'Especially now she's extended her stay at Saffron Fields.'
'Eh?'
'Would you please stop saying that? I've never known a man so infuriating—'
'Not many left from the old Div,' Tinker said wistfully, sputum bubbling up. 'My mate Chalky White passed away last autumn. Frigging chest cold took him. Did I ever tell you about that twenty-five pounder he let roll over that sodding cliff in North Africa?' He gave a cackle that set him off coughing and trying to spit out of the car windows. I stopped in a lay-by.
'You lets me gullet get dry, Lovejoy,' he gasped, choking and wheezing. 'There a pub near here?'
Division as in armed forces, my brain finally reasoned, synapses clanging, not as in football. Alanna emerged to hand Tinker a hanky. A passing motor honked approval, the lads in it whistling. She has this effect.
'We'll stop at the next, Tinker,' I promised. I went to Alanna. 'Who's Vestry's sister?'
She stared, judging the extent of my ignorance.
'Mrs Susanne Eggers. You got her some actors for tomorrow.'
'Course,' I said brightly through a splitting headache.
'Just checking.'
So Vestry's antiques shipment was going to the Continent via the Countess, as was decided by some old army geezer, bankrolled by Sandy who was funding Ferd and Norma, and back reeled my mind into a void where logic couldn't follow.
'How about we stop for a bite?' I said.
'Are you all right, Lovejoy?' Alanna asked.
'I was telling you about Chalky White and this twenty-five pounder,' Tinker resumed affably, splashing back through a puddle and getting into the car trailing a bushel of mud. 'There was our frigging battery on this bleeding cliff, see? The sergeant says—'
'I'll drive, Lovejoy,' Alanna said curtly.
Head thumping, I tried to doze while Tinker's incomprehensible tale rambled on between coughs. Alanna stopped at the Wig and Fidget in Pullingham where Tinker finally stopped moaning while he soaked up enough ale to bath in. Alanna admired the tavern's wisteria and nibbled an Eccles cake. I had sweet tea, three pasties and a stack of toast, and recovered. Not enough to take on Vestry's place, though.
It stood back from a stream. No access for the motor, just a footpath under an old cattlecreep arch. I was unprepared for the sheer rurality. Some maniac had set a stick bearing a notice in case we developed ideas of molesting the undergrowth: Fritillaria Rare Do Not Disturb, like some daffodil should make us all go on tiptoe. Alanna, of course, was in raptures. 'Lovejoy! Fritillaria! So called from its flower's resemblance to a Roman legionary's dice-shaker ...' etc, etc. We followed the path, Tinker grumbling there wasn't a pub within miles and how did folk manage. For me, the despressing thought was, how soon everything was overgrown. Brambles, ferns, tendrils, you'd think nobody had ever been this way.
There stood Vestry's converted barn. I suppose once it had been a sort of stable, but now it was quite a grand house. Its beams and pargetry were restored, the leaded windows good if you like that sort of fake. A set of steps to the stream, and that was Vestry's house. We walked round. I tested the doors while Alanna tutted. Tinker saw the double doors of the workshop before I did, away from the building in a tangled grove. We made it, Alanna exclaiming as she laddered her tights on brambles, the creeping greenery no longer quite so delightful.
The barn didn't hold much. Every antique dealer has delusions of creative grandeur like, I'm told, screen actors get once they've played some bit part and see themselves mutating into directors. Similarly, antique dealers – basically furniture movers, nothing more – get the bug to improve antiques. If they buy a painting they'll cack- handedly try to add to it. A piece of furniture by Sheraton, they'll strip away the surface patina and leave it warping and scratched, then be narked when nobody wants to buy. For this barmy reason every dealer has a neffie assembly of brushes they can't use, jam jars of varnishes they don't know the properties of, and a few tools they couldn't wield in a month of Sundays. Against every dealer's wall there leans a load of old canvases, maybe some planks taken from some wardrobe that they dissected to extinction.
Vestry's was like that. I eyed the beam uneasily. Tinker coughed, spat, babbled, 'Yon middle hook's where he topped himself, FeelFree said.'
'Please, Mr Dill,' Alanna rebuked crisply. 'This is the place of Mr Vestry's demise, let's not forget.'
There was an earth floor, no paving flags, nothing. Alanna winced when Tinker pointed out the marks on the floor where feet had scuffed while somebody'd cut Vestry down. I thought, what a lot of local grief. Ever since Vestry's sister Susanne Eggers had appeared, in fact.
'Is anything different, Alanna?' I asked.
'The stepladder's gone.' She shuddered. 'Vestry had been painting.' Indeed, one wall was whitewashed, nearly finished. 'He wore paint-stained clothes.'
'No ladder now. The Soco must've took it. Sep Verner?' Odd. 'See, I'm surprised FeelFree and Horse wanted to deal with him.'
Alanna gave me a moment's frost. 'Forgiveness is something you might learn, Lovejoy.'
Tinker said, 'You think it all comes down to shagging, son, but you're wrong. All comes down to money.'
Thank you, Beau Brummel. Hang on, though. 'Forgive who?' I asked. Then for clarity,
'Forgiveness of what, exactly?'
'Divorced people can be friends, Lovejoy, the consul himself said.'
Consul? I was looking at Vestry's canvas stack, pulling them away from the wall.
Several had been 'cleaned' –meaning that some masterpiece had been sanded off so the canvas could be sold to passing forgers. Vestry sold me some. Genuine antique canvases are valuable, so never never throw them away,
