing.'
They chorused eagerness. My scheme was becoming as secret as the Opening of Parliament. I tottered off to find FeelFree Halsey. She and her bloke Horse claim to be Royal Doulton specialists who know when the world's going to end. For voyantes, they weren't very accurate the afternoon they found Vestry's cooling body at his private finale. They're also friends of Aspirin and Paul the birdman's wife Jenny. It was getting complicated. I could have throttled Mortimer for getting me into this.
First, though, a word about collectors, and how stupendous dreams come true.
Collectors are wonderful people. That's all they do, collect. They'll rob, plunder, sell their grandma, abandon the most prestigious job on earth, just to collect matchboxes, old wheels, pins, pieces of rocketry, coloured buttons, inkstands and – honest, no kidding – bits of tripe and olive pips. They might end up threadbare, living in cardboard boxes on the Embankment, yet become the proud possessors of hidden stores of toy telescopes or a thousand metal keys. For me, they are barmy yet beautiful.
Some manage to keep their jobs. Others go to the dogs while dreaming that one day –
soon – the world will come a-thronging to worship their unbeatable collection of Victorian hats, limestone baptism fonts, or bronze camels. I like collectors, partly because they keep me alive by buying bits of junk that no sane person would look at twice.
Sometimes, though, collectors come a cropper. Like Vestry, requiescat in pace. I tried to think. He was a collector-dealer of gruesome old medical instruments.
I found Horse preaching in the shopping precinct. Feel-Free was at the nearby open-air caff. She's gorgeous and voluptuous, just the sort I should win. It's no hopes, though, because she's hooked on Horse, a tiny desiccated clerk, all bulbous forehead and specs, but who has the undoubted appeal of being our only Existence Guru. An ex- convent girl, FeelFree reasons that she'll be able to square it with the Almighty in the nick of time. Her plan is theologically suspect, but what isn't?
'Wotcher, Feel. Having coffee, I see.' I swallowed, desperate for some. She moved her biscuits away and sipped with gentility. She knows me. I peered into an abandoned cup but somebody had drained it, stingy swine. They'd taken the sugar.
Horse was standing in our precinct's fountain, thundering – well, piping – away to a crowd of two old ladies who listened approvingly to his intentions to inflict his hang-the-swine morality on a liberal country. FeelFree's eyes glistened.
'Isn't he wonderful, Lovejoy?'
Well, no. But I was starving and Maggie the waitress was questing for orders. A noisy family on the next table asked for egg and chips with sponge pudding for afters, not a thought for hungry folk near by. My belly rumbled as they whaled in.
'When does the world end, Feel? Soon, is it?' Asking for the latest bulletin on Planet Earth's chances always cheers her.
'No news this week.'
Thank God for that. 'Sad about Vestry, eh, love?' The tact of an axe.
Horse was working himself up to a shrill denunciation of Satan, who this week was making us all hard-hearted materialists. This, note, from a dealer who establishes, then defrauds, antiques clubs. (Get the clue, from Rio?) The clubs invariably go bust, leaving his members destitute and him in clover, with (as such clubs always claim when they mysteriously go bankrupt) 'unexplained financial losses'.
What happens is that Horse starts up an antiques collectors' club, then exhibits the antiques he's bought with members' subscriptions. The members are delighted at the porcelains, Georgian silver, Regency household items, Portuguese colonial ivories, whatever, and chip in more investment gelt. (Greed, see?) Horse sends round an urgent circular, and guess what? A rich American tourist has asked to buy the club's antiques! Quick, quick! He sails on Tuesday...
Who can resist? The club hastily agrees, yes, sell for God's sake, don't let him/her get away . .. The club's antiques are sold. Then, horror of horrors, the cheque bounces!
The club is broke. And who's the saddest and brokest of them all? Why, none other than the Hon Sec, for didn't he lose more than anyone?
