A little marble statuette of a faun was tagged Number Three. Nigh on two hundred years old, Italian from the look, but some hard-hearted swine had etched a mark on its foot with some coarse cleaning agent, probably oxalic acid, to ruin the patina and make a casual observer assume it was a reproduction. Such blemishes are common in fakes.

  So Susanne Eggers must have thought it worthwhile to injure a genuine antique just to make her test more effective, the rotten cow. I ask you, what morality is that? Now I'd hate her for ever. She must have been desperate about something vital. I scored it fake, to be wrong again.

  The last object was an earthenware galena-glazed moneybox shaped like a hen sitting on a crude nest. Three hundred years old or so, these things are highly valuable. They have a slit for coins. Full, you simply smashed the pot and tot up your loot. (Hence our saying, 'nest-egg'.) Very few have survived, though we – I mean dishonest forgers and fakers, not me – make them when desperate for gelt, hoping some buyer will jump to the wrong conclusion. This was genuine, making real bongs in my chest. Worth a decent motor on a good day. So I scored it a dud.

  'That it, missus?' I gave Taylor Eggers the card.

  'Wait outside,' she ordered. 'This is confidential. Understand?'

  We swore eternal fealty and trailed out to stand on the gravel. I felt embarrassed.

  They'd done really well, got every one correct. I was the only one to get them wrong.

  'Are we in still in character, Lovejoy?' Wilhelmina asked in a whisper.

  'Not any longer,' Tina said, smiling fetchingly at me. 'Did we get your signals right, Lovejoy?'

  It took a millisec to answer. She'd just proved she was a treacherous bitch.

  'Aye, well done all of you.'

  'Will she tell us straight away which of us gets the part?'

  'Maybe she'll want everybody.' I tried to do one of Taylor's hearty beams, on the theory that optimistic lies are best.

  'That'd be superb,' Larch said to Wilhelmina. She smiled at him. I realized he must have overheard my spiel about her priceless shahtoosh. I sighed inwardly. So near and yet so far.

  'Lovejoy?' Taylor appeared at the door. 'Thank you for your services. Mrs Eggers will send word. You will each get expenses.'

  One last beam, then slam. We looked at one another. I wondered if the deal was off, whatever it was. Maybe Susanne Eggers's mystery ghost had its own way of working. I led the way in silence to the road and we clambered aboard Jacko's lorry. Only because I was looking, I saw a shadowy figure in the shrubbery by the huge ornate gate. It raised a thumb and little finger, sign of the telephone. I just nodded.

  We drove back to town while Jacko sang that high C thing from The Daughter of the Regiment. I hummed along but, unlike Jacko, in tune with the composer's intentions until Tina snapped at me to shut up. Jacko bawled atonally on. Well, it was his lorry.

  Larch and Wilhelmina talked quietly. Tina then settled down, smiling inwardly at a good job done, the traitorous cow. Jules only once was careless enough to catch my eye and swiftly looked away. He too knew we'd been had, maybe guessed who by.

  We alighted at the war memorial. I told Tina to give me a list of phone numbers where I could reach them. It was only then that I wondered how the hell could I phone Mortimer like he'd signalled, if the phone people had disconnected me. We split up, and that was the end of a perfect day until I was reminded of a death, the only one in recorded history that was not my fault.

  14

  THE WELCOME SAILOR was crowded. The dealers raised a derisory cheer when I entered, 'Watch your wallets / women / pints!' in various combinations, all that. I was surprised to see five auctioneers in, because they're like kestrels. You only see one at a time, unlike other birds of prey I could mention.

  I went about trying to cadge a drink, not because I was thirsty but because it would legitimize my presence and I could see who else was in. Failing miserably, I went into the saloon bar where I found Jules losing to himself at dominoes.

  'Ta for that, Lovejoy. Made me feel a lot better.'

  'Give over. Seen Susanne Eggers before, have you?'

  'Once,' he said. I showed surprise. 'She tried to buy out the Edgar Allen Poe bloke.

  Remember that Prague business?'

  I remembered all right. 'Your bit of coffin?'

  'Before I went on holiday.' He meant gaol.

