Tickled to Death and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense (27 page)

“Picked with great care,” Loxton said. What's that mean? I begin to wonder. Think about my reputation in the business, where, as I happened to mention, I am reckoned a complete dumbo who'll do whatever he's told without question.

That's it, of course. Loxton wanted someone guaranteed thick as a bunch of duvets; and Wally Clinton recommended me.

Hurtful though this conclusion is, I don't dwell on it. If that is the case, other things follow. Yes, I am being set up, but set up for something bigger than revenge for Wally. I try to think what else in the deal needs a deodorant.

I remember that right from the start I'd been impressed by the efficiency of the villains I was dealing with. Attention to detail. They'd given me instructions you couldn't go wrong with. They'd paid back my exact expenses. They'd even left the right money for the parking in Cavendish Square.

That thought stopped me. Cavendish Square Garage was where the car was meant to go back to. I was to drive there from Harbinger Hall. On my little lonesome. They'd set the whole thing up real tight until I left the Hall and then I could do what I liked. I know they thought I was thick, but surely even someone thick was going to realize that there was other things they could do with a couple of millionsworth of canvas than leave it in a garage. Considering the care they'd taken with everything else, they really hadn't thought that bit through. Why?

Something else suddenly barged into my mind. I went across to where my bomber jacket was hanging and felt in the pocket. The new price-list the bloke at the garage had given me.

There it was. Give me a nasty turn when I saw it.

“
THE GARAGE IS CLOSED ALL DAY SUNDAYS
.”

They hadn't bothered to think through the details of the handover once I'd stolen the painting, because they knew I wasn't going to get that far.

Then I remembered the other thing that didn't fit in. The locked boot of the Peugeot. Picking locks isn't my Number One talent, but I got a decent set of skeletons and I get by. Could've done the Peugeot boot quicker with a jemmy, but I didn't want no one to see I been snooping. So I was patient and after about ten minutes had it open.

And what a treasure trove my little pencil torch lit up inside. Complete Do-It-Yourself burglar kit. Sets of chisels, jemmies, wire-snips, pliers, big crowbar, the lot. Stethoscope, too, presumable for the old listening-to-the-tumblers routine when opening safes. Not that many villains do that nowadays.

Don't use dynamite much either. Not in sticks. Plastic explosive's much easier to handle. Less likely to have accidents. Still, whoever had stocked out that car boot reckoned I might need dynamite for the odd safe-job.

They also reckoned I was going to need something else. The rectangular outline of the suitcase was familiar, and that of the cloth-wrapped object inside even more so. I felt the knobbly ridges of the frame as I undid it.

It was a painting, of course. Same size as the Madonna. Old, like the Madonna. But it wasn't the Madonna. Difficult to see what it was, actually. Or what it had been. The paint was all flaked and stained. Could have been anything. Can't imagine anyone would have given two quid for that one, let alone two million.

But the odd thing about it was that screwed to the frame at the bottom there was this brass plate, which said,

M
ADONNA AND
C
HILD

Giacomo Palladino

Florentine

(1473–1539)

Someone was certainly setting me up, but I couldn't right then work out what for.

The Sunday was as boring as the Saturday. Some gamekeeper git give us a long lecture on grouse-shooting; there was a berk who went on about coats of arms; the “Traditional Sunday Lunch” was full of gristle. And whoever done the gravy ought to be copped under the Trades Descriptions Act. I mean, if the upper classes have been fed gravy like that since the Norman Conquest, no wonder they're a load of wimps.

The afternoon was, in the words of the old brochure, “less structured”. That meant, thank God, they couldn't think of anything else to bore us silly with. Guests were encouraged to wander round the grounds until the great moment of tea with Lord Harbinger.

I didn't bother to go out. I just lay on my bed and thought. I was piecing things together. Though nasty things have been said about it, there is nothing wrong with my intellect. It just works slowly. Give it time and it'll get there.

Trouble is, thinking takes it out of me, and I must've dozed off. When I come to, it was quarter to five and the old Royal Command tea had started at four-thirty. I got up in a hurry. Half of me was working out what was up, but the other half was still following instructions. I had to behave naturally, go through the weekend without drawing attention to myself.

