The Possessions of a Lady (21 page)

'You know what I think, Lovejoy? I think you are really
embarrassed deep down, to feel so lovingly about things, that you mask your
psychic nature.' She smiled at Wanda. 'Mrs. Curthouse, does it run in the
family?'

This was getting out of hand. The important thing was to keep my
suspicions about Tinker's lass Vyna from Wanda. I didn't want to get smashed
against some wall like Jim. The important thing was to find out how Vyna had
got ahead of me, and made another fortune.

'Lovejoy? What is it, dear?' Briony asked, a hand to her throat.
'You look positively . . . cross.'

I laughed a swashbuckling laugh. T was imagining being on that tin
steamer, if it had been real, Briony. That's all.'

'Honestly!' she exclaimed, laughing. 'Little boys, aren't they,
Wanda? I expect Lovejoy was the worst!'

'That's true, Mrs. Finch,' Wanda said. Her voice had gone quiet,
her eyes unwavering. 'Absolutely the worst. Can he stay here? I could adjust
the fee . . .'

'Of course he may, Wanda!' Briony cried. 'It's not the slightest
trouble, after all you've done! Not another word! Lovejoy will be our guest.'

'That's settled, then. Thank you, Mrs. Finch.'

'Briony, please. Unless you think I'm too forward?'

God give me strength, I thought, exasperated. We'd be ironing the
anti-macassars next. I was glad when Bertie awoke with a snort. By then, Wanda
was talking urgently into a mobile phone, and Briony was instructing Mrs. Treadwell
about airing beds. I couldn't catch what Wanda was saying but I heard my name.

Quiet voices are a nuisance. I've often found that. The sal
volatile bottle drew my eyes. It was silver mounted. I desperately wanted to
see what locked box it came from. If I guessed right, it was worth me. Give or
take.

18

‘Don’t say psychic' I argued with Mrs. Treadwell much later. She
was doing vegetables. I'd made a couple of phone calls.

'That's because you're psychic'

Arguing with old women is like arguing with young ones, hopeless.
I once had a row with a three-year-old lass, who reckoned toothpaste was made
from horses. I ended up believing her. Even now I'm queasy about cleaning my
teeth.

'Psychic's balderdash. Antiques just give me flu. Sweating and suchlike.
Gets better as soon as I move away a few yards.'

'That's psychic all right, Lovejoy.'

She washed some white stuff and started to dice it. Watching an
older woman preparing vegetables is really calming. They must have done it in
Ancient Rome, and in the famous Iceni tribes hereabouts. In my own county of
Lancashire, our great pre-Roman Queen Cartimandua must have lain on her fur
rugs idly watching her serving women doing vegetables for her dinner—in the
rare minutes she could spare from snogging with her standard-bearers while her
King snored his head off. (Terrible to relate, the one occasion he did wake she
had him executed.)

'Anyway, it wasn't an antique. Not old enough.'

'Excuses. Are you Mrs. Curthouse's friend?'

Danger. What was Wanda's story, cousins or something? 'We're
vaguely related.'

'That's right, Lovejoy. Invent.' The old lass swished things in a
colander.

'Where's your apothecary box, love?'

She laughed. '
Thought
that's what you come for, Lovejoy! Your sort wants woman's company for what you
can get.' I won't tell you the rest of her affable onslaught. It's all wrong.

I'd honestly visited the kitchen to cheer the lonely geriatric up.
But that exquisite bottle, reduced by Mrs. Treadwell to a sal volatile sniffer,
deserved a good home. 'Your one saving grace,' she ended, 'is that you're
stupid. Women wrap you round their little finger.'

'Nark it,' I said. 'That box.'

She stopped work, not an ounce of trust in her. 'It's beautiful.
And yes. it's complete. Every one of its square-sided bottles, stoppers,
original lining. The old lady gave it to me. It's my one and only heirloom.'

These apothecary boxes are worth a king's ransom. Even-grand house
had one, from the seventeenth century on, until Edwardian times. Travelling
druggists and apothecaries topped up supplies as the families' potions, simples
and unguents depleted. I hate—
hate
—the modern trick of turning these lovely boxes into cocktail cabinets. I was
pleased with old Mrs. Treadwell. She would preserve it. That's all a genuine
antique asks.