  The Poe bloke is secretly famous. We all know that he's English, obsessed with the long-dead writer. Very like some sculptress I could mention who's emotionally involved with Leonardo da Vinci. It takes all sorts. The Poe bloke arranged a vast EAP Festival in Prague, of all places, and actually pulled it off. He assembled Poe's clothes, gear, books, etc, etc. Jules here reckoned he'd contributed a chunk of Poe's actual coffin. Most dealers claim this kind of thing, given half a listen.

  'What did she have to do with it?'

  'She tried to pinch his idea, see? It failed.' Jules put his arm round his glass as if to shield it, the mark of the soldier squaddie and the lag. 'I saw her the day she got her team together. One of them's a big Yank diplomat.'

  'She had quite a mob, then?' Remember what I said about antique dealers flocking?

  Think vultures, not budgies.

  'Not really.' He was watching the tap-room door as if waiting for somebody. 'Ferd and Norma, the Countess, Sandy and Mel. Horse and FeelFree wanted in but got the sailor's elbow, nudge splash. Vestry was going to try but shuffled the coil.'

  A strange group. My voice croaked twice before it got going. 'How come you wanted to audition, you having met her before and all?'

  Nobody was within earshot. Two middle-aged lovebirds by the door were having one of those terrible whispered arguments, all thin lips and white knuckles. I didn't know them.

  He smiled sadly. 'She's never seen me before. I was the Countess's next bloke after you, Lovejoy.' I went a bit red. The Countess has lovers like restaurants do servings. 'I was in her Antiques Emporiana.' In case I'd forgotten, he added helpfully, 'You turn off through Long Melford—'

  'I know.' Who didn't?

  'We were in her stockroom when they all came to decide the chop. Ferd and Norma, Mrs Eggers, Sandy, a bloke I'd never seen before.' He winced. 'The Countess shoved me behind a curtain. It covers the doorway into—'

  'I know, I know.'

  Chop is the division of the spoils. I was embarrassed, that curtain. Uneasily I wondered how many of the Countess's former lovers had hidden behind it while she sallied forth to awe customers.

  'I heard about you wanted actors so I changed my name. That's it.'

  So Susanne Eggers was a would-be international buyer. My pathetic brain felt it was clip-clopping after Derby runners. 'She must have money,' I bleated feebly, as if a Yank lady who could rent a country estate and assemble a team of antique dealers might possibly be destitute.

  'She's loaded. The Countess was in raptures.'

  'What happened?'

  For it had changed. Instead of a respectable mob of well-off dealers, she'd finished up with a penniless dolt, namely Icky Tod, me. I felt risk closing in. Thank you, Mortimer.

  He said scornfully, 'Vestry took the drop, didn't he? That's what happened, Lovejoy.'

  My imbecilic mind went, trying to trick me with the obvious, hey? It was then that I realized I was simply putting things off. I'd known what to do for some time. It was time I got on.

  'Ta, Jules.'

  Now I knew that Susanne Eggers was dedicated to something long-term and multo vital. She was a trier and a stayer. All the clues were somewhere there. She wanted to assemble a task force, and failed. She'd tried to nick a successful international festival, and failed. So she was scraping the barrel, namely me, that well-known success story.

  Desperate from hunger, I went to find my talented ex-friend Alanna, who now hated me because I once made smiles with her mother. Please hear me out, because it wasn't my fault. I postponed the burglary I was going to do for Bernicka. I'd just got time to reach the rubbish tip.

  There stands Marjorie.

  Law compels our rural councils to run a rubbish dump. It's called the Regional Council Recycling and Hygienic Refuse Disposal Central Facility. It only means a tip.

  Among waste containers loaded with old clothes, tins, bottles, and stacks of sodden paper are vast heaps of smouldering ashes spread over a desolate landscape. There's a hut where workmen play cards and doze, a prefab office where the boss watches cricket on a TV nicked from the chutes, and that's it. Except for Marjorie, she of the biggest customized Aston Martin you ever did see. She is fiftyish. (Her age doesn't matter. I'm only trying to explain how things turned out.) She was, is, always there on weekdays, dressed to the nines. Fox fur (ugh), elegant high heels, lovely figure, a quite splendid hat and kid gloves, she stands and watches the macabre terrain. If the weather turns foul she sits in her motor listening to the radio. Usually she's merely there while folk drive in, ditch their rubbish and exit smiling. And Marjorie leaps into action.

  Sometimes, folk throw out things that aren't quite crud. It's then that this serene, charming figure moves with the alacrity of a decathlete and scavenges like a terrier.

