scarlet varnish and diamond rings. Lovely to see a real woman making the best of herself. I'd never seen anything so beautiful. I felt a pang. I had lost all that pulchritude.
'Russia, in the days of the Soviets,' the Countess said, resuming where she'd left off yonks since, 'nationalized reindeer. Can you imagine the barbarity? And guess, Lovejoy.
Which country has the most American one-hundred dollar bills?'
'Russia?'
'Who else? More than America. When Russia needed a bank to launder several billions of dollars, how long did it take those Cossack ruffians to find crooks with sufficient expertise? Guess.' And when I shook my head, 'One hour! What a stupendous, horrifying country!'
'Indeed, Countess.' Me, dyed-in-the-wool humility.
'Come and sit down, dear boy.'
This is how teachers speak before they clobber you, hitting you hurts me more than it hurts you. I advanced gingerly and perched on a low stool waiting to be scurri-lously treated. The hulk stood by, a landslide in search of a victim. She made a sign. He receded, to be a thundercloud darkening the yard window.
'Countess. I accept that I was to blame, and acknowledge that your dismissal of me was perfectly just. I apologize.'
I'd worked out this tactic from TV. Half the soaps thrive on blokes apologizing to birds.
In fact there's no other plot on telly. What's the average number of 'Sorry-sorry' lines per thirty-minute soap? Four. Count them. TV scripters have one maxim: never mind logic, go for the grovel. The ratings will soar.
She smiled. 'You are correct. I do not accept, Lovejoy.'
I rose. 'Well, Countess. I'll leave. Thanks for the ... er.'
I'd already turned, when something really strange happened. She said, 'Stay. Sit.' I obeyed, which wasn't the oddity. It was that she'd changed her mind. Countesses don't.
'Do you see the painting?' she asked.
'Where?'
There in the corner was a portrait. It was at an angle in the top corner, exactly where people who can afford electricity and air conditioning site their gadgets. And like Russians anciently placed their icons of saints or the tsar. No vibes, so not a genuine antique. It was in shadow.
'Who is she?'
'Is not a woman a remarkable thing, Lovejoy?' the Countess mused. She sipped at a glass of white wine, offered me none. 'So exquisite, so fatal! She was Princess Zanaida.
Of course, her husband Prince Volkonsky was an animal. She only married him to hush up her affaire with Tsar Alexander, with Goethe, Pushkin, Rossini, Donizetti, others. Do I believe she took the pope as her lover? No!'
She screamed the denial so loudly I jumped.
'I don't either, Countess,' I said quickly. Princess who?
'Do you know why I know she was pure, Lovejoy?'
Pure? If she said so. 'Enlighten me, please, Countess.'
'Because she only fornicated with honest men! If that sordid pianist Liszt had wooed her, she would have had him beheaded. Why? Because he stole every composition he called his own.'
Well, everybody knows that Liszt was a thief. Hear a tune, he'd 'compose' it himself next day, like a certain modern English composer I could mention. She glared at me. I hurriedly smiled to prove I wasn't Liszt.
'Anyway,' she said with scorn, 'Franz Liszt was Hungarian. Can you get lower?'
She snapped her fingers and a youth appeared with a silver basket of sweets and chocolates. She selected one, inserted it into her mouth, and accepted a fresh glass.
The youth retired.
'You admired the silver basket,' she said with satisfaction.
'No, Countess.' To her withering glare I said candidly, 'Its handles had been clumsily removed. Your silversmith –is it still Yosh? He's losing his touch – hasn't concealed the marks very well. They catch the light.'
On safer ground, I added the really important detail that silver table baskets tended to get shallower as more and more people afforded them. They started about 1730.
Oddly, they were mainly a British thing. You find them made of clever silver wire, and in Sheffield plate, adorned with loaves and sheaves of corn. I suppose they were mainly decorative centrepieces. Fraudsters file the handles off to make fake silver trinkets for high prices, because then laboratory tests will reveal the trace elements of Georgian silver instead of crummy modern stuff. If you're ever offered an antique silver basket without handles, look at it in subdued light, to see if there are the marks left by missing original handles. It's sensible if you're a crook, because a handled basket will net you only a fraction more money than a handle-less one, whereas a few seemingly genuine artefacts made of ancient silver bring in a fortune.
'Have you got any old dies, Countess?' You need old silversmiths' dies for best forgeries, though possession of them in England is forbidden by law.
She suddenly laughed, white teeth on display, her cosmetic layers shivering into craquelure. I was stunned by her beauty. Women never lose it, do they? Her varicose veins were painted out. Real class.
'I really do miss you, Lovejoy! Antiques are the only things you remain honest about!'
She leaned forward confidingly. Her breasts moved. I was almost enveloped in her cleavage. Gold chains sagged against my forehead. Perfume almost asphyxiated me.
'Thank you, Countess.'