'You'd do better with somebody else, Lovejoy,' she rabbited on,
'instead of that hard bitch.'

'Here!' I exclaimed. Their instant hatreds astonish me. 'You
mustn't say things like that!"

'I know her sort, fur coat and no knickers. Men are magpies.
Anything with half a shape and her own teeth, you lose control. Bnony Finch is
the woman for you.' She wagged a chiding potato peeler. 'Nobody misses a slice
off a cut loaf, Lovejoy. Remember that.'

An old saying, straight from my childhood. I smiled.
"Suddenly decided I'm eligible?'

'Suddenly decided you're soft in the head. If you'd an ounce of
drive you'd charm that mahogany apothecary box-off me quick as a wink. But you
give up, once you see I mean to save its life. Soft as putty. You don't stand
an earthly with women these days.'

She started dicing some meat. I rose in a hurry. You can only take
so much carnage. I'm all for soya bean. The silly old sod laughed, holding her
sides.

'Well, it's raw,' I said feebly.

'Of course it's raw, silly! It's not cooked, so it's raw. When
it's cooked, it's not raw.'

Her laughter receded as I made the safety of the hallway. I could
hear Wanda's mob organising the items, covering them with dust sheets. I found
Sonny.

'That Aussie girl. You see her?'

T think so, Lovejoy.' He was checking lists. 'Lovely bit of
crumpet. You know her?'

'No. Odd that she homed in on some pricey toy and lammed off
through the bundu, though, eh?'

'Made herself a tidy fortune,' Sonny said sarcastically. 'That a
clue?'

'Why here, though?'

'Because it was today.' He paused, penny finally dropping.

'Among others, Sonny. Big, easy pickings, sure. But would this
have been the biggest local auction? Not by a long chalk. There's three. One
today, over at Holt.'

'Dealers go where it's easiest. The bigger the stately home the
greater the profit. She'd go for the simplest, right?'

He still wasn't quite there. I helped.

'See, Sonny? You knew all that straight off. But would a girl
fresh off the boat? A lone teenager, new into lipstick, roaming the
countryside?'

'Teenager, was she?' Sonny said evenly, eyes hard.

Oops. 'The way Jim described her. See my problem?'

'No, Lovejoy.' He was cool. Wanda's girls stopped working to
listen, Wimbledon style, heads switching side to side. T see one single
problem. You came in out of the blue and raised the game here. Why? It makes me
wonder if you aren't the problem, not some stray tart whizzing through.'

That's where logic gets you, nowhere. I shrugged, accepted defeat,
and went to look at the grounds. Briony found me.

'Lovejoy.' Stern, facing perdition. 'Those policemen weren't true
policemen at all, were they?'

'Special constables, love,' I lied. 'Security firms have their own
uniforms. Wanda hires them.' The uniforms were from theatrical costumiers.

'Oh, that's all right then.' She hesitated. 'Did you hear about
Jim's car accident? One of Mrs. Curthouse's men drove him to hospital.'

More lies were called for. 'Jim'll be fine. I talked to him. He
was worried nobody would feed his pet dog.'

'Really? Will they?' I gazed blankly at her. She explained, 'Feed
his dog?'

'Oh, yes.' I improvised. 'A labrador spaniel.'

'A what?'

I grew impatient. What right had she to cross-question me for
heaven's sake? It's no wonder she narked me. 'I'm off to Norwich, love. Where's
the bus stop?'

'Three miles off. The bus comes tomorrow.'

Odder still. I thought of a girl carrying a three-foot-long metal
model. I'd looked at the kitchen garden from Mrs. Treadwell's domain. Beyond,
fields, grazing herds, woods, a river. Now no bus.

'Love, would you let me use your phone, please? And I need a lift
to Norwich.'

Spoolie arrived at the railway station buffet as it got dark, full
of grumbles. I cut him short. I was knackered.

'Lovejoy. I've come a million miles.'