  I've seen Marjorie actually fight – not merely squabble or rant; I mean fisticuffs and talons – over a broken side-table you wouldn't shake a stick at. It's ugly. Is there anything worse than a drunken woman, or two women brawling over detritus? I was fascinated by her when first we met. We both were trying for a leatherette case that looked hopeful. I was on my uppers from an episode of financial ruin, and had grown desperate. Challenged by this harridan, I made a chivalrous withdrawal. Marjorie turned on me such a lovely smile of triumph that I was quite dazzled. The dress pouch she won held a lovely articulated Regency fan with a perfectly preserved silk leaf painted with Parisian scenes, about 1778 give or take a yard. I fell head over heels for Marjorie on the spot, and wooed her with instant passion, of course hoping to nick the fan.

  We made smiles, the lovely scavenger Marjorie and I, for quite three days. Long time, especially as I never did get the cased fan. Our pure love was ruined when her daughter woke us, hollering what the hell was I doing in her mother's bed. The affronted offspring was Alanna, she of the golden hair, who is a broadcaster, meaning she sings those jingles trying to get you to buy face cream and toilet rolls, and fills in when the newsreader's too sloshed or stoned to sit erect. I'd given Alanna the best years of my life for a fortnight once, so knew her temper. The story got around and for a month or two my name was mud. Paradoxically, things move apace in antiques. Apart from a deluge of jokes at my expense the affair was soon forgot, though I still sob over that Regency silk fan. I could have bought my cottage for it, and lived there honestly.

  The lovely Marjorie was there, beautifully attired in the lunar landscape. She wore a pastel blue suit, the skirt hem defiantly lower than fashionable, a capellone hat with flowers on its sweeping brim, gloves and a chic veil. A queen amid jetsam. On hot days she carries a frilly parasol. I noticed an old Singer sewing machine in her brilliant Aston Martin. (Who'd lifted it for her? And who would lift it out?) I peered as I approached. It wasn't a Kimball Morton Lion treadler of 1868, thank God, or I'd have been really narked because one would buy a new car. (Tip: the head of this sewing machine rarity is cast actually like a lion, its bottom towards the bobbin.) You can't miss it, yet folk still chuck them out. I heard of one old lady who actually paid a dealer to take hers away.

  Dandy Jack, down the Arcade.

  'Good day, Lovejoy.'

  'Wotcher, Marjorie. Trade good?'

  'Slow, Lovejoy.' She appraised me in silence as cars arrived. A bloke hefted out a bundle of hedge cuttings. She smiled at him as he drove off, her investment in an unknowable future. 'It's time you and Alanna got back together, Lovejoy. She's at Eastern Hundreds TV down Pelhams Lane.'

  'Chance'd be a fine thing, Marjorie.'

  'For somebody who reckons he's clever you're stupid, Lovejoy. Tell her you were only trying to make her jealous.'

  I tried to work out what she was on about. Women, lacking any legal or social accountability, are basically greed machines fuelled by whim, yet they do have a certain para-logic that occasionally works, though you can't use it yourself without a detailed instruction manual.

  After a few minutes I asked, 'Jealous of what?'

  'She was seeing a Cambridgeshire bobby. I didn't approve, Lovejoy.'

  'Alanna was?' I seethed with indignation. 'Seeing somebody else? The rotten two-timing bitch.'

  'You were sleeping with her mother, Lovejoy,' Marjorie said. That old reason trick again.

  It shows how underhand women can be.

  'I'll try,' I said, giving in after sulking a bit. I badly needed Alanna's help. 'Ta, Marjorie.'

  'Here.' She passed me a note. 'Have something to eat, for God's sake. And don't be such a bloody fool. I won't bite if you call in.'

  Accepting a loan on a rubbish dump doesn't seem quite so humiliating as anywhere else, does it? I trudged off, leaving the stylish Marjorie standing there, queen of her domain.

  The shoddy Eastern Hundreds TV studios are in a side street near Trinity Square. I waited in the anteroom among tatty magazines and soiled plastic cups. Occasional girls and bearded wonders strolled in, went through by tapping in some code on a panel.

  They looked hung over, arrivals from a shop-soiled protest march. I said hello to one or two and was ignored. They were marauders acting out a corporate conspiracy against TV viewers. Some called out vigorous greetings into the squawk box, of the tally-ho sort that foxes know so well. My Auntie Agnes wouldn't have let any of them across her threshold. She'd have given them all a good scrubbing.

