The Rich And The Profane (33 page)

She’d moved to her auntie’s, only three doors along. She was glad to see me. I asked what Gesso’d been up to when she’d seen him last.

‘I don’t know, Lovejoy. Remember, we’re separated some time.’

‘What work did he do for Albansham Priory?’ I asked, not knowing what the hell I was up to. My plan was in Guernsey, bubbling to the boil, while I was home gnawing at a non-existent bone. Daft.

‘He did a lot, Lovejoy.’ I took her hand. She pulled away. ‘No, Lovejoy. Not now. The children will be home soon. Another time?’ I said yes, but I’d said the same to Victoria.

‘Can I see his toolshed?’

She took me into the back garden. The shed looked untouched, just a few trinkets lying about, a tube of paint, brushes, a dusty canvas. Nobody had worked here for ages. Powder in jars, a midget electric kiln with a temperature slab drooping like a Dali watch. I gave myself a splinter feeling along the window ledge.

‘Was he well paid?’ I wanted to ask if Gesso had happened on some scam of Prior Metivier’s, like a fool hunting for motives, when motive is always dud.

‘I never knew,’ she said, aggrieved, ‘after he took up with Irma.’

‘Irma who?’

‘Irma Dominick. Him and her. That’s why I went to Little Henny - I met you there, remember? They had a holiday chalet.’

We returned to the house, leaving the shed door ajar. ‘Did Gesso ever go to the Channel Isles, find anything there he shouldn’t?’

‘Him? Stick-in-the-mud?’ She started laying for tea. I heard the school bus arrive, whoops and shouts. ‘That plainclothes bobby came asking the same.’

‘Oh, I know,’ I said, casual. ‘I was just checking he’d, er, asked the right questions.’ I made for the door. She plucked at my sleeve.

‘I meant it, darling, about another time.’ She smiled, coming close. ‘I’ll promise you, if you promise me. Yes?’ Her two children burst in, flinging satchels. I zoomed to town, only a few hours left. Why do women and promises go together? Maybe because promises aren’t for keeping anyway. What policeman exactly? I hadn’t dared ask who, in case it gave me scarier thoughts than usual. Gesso was Irma’s mate, and Gesso got killed. Had Irma in fact stood to gain most from his death? What Gesso’d found out about the Priory’s cache of war loot, Irma must also know. And I knew from Michaelis that she was among the merry holidaymakers on Guernsey. Had she led Gesso unsuspecting to his doom at the priory?

I was beginning to sound like the Black Hand Gang myself.

Jutta was in the Antiques Arcade, hair still unbridled. I was relieved the dealers had left. Racing at Doncaster, the results in at Penny Dev’s, bookmaker of this parish. I said hello.

‘How’s Guernsey, Lovejoy? Did you hear Gesso’s gone walkabout?’

‘Nice, and yes. How’s Damnation Dougal?’

She was dusting her rotten antiques so they’d look buyable. Some hopes.

‘He’s wonderful, Lovejoy. Maybe one day.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, Paula’s on the warpath after you. You stole a George the Fifth silver and sold it to Harry Bateman. She’s livid.’ ‘I’ll call in and see her,’ I said pleasantly. ‘Look. Did you ever see Irma Dominick? She was that girl who—’

‘Fortune on wheels, that one.’ Her vigorous dusting almost sent her items flying. ‘I hate a rich buyer who won’t buy when she should, stupid bitch.’

Which flabbergasted me. Into Jutta’s voice had come That Tone, a whine dealers use to blame punters for not throwing money at their tat. What set me on my heels was rich. Irma? R-i-c-h rich? Or merely got a bob or two?

‘Can’t be the same lass, love. This Irma was virtually broke.’

‘That’s her, smarmy cow.’ Jutta threatened me with a duster. ‘You stupid sod, teaching her how to shoplift when she could buy every auction house in the Eastern Hundreds.’

‘Eh? But she jumped bail.’ I almost whimpered it, lost. ‘Typical rich, that is. The mare.’ She came close, fingered my lapel. ‘Lovejoy. Could you show me that technique we tried once at your cottage? Only, this Friday I’m in with a chance. Reverend Dougal has asked me—’

Typical. Starving for lack of a woman, I start getting offers wholesale when I’ve no time. I promised, hand on my heart, etc., etc., and fled to Florida’s home, a little cot in the Suffolk meadows.

Her home occupies vast tracts of prime farming land, which explains the shortage of grain products, but the splendid mansion, the gardeners slogging at the verdure, make you trust Florida’s profane contention that wealth is justifiable - as long as it isn’t wasted on worthless social causes like the poor.

‘Remember he’s an ex-cop,’ I told myself, knocking. A maid let me in, made me wait in the marbled hall. I’d been in smaller cathedrals. The staircase soared up in spirals to a majestic domed belvedere.

