The Possessions of a Lady (31 page)

'I've a bird to meet.' His face clouded, so I supplied an extra
lie. 'Off the London train.'

His grin returned. 'Hop in.' He cut into the traffic, missing a
lorry by a whisker. 'Who's the girl?'

'Nobody you know, Tubb,' I said, cool. Nobody I knew either. She
was imagination. I could escape once I was past the station ticket office.
'Rotten motor you've got, Tubb.'

'This?' He tried to seem narked, like any owner. 'Bought it six
months back. Sixty m.p.h. on the sniff of an oily rag.' It was hired, its
licence-holder said.

Tubb dropped me at the kerb. I stro-o-olled in among passengers.
I'd have casually looked at my watch, if I'd had one, the
waiting-for-a-passenger image. Once out of sight, I darted past where they
never have your luggage when you've paid them to mind it, and peered. Tubb had
coolly parked where it says you shouldn't. He stood to watch the exit. I went
and caught a train, alighted in my town in no time.

Stella Entwistle's address was in Halliwell. This suburb is named
after St Margaret's Holy Well, now godlessly built over. I found the stone
cottage. The old square still had its old gas lamps. Once a village, it became
immersed in Victorian mills. I knew it well, before the chapels became
electrical shops and the great mills were sliced into printing firms.

The door opened. I turned with a fraudster's smile.

'Stella Entwistle? I'm Bran Mantle . . . er.' Something was wrong.
Her face.

'Lovejoy, isn't it?' She stood there smiling.

Did everybody know my every move? She shook an old-time finger.

'I'm sorry.' My words trailed away. 'Miss . . . ?'

'Miss Renson was the name, Lovejoy.' Dimples just as I remembered
them. But, grey hair? 'Mrs. Stella Entwistle, now. Parish fundraiser.'

Last encountered clipping my ear for misbehaviour in class, my
ex-teacher. I gaped. Women change more than men, though we sling our hooks
sooner.

'Laughter lines, Lovejoy,' she said, wry. 'Except life isn't that
funny. Do come in.'

She went ahead to a living room looking out at the Falcon mill.
I'd played football on its cinder pitch. I felt in church. Teachers always
scare. I once knew an elderly professor, collector of octagonal chairs, who
once got sloshed and wept over how he'd been told off in school, aged twelve. I
watched her warily, not wanting my ear clipped.

'You gave me a dud name,' I accused.

'Snap, Lovejoy! Marriage is
my
explanation. Yours is merely your natural criminal bent.' She gestured me to a
seat. 'I
thought
it was you on the
phone. Who's Bran Mantle?'

'Washington State in America puts a risk warning on its marriage
lines,' I said nastily. 'So watch it.'

Teachers look younger than numerical age suggests. Or do women
teachers hold their youth? I'd give it serious thought.

'The Americas are noted for marital violence.'

'Toosh-ay, Miss. I'd forgotten that teachers of your vintage can
read.'

'Still dreaming, Lovejoy? You've never grown up.' Not a smile, so
she'd invited me for grim reasons. 'Would you care for some tea?'

'Please,' I said politely. 'This antiques sale for the old parish.
It's above board?'

'Scrambled eggs, toast and marmalade?' She went to the kitchen. A
cat strolled through in disdain. I looked away, guilty. 'Mixed cereals?'

'And fried bread, please, Miss.' I looked at the furnishings. Not
too bad, for disgusting modern gunge. There were photographs. Her, younger, beside
a bloke with a tash and lank hair in a porch. Our church. 'Where's Mr.
Entwistle?'

She rattled pans. I'm sure women make an unholy din just to punish
us for making them snap into action. 'He's not here.'

'Oh?' I brightened. I'd never got close to an ex-teacher. She
might clout me for suggesting that my education was incomplete.

When I cook I'm really quiet. She sounded like Agincourt. 'I'm
afraid he's missing, Lovejoy.'

'Missing where?' Stupid people always say that. Tell me you've
lost your purse, I'll go, 'Where?'

‘I don't know, Lovejoy.' She was weeping, busying herself at the
grub. T wish you could find him.'

