The Rich And The Profane (2 page)

Which astonished me. Lawyers never do favours, but we were friends.

I said, gingerly, ‘I thought you’d do it for friendship’s sake, Michaelis. You and me being pals.’

We
did
go back. Once, he’d been hired to defend Saint Floosie, a lady of sour fame. Saint Floosie - no saint, but definitely the latter - ran a ‘house of comfort’ in Frinton-on-Sea. Her main attractions were a dozen ladies in perfumed bedrooms and bathing pools. Her gimmick was a plaster saint that wept holy tears of blood, because the world will always flock to see a holy con. Floosie charged visitors to see it do its holy stuff. The council alleged deception, and Saint Floosie was had up. Michaelis called me as a witness. I saved his bacon. With 10 grams of calcium carbonate and a 25 gram solution of ferric chloride, dialysed, and 1.7 grams of salt chucked in, you get a gel. It’s not firm, but it doesn’t have to be. When vibrated or shaken it liquidizes and turns the colour of blood - as when folk make the floorboards quiver, parading past a holy alcove. In the witness box I learnt the word thixotropic. I’ve been dying to use it ever since, so there it is. The chemicals are common enough ingredients in plaster modelling, and for setting small objects - like doll’s eyes into plaster. So Floosie was sprung, back to being the holiest purveyor of sex in the Eastern Hundreds. Michaelis became my greatest fan, because he owned St Floosie’s bawdy house for services rendered. In return, he got me off two charges of burglary, by legal technicalities I still don’t comprehend.

‘Tit for tat, Lovejoy. Scan me a wine lake?’

‘Eh?’ He’d gone barmy, all alone swigging wine among the rodents and bottles in his ancient vaults. ‘You’re off your frigging . .. er, sure, Mikko,’ I ended lamely. ‘Anything for a pal.’

And went my way rejoicing. But scan a
lake}
I scan antiques, more antiques, and nothing but antiques, so help me. Still, the thing about promises is they needn’t be kept. Any antiques dealer will tell you that.

Putting on a grave face, I strolled into Gimbert’s Auction Rooms. It’s no good beating about the bush. I sought out Daffo. He looked shifty, tried to edge away.

‘How do, Daffo. All quiet since the Plod took that Irma girl?’

‘Excuse me, mate. I’ve a job on.’

‘For the moment, Daffo.’ My angelic smile would have lit lamps. I looked round. It seemed full of tat, clothes, wobbly furniture, trinkets, Old Masters turned out by forgers - which included me. It’s the usual dross that litters the Eastern Hundreds. Gimbert’s catalogue would describe the mounds of gunge in glowing terms, but beware. Auctioneers invent lies.

A few people were in. I waved to Stylish, a new dealer in from the West Country with, it was said, heavy gelt, though we’d seen precious little evidence of it. Alisa was chatting to Gimbert. Gimbert’s a skeletal bald man who is ageless. He’s lately had Gimbert’s auction rooms estd 1739 painted in rococo lettering over his door. The lads joke that he’s certain of the date because he remembers that far back. He looks made of dry brown paper dressed in black, not quite an undertaker. Gimbert wears squinty specs, has flattened oily black hair and considers himself a cut above us hoi polloi. Incredibly, he has a son who is a sports broadcaster. The lads all speculate about Gimbert’s sexual ability. They say he got his son in a job lot. It’s a joke. Maybe not.

Alisa rushed across, full of exciting news.

‘Oh, Lovejoy! You missed it! There’s been an arrest!’

‘No!’ I looked shocked.

Daffo was talking urgently with a lady near the office, one wary eye on the aloof Gimbert. Reporting to her, doubtless about me. Why?

‘This woman tried to steal a porcelain!’ Alisa said.

‘Not a - not a mistake?’ Not a necklace?

Alisa squeaked, thrilled. ‘It was there one minute and gone the next!’

‘So you reported her?’

‘Certainly not, Lovejoy!’ Alisa can be trusted. Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘Daffo did it.
Told
on her. I think he’s a rotten sneak!’

Alisa is from some exotic young ladies’ finishing school, hence the 1880 vernacular. She has languages, and rides horses in pursuit of innocent creatures. Her husband owns motorbikes. In spite of all, I like Alisa. We made smiles once, but she took up with a Hatton Garden jeweller. I quickly shelved her fourth-form slang. I had to find out what Irma had done, as Michaelis sobered up to gallop to the rescue.

‘Funny,’ I ruminated. ‘Ellie at Porridge’s caff said Irma tried to steal a necklace. Which was it, necklace or porcelain?’

‘Irma?’ Alisa purred, eyes dancing. ‘You know her name!’ ‘Ellie said it. No, never met her in my life.’