‘Lovejoy? Eddie Champion. Come in. Drink?’

Gentry aren’t often pally straight off, so I trod warily. He poured me orange juice, had whisky in a beaker that made me groan. Eddie Champion chuckled. He was the man I’d seen leaving Vesta’s Emporium. Now, he looked kindlier.

‘So it’s true, eh? Genuine antiques do make you gag?’ ‘Only an idiot could mistake that yellow.’

An expert decorator of porcelain in old Vienna was Anton Kothgasser, who lived to well over eighty. He loved colour. His pal Gottlob Mohn showed him his new palette of transparent hues - Gottlob’s dad had developed them long before 1815, when he popped his clogs. The shock of all time was this brilliant clear yellow. They’d used it for painting window glass, and Anton fell in love with it. Glass which the Mohns did for the Austrian Emperor is more pricey, but for me Anton’s is second to none. I winced as the beaker clanked gently on Champion’s teeth. Signed, with his address, a Kothgasser beaker names its own price.

‘Irma Dominick gave me this,’ he said wrily. ‘The only antique I own.’

‘Quite a present.’ From a lass who’d begged me to teach her to steal a cheap necklace free of charge.

‘Thought you were in Guernsey, Lovejoy. How
is
Florida?’

No good trying to pretend. Everybody knew everybody else, except me.

‘She took a friend, Lovejoy. Dook isn’t it, this week?’

I never know what to say when people, especially husbands or wives, go like this. ‘Aye. She’s determined to bet on some antiques.’

Champion laughed. ‘Uncontrollable. Still, it’s her money, not mine.’ He glanced shrewdly at me. ‘You’ve taken up with Mrs Crucifex?’

‘I’m the one that got away, Mr Champion.’

He chuckled, a man content with his lot. He actually looked like a retired Fuzz. ‘But you have hopes? No need to answer. And it’s Eddie, please. You gave us a lot of amusement, Lovejoy. We used to run a book on you at the station. I won three hundred quid once. Your Scotch scam. Remember?’

‘No,’ I said, cold. Like I said, I hate people who remember things, especially police, ex or extant makes no difference.

He poured himself another dram. ‘You lying bastard. How can I help you?’

‘What’s happened about Gesso?’

‘Hopped it, I heard. Why?’

‘I’m worried he’s been topped.’

‘Sometimes
you
vanish, Lovejoy. Florida is — was? -forever hunting you.’

‘But I’m alive.’

He stared into his Kothgasser beaker. The decoration on the lovely glass was St Stephen’s Cathedral, which Anton used to walk past in Vienna. I like the ones with playing cards on, though collectors mostly go for his glasses showing children, views, bouquets.

‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, Lovejoy. Gesso’s tough, worked at Albansham Priory. It’s hardly the life of a harum-scarum, is it?’

Him and his Kothgasser. I wondered if I should tell Pedalo, our slinkiest cat burglar, to come night-stealing and claim commission on the theft.

‘Irma Dominick’s a friend of yours? I’m looking for her too.’

‘Mmmh. I still think they should have taken her offer.’ ‘What offer?’

‘For the priory. Send the monks packing, make a great hotel complex. At least it would endure, instead of falling into ruin.’ He lit a pipe, puffed lazily. Nice aroma, pity about the arteries. ‘Village lads’ll have the lead off the roof any day. After that, rubble time.’

‘To buy it? Irma?’

‘Yes. Irma was grateful because I set up the meeting -Irma and Prior Metivier - in this very room. Irma offered to buy the priory, freehold, grounds and all. I used to be in Company Fraud when I was in the police. Irma wanted me to be there when she did the deal. She offered cash. Jocina found out - Metivier told her - and went berserk, called her a scheming bitch outright.’

Instead, the whole priory becomes empty as a ghost village. With a choice of money or ruin, I think I’d take the gelt. So why hadn’t Prior George?

We parted amicably. I quite liked him. I noticed that the housekeeper, a pleasant lady his age more or less, looked at home. As I left, they stood together to wave me off. Well, fair’s fair.

That night I stayed with Jutta, in serious training for her final assault on Reverend Dougal’s hellfire morals. Next midday she drove me all the way to Weymouth. I gave her the Jersey Lily/Oscar Wilde Budge teapot. Not in payment, you understand, just for peace of mind. I knew now that Prior Metivier, alarmed at Irma’s offer to buy him out -denuding him of his charity scams and gambling - had had Gesso killed. Had Gesso threatened to tell the other fundraisers, and so sealed his own fate? I was satisfied. I had the motive.