From one missing-person triumph, hunting Tinker's lass Vyna, to
another. The aroma made my belly rumble, so I moved to ogle the photographs.

Finding things isn't me. Last year, a Surbiton dealer bought a
Georgian mahogany fall-front bureau, only forty-two inches wide. The Farnham
piece was lovely. It was even lovelier when an investment bond was discovered
in a secret drawer— these drawers were quite usual, for hiding passionate
letters. The bond was worth a mint, plus interest since Adam dressed, well over
four times the bureau's price. It's always somebody else. I'm the expert at
losing, not finding.

The cat eyed me reproachfully as I tiptoed out. 'Shut your face,'
I told it. Gently, silently, I reached round the speer, opened the door.

Tubb stood there. 'You're a bugger, Lovejoy. Any more of this,
I'll take out insurance.'

'Look, mate,' I said, whispery. 'Get lost. I'm in with a chance
here.'

'Who is it, Lovejoy?' my old teacher called amid kitchen war
sounds.

'Salesman,' I yelled over my shoulder.

'They'll be narked, Lovejoy,' Tubb said. His runes had let him
down.

For just an instant I almost sensed what the game was. I stared at
Tubb like he'd landed from Andromeda. He was threatening me. I caught myself.
He'd said 'they'. They who? Carmel? Abrasive, true, but no physical threat as
such. And she was a lone operative, except in the fashion world.

'They who?' I asked.

He became shifty. 'This is once too often. Best do as you're told,
or it's curtains.'

'They who?' He was behaving really lifelike, unprecedented. Even
ordering a pint Tubb has to divine some tarot, work luck out. Just for that one
fleeting instant he'd been himself.

'Please yourself, Lovejoy. I've warned you.'

And he went, shoulders humped, a tough with a faulty oracle. I
watched him drive away in his hired non-hired motor. I shut the door, went to
the photographs. One or two really interested me. I thought, Aha. Terence
Entwhistle at a card table. Terence on holiday, on his tie dumb-bells, acorns,
leaves, hearts—German playing-card emblems. Terence in some club spinning a
Victorian 'random clock'. It's a collector's item nowadays, picks out any
digits from one to ten. Was Terence that all-time loser, the gambling addict?

She finally called. I went, fell on the grub.

'First I've had for two days, Miss Renson.'

She managed a smile. 'Stella, Lovejoy. I'll not tell you again.'

'Teachers never had first names.' I'd feel like when I went round
a palace and saw the Queen's loo.

She watched me scoff. 'Terence has vanished, Lovejoy. But not
alone.'

Which froze me. 'Who with?' For one terrible instant I dreaded she
was going to say Vyna.

'Some of the antiques we're—you—will sell for us.'

Well, I laughed until I choked. Tears streamed down my face. She
stared, thunderstruck. It took five minutes to come to.

'What is funny, Lovejoy?' That metronomic staccato teacher-speak
has chilled and stilled children down the ages.

'Is that all, love?' I was cheery for once. T thought you meant
he'd howffed it with some bird. Antiques, I can do something about. What were
they, and how many? I'll pin him by teatime."

'You will?' She was so relieved. 'Oh, thank you, Lovejoy. Terence
is not the most worldly person. He tries to be commercial.'

'Any brown sauce, love?' I asked for the list of antiques her
hubby'd nicked.

'Those I don't know, Lovejoy.'

Up one minute, down the next. 'You don't know, you silly cow?' I
raged, spluttering valuable calories on gusts of anger. 'Who's in charge of the
list?' God Almighty, out of Briony's frying pan into Stella's fire.

'Vulgar language,' she scolded automatically. T am, Lovejoy. We
had no idea which were antiques. Folk just brought things in.'

My quiescent temple artery woke with a start and began to pound my
cortex. My plate blurred.

'You didn't even write the antiques down?'

'Of course not. They're only going to be sold.'

'Not now they're not, love.' I moaned softly to myself.

She decided to get on her high horse. 'You are decidedly
unhelpful, Lovejoy. Terence was really quite good. He only stole one load.'

See? Her bloke steals the whole shebang, and he's being 'really
quite good'. If I'd nicked a light, the Plod would have me clinked. Selective
thinking.

