In fact, no, he didn't, for there never was any rich American tourist. There was only some crooked pal (read FeelFree) who drives the antiques north and sells them on that motorway service station beyond Hawkshead. It's Horse's (and every other crook's) favourite venue.
That's Horse's scam. He's worked it four times so far. FeelFree is named from her patter: 'Feel free to cheat me,' she says with a glamorous smile. 'Offer me half the price. I'll starve ...' and draws her clothes tightly round her voluptuous form, and lands another bargain. She does Horse's driving, sees the trips north as her rightful (not righteous) holiday entitlement. I'm being cynical, saying that all antiques investment clubs end in tears. I don't mean it. I only mean the vast majority. Except I've only ever heard of one honest one. Not two. One.
'Vestry?' Religion lapsed as she swivelled her exquisite eyes on me. I almost fell into their limpid blue. Women make you forget what you're up to, don't they? 'Please don't mention him, Lovejoy. It was ghastly.'
To my alarm her eyes filled. She wept genuine tears.
'Ignore him, love,' a passing crone gave out. 'They're not worth it and I've been wed these forty-six years,' et dronesome cetera, daft old bat.
'How come you were visiting him, Feel?'
Her eyes narrowed. She made no reply while I worked it out.
Antiques dealers are creatures of habit. They're worse than serial killers. (I wish now I'd not thought that.) They'll stalk every country auction after making one superb find. In fact, they'll sacrifice the rest of their lives in hopes of repeating a one-off success. As in the old music-hall song, where some lass danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales. Now Horse wouldn't be seen dead (sorry) with Vestry. Nor would FeelFree. In fact, their paths never crossed. They ran on different tramlines. The row was all over, believe it or not, a piece of toast. Literally. Toast.
Some antiques are as ancient as the planet. Others are so-called 'tomorrow's antiques'.
(Tip: avoid these at all costs. They're never, never ever, worth buying, because everything today will be antique in the future, right?) But some very mundane antiques are priceless because of their rarity.
I get narked, because it's always others who find these genuinely desirable items, never me. Somebody finds a priceless 26,000-year-old woolly mammoth planted in the Siberian ice. It's some undeserving rambler.
This piece of toast. It was found in the Yarnton pit near Oxford, together with a biggish flint knife, hazelnut shells, a few apple cores, some toasted cereal, bits of pottery, and a few tools. It turned out to be barley bread, like the stuff my gran used to make, but baked in 3,485 BC, give or take a radiocarbon burp. Unimportant? Yes, until you realize it's a mite older than Stonehenge, and antedates all other antique breads by a cool 2,500 years. Now, Vestry was always a scammer, never honest like me. And Horse and FeelFree are nothing but no-hope scammers working the investment club game. Vestry claimed he had some ancient toast from Yarnton, complete with authentic radiocarbon dating certificates. Worthless? Hardly; find some, it means a cool five years of affluence in Monaco, blondes and beer thrown in. Horse sensed profit. He tried to buy Vestry's archeological relics for his current antiques club scam. Vestry refused. Word was he'd been scared of drowning in the tide of litigation that always threatens to submerge Horse and FeelFree's manky clubs.
'What I mean, Feel, is why would you two supposed Royal Doulton collectors race to the Fenlands to buy some antique barley bread?'
'Money, Lovejoy!' she said with scorn, tears drying instantly. 'Heard of it?'
'You shunned Vestry after that Beethoven business.'
This is what I mean by luck. In 1817, the great Ludwig had a young English visitor called Richard Ford. In the way of geniuses, I've dashed off a string quartet for him.
The original manuscript lay dormant in some attic, only coming to light when money called its siren summons. The whole thing was dated, and in Big B's own hand. Ecstasy!
Sotheby's auctioned it, musicians fought to play it, and harmony soared on wings of song while the rest of us, forlorn and deprived, drooled and sobbed. Needless to say, the ancient house in Pencarrow, Cornwall, where the manuscript was found, is now the focus of many a braggart dealer's imaginings: 'I've got a Dickens manuscript from that attic in Pencarrow. The end of Edwin Drood, for the right price . . .' Vestry tried this on with everybody in the Eastern Hundreds, and got nowhere.
'Vestry made us a special offer,' she said lamely. 'He chucked in a French pottery fake.'
'Nobody trusted Vestry. He'd the knowledge of a gnat.' And the luck of one.
'We did!' She tried to sound indignant. 'Horse is clever!'
I didn't believe a word of it. Horse wouldn't know how to market Stone Age toast any more than fly. He didn't know porcelain from pork. Clever? This was the man who, unbelievable to relate, once sold a dinner service, not spotting that the gungy old chipped plates were actually copies done by Edme Samson of Paris, the immortal copier. Samson's creations often cost ten times the originals. Samson started as a faithful honest duplicator of broken pots, and ended up making brilliant fakes of Meissen, Chelsea, and Chinese famille rose by the million. Pretty good they are, too.
Incidentally, moulds taken from Meissen originals are almost invariably smaller than the originals (a useful tip, this) owing to shrinkage in firing, so watch out. And the base of Meissen figures of, say, 1740 to 1750-odd, is always supposed to be a flat unglazed
'buff' hue, whereas fakes are practically white, though I've never found this much use because there are exceptions. If I have a fake porcelain anything, I offload it onto Horse and FeelFree because they know nil.
Hence FeelFree was lying, telling me Horse and she were doing a deal with Vestry. But why?
'Did you tell the police this, love?'
'Should I? We just popped over. He was our friend. We found him hanging there. It was horrible.'
She burst into sobs, hands over her face, peeping between her fingers to see how I was taking her falsehoods.
'God rest him,' I said, sick now.
'Leave her alone, you brute.' The same vicious old bat advancing threateningly across the square made me get