‘It’s still here. The police are sending a photographer.’ ‘They usually leave some cretin on guard.’ I said it outright before realizing there was somebody behind me.

‘Hello, Lovejoy. Inspector Cretin, at your service.’ There he stood, thin and intense, hating my every breath. Malice personified. ‘On guard,’ he added pointedly, ‘against criminals.’

‘Wotcher, Mr Summer.’ I smiled ingratiatingly. ‘I was just passing.’

‘The perpetrator called out your name, Lovejoy. Why?’ ‘Maybe she was hoping to sell me the ... item.’ I always find it hard to keep a lie simple, one of my faults. ‘Not that I’d ever buy anything stolen.’

‘Of course not, Lovejoy. Yet she’s asked for you to come to the police station and make a statement.’

‘Me? About a cheap necklace?’

‘No. About this.’

It wasn’t a necklace at all. It was a small jug. My knees went funny. I had to steady myself on the edge of the table. Inside me a deep chime resonated. Alisa looked hard at me, took my arm.

‘Are you going giddy, Lovejoy?’

‘Moi?’ I laughed a swaggering denial. It came out falsetto.

‘Why did you think it was a necklace, Lovejoy?’ Summer wouldn’t give up.

I looked away to get my breath. ‘How should I know?’ I felt rotten, moved away. The rare antique beamed after me. I wanted to have a word with it, see how it felt, being so valuable among this load of crud.

‘Soon as the photographer comes, Lovejoy, I’m taking you in.’

Alisa leant me against a tatty wardrobe and wafted me with her auction catalogue. I stared over her at the beautiful, exquisite, lovely Rockingham jug. You can’t help it. It stood there proudly radiating perfection.

Some two and a half centuries ago, a bloke called Edward Butler was wandering Yorkshire. A vigilant lad, he came across a bed of high-quality clay of a rather odd yellow hue. Instantly he set up a pottery at Swinton, up Rotherham way. His pots weren’t remarkable, merely ‘household browns’, as trade slang has it. When he popped his clogs in 1765, a friend called Malpass carried on. Here’s an interesting thing, though: no original Swinton pieces have yet been confirmed. So somewhere Out There, in some junk shop, in some boot fair or street market, a common-as-muck piece of brown Butler or Malpass domestic pottery is waiting, screaming, to make you a fortune. Find one, you’ll never see so many noughts this side of the National Lottery.

Well, time passed at the little factory. Then, enter the great Thomas Bingley, bringing the Brameld brothers. It was evolution time in the old Swinton pottery. Fashions, and partnership, changed over the years, but those ancient old craftsmen were equal to it all, being nothing less than slogging geniuses. You’ve only to see the Rockingham glaze’s purplish-russet colour to fall in love with it.

Except this little thing wasn’t
it
at all.

For the descendants of the Bramelds went from strength to strength, and from strength to bankruptcy, since those youths were great experimenters. While great savants were discussing the number of angels dancing on pin heads, or the ability of the stars to think, the young Bramelds did solid experiments, testing the effects of kiln heat on metals and clays. In early 1826 they went for it, and started producing bone china so superb that it melts your heart. The Bramelds’ bone china was so light and delectable, and their brilliant high-quality standards were so impeccable, that they went bust. The Swinton pottery was done for. Gloom abounded.

At the last minute, an astonishing white knight arrived, none other than creaking old Earl Fitzwilliam. He put up a fortune and fired the kilns, on condition that the Swinton factory was called the Rockingham Works. The old gent also wanted his own crest on the china. It’s not much to look at, actually, a somewhat cocksure griffin, with
Rockingham Works
and the name
Brameld
underneath.

There are forgeries, of course, but one tip I’ve found reliable when trying to find a path through the minefield of Rockingham-type antiques is this: as rival potteries flourished, the Bramelds developed superb enamels of unequalled colour from the 1830s on. To me, the giveaway isn’t their dazzling ground colours or their famous ‘Rockingham blue’. It’s that they went ape on gilding, lashings of it. But sometimes, just sometimes, one or two items crept out with a curious delicate, lacey gilding. One glance takes your breath away. With the passage of time, the Brameld gilding in surviving pieces has gone dark, maybe even golderer, if there is such a word. It’s like the gold is trying to become copper, exactly like new pennies used to be before the Great Decimal Trick made us paupers.

This little jug in Gimbert’s Auction was genuine lacey-gilded Rockingham. That alone would have made me faint, but it was also the most special colour of all, the ultra-rare light peach. OK, some would see only an ornate little milk jug, and dealers would only see a ton of money - if they spotted it. To me it was pure magic, shaped by wonderful people of the dim past who laboured in hell, and who created a radiant gift for all generations.