As I hurried across the landing, I looked out through the big front window. I could see the red Peugeot parked right outside.

And I could see Mr Loxton closing the boot and moving away from it. Thought I'd be safely inside having my tea, didn't you, Mr Loxton?

The tea give me the last important fact. As soon as I was introduced to Lord Harbinger, it all come together.

“Good afternoon,” he said with a reasonable stab at enthusiasm. “Delighted to welcome you to Harbinger Hall.”

It was the voice, wasn't it? The bloke Loxton had been speaking to the night before. I realized just how inside an inside job it was.

And I realized other things that give me a nasty trickly feeling in my belly.

Half-past five the tea broke up. Lord Harbinger switched off like a lightbulb and, in spite of the Americans who would have liked to go on mingling with the aristocracy forever, everyone was hustled out of the drawing-room to go and get packed. I went up to my bedroom like the rest.

Wasn't a lot to pack, was there? But for the first time I took a butcher's at the package in my suitcase. After what I seen in the car boot the night before, could have been anything.

But no. It was a copy of the Madonna. Bloody good, too. I couldn't have told it apart from the real thing. But then I don't know much about art, do I?

Ten to six, following my instructions to the letter, down I go to the hall, leaving my suitcase in the bedroom. There's already a few of the punters milling around and piles of cases. Casual like, I take a glance at these and see, as I expected, that there's one there just like the one I left in the bedroom. Expensive for them on suitcases, this job. Mind you, if it all worked, they'd be able to afford it.

I hear Loxton's voice suddenly, whispering to Lord Harbinger. “I'll get away as quickly as I can afterwards.”

“Fine,” says the noble peer.

Just before six, most of the punters have arrived and the Harbinger Hall staff are all starting to make a farewell line like something out of a television serial. The Americans think this is wonderful and start cooing.

“Oh, blimey,” I say loudly. “Forget my own head next!” Then, for the benefit of the people who've turned round to look at me, I add, “Only forgotten my blooming case, haven't I?”

They turn away with expressions of distaste, and I beetle upstairs. Do it by the book. To my bedroom, pick up the suitcase, to the Long Gallery, down the “Private” staircase. Out with the old metal-cutters, reach for the cables at the top of the alarm boxes, snip, snip. I'm tense then, but there's no noise.

Into the Great Hall, put the suitcase on the table. Unzip it all the way round, take the copy of the Madonna out of its cloth wrappings, and do what I have to do.

Slam the case shut, back up the stairs, Long Gallery, bedroom, back down the main staircase towards the hall, stop on the stairs, panting a bit. Whole operation—three and a half minutes.

Now you've probably gathered that I have got this unfortunate reputation for bogging things up. Just when the job's nearly done, something always seems to go wrong. Bad luck I call it, but it's happened so often that some people have less charitable descriptions.

So, anyway, there I am standing on the stairs in front of all these people and I reach up to wipe my brow and—you'll never believe it—I haven't had time to zip up my suitcase again and I'm still holding the handle and it falls open. My aftershave and what-have-you clatters down the stairs with my pyjamas, and there, still strapped in the suitcase for all to see, is the Harbinger Madonna.

“My God!” says Lord Harbinger.

I say a rude word.

Various servants come forward and grab me. Others are sent off to the Great Hall to see the damage. Loxton's the first one back. He looks dead peeved.

“My Lord. The alarm wires have been cut. He's replaced the Madonna with a copy!”

“What!” Lord Harbinger blusters.

“Shall I call the police, my Lord?” asks another servant.

“Um . . .”

“All right.” I shrug. “It's a fair cop. Story of my life. Every job I seem to screw up. And this one I really thought I'd worked out to the last detail.”

“Shall I call the police, my Lord?” the servant asks again.

“Um . . .”

“You better,” I say. “I really have got caught with the goods this time. I'm afraid the police are going to want a really thorough investigation into this.”

