PearlHanger 09 (15 page)

16

Maybe I'd dozed. There was a newspaper but I make up my own lies so I just lay there. Sometimes it seems that, however brightly a day begins, it ends with a choice of degradations. There was nothing going for me except innocence— good for a laugh, though they say it counts in heaven.

You always get death on a coast. It doesn't have to be a Bermuda Triangle. Accidents happen. But presumably Ledger had found some blunt instrument? It wasn't much of a tumble for Vernon, the few feet down from the path, and mud's soft. Add this to Donna's bewildering behavior and . . .

"You're sprung, Lovejoy. Out of it."

Harder to wake up into daytime than night, and relief is hard any old time. The constable thumbed me down the corridor. They're not allowed to touch you—another guffaw—so he could only glower hatred as I emerged, blinking.

"Good morning, Lovejoy." Lydia stood there. High- throated lace blouse, smart blue suit, seamed stockings, and strap heels. A goddess to the rescue. "Constable," she was

. 129

saying severely to the desk sergeant. "I want to complain. Lovejoy hasn't shaved."

Tinker was snoring on the bench. A young couple huddled like kipping hamsters.

"Er, look," I said in a panic, thinking, Christ. This just wasn't the time.

The sergeant had had enough. Rolling his eyes at me he made me sign that I'd got all my things.

"Is this why we pay our taxes?" Lydia was demanding as I bundled her out, hauling Tinker as I went. "This behooves a letter to our member of Parliament—"

We didn't stop until I reached the corner by the old flax house. Lydia was still seething and behooving. The pub wasn't open so we sat on the memorial bench, safe among noise and shoppers and traffic. Bliss. I put my head back. You know that feeling when you've been through the mangle?

Lydia told me how Tinker had seen me and Donna talking by the creek cottages. "I went down earlier to visit Tinker because he seemed so lonely on his own. I took him some things, made him comfortable."

"Ledger took Tinker's word that I'd left there without seeing Vernon?"

"No, Lovejoy. Tinker'd actually let part of the cottage off to two young campers. Very reprehensible—it isn't his property—but fortunate in the circumstances. They also saw you and were able to corroborate ..."

By a whisker. "Good old Tinker."

"But furthermore, Lovejoy," she said portentously through Tinker's snores as the traffic hurtled and surviving pedestrians shuffled, "I have something to say."

Dear God no, I thought. Not now. She's going to say this is all too much. Laying about with Donna, murder

charges. I wanted to crawl into a hole. What a frigging world. Everybody corrupt with rotten self-seeking.

"Go on," I said dully.

"It's—it's money."

That really made me rouse and stare. "Eh?"

She faced me on the bench. People milled by. Tinker snored.

"Do you know how much I paid yesterday for mushrooms, Lovejoy?" She clasped her hands on her lap.

"Er," I said, fascinated in spite of myself.

"They've gone up fivepence, Lovejoy. Now, as you well know, I'm not one to complain,
but..."

She'd made a list of commodities, foods, and whatnots, to prove Lovejoy Antiques Inc. wasn't making enough gelt. It came from her handbag like a roll of wallpaper, endless and wide. I closed my eyes, suddenly weak. She rabbited on and on. That's all it was, her bloody wage. I hadn't paid her for months anyway.

"Which is why," she explained, trying to be casual, "I've drawn out my savings." She delved and gave me a check. "Please regard it as a loan only. Until this terrible business is over."

The words blurred on the check for a minute. I looked away. Isn't it a good world? People are really generous and far-seeing deep down. It's only perceptive souls like me that recognize people's true worth. Money can't be bought.

"And," Lydia said, "I've sent for the two, ah, boys. We need all the
help ..."

Several motor horns sounded. A falsetto screeched, "Lovejoy!" I prayed again, but it was. The Rover of many colors. Heaven knows what it is about me, but I've never had a prayer answered yet.

