“What a good job I remembered these,” I said, burrowing in my bag. “Here, try these lorgnettes. They came with that job lot of spectacle cases, remember? They may not be quite your prescription but they have a certain something, don’t you think?” I waved the pretty turquoise-and-white-enamelled Victorian hand-held specs before me, pressing a little button so that the lenses popped out.
“My sweet girl, what a gem you are!” Griff took them and peered this way and that. “You see, you adjust the focal length by moving them closer to or further away from your eyes. How clever. And how very pretty. Dear child. Now I can see whatever it is you wish to show me, young man,” he added, taking the catalogue and opening it. “Ah – there’s the wretched games table. What on earth could there be about such a monstrosity that someone should go to such lengths to get hold of it? Why, a quiet word to me beforehand and the promise of a drink afterwards and I wouldn’t have bid so high. Or indeed at all. Mrs Thingy could have waited for another – as indeed she will have to now.”
“And why indeed should they have stolen twenty or so others in the last twelve months?” Will asked. “At least, that’s what Lina’s research shows.”
Griff shot me a keen glance. “Do our friends know that the police might see this list?”
Will coughed. “Just at the moment we’re interested in the thieves, not their victims, Mr – Griff. And I gave Lina my word that I would only interview people who had already reported the thefts to their local police.”
“Very well. I hope you will keep it.”
“Of course.” He sounded sincere enough. He patted the catalogue photo. “Now, if these are gaming tables, am I right in thinking that they would have been in casinos or clubs?”
“Games tables. Probably in private homes – no TV in those days so you made your own entertainment,” Griff explained.
Will jotted. “Okay. Now, to me this just looks like an ordinary table with a chessboard inlaid on the top. Am I missing something?”
“Sometimes the chessboard part swivels round to reveal a backgammon well. Or some have side drawers for pieces and counters. I dare say some even have secret drawers, so that someone who knows where they are can cheat. None are terribly valuable, not unless they’re made by a famous manufacturer.” Griff didn’t volunteer how much he had paid, still less how much he would have asked Mrs Davenport to pay.
“Yet someone wants shedloads of the dratted things. And hides them away.”
“Or, more likely, young man,” Griff said, closing the lorgnette and waving it to emphasize the point, “has had them out of the country within the hour. Look at the places they were stolen… Ipswich; Plymouth; Southampton; loads round here in Kent.”
“But why on earth should they want them abroad?”
“It seems to me,” I said, as Will and I walked back to the car park, “that the only way of finding out why these tables are going abroad is to buy one and follow it.”
“Follow?” He frowned. “I suppose we could always hide a tracking device in it. So how could we make sure that there’d be a games table on the market soon?” He let me into his car before going round to the driver’s side, just as if Griff were watching to make sure he had good manners.
“Easy,” I said. “So long as you don’t want a kosher one.”
“Do I want to know what you mean by that?” It was hard to tell in the darkness whether he was serious or not.
“No names, no pack drill. I know a couple of dealers who would put together – using authentic bits and pieces – a games table that would convince most punters. And so long as it was me – it was I – who bought it, knowing it was a fake, that wouldn’t be a problem, would it? In fact,” I added, “wouldn’t it be all the better for being dodgy? It would mean that whoever bought it just wanted any old rubbish, not a really good one.”
“I’m not sure I follow your logic.” he grinned. “But I don’t think you’d be involved. It’d be one of our officers.”
“In the antiques world everyone knows everyone else. You put a police officer in there and whoever wants the table would be on to him in thirty seconds.”
“Or her,” he corrected me. “Someone who looked like you. You could do the bidding and then the officer could take your place in the van. There’s a whole department at Scotland Yard devoted to fine art theft – I’m sure they’ll want to be involved.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Games tables aren’t exactly fine art. And I have this feeling that it’s not the art value the thieves are interested in.” Griff always insisted that I had a bit of the divvy about me, in other words an instinct for what was real and what was fake.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know… But maybe we’ll find out.”
Smudger Smith operated at the shady end of antiques dealing. If asked, he might say he was into recycling before it even got fashionable. What he did was take a nice table top, say, the legs of which had been ruined by something like a fire or woodworm. Then he’d find a set of legs of the same wood, but not necessarily even from a table, and marry them up. He might even make his own table legs, and artificially age them, or make them from old wood from yet another item.
We met in a pub in a town some way from both our bases, and cash was exchanged in the used fivers and tenners he demanded, all courtesy of the police. What they’d say when I couldn’t provide a receipt I’d no idea – but ask Smudger to put anything on paper and he’d have disappeared before you could blink.
“How soon d’you want it?”
“The next furniture sale in Canterbury.” I was dead sure that if I’d asked him how he was going to fix it he’d have been outraged. “Plenty of little drawers and a couple of cupboards, if you can manage it,” I added. “‘You know the sort of thing.” My hands conjured the sort of mini-turrets and curlicues and cabriole legs that Griff particularly loathed.
But that was all right because I made sure Griff knew nothing about it.
A week later Will popped into the shop with some news. “We’ve had a couple of writing bureaux reported as missing,” he said. “Could there be any connection?”
“What period?”
“One’s seventeenth-century Italian.”
“Wow, you’re talking serious money there. Collectors would have your hand off.” I tugged an idea from my brain. “It would have one thing in common with those tables – it would almost certainly have secret drawers. Very secret. Will, has anything else gone missing over the last few weeks? So valuable your specialized squad would be on to it?”
He jotted in his notebook. “I could find out. Any news of your table?”
“It’ll be ready for next week’s sale.” I handed him the money I hadn’t had to spend, thanks to my haggling skills. “Sorry – my contact doesn’t do receipts.”
“So you could have kept the whole lot and I’d have been none the wiser.”
“I would,” I said shortly. When I was younger I’d have taken the lot and lied myself blue in the face. But not after six years with Griff. I changed the subject. The problem would be keeping Griff away from the auction now he was back on his feet. I might have to talk to Aidan.
“You don’t think Will’s a bit too good to be true?” I asked Griff, when Aidan, always the perfect host, had gone to bring fresh toast.
Griff was staying with him for an extra week’s convalescence when he’d been signed off by the private hospital. Then Aidan – prompted by me – thought they might go for a nice cruise somewhere exotic. Half of me was delighted: a break was just what Griff needed. The other half was desolate. But at least it meant he wouldn’t be at the sale.
“You’re not losing your heart to him, are you, sweet one?”
I licked my index finger and collected a few crumbs from the pristine cloth. “It’d be very easy to.” Eventually I looked him in the eye. “You wouldn’t recommend it?”