'Aye, love,' I said bitterly. 'Captain Blood only wanted one
sackful—of the Crown Jewels.' I cut in as she drew breath, 'Terence'll have
nicked the most valuable. He'll not have grabbed a pencil and taken to the
hills.'

She said with asperity, 'You always were a grumbling child,
Lovejoy. Grumble, grumble. The point is, the sale's tomorrow. Do something.'

'Do what, exactly?' I was relieved I'd eaten. Doom loomed.

'Bring Terence back, with the antiques he borrowed. And sell our
antiques.' Terence, arch thief of her charity, had now only 'borrowed' the
stuff, so I must solve her fiasco. She said it like I had to wash up.

'That all?' I said, peeved. 'Got any cake, love?'

'I have some parkin.' She fetched it, cut a wafer-thin slice. It's
our local cake, mostly for Bonfire Plot, a real filler. I helped the next chunk
to be bigger. It's oatmealy, sticky. 'Can I see the remaining antiques?'

'Whenever you are ready, Lovejoy.'

So we hit the road. Her motor was toy size. I sat, knees to my
chin. Neither of us touched on one difficulty. Why had her husband Terence
nicked the antiques? Gambling fever, or something worse? I didn't ask, and
Stella was not for telling. Motive's crap anyway, only made for Dame Agatha and
editors, not real life. The questions in antiques are who, how, and what. You
can forget why. So I did.

30

Who said never go back?

Scout Hey was still an old moorland chapel, sort rich visitors buy
to turn into grand dwellings with cocktail cabinets where the pulpit once was,
alarm boxes in the eaves. Me and Amy had robbed its great manse, now in ruins,
much of the mansion's roofing reduced to a skeleton of charred beams.

A housing estate had spread over the moors. The stunted hawthorns,
wind stoopers all, were distant now. Civilisation had come. Prefabricated
garden sheds, Japanese cherries blooming in the wrong season, one-eyed TV
dishes trained on infinity.

There's always a wind. I'd forgotten. Below, the coast road at Blackrod.
You'd see the Isle of Man on a clear day. The town looked undressed without its
pall of black smoke, oddly flattened without its chimneys.

'Lovejoy? What's the matter?'

Maybe a couple of dozen cars, lots of women with children about
the rear entrance of Scout Hey chapel. Where me and Amy had come a-stealing was
a sloping car park. Several vans stood by, marked with fashion college logos.
Arty students in shawls, cowbells, clothes made of odd strings, chatted and
smoked strange substances. Artistry had come. The chapel was apologetic, the
way of all defrocked chapels. Its entrances were busy.

'Who're they?' I wasn't prepared for a jamboree.

Stella was puzzled at my reaction. 'Why, my helpers. Bringing
antiques for sale, setting out. Those fashion students are planning their
show.' She was exasperated. 'You'll do the auction. The fashion's afterwards.'

'It's an odd place. Miles from anywhere.'

She went all hurt. 'Fashion colleges do their displays here. The
chapel costs nothing, not like hiring hotels.' She saw I was unconvinced.
'Seats hundreds. And it's secure.'

Secure? When her husband nicked a lorry load?

'Okay, then. Everything's money nowadays, agreed. Let's see what
you have.'

She was anxious, went ahead saying, 'Hello, Mary. Did we do those
notices? Hello, Betty. We arranged the parking with the police?' Boss organiser
stuff.

We went into the chapel, a late Wesleyan boom building. Lovely,
gallery symmetrical, pillars Mr. Wesley's church at Moorgate would be proud of.
The volunteers greeted us shyly. I'd been given quite a build-up, earned
applause just walking in.

'Everyone!' Stella called, voice quavery. 'This is Love-joy. Some
of you remember him. He'll do our auction tomorrow!'

'How do,' I said, time and again. Smiles were everywhere. East
Anglians don't smile.

Some came forward for a word. I was pleased, recognised several,
one third cousin. It was difficult being friendly, because I could see only
tons of dross nearby.

'We know you'll be pleased, Lovejoy,' one bashful lady told me.
'We've been collecting for ages.' Risking all, adding, 'I knew your gran.'