"Lovejoy!" Sandy marched—well, minced—across the crowded pavement and stood, hand on hip, fluorescent copper-blue handbag swinging. "Your sweep what an absolute tremenduloso I mean
what a
fiasco!
He plumped on the seat and gazed ardently into his reflection. He has tiny gilt mirrors on his gloves. I suppose I must have been a rotter in some earlier existence.

"Er, Sandy. Your motor . . ." He'd parked it on the High Street's one pedestrian crossing. Mel sat stony-faced in the passenger seat. Another row.

"Oh, you
noticed
!" Sandy rose, did a little skip and cried, "Mel, dear! Lovejoy
adores
the new wings." He whispered to me,
"Tell
him, Lovejoy! He's in rather a
mood."

"Er," I said nervously. "They're, er, great, Mel."

The big old Rover was now adorned with two white metal wings projecting from the mudguards. Not, note, wings as in car, but as in angel. It was bloody daft.

Mel glanced across. "Do you, Lovejoy?"

"Really, Lovejoy?" Lydia said doubtfully, eyeing the car. "White's such a risk."

"Well, dearie," Sandy trilled venomously at her. "We all
know
where
your
color sense goes in the winter time don't we I mean can we ever
forgive
that opal
harness
you wore over that plastic last Easter
oooh\"

His screech made me leap a mile. Every head turned. He was pointing dramatically at Lydia's face. "You got it! Mel, dear. Come and
seel
!
Lydia got that new flickershade eye luster
ooooh!

I thought, honest to God I can't stand much more. I'd just escaped the scaffold.

Mel descended. "Lovely, dear," he said sweetly. "Let's hope you learn how to use it. The fashion might come back. One day."

"Whose car's that?" A traffic warden, all I needed.

132 .

"Ours, dear," Sandy said. "D'you want a ride?"

"What the fuck's it doing parked at traffic lights?"

Sandy tittered. "Red and amber go with it, sweetie pie. But you're
greenl"

"Right." He pulled out his notepad, paused, looked at me. "Here. You the bloke as got done for murder?"

"Murder?" Sandy screamed, faked a dramatic swoon. "Whose?"

"Mr. Vernon's," Lydia said. "But it was a false charge ..."

"Oh,
him!
Is that all?" Sandy ostentatiously returned his smelling salts to his handbag with a relieved flourish.

"Right. I'm booking the lot of you," from the threatening warden.

"You know Vernon, Sandy?" I asked.

"Oooh, I love macho!" Sandy squealed. He stepped forward and gazed soulfully into the goon's eyes.
"Promise
you'll take my phone number, dear?"

"And Chatto," Mel said. "He lodges with Deamer. They own that riverside estate down Salcott. His hair's quite wrong, of course."

"Fancy that," I said faintly, thinking. So Chatto stayed with Deamer. No wonder it had all been so easy for them to plan. The low spit of land on which Deamer's house stood rose into my mind.

"I love uniforms." Sandy's hand was looped in the goon's belt. The idiot, scarlet with embarrassment, escaped. Sandy's voice rose to a penetrating falsetto.
"Must
you go, dear? You can play with the gear stick ..." People were smiling. Everybody knows Sandy and Mel. They've got out of more scrapes than Pearl White. This was just Sandy's technique.

Abruptly I was on my feet, looking at them. My re-

sources. Two oddities, a drunken barker, a specky prim bird hooked on health foods and properly aired underwear, and me. Still, it was the only army I'd got.

"Look, troops," I said. "Where'll I get an airplane?"

"That cow Vanessa," Sandy said absently, doing his eyes. "If you like blue."

»

We left Tinker and Lydia. They drove me off, arguing about their new fiber-optic screen wipers. ("But, Mel, how else can we wave at friends?" from Sandy). I tried explaining that I wanted to land secretly near Deamer's mansion house and burgle the place to see who'd murdered Donna's husband and Owd Maggie and bubbled me to be hanged, and find out who was pulling a pearl scam. Surely it wasn't too much to ask? They didn't really listen.