“Ye-es.” His Lordship sounds uncertain. “Under normal circumstances of course I'd call the police straight away. But this is rather . . . um . . . awkward.”

“Why?” I ask. “I'm not pretending I haven't done it.”

“No, but, er . . . er . . .” Then finally he gets on the right track. “But you are a guest in my house. It is not part of the code of the Harbingers to call the police to their guests, however they may have offended against the laws of hospitality.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Gee,” says one of the Americans. “Isn't this just
wonderful
?”

Harbinger's getting into his stride by now. He does a big point to the door like out of some picture and he says, “Leave my house!”

I go down the rest of the stairs. “Better not take this, had I, I suppose?” I hold up the Madonna.

“No.”

I hand it over, sort of reluctant. “You better keep the copy. I got no use for it now. And I suppose the police will want to look at that. Might be able to trace back who ordered it.”

“Yes,” says his Lordship abruptly. “Or rather no. You take that back with you.”

“But—”

“No. If the police could trace you through the copy, I would be offending the rules of hospitality just as much as if I had you arrested. You take the copy with you.”

“But I don't want it.”

“
You will take it, sir!
” he bellows.

“Oh, all right,” I say grudgingly.

“Oh, heck. This is just so
British,
” says one of the Americans. Made her weekend, it had.

They give me the picture from the Great Hall, I put it in my suitcase, and I'm escorted out by Loxton. The punters and staff draw apart like I'm trying to sell them insurance.

Outside, Loxton says, “God, I knew you were thick and incompetent, but it never occurred to me that you'd be
that
thick and incompetent.”

I hang my head in shame.

“Now get in your car and go!”

“Oh, it's not my car,” I say. “It's stolen. Way my luck's going, I'll probably get stopped by the cops on the way home. I'll go on the coach to the station.”

Loxton doesn't look happy.

Takes a bit of time to get all the punters on to the bus. Loxton stands there fidgeting while further farewells are said. I sit right at the back with my suitcase. Everyone else sits right up the front. I'm in disgrace.

The bus starts off down the steep zigzag drive towards Limmerton. I look back to see Loxton rush towards the Peugeot, parked right in front of Harbinger Hall. I look at my watch. Quarter to seven. All that delayed us quite a bit.

I see Loxton leap into the car. Without bothering to close the door, he starts it and slams her into reverse. He screeches backwards over the gravel.

But it's too late. The Hall's saved, but he isn't.

The back of the Peugeot erupts into a balloon of orange flame. From inside the bus the sound is muffled. A few of the punters turn curiously, but just at that moment we swing round one of the hair-pins and there's nothing to see.

I piece it together again in the train. They've left me in a compartment on my own. I'm still like some kind of leper. They all feel better having had their guesses at the sort of person I was confirmed.

Lord Harbinger had money problems. Cost a lot to keep the Hall going, and the trippers weren't coming enough. Stately Home Weekends might bring in a few bob, but they took such a lot of staff, there wasn't much percentage in it.

But he had got the Madonna. Couldn't just sell it, wouldn't look good, public admission of failure. Besides, either he or Loxton had worked out a scheme that'd make more than just selling it. They'd have it stolen, get the insurance
and
sell it. But they need a real mug to do the actual thieving.

Enter Yours Truly.

I had to raise suspicions when I came for my day-trip, then stick out like a sore thumb on the Stately Home Weekend. When I'd actually done the theft, switched the real Madonna for the copy, Loxton would have offered to take my bag to my car. He would have switched my suitcase for the empty one and put the Madonna in another car, in which he would later drive it up to London to do his deal with Mr Depaldo's rival.

I would have driven off in the Peugeot, maybe full of plans to doublecross my paymasters and do a little deal of my own. They weren't worried what I had in mind, because they knew that half an hour away from Harbinger Hall, the dynamite in the back of the car would explode. When the police came to check the wreckage, I would be identified as the geyser who'd been behaving oddly all weekend, the one who'd obviously cut the alarm cables and switched the paintings. My profession was obvious. There was my record if they ever put a name to me. And if not, there were all the tools of my trade in the boot of the car.