He meant sixty; I'd put a threatening message on his answer-phone.
First thing he did was walk round looking at film adverts. I watched. He's just
seeing if the posters are nickworthy. He runs The Ghool Spool, a small antique
shop between two tottering pubs in Mistley. Movie ephemera, stars' autographs,
starlets hair-bands, old newsreels.

'Nothing much here,' he groused, going to ask the counter lady if he
could filch a couple of her posters.

There were very few passengers about at this hour, sipping tea,
waiting for trains. Spoolie had that look, a typical ex-con with a mission—to
get the whole world hooked on the film industry. I know for a fact that he's
been trying to buy the 'H' from that Hollywood sign in California. His wife
left him, annoyed when his obsession took priority. Now, Spoolie had known that
Chessmate told me about the Thornelthwaite auction—and was worried sick when
I'd been slow to arrive, Florsston said.

'Here.' I shelled out a little gelt. 'That's your lost trade,
Spoolie. Business good?'

'Good?' he growled, splashing tea into his saucer, an old prison
trick, to drink up fast before somebody else gets it. 'It's terrible. I went
into feminism. Hopeless. Not worth a light.'

That startled me. 'Feminism?'

'All the rage, believe magazines.' He tapped the Formica. 'How
many movie titles start with
Woman
,
Lovejoy? Forty-seven, compared to one hundred and fifty-three that start with
Man. See what I mean? And
Mrs.
and
Mister
are as bad— thirteen to
fifty-nine.
Princess
titles outnumber
Prince
titles, half as many again.
Frigging movie business.'

‘I know.' I thought of poor Nanook, that genuine Eskimo who'd
starred in
Nanook of the North
, 1921.
When the documentary achieved mega status, the news media gleefully beat a path
to Nanook's igloo to announce his sensational world fame and endless riches—to
find that Nanook had starved to death in the ice. The movie makers had simply
forgotten him. Once they'd used him and made fortunes out of him, of course.
For them, a movie success story. To me, I think it's creepy.

'Tell me where a German tin toy'd turn up, Spoolie. Made for an
old war film. Mint.'

'Tin model?' He quivered, a huntsman's pointer. Acting that he'd
not known of it at all, of course.

Only giving him the bare bones, I told him about the Lepanto. He
moaned so loud I had to kick him under the table.

'Every collector's dream, Lovejoy. Two catches, see?' A catch is a
mob of collectors interested in a particular antique. 'Models are so in you
wouldn't believe. The movie manics would compete. Oooh.'

Another kick shut him up. I hate over-acting. I'd got his point.
'Who'll it go to, Spoolie?' I had to follow the trail he was to lay.

He licked his lips. 'A deal, Lovejoy. I'll promise a hundred
thousand, from a collector I know. We'll split fifty-fifty, okay?'

'Spoolie.' I went sad, genuine. 'I haven't got the model. But sure
as God grows trees the toy'll turn up in forty-eight hours. Pure cash sale,
highest loot on the nail. Where, though?' We waited. I said, 'I'll ring you
every few hours, night or day, Spoolie. Be there. I don't want to be chatting
to a recording as hoodlums batter my door down.'

My manner—fright mixed with anger—got through.

'What's in it for me, Lovejoy?'

'Maybe the odd letter, photos perhaps. Copy of some old war
picture.'

'Let's have your phone number, Lovejoy,' he said, pulling out a
pencil stub, but by then I'd gone. Some folk think you were born yesterday.

The missing girl Vyna was not far ahead. I was learning. She knew
me better than I her, but I was close. She must have been at Thornelthwaite,
seen me spot the valuable item. She was cannily fast, and had accomplices.
Somebody had paid Spoolie—supposedly scouring for film relics—to keep watch for
my arrival. So Spoolie knew the backers, if not the scam. Chessmate probably
knew much less.

In a way it was quite exciting, now feeling the hunter instead of
the hunted. When I caught up with Vyna, she was in for a piece of my mind. But
where had she gone?

Tinker. I'd have to contact the old soak, my one reference point.
I got a taxi back to Briony's. In the dark it looked like something from the
Baskervilles. Luckily Briony was up, and Mrs. Treadwell for once wasn't sawing
up the corpses of massacred creatures. She'd made a vegetable curry.