"That peroxide bitch is behind it all," Mel said.

Sandy tittered. "Dear Donna wears such
canopies
over those
gaswork
hips I mean she could be hiding
anyone
¹
."

"You know Donna too, Sandy?" I asked.

"Doesn't everyone, cherub? I told her the other week at Madame Blavatsky's you remember Mel I had
fits
over her coral red shoes—"

"Walter has a plane," Mel cut in. "Let's try him. He flies really well."

"Only when he smokes those strange powders, dear," Sandy said, giggling.

My headache was back. "Sandy," I got out. "Donna Vernon."

Sandy had his powder compact out. "Desperate Donna poor hag calling up all
possible
supernatural forces!" I tried to get a word in edgeways because there were a million clues here in full flight.

"Don't mock the afflicted, Sandy dear," from Mel.

Sandy giggled. "Mel's furious because he took a shine to her fancy man with the curls. Groper Chatto, poor lamb. A mystery, Lovejoy. She's so
plain."

This morning with the police Donna had looked quite distracted. No wonder—she'd not realized the danger I was in on account of her testimony. She was only in Chatto's scam because she was coerced. That was transparently plain. If Deamer and Chatto came croppers in the process it'd just be their hard luck. Well, whatever happened I'd still be the same shape in the bath tomorrow.

"Wake me when we're there," I said, and nodded off, bushed.

. 135

17

Dolly, whom I knew once, used to say that my life style was an embarrassment. In fact it's the other way about: Embarrassment's my life style.

Luckily Boxenford's remote, one of those flattish areas of East Anglia where squadrons were stationed during the war. Occasionally our local paper carries pictures of American veterans returning to see how far downhill it's gone
since
they left.

Airports don't bring out the best in me. I dislike them—correction: I hate them. I always get a wheelie that wants to go counterclockwise and the tickets are baffling. Other civilizations left Lindisfame Gospels. We'll leave a Dan-Air counterfoil. Airports to me mean spewing tots, and blotch-faced sleepless aunties plodding between loos and the duty-free. Airports are anonymous hotels, Levantine staff in brown and maroon talking Peter Lorre English, croissants instead of breakfast, and only the hotel flag logo ever changes. Travel used to mean the joyous experience of places. Once.

"We're here, Lovejoy."

136.

Rousing, I looked out. The harbor. We were outside Beatrice's cottage. "What's going on?" I asked.

"Time for your seance, Love joy," Sandy said. "Mel will fix your flight with that cow Vanessa while you're at it."

"Give Cardew my regards," Mel said. "He's nice." »

It's women, not men, who go for mystery, not to mention mystique. They're hooked on Meanings and What's Foretold and all that jazz. You can't blame them, I suppose. Nothing else to do all day. They've got to fill their time somehow.

Once, I knew this bouncy dark-haired bird Angelina who was a zodiacal astrologist, whatever that is. Her bed crawled with embroidered signs. She ran her life to a starry timetable that had no relationship with planet earth or us inhabitants. Some days were great for this or that. Others were death. Oh, I'm not knocking it. Don't get me wrong. There's this London professor (though only psychology, so maybe he's a nut too) who's proved all Olympic gold medalists are Aries or something. And women's magazines are full of it. I'm simply open-minded, even about rubbish, as long as there's gelt to be made out of it. Anyway, this bird Angelina was a raving, er, friend. We'd met doing battle over a Cromwellian chair—solid square panel back, arms dead horizontal, legs bobbin-turned, brass-nailed leather covering the seat and back. (All those romantic movies are wrong, showing people sitting on chairs when they should be on stools; stools were twenty times as common.) Angelina outbid me. "It was in my prediction for today," she told me afterward. We were enthusiastic friends for two months, then she discovered that she'd misread our horoscopes and gave me the push. Apparently we'd been