even if rotting to bits. New canvas undoes a forgery more often than bad painting.
'Who consul?' Grammar gone to pot.
'The American gentleman. He sent condolences.'
'Decent of him.' The last canvas came away. It was my portrait of Colette as Lady Hypatia. I jumped away.
'In my radio interview.' She sounded proud. 'He promised me an in-depth interview on the American elections.'
'Why did he?'
She bridled. 'Because I have broadcasting talent, Lovejoy.'
'You're the best I've ever heard, love,' I lied. The trouble is that lying tends to grow, like an expanding verbal ladder getting riskier as it extends ever upward. 'Why'd he concern himself with Vestry?' I'd assumed I was the only person who was guessing right about the gorgeous Susanne Eggers.
She stared. 'Mrs Eggers was the consul's first wife, Lovejoy. They're still business partners. Names at Lloyd's. Head of syndicates. Vestry was their secretary. I thought you said you never miss my programme?'
'Well,' I said faintly, 'I can't remember everything.'
I took my painting and the scraped canvases, and we left the sorry place. I just asked Tinker to go over what deals Vestry had made before his passing. Tinker began a litany of deals, defaults, broken promises, sham antiques, humdrum sales, nothing anybody in the trade would think worth a light.
So why did somebody kill the poor duckegg?
Time passes faster than you think. I can remember when actresses closed their mouths instead of acting with that half-idiot gape they all now assume shows inner dynamism.
And when TV extras could dance instead of doing that embarrassed shuffle. And to when actors knew their lines, instead of reading prompt cards held off camera so they all look squinty. And to when police were reliable. And back when occasionally, just occasionally, people were innocent, sort of.
Now, though, everybody's got what Americans call an angle, a craving for sly money.
And it always concerns antiques. Okay, we all know – and the plod condones –that the glorious bulb fields of Lincolnshire are farmed by illegal thick-sweat immigrant labour.
And that priests and nuns aren't holy. And that teachers no longer know what the hell to teach, that parents are sometimes monsters and the honest social services neither honest, social nor services. Did folk ever really go out without locking their doors?
Maybe they did, yonks since, but it's different now. Yet deep in me lingers a faint glim of hope that somewhere sometime somehow out there, maybe a huge fair-minded God thing will shazoom out of the ether and blam the baddies. Just maybe once, to give us all a prayer. You know the feeling. Let some avenging angel black the bully's eye.
It won't happen. It never will, never did, never does.
No good saying that the meek can inherit the earth, that virtue is and has its own reward. They can't and it won't and it hasn't. Shout for help, your echoes shout back louder. Shoot your one pathetic desperate arrow in this life, you get back a broadside. I had this stupid notion that the brigadier – officer and gentleman, after all – might simply want his daughter's eventual happiness like a true dedicated father.
'Here,' I told Alanna and Tinker. 'I've an idea. Drop me by that little quayside nosh bar.
I'll see you at the Old Court coffee place. Make sure that Mrs Domander gets her motor back, okay?'
And walked to Quaker's bungalow along the riverbank. The brigadier, smiling, watched me approach from his picture window.
Smiles cost blood. I've always found that. But somebody had to work things right for once.
34
EVEN BEFORE THEY opened the door, I felt like a suitor in Emma, seeing Maud standing there smiling. Her frock was new. She looked glammed up. In the background, Quaker gave me a wave, grinning. Was I expected? The Olympic fanfare was playing too loud – is there ever a time when it isn't?
'Come in, Lovejoy. Father's waiting.'
'Wotcher, Maud.'
Gingerly I went in, wishing I had flowers. But can a bloke call on another geezer's missus with a ton of daisies, when he's up to no good? Hardly.
'So kind of you to think of me, Lovejoy.'
Was it, when I hadn't? I followed her to her dad's adjoining door. A rowing boat glided by, then a small engined craft. Brig was watching the telly, horses leaping over sticks.
On his side-table was a crime story, horses on the dust jacket. I'd sooner watch fog, but nags hook plenty of adherents. Can't fathom it.
'I'm so looking forward to the music, Lovejoy!' Maud enthused. 'I hadn't realized you liked English song cycles.'
'Neither had I.' What music?
'Oh, you!' She smacked out playfully, taking my answer for wit. 'Elgar's my favourite.
Are they doing Peter Warlock?'
'Yes.' I gave the brigadier a challenging stare. Expose my ignorance, if you dare. 'Is it all right with