  Alanna angrily emerged after an hour. She must have seen me on the closed circuit and finally lost patience.

  'What do you want?'

  Nobody about, nobody to overhear.

  I blurted, 'Whyn't you tell me Vestry was murdered, Alanna?' And thought, what did I just say? I stared, aghast at my exhumed suspicion, gaping inwardly as much as out at her radiant gold hair, because she recoiled in shock, eyes wide.

  Quickly she glanced about, closed the panel behind her. She slowly sat. I tried to adjust, get things back to normal.

  'This place always pongs of armpit.' I didn't manage a smile, just worked those levator muscles without reassurance. It was a wonder she didn't run.

  'Why didn't I what, Lovejoy?'

  People in broadcasting are of two sorts. One is the wireball, as they call those blokes who trail flexes and wear earphones to shut the world out. The other is the scripwit, some nerk who sits before the camera's red eye, tries to sound original and look as if they're not being screamed at down headphones by some frantic producer exasperated at their stupidity. There's no other sort. Alanna was a scripwit, couldn't speak to camera without the idiot board. The only thing gets her going unprompted is finding some penniless git in bed with her mum, but whose fault was that? Marjorie had nicked my antique cased fan, after all.

  'Vestry. Remember him?' In for a penny. 'You guessed there was something wrong, didn't you?'

  She occasionally does work – I use the term loosely –for the News Come Nine team.

  She harbours hopes of becoming a national TV figure, like miracles happen. By instinct I went for her ambition's jugular.

  'I knew it,' I said with bitterness. 'You were too smart to be taken in.' Soulfully I raised my eyes. 'I had suspicions all along, but thought I was the only one to realize it must have been murder.'

  'Murder!' she breathed, the light of promotion in her eyes.

  'Just as you suspected, Alanna,' I repeated, narked that she wasn't moving as fast as I hoped. 'You were clever, keeping your suspicions to yourself. Why didn't you tell me?'

  'Well, I, ahm, you see—'

  'I know, Alanna.' I turned aside, irritated that I couldn't see her reflection in some handy mirror, see how I was doing. I tried for a hurt kind of anger, the sort of thing women themselves act so brilliantly, but couldn't quite make it. Instead, I tried words, always a poor third to silence and passion. 'I know why. It was because you'd sussed me out, wasn't it?'

  'Was it?' she said, quite lost.

  Give me strength, I thought in temper. Do I have to do all the blinking work? I waxed lyrical to egg her on.

  'Of course.' I uttered it coldly, deeply hurt by forsaken love. 'You always did see straight through me, Alanna. You knew I only ingratiated myself with your mum Marjorie to get even with you for going out with that horrible Cambridge copper. You saw I was trying to make you jealous.' I did a bitter laugh, nearly choked myself. Acting just isn't for me.

  I honestly don't know why I do it. I always lose conviction halfway through, like suddenly forgetting a poem.

  'I didn't know,' she said, astonished, too many unscripted prompts in her mind. 'I honestly thought—'

  'Very well.' I stood, Mr Darcy before his fireplace, perfidious women all about. 'I shall leave, but it ill behoves ...' I stopped. I never say behoves. I hardly know what it means. 'If you won't help, then I'll go.'

  'Wait, Lovejoy.' She saw the chance of a scoop and took my hand. 'Maybe I did misjudge you. You can't really blame me. I'll be in the Steps Caff tonight. I get off about eight.'

  Relieved, I left with a murmured Mr Darcy adieu. If I'd had a lace hanky I'd have bowed. See? Tricking myself into being somebody else. One day it might be the end of me.

  15

  THE MARKET WAS already closing down Scheregate Steps, so the cheapo grub Filtho Shaughnessy cooks there to pollute our internal organs wasn't available. He packs up earliest of all the stalls because he's a lifeboat man down the estuary. Instead, I went to Princess Beatrice's Splendid Tea Shoppe on North Hill.

  Bea Willing, no pun intended, runs it. With Marjorie's money I ordered a plate of scones, seven jam tarts, a pot of tea, a heap of toast, Lancashire cheese, and a plate of fried bread. I felt really proud. Bea served it with enough serviettes to stuff a mattress.