I gave vent to every expletive I'd ever learned, ranting and fuming. I'd got the clock for a quid from a starving old widow —one of my kinder moments this, because if I'd been true to myself I'd have beaten her down to a few pence. The sheer effrontery of somebody having the gall to come in, finger anything of mine he wanted, then take a rare priceless antique was sickening. Literally, I felt physically sick. I phoned our ever-vigilant constable Geoffrey, who was mercifully in, probably still having his morning nap. He was ever so sympathetic.
"When you've stopped laughing," I snarled, "get my clock back."
"Estimate of value, please, Lovejoy."
"Six hundred," I said firmly. He was silent for once.
"Did— Did you say—?" And he laughed again, louder this time.
"Well, maybe three hundred."
"You mean about eighty."
"Ninety."
"As a friend, Lovejoy," he said sadly, "I can only make it eighty-five."
"But that's robbery."
He agreed. "You can argue it out with the insurance people, Lovejoy," he said. "Incidentally, how'd he get in?"
"I'll look. Hang on."
There was a cut around the window near its catch. The window looked right down the back garden and could be reached by anyone standing on the grass, which grows right up to the cottage. I told Geoffrey and he said it was typical, but how about my alarm system connected at great expense to a noisy little flashing light in his office? I explained I'd been in a rush that morning.
"Thanks, Lovejoy," he said cynically. "We love a bit of help from the public."
"Are you going to come and look for clues or aren't you?" I snapped and crashed the receiver.
I made some tea while I waited. Apart from scratches on the windowsill there was nothing. I moved about straightening things. The trouble is that you know where to look for antiques. Guns must be locked in an enclosed space, says the Firearms Act; porcelain will be in a fastened case; portabilia locked in a safe or drawer. He knew his stuff. Whoever had done this was neat, slick, and an opportunist dedicated to walnut carriage clocks. Now, two things worried me far more than the loss of the clock. One was that Geoffrey's guess about the clock's value wasn't too far out, which was important, because nobody robs for very little. The second thing stared back at me from the opposite wall as I lounged on the divan swilling tea. It was my Chien Lung plate, a lovely disk of hand-painted light pastel colors stenciled by a neat blue running-edge design. It stood in prominence 6n my desk on a three-leaved ebony hinge support of the sort the Chinese do so cleverly. Neither plate nor clock was unique, but of the two the plate was infinitely—well, ten times—more desirable in anybody's book, as well as being more valuable. So why pass it up?
That left two possibilities. Either my burglar was well informed enough to know that I had a carriage clock to suit him, or he hadn't come for the carriage clock at all. Which raised the question, Why take it if he didn't want it? Answer: To cause his intrusion to be written off as a simple uncomplicated robbery by a burglar who happened to have a casual eye for antiques.
It was starting to look as though I'd established contact with the owner of a very special pair of flinters.
The rest of the day's happenings I don't really want to talk about.
Geoffrey came on his bicycle and took notes. He examined the earth outside, searched patiently for heaven knows what sort of clues, and later went around the village asking who'd noticed what and when, with conspicuous failure. Left to my own devices, I retrieved my Adams from the priest hole before driving to Barton's on the estuary and settling with him for too much in part exchange, and bringing the cased Mortimers back home to gloat over despite the fact that I'd have to pay out to settle it before the month ended. I had my usual supper bought from the Bungalow Shop in the village, read a lot, and went to bed not knowing that by then Sheila was dead.
She had got on the London train, and apparently went home before reporting to work that same day. It was on the way home that evening that she was said to have stumbled and fallen beneath the wheels of an oncoming train.
The platform was crowded. In the friendly reliable way we all have, nobody came forward to say who was even standing near her. To hear the witnesses at the inquest, the three thousand people must have clustered awkwardly along the platform leaving an open space for several yards all around Sheila as she waited for the train to come and kill her. Don't go trying to say people may not have noticed somebody pushing a woman off a platform because of the crowd. There's no excuse. Women notice a pretty woman because they're practically compelled to, and men notice because they're compelled to in a different way. People simply look away when they want to, and they've no right.
Later, a couple of days on, I remembered what George Field had said: If you take away people, there's nothing left. One can't be answerable for all mankind, no. But you can sure as hell stick up for the little chunks of mankind that are linked with you, no matter how that link came about—birth, relations, by adoption, love. It all counts. Podgy old George and his dumpy little wife knew the game of living, while I was just a beginner.
I learned about Sheila from Geoffrey the day after the burglary. I just said thank you and shut the door.
No jokes from now on, folks.
Chapter 10
Somebody once said you get no choice in life, and none in memory either. Judging by what the Victorians left in the way of knickknacks, they made a valiant attempt to control memory by means of lockets for engravings, "likenesses" in all manner of materials ranging from hairs from the head of the beloved to diamonds, and a strange celebration of death through the oddest mixture of jubilation and grief. Their memory, they seemed to think, should be neatly ordered to provide the maximum nostalgia centered on the loved one. If it needed extra emotional work to achieve that reassuring state, then the labor would just have to be endured. You can't say the Victorians were scared of hard slogging.
I would have liked to have been as firm as they. You know what I mean, pick out especially fond moments from my friendship with Sheila and build up a satisfying mosaic of memories which would comfort me in my loss by giving assurance that all was really not wasted. Nice, but all really was wasted as far as Sheila was concerned. Finished. Done for. And for me Sheila was gone. Anyway, I'm not resolute enough to look inward for the purpose of emotional construction. Gone's gone.
So that terrible day I sat and sat and did nothing to my records, left letters unanswered, didn't pick up the phone. For some reason I made a coal fire, a dirty habit I thought I'd given up. I shifted my electric fire, put newspaper in a heap in the grate, chopped wood, and got it going first time. There was a residue of coal in the old coalbin by the back door so I set to burning that. The cottage became warm, snug, and the day wore on. I had no control over my memories of Sheila as I watched the flames gleam and flash in the fire.
She had this habit of watching me, not just glancing now and again to check I was still around and not up to no good, but actively and purposely inspecting me. I might be doing nothing; still she'd watch, smiling as if engaged in a private humorous conversation at my foibles. It made me mad with her at first, but you get used to a particular woman, don't you?
Another trick she had was reaching out and absently rubbing my neck for nothing while she was reading or watching TV in the cottage. I'd probably be searching through price data of antiques and she'd just put her hand on my neck. It distracted me at first and I'd shrug her off, but moments later back she would come caressing me. There was nothing to it, not her way of starting sex play or anything. It was just her preference. She used to do it for hours.