Another gambler. I'd never known a bloke like him – well, I have, but you've got to say that. Fookie gambles serious money. With Betcher gambling's a mere introductory spiel leading, he hopes, to better things.
'That spinel?'
'Isn't it a sapphire?'
'No. Fookie's just trying it on. It should only be a tenth of the price.'
People let themselves get carried away by simple points of recognition. Men do it with women – she's got a terrific shape, so she must be desirable / holy / honest / kind /
trustworthy, etc – and women invariably do it with jewellery. They see something prettily mounted and blue, and think, 'Egad! A princely sapphire in twenty-four carat gold! Astronomically priced, so it must be terribly valuable . . .' and so on. A spinel can be red, through blue to black. Most people think that so-called 'noble' spinel (only means gem quality) is always red, which isn't true. Okay, blue spinels are sometimes cloudy and not so bonny, but when you see transparent violety or frankly blue stones, they don't come any lovelier. The great 'Black Prince's Ruby' in our Crown jewels is secretly a spinel, not a ruby at all, but don't let on. Blue and red spinels have been substituted for sapphires and rubies over the centuries.
Like a duckegg I decided to help Betcher. I got Fookie to sell me the blue spinel pendant for a fraction of his asking price. I sold it on to Betcher for exactly what I'd paid. He wooed Trudy, heavenly violins soared and angels sang, and we all waited for wedding bells to chime. No such luck. The sky fell in. Trudy abruptly resigned and went to Manchester. Betcher sank into profound dejection, recovered slowly to his usual,
'Wotcher, Lovejoy. Betcher that new cat of Chrissy's gets lost within the week, ten quid on it?' I thought, oh well, lovers' parting is such sweet sorrow and all that. I'd done my bit so was it my fault?
Needless to say, yes it was.
One day I was in Manchester collecting some fake English secretaire bookcases – lovely mahogany, narrow, finely dovetailed drawers. Manchester repros are by far the best anywhere on earth. They're dead ringers for 1795. Dunno why, but Manchester craftsmen take the trouble of matching wood grain top and bottom, banding the same.
Other forgers are too damned idle, don't do a proper job ... Where was I? Manchester, bumping into Trudy in an antique dealer's.
She still wore Betcher's spinel pendant. In fact I recognized it before I even looked at her. We said hello. I stood shuffling, waiting for her to get mad over something I'd done / hadn't done, the usual female response to me. Until she said, 'I'm married now, Lovejoy. A little girl, twelve months.'
'Oh, good.' What can you say?
'It didn't work out with Brendon,' she said wistfully. I remembered in the nick of time that was Betcher's real name. 'I waited, but he never said anything. I saw it was hopeless.' Sorrow pained her eyes. 'I just had to leave.'
Betcher had been too much of a dope to speak out and I'd been too thick to bang their silly heads together and tell them to get on with it and stop annoying us. A classic tragedy, English reserve versus ardent longing.
The question was, what to say? Tell Trudy the truth, that Betcher had always loved her, now she was married with a family? Or reveal all to Betcher? Or let things slide? Being me, I took the easiest, saddest route. When next I met Betcher he said wistfully, 'Back from Lancashire, eh?' And asked, heart in his eyes, 'Betcher didn't see Trudy, Lovejoy.
Tenner on it.'
'No,' I lied evenly. What else could I say?
So Betcher languishes and Trudy languishes and me helping made it shambolic. And that, said Alice, was that.
The lesson? When I help, things get worse. My gran used to say, 'Lord save me from helpers.' She meant me.
There's no doubt. Morality's punk, dud from start to finish. I believe there's only one moral problem in life. It's this: if you could save somebody's life and you don't, then you're a murderer. That's the only moral dilemma since the dawn of man, like Brigadier Hedge's australopithecines question. Except it's no problem, for it's solved before you even utter the question.
Whoever else was responsible for Florence and Timothy Giverill's deaths – plus the deaths of whoever else had died in the crash – there was no doubt who was the real culprit. It was me, as surely as if I'd driven Timothy into that tree.
No sleep that night. The bluetits knocked on my window at seven as usual. I got up, filled their thing full of nuts, diced cheese for the robin and scattered a load of gunge for them to get on with. The plod came and took me in. I wasn't quite ready for them, but answered as I'd worked out during the lantern hours.
22
IT WAS A different office. I prefer uniformed plod these days. Once, I used to think they were the worst of a myriad evils. Now, I think maybe they're the least, though you've still to watch them.
'Eh?' I asked Sep Verner.
He showed his teeth. He believes it looks like smiling, but so far he hasn't learned how.
When he was in clink and I was showing him how to paint like Vincent – I told you about that – he was a quiet, withdrawn geezer on remand. We all make mistakes. I believed he was human, or at least lifelike, capable of emotion and everything. I was well wrong. He shook my hand, I remember, when I got sprung, and told me ta for helping him through. A blink of an eye, and there he was a rising star in the plod's firmament.
'This fatal accident in which you were involved, Lovejoy.'
'What accident?'
No lie to tell him my head hurt. I'd no mirror at the cottage, but knew I must look frayed at the edges. I had a bump on my noggin, though I'd bathed as usual in my tin bath and got blood and mud off.
He sat in his chair, rocking and swinging. I'm sure he copies American gangster films.
He's prognathous, teeth like that cowcatcher device that Babbage invented for the front of railway engines. I'll bet he got called names by his pals at school. Is there anything worse than the cruelty of children?
'What was that about children?' he asked sharply, his chair slamming down. He leaned forward, fingers linked. Whoops. Must have spoken my thoughts. I'm always doing that.
'Sorry,' I said. 'I'm still woozy from the accident.'
'What accident?' he asked softly.
'That's what I asked.'
He flicked open a slender file. My name. I must have started a new one, for legal goings-on instead of the usual messes.
'Last night, Lovejoy.' He stared beyond me, gave some newcomer the nod. 'You were injured. Two people were killed. An antique dealer, one Mrs Olive Makins, was injured along with three other drivers. You were an eye witness.'
'Olive Makins? I know her. Is she all right?'
'Fine. Just grazes.'
'Thank heavens,' I said piously. 'She's the auctioneers' secretary.'
'We know.' No grin now. 'Which raises the question what you were doing so late thumbing lifts on the trunk road.'
'Trying to get home, I suppose.' I furrowed my brow, trying to help him against the odds. 'I remember some event in a village hall. Was it Beccles?'
'How did you get to the main road?'
'I don't remember. All I can see is ...' I did the same patter, tyres, vehicles braking, me down the embankment.
'Then this truck driver was saying there'd been an accident. From Liverpool,' I added helpfully.
The newcomer spoke. 'You're not pulling the wool over my eyes, Lovejoy,' she said, coming round the desk. My heart sank.
Sep Verner made way as Petra Deighnson seated herself and gazed at me unsmiling.
Petra, incidentally, means rock in Latin.
Deighnson missed her vocation. She could have been human given half a chance. No, I mean it, could have been a real functioning Homo sapiens with friends and a life to lead. Don't misunderstand. She looks the part, is always well turned-out. Smart, my generation would say, suited, good legs and high heels, only one item of jewellery and that a spanker with an ultramarine – my favourite gem –at its centre. High Victorian, it's what posher antique dealers call en tremblant, meaning shivery, always on the go. It's one of the few brooches you can tell a mile off.