The Judas Pair by Jonathan Gash Read Free Book Online Page A

.grappling with Chorley cakes. I got the cleanest cake and a plastic cup. Within five minutes they were popping in.
    ‘Hello, Lovejoy. Slumming?’ Harry Bateman, no less, of Wordsworth fame.
    ‘Hiya, Harry.’
    ‘Hear about my –’
    ‘Remember the Trades Description Act, that’s all.’ He gave me a grin and shrugged.
    ‘I thought I’d done me homework that time. Bloody encyclopedia you are, Lovejoy. See you later.’
    ‘It’s Lovejoy – going straight yet?’ came a second later.
    Margaret Dainty was perhaps a useful thirty-five, tinted hair, plump and prematurely matronly of figure. She was cool, usually reasonably griffed up on her wares, and tended to be highly priced. There was a husband lurking somewhere in her background but he never materialized. An unfortunate childhood injury gave her a slight limp, well disguised.
    ‘Hiya, Margaret. How’s business?’
    ‘Not good.’ This means anything from bad to splendid.
    ‘Same all round.’
    ‘Interested in anything – besides Jane Felsham?’ She sat opposite and brushed crumbs away for her elbows. I raised eyebrows.
    ‘What’s she done wrong?’
    ‘One of your late-night visitors, I hear.’
    ‘Word gets round wrong as usual. Daytime. Accompanied.’
    ‘I’m glad to hear it, Lovejoy,’ she said, smiling.
    We had been good friends, once and briefly. I’d assumed that was to be it and that she’d developed other interests.
    ‘Now, now, young Dainty,’ I chided. ‘You don’t want an ageing, dishevelled, poverty-stricken bum like me cramping your style.’
    ‘You
are
hard work,’ she agreed coolly. ‘But never dull.’
    ‘Poor’s dull,’ I corrected her. ‘Failure’s dull. That’s me.’
    ‘You’re determined not to risk another Cissie.’ Cissie, my erstwhile lady wife.
    ‘There couldn’t be another. It’s one per galaxy.’
    ‘You’re safe, then.’ She eyed me as I finished that terrible tea. ‘Coming to see my stock?’
    I rose, bringing my unfinished Chorley cake with me. Frankly, I could have gone for Margaret badly, too deeply for my own good. But women are funny, you know. They keep changing, ever so slightly, from the time you first meet them. There’s a gradual hardening and tightening, until finally they’re behaving all about you, unmasked and vigilant, not a little fierce. It’s all made worse by the crippling need for them that one has. There’s an absolute demand, and women have the only supply. I prefer them before their shutters and masks come down. Not, you understand, at a distance.
    She had a
bonheur de jour
– lady’s writing desk – eighteenth-century.
    ‘Sheraton?’ Margaret asked.
    ‘No. His style, though.’
    ‘Why not?’
    I shrugged in answer. I couldn’t tell her about my bell’s condemnatory silence. ‘Doesn’t seem quite right.’
    Tip: look for neat firegilt handles, that lovely satinwood, tulipwood and ebony, and never buy until you’ve had out the wooden runners which support the hinged writing surface. You’ll be lucky if the baize is original – look at it edge on to see if it’s standing high or not. High = modern replacement. Low = possibly original. Forget whether it’s faded or not because we can do that on a clothesline, washing and sun-drying repeatedly, day in, day out for a week. It’s only stuck on.
    ‘Good or not?’she pressed.
    ‘Pretty good,’ which satisfied her.
    She showed me two pottery birds, all bright colours and asked if I liked them.
    ‘Horrible.’
    ‘Genuine?’ They looked like Chelsea. I touched one. Ding-dong.
    ‘As ever was.’
    ‘You haven’t looked for the gold anchor mark underneath yet,’ she said, vexed. ‘It’ll be there,’ I said.
    ‘Seeing you’re on form,’ she asked, ‘what are these?’
    There were four of them, shell-cases of various sizes, cut and decorated. A small cross, also brass, had been drilled into each. I picked one up. The crosspiece of each was loose and came free.
    ‘Table bells,’ I told her.