The Judas Pair by Jonathan Gash Read Free Book Online

see his masterpieces you have to go to the London art galleries, for he was the famous oil painter pal of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. To read the scathing comments these writers left about him, he’d have run a mile on even seeing a pistol, flintlock or otherwise. No. It all pointed to Durs weapons. My own Durs flinters were holsters. The duellers I owned were a late large-bore pair by Henry Nock. All the rest, carefully wrapped and laid on dry sponges, were unmistakably non-Durs,
    The more I thought about it, the more unlikely it was that Eric had got it wrong. His pair probably were duellers, and perhaps even Durs. If a master craftsman can make a dozen pairs, what’s to stop him making one more set? Nothing.
    But what made them so special that Eric would babble eagerly over the phone about them to his bored brother?
    There was no other alternative. I would have to make the assumption that the Judas pair had been found and bought by Eric Field, that they were used to kill him by some unknown person, and that the motive for Eric’s death was possession of the unique antiques. How they’d managed to kill Eric without bullets was a problem only possession of the weapons themselves could solve. I put my cards away, switched off the light and climbed out.
    It took only a couple of minutes to have the living-room carpet back in place. I opened the curtains and phoned Field.
    ‘Lovejoy,’ I told him. ‘Tell me one thing. How long before his death did Eric have them?’
    ‘I’m not sure. Maybe a few months.’
    ‘Months?’
    ‘Why, yes,’ he said, surprised. ‘I’m almost certain he mentioned he’d found a pair of good-quality flintlocks quite some time ago.’
    ‘Who would know for certain?’
    ‘Well, nobody.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You
could
try his wife Muriel, my sister-in-law.’
    ‘Same address?’
    ‘She still lives in the house. Only, Lovejoy.’ He was warning me.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Please go carefully. She’s not very . . . strong.’
    ‘I will,’ I assured him, and hung up.
    So Eric had bought them, and only months later had he discovered their unique nature. I was justified, then, in searching for duellers which looked like most other flints.
    This was a clear case for Dandy Jack over at the antique mart, the world’s best gossip and worst antiques dealer. I could do him a favour, as he’d recently bought a small Chinese collection and would be in a state about it. He always needed help.
    I locked up and examined the weather. It would stay fine, with hardly a breeze. The nearby town was about ten miles with only one shallow hill to go up. My monster motor would make it. I patted the Armstrong-Siddeley’s bonnet.
    ‘Let’s risk it, love,’ I said, set it rolling with the outside handbrake dropped forward, and jumped in.
    Mercifully, it coughed into action just as it reached the gate. The engine kept grinding away while I swung the gate open, and we trundled grandly out on to the metalled road, all its remaining arthritic 20 cc’s throbbing with power. I pushed the throttle flat, and the speedo sailed majestically upwards from walking pace into double figures. The jet age.
    Practically every town nowadays has an antique market, mart, arcade, call it what you will. Our town has an arcade of maybe ten antique shops. Imagine Billy Bunter’s idea of the Sun King’s palace, built by our town council who’d run out of money before finishing the foyer, and you’ve got our shopping arcade. It’s given to seasonal fluctuations, because people from holiday resorts along the coast push up summer sales, and the dearth of winter visitors whittles the arcade’s shops-stalls included – down to five or six. They throw in a café to entice the unwary. Dandy Jack never closes.
    I parked the Armstrong illegally, sticking the card on the windscreen, saying DELIVERING , which could be anything from a doctor to a florist. It often worked. The café had a handful of customers swilling tea and