Summer saw my gape. ‘That jug’s evidence, Lovejoy. Keep your thieving hands off.’

See what I mean? Silently I apologized to the antique for the company it had to keep. Alisa took me to a chair, sat me down.

‘Are you all right, Lovejoy?’

‘Course.’ I felt clammy. The Rockingham jug was sad, hating all this. ‘Sorry, love,’ I called over to it.

‘Oh, don’t worry, Lovejoy,’ Alisa said, thinking I meant her.

She went to the office. I heard Summer interrogating some whiffler. When I’d recovered enough to take notice, the lady who’d been talking to Daffo had gone. I beckoned him over.

‘That lady. She dash you?’ Dash is bribe. He glanced around, edgier still. ‘I’m serious, Daffo.’

‘She dropped me a tenner to blow the whistle if that Irma lifted anything.’

‘Okay, Daffo, no harm. What did Irma try nicking?’ ‘That Rockingham fake jug.’

Fake? It was as genuine as breath. ‘Who put it in?’ ‘Entered it in the sale? That lady, Mrs Crucifex.’ Wobbly, I stood and beckoned him with a jerk of my chin to where the necklace lay on phoney velvet. I examined it in case I’d missed anything from its photograph. Still Edwardian, still mediocre, nothing more than dress jewellery, tourmaline, miniature malachite greens not even worth counting. Now, I really like semi-precious stones, as people cruelly call them, but this wouldn’t break anybody’s bank. What, eight quid in wet weather? Not a farthing more.

‘Who entered that necklace?’ It was what light-fingered Irma had really wanted to steal.

Daffo riffled through his catalogue. ‘A Miss Dominick.’ ‘You sure, Daffo?’ Irma had entered it herself?

He saw Gimbert peering from the auctioneer’s office and firmly folded his catalogue away.

‘That’s confidential, Lovejoy!’ he said in a voice like a thunderclap.

Which ended my involvement, because the police photographer came just then, and two newspaper stringers bawling idiot questions. I slipped out.

Why did Irma Dominick enter a cheap necklace in a country auction, come to me for lessons on how to steal it, then get herself arrested trying to steal something totally different, namely a Rockingham bone china jug of outstanding richness and quality, wrongly described as a fake and belonging to her aunt Mrs Crucifex? I went to stave off a migraine in the Welcome Sailor.

There was one local Crucifex, the tavern’s phone book told me, a Mrs J. She didn’t answer when I rang. No Dominicks. I sat among antique dealers and heard the saga of Irma’s arrest a thousand times more I thought of Florida, queen of hearsay, tittle tattle and fable. As soon as her flower arranging class ended, I’d ask her what was going on. She’d know. Florida’s a gossip frenzy.

It’s a sad truth that housewives murder antique silver. They will pay a fortune for a lovely Regency silver salver or be delirious with delight that they’ve inherited Auntie Elsie’s valuable Georgian mint Paul Storr silver candelabrum, then fall on it like vandals, polishing the poor antique as if desperate to wear it away. I can’t understand it.

‘Lovejoy,’ Arty greeted me. ‘This is genuine, right?’

I looked at the poor thing, a sugar crusher. It doesn’t look much, nothing more than a silver rod with a rounded end. The capital Roman-style A silver mark came in during 1796, lasted until 1816. It is, believe me, a precious clue, but housemaids had all but worn away the sugar crusher maker’s mark and the date letter - they used rouge to scrub their mistress’s silverware. Life’s less risky for silver now, but try telling this lovely little damaged antique that.

‘Aye, Arty.’ It rang my chimes, but was having a hard time.

Why don’t people simply wash silver in baby soap, followed by a hearty rinse? It’s the best way.
Never
use scrubbers, scourers, vicious detergents. Antique silver deserves care. Think of a three-month-old baby’s skin, and you have it.

‘Why aren’t you glad, Lovejoy?’

Arty finances his gambling by dealing in antiques, if you can imagine anything more cock-eyed. One activity would ruin Midas, but Arty does the two together. I explained about not wearing away silver treasures.

‘Modem polishes often incorporate tarnish-retarders, Arty.’

‘Must I clean it, then?’

‘No!’ I bawled, then muttered, shamefaced, as everybody looked, ‘It’s clean enough.’

Sugar crushers, oddly, are rather rare, perhaps because they look ordinary. Loaf sugar, usual in Georgian times, was cut by the maid and served in a sugar basket. The pieces were gracefully broken by the hostess with a silver crusher at tea, her skill impressing gentlemen callers.