PearlHanger 09 Read Free

grumbled audibly, "You should have bought that oil sketch instead of tarting around this gunge." Saying