After interrogating the reception lass in the depot about Miss I. Dominick’s journey - she was helpful when I explained that Irma was my diabetic sister - me and Jutta parted like fond lovers. She thanked me for showing her how to thrill Reverend Dougal, should she ever get close to him in a state of undress. I wished her luck. Jutta was on a loser, a hiding to nothing. I’d say our confidence levels were about equal.

At st peter port I let everybody else get off. I chatted up the stewardesses, and asked if they knew Irma. No luck. I ambled to the Esplanade, where I sat in the gathering dusk. The show would open in two hours. Jimmy and Victoria would be demented, but I had questions.

What lass, rich as King Thingy, wanted a scruffy reprobate like me to show her how to steal from an antiques auction, and then goes and balls it up? Any dealer would have nicked it for a tenner, not batted a lid. As if Irma’d
wanted
to get caught. And what lass, so filled with antiques lore that she unerringly picks a precious - meaning violently precious - glass beaker made by an all-time Viennese great, then donates it to some ageing gent, Eddie Champion, who’d done her a favour? Last, and most ominous, what enviably rich bird, clearly an antiques expert herself, wanted a priory?

The more I thought of Irma, the more I thought of the helpless, hapless Martin Crucifex, submerged in his wife’s social tide. Very like Eddie Champion, except that Florida’s husband, with no allegiances - no inherited money, passion or such impedimenta - had simply condoned Florida’s county-set life and been kind when Irma had come for advice. Eddie quietly loved his housekeeper. Sauce for the gander.

The marina was busy. Which boat was Irma’s? If she had one, it must be here. They all looked the business, ocean-goers, tall masts, bow railings, twice as posh as Mersea Island’s and those on East Anglia’s Blaclcwater. Had Irma got me in her telescope right now from out there? One thing, her plan was consistent. The instant she’d created maximum mayhem by her deliberately inept theft from Gimbert’s Auction Rooms, she’d gone to earth. I was convinced she would try to sabotage tonight’s exhibition. But who did kill Gesso? OK, I admit it was me got him captured, but was it Irma, with a little bit of help from friends? Or Metivier alone?

The light was fading on lovely, warm Guernsey. The locals speak of themselves with a soft ‘G’. Which made me think all the more of Gesso. Him and his clumsy forged antiques, his reputation as a brilliant robber that had let me down so badly. I felt ashamed. Me, the loyal avenging friend, tempted by his widow, in Gesso’s own cottage, as she made tea for his children. Worse, I’d even promised to make smiles with her, first chance I got. This after having lain on Gussy the previous night, just before slogging myself to a grease spot in Jutta’s tender clasp. I’m a pathetic swine.

‘Which boat is Irma Dominick’s, please?’ I asked a boatman.

‘Didn’t she give you a phone number?’

Nautical folk always think you’ll nick their mizzen mast. ‘Lost it, I’m afraid.’

‘Hasn’t she relatives you could ask?’

He knew Irma all right. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Can’t help you. Sorry.’ He clunked on in his great boots, bucket clanking.

The other question was just as serious. If you were Prior Metivier and were offered cash for your sinking enterprise, namely Albansham Priory, would you turn it down? Doubt it. I wouldn’t, especially with bare-fist fighters and bookmakers on my tail. So why did Jocina, doyenne fund-raiser and leader of the pack, ‘go berserk when she heard’? Eddie’s words. The sale would have got her and Metivier off the hook.

That question stumped me. Because maybe the money from the priory sale would have had to go to some archdiocese, or the Order itself? I was still mulling it over when I heard tyres squeal and somebody shouted, ‘He’s there!’ and people came running. I stood, stretched, yawned. Stan, Jimmy Ozanne, two guards. They had a big Range Rover.

‘Evening, lads.’ I went towards their motor. ‘Let’s go.’

They halted, recriminations dying.

Jimmy said, reproachful, ‘Jonno’s show’s already started, Lovejoy. It’s a sell out.’

‘Pleased to hear it. Thanks for coming.’ I got in one of the rear seats. They looked at me. I think the word is nonplussed. ‘Jimmy, Stan, come with me. You others go and scour the exhibition for electronic bugs, external wiring, plastics, anything odd. We’ll be half an hour. Put an extra two men on the gate.’

‘That’s seen to, Lovejoy.’ Stan nodded to his men to hare off.

‘Well done. I’ll direct you.’

Joe and Meg let us in. I liked the way they didn’t ask questions or look about the Carrieres’ place much. I shouted a hello through to Dove, then asked for solitude in the woodshed while they had a chat. Jimmy was nervous about the time. Alone, I did some quick work with Joe’s claw hammer to check that Gussy’s paintings were untouched. I removed one canvas - any would do - and strapped it between two pieces of cardboard. It was clearly a painting. I refastened the crates and shouted Stan and Jimmy to give me a hand. We carried the crates to the motor. I called ta. Stan zoomed us off.