The Judas Pair

"I saw you."

"Tinker reporting in," I explained, looking around. Her lace christening gowns were beautiful, but I always sneeze over them. "I can never understand why these things are so cheap. A few quid for such work, years of it in each case."

She smiled. "Keep plugging that attitude. Genuine?"

"Does it matter?" I said. "Any forger who does something so intricate deserves every groat he gets." I felt them. "Yes, all good."

"I thought you'd been neglecting me till I heard, Lovejoy." She brought tea over despite my refusal.

"No matter now." I took the Victorian Derby cup as a mark of friendship because her tea's notorious. "All over."

She sat facing. People outside in the arcade must have thought we were a set of large bookends for sale.

"Give, Lovejoy."

"Eh?"

"I've one thing you've not got, darling," she said in a way I didn't like. "Patience. What are you up to?"

"I'm going to find the bastard. And I'm going to finish him."

"You can't, Lovejoy." God help me, she was crying. There she sat, sipping her rotten tea with tears rolling onto her cheeks. "It'll be the end of you too."

"Cheap at the price, love."

"Leave it to the police."

"They're quite content with matters as they are." My bitterness began to show. "It's much more dramatic to rush about with sirens wailing than slogging quietly after the chap on foot."

"They know what to do—"

"But they don't do it." I pulled away as she reached a hand toward me. "I've no grouse with anybody, love. I just want help." Two people staring in turned quickly away at the sight of our tense faces.

"Supposing you do find him. Why not just turn him in?"

I had to laugh, almost. "And endure months or years of questions while he wheedles his way out?"

"But that's what law is for," she cried.

"I don't want law, nor justice," I said. "From me he'll get his just deserts, like in the books. I want what's fair."

"Please, Lovejoy."

"Please, Lovejoy," I mimicked in savage falsetto. "You're asking me to let him off with seven years in a cushy jail thoughtfully provided by the taxpayers? No. I'm going to spread his head on the nearest wall and giggle when it splashes."

She flapped her hands on her lap. "We used to be so…"

"Things have changed."

"You'll get yourself killed. Whoever it is must have heard you're spreading word about fancy Durs duelers. It's the talk of the trade. Half of them already think you're balmy." Good news.

"There's one person who knows I'm serious, love." I was actually grinning. "I'm going to needle and nudge till he has to come for me." I rose and replaced her cup safely.

"All right, Lovejoy." She was resigned. "Anything I can do?"

"Spread the word yourself. Tell people. Make promises. Invent. Tell people how strange I've become." I kissed her forehead. "And your tea's still lousy."

I phoned George Field from the kiosk. He agreed to send an advert to the trade journal whose address I gave him:

REWARD

A substantial reward will be paid by the undermentioned for information leading to the specific location (not necessarily the successful purchase) of the Durs flintlock weapons known to the antique trade as the Judas Pair.

I thought, Let's all come clean. He gasped at the sum mentioned but agreed when I said I'd waive any costs. I insisted he put his name and address to the notice, not mine, because he was in all day and I wasn't.

I called in at the cottage and then drove to see Major Lister, happy as a pig in muck. By the weekend the murderer would know I was raising stink and getting close, and he'd start sweating. Don't believe that revenge isn't sweet. It's beautiful, pure, unflawed pleasure. He was losing sleep already because I had the little Durs gadget. I slept the sleep of the just. My revenge had begun.

Major Lister turned out to be a fussy disappointment, a stocky, balding, talkative, twinkly chap who wouldn't hurt a fly. His vast house was full of miscellaneous children. Everybody there, including three women who seemed to be permanent residents, was smiling.

"I'll bet you're Lovejoy" were his first words to me. "Come and see my fuchsias." He drew me away from the front door toward a greenhouse, calling back into the house, "We'll have rum and ginger with the fuchsias."

"I like your system," I said. The nearest child, a toddler licking a dopey hedgehog clean in the hallway, cried out the rum message hardly missing a lick. The cry was taken up like on the Alps throughout the house until it faded into silence. A moment later a return cry approached and the hedgehog aficionado shouted after us, "Rum on its way, Dad."

"They like the system, not I." He twinkled again and began talking to his plants, saying hello and so on. A right nutter here, I thought. He chattered to each plant, nodding away and generally giving out encouragement.

Well, it's not really my scene, a load of sticks in dirt in pots. He evidently thought they were marvelous, but there wasn't an antique anything from one end of the greenhouse to the other that I could see. A waste of time. His sticks had different names.

"Same as birds, eh?" I said, getting to the point. "Identical, but each one's supposed to be distinct, is that the idea?"

"I see you're no gardener."

"Of course I am."

"What do you grow?"

"Grass, trees, and bushes."

"What sorts?"

"Oh, green," I told him. "Leaves and all that."

"Yes." He twinkled as a little girl entered carrying two glasses of rum yellowed by ginger. "Yes, you're Lovejoy all right."

"Seen me at auctions, I expect, eh?"

"No. Heard about your famous Braithwaite car."

"Braithwaite?"

He saw the shock in my eyes and sat me on a trestle. The little girl wanted to stay and sat on the trestle with me.

"Herbert Braithwaite, maker of experimental petrol engines early this century. Some o.h.v. cycles. Yours must be the only one extant. Didn't you know?"

"No. Well, almost."

"Drink up, lad." He settled himself and let me get breath. "Now, Lovejoy, what's all this word about a pair of Durs guns?"

I told him part of the story but omitted Sheila's death and the turnkey.

"And you came here, why?"

"You were at the Field sale."

"And Watson got the Bible pistol. Yes, I recollect." He took the little girl on his lap and gave her a sip of his rum. "Fierce man is Watson. One of those collectors you can't avoid."

"The Field sale," I persisted.

"Nothing very special for me, I'm afraid. Naturally," he added candidly, "if you're trying me for size as a suspect, ask yourself if I would dare risk this orphanage."

"Orphanage?" It hadn't struck me.

"I don't breed quite this effectively," he chided, laughing so much the little girl laughed too, and finally so did I.

"You saw Watson there?"

"Certainly. He'll be not far from here now, if indeed he's in one of his whirlwind buying sprees."

My heart caught. I put the glass down. "Near here?"

"Why, yes. Aren't you on your way there too? The Medway showrooms at Maltan Lees. It's about eleven miles…"

I left as politely and casually as I could. Nice chap, Major Lister. I mentally filed him away as I moved toward the village of Maltan Lees: Major Lister (retd.): collector flck dllrs; orphanage; plants; clean hedgehogs.

Then I remembered I'd not finished my rum. Never mind, that little girl could have it when she'd finished his.

Four o'clock, Maltan Lees, and the auctioneer in the plywood hall gasping for his tea. I had no difficulty finding the place, from the cars nearby. They were slogging through the remaining lots with fifty to go. The end of an auction is always the best, excitement coming with value. By then the main mob of bidders has gone and only the dealers and die-hard collectors are left to ogle the valuables. Medway's seemed to have sold miscellaneous furniture, including bicycles, mangles, a piano, and household sundries, leaving a few carpets, some pottery, a collection of books, and some paintings, one of which, a genuine Fielding watercolor, gave me a chime or two.