Ten Word Game by Jonathan Gash Read Free Book Online Page A

on. The Marquis’s mansion was an enormous baronial hall, with barmy Tudor brickwork chimneys, really a mini-Hampton Court, all parapetsand mullioned windows. Skeggie, a night-stealing cat burglar, had walked the building for me on a Public Open Day, taking photos, pretending to be a mature student from Norwich. Skeggie mapped out every inch. In these lord-of-the-manor places there’s no real security. They can’t afford it. Trouble is, cranky old retainers tend to have old-fashioned notions of right and wrong, and use double-barrelled shotguns before asking burglars to please vacate the premises. I’d taken advice from night-stealers before. I was ready. Forging antiques isn’t half so much trouble.
    The reason I was in peril was Drogue. A drogue is actually a sea anchor, a canvas thing you throw overboard to keep your boat from drifting. Drogue’s nickname is a joke. He maims people with a walking stick he carries. Friends say there’s a sword inside, but if you’re near enough to worry about such things it’s too late. I’ve seen Drogue batter a bloke senseless. It’s got gold and silver mounts.
    Once a boxer, he looks a real gent and wears a monocle , very Brigade of Guards, waistcoated, suit, George boots, a toff. He hires thugs, never keeps a bodyguard, and trusts no one. He said he’d pay me if I stole my forgery back, and punish me if I didn’t. Different words, of course.
    The pub was crowded, football night.
    Drogue rents his smiles out to women of a particular character. At me, he frowns.
    “Break in tonight, Lovejoy. The Marquis is at a London premier. Two old retainers, no gamekeepers, it’ll be a doddle. Off-season, see?”
    “I’ll take Belle.” She had a Land Ranger, good on rustic roads.
    “Best time’s four in the morning, Lovejoy. Do it right.”
    “Okay, Drogey. You paid Skeggie? He did a goodjob, maps and everything.”
    “Use the cran in Dragonsdale.”
    A cran is a place – hole in a wall, hollow tree, a disused bell-tower in some old church – where thieves leave stolen goods until fuss has died down. It’s common practice among people of low repute. (I don’t mean me, or even you, only everybody else.) The lady at Dragonsdale runs an Olde Englishe Tea Shoppe. She lets the antiques dealers use her chicken coop for a small fee. I like Hyacinth because she gives me bags of tomatoes when I’m short of money. She offers me chickens too, but I haven’t the nerve. You have to throttle a hen to eat it, and who can do that?
    “Fingers crossed, Drogey.”
    “No, Lovejoy. Fingers broken !”
    He left, chuckling at his clever play on words. I chuckled along because I’m an ingrate. Women smiled at him all the way to the door. If he’d beckoned, any of them would have brushed off their skirts and made after him.
    Blind Elsie came over to finish Drogue’s drink. She empties glasses from one end of Suffolk to the other but is never tipsy. She runs antiques from here to the Kent coast. Ugly as sin, heart of gold, she’s not really blind, just pretends because the myth helps her to sell mystic fortunes with the assistance of a toad in a bottle called Ape (the toad, not the bottle). She feeds it flies if it has a good run of clairvoyance. I can’t watch her do this. She carries Ape and a tube of bluebottles in her handbag. I think she’s a fraud, but other people say she’s a mystic who really Has The Eye. Claptrap, of course, though 60% of people believe in psychics.
    “Find Belle for me, Elsie.”
    “Is your robbery tonight?”
    Everybody knows my business but me. I nodded. “I need wheels.”
    “She’s just back from Llandeilo. Her cousin Stephen’s boy’s been ill.”
    Gossip in the Eastern Hundreds is like weather, everybody shares. I sighed. If word had got round this quickly the police would be forming a queue at the Marquis’s gate revving their Black Maria.
    “Lovejoy.” Blind Elsie took my hand. “Watch Drogue. He’s dicey. It’s one of your own forgeries,