'It's what I told them, Lovejoy.' She sounded schoolmarmish, no-nonsense-from-you.
'Infants harbour wrong conclusions.'
'Indeed.' I hoped they hadn't blabbed about Mrs Vullamy's aerial legs.
'I called to ask you how I can conceal an object.' She avoided an exchange of glances, addressing the middle distance. 'I want antique dealers not to see it.'
'I don't understand.'
The way women present themselves to the world is admirable. Blokes aren't worth looking at. Not exactly poor, she'd get a mention in Elizabeth's skipping song any day.
Weighty wedding ring, earrings pricey, but some jeweller had made a terrible mistake with her pendant, a blue topaz set in oval gold. Still, it wasn't pale lavender, which would have been dearer but worse.
'It's a painting of a lady,' she explained. 'Done by Geoffreye Parlayne.' She took my aghast silence for awe and smiled. 'It is rare and valuable.'
'Oh, good,' I bleated faintly. 'Can I lie down, please? I've had a hard night.'
'Please don't dissemble, Lovejoy. I heard what the children said about you and Darla Vullamy.'
'Never heard of the lady,' I gave back, sagging onto my divan.
People have a right to anonymity. I know I'm in the minority in thinking this. Nowadays, every model having a one-nighter with some film star thinks it the height of propriety to hurtle for tomorrow's headlines and tell, sell every gasp of pillow passion. I regard it as a modern ailment, like Value Added Tax and vile clergy, and hope it might pass.
'She's my neighbour,' the lady said, doing the thin lips.
'I trust I might meet her one day,' I returned politely, thinking what frigging painting by Geoffreye Parlayne? Because that renowned Cromwellian soldier-cum-artist, 1599 to 1658, is actually me. He didn't exist. Still doesn't. I'm the forger who coined the name and stuck it on a dreadful daub I did one drunken month. I called it A Portrait of Lady Parlayne. The picture, almost a spillage, was astonishingly bought at Selpman and Coater's auction by a London dealer. I dined out, and in, until I got with Eve, who runs a fingernail shop (honest, there is such a thing. Eve sells gruesomely false fingernails).
After a week of Eve I was broke. When I'm desperate I forge yet another version of his Lady Parlayne. I've done four. The point is there's no such geezer as Geoffreye Parlayne, Cromwell's warrior artist. It's only me in a bad spell. My career can be logged by troughs and depressions, the nadir marked by portraits of Lady Hypatia Parlayne.
Never, never ever, buy art by Parlayne. He's the Dauber Who Never Was. All his paintings are forgeries done by me and skilfully aged to look Old Mastery.
Which is why I gazed at her bonny features and pondered.
You think folk are honest? Think again.
True story, to convince skeptics. Once upon a time, a bloke died. The eccentric millionaire Mr Digweed, sad to relate, passed away in a tent erected in his living room.
He actually left his fortune to Jesus Christ. A proper will, legal to the hilt. Hearing this, we might just smile and think what a charming old geezer. After all, the English are known eccentrics. Nary a ripple on the pond of life, right?
Not a bit of it.
Claims flooded in – from Jesus Christ! Within days, the Home Office was knee deep in letters claiming Digweed's gelt. Letters from whom? From JC, no less, duly signed and witnessed. They poured in by recorded delivery, with Address of Sender solemnly filled in, giving bank accounts where the money should be forwarded. The HO is still wondering what on earth.
I don't read the Church Times or the Vatican's daily newspaper, so maybe a Second Coming has occurred and I missed it.
My point is, logically there could be only one truthsayer, maximum. And most bookmakers would give odds on all those Jesus Christs being duds. (Incidentally, if you're the real genuine Claimant, the correct Home Office form of application is 319(0), and good luck. But I suppose you'd already know that.) Stark truth? We're all on the make, crooks, the sinful lot of us. I honestly don't mean you – just me and everybody else. We're bad hats.
Hence me, exhausted on my creaky divan, wondering what the hell.
She told me gravely, 'I am Mrs Thomasina Quayle. I approach you because you are, I believe, the most evasive of the local dealers.'
Evasive? Daft, I found myself wondering how little Marie would fit that into her skipping chant, Lovejoy's evasive or some such. I was just tired out.
'Who d'you want to evade?'
'Buyers, dealers, auctioneers. And,' she added prettily, 'thieves.'
'They're usually the ones I hunt down.'
'No flippancy, if you please.' From her handbag she withdrew a purse, gave me a thin wad of notes bound in bank paper. 'This is for the first month.'
'Where's the painting?'
'It is already in your shed.' She meant my workshop, but was too proud to say it. 'I shall expect a written report concerning its preservation from marauders each Sunday noon.'
'Why this malarkey?' I asked, reason struggling to the surface. 'Sotheby's, your bank, some dealers, they all have impregnable vaults. I don't.'
'Can they be trusted, Lovejoy?'
Another headacher. She had a point. 'Not by me,' I said grudgingly.
'There we are, then.' She rose, poetry in motion. I thought, I measure time by how a body sways, then wondered who'd said that. He must have known Thomasina Quayle.
She left then, and like a pillock I rolled over to sleep, my silence implying acceptance of the dumbest con trick I'd ever fallen for.
18
SUSANNE EGGERS DIDN'T deign to drive. Her husband Taylor drove us in a motor so plush I almost nodded off. We went to the River Deben estuary, a favourite site for lovers. Not today, though.
There's a seaside hamlet near one of the large boating centres. Nearly a marina, it has an old Martello tower. These squat edifices were built to resist Tyrant Bonaparte. Now, they're little museums or trendy caffs. This one I already knew. All candles, purple chintz and gothic silver, with waitresses dressed like young witches waiting for the Black Sabbath. Purple lipstick, kohl eyeliner, chalk-white features and niello jewellery. It isn't exactly teatime at Frinton-on-Sea. I once had a long smileship with a bird who used to take two hours doing her face like this. Daft, when she was gorgeous to start with. Forty-three years of age was Bliss, shapely plump, yet a born worrier. We used to come out to this very place and spend summer evenings watching the boats while I'd tell her about antique scams I'd done.
'Stop that smirking, Lovejoy.'
'Sorry.' I hadn't known I was.
Her bloke dashed round and opened the door. The only time I did that for Bliss I fell flat on my face and she rolled in the aisles.
'I said stop smirking. You look Neanderthal.'
'Sorry, sorry.' Do women know when you're thinking of a different bird? It makes them ratty.
We alighted. The foreshore was coolish and breezy. A delivery van was parked by the side entrance, a youth in overalls unloading crates. Two cheapo motors in the little car park. And, three-four furlongs off amid tussocky grass and dunes, a large dark motor.
Nobody in it. Nobody fishing on the breakwater. So why was it here?
Inside, the place hadn't started serving. A senior man was sitting at the far end, last table. I felt odd. It was Consul Sommon, the bloke who'd made serious smiles in my cottage with Mrs Eggers that cold frosty night. The mighty American. I glanced anxiously at Taylor Eggers, but he simply went to stand by the entrance. We serfs are prone to do that, attend humbly on our betters while they live life.
The gent signalled us to approach. I'd seen his face in newspaper photographs, so I was sure. The waitresses were laying tables. A musician was tinkering with those black sound boxes that deafen you, cables everywhere.
'This is he,' Susanne said.
He? How come I was he? I felt his eyes peel my features away. His gaze roamed my skull, ferreting out hidden allegiances. A politician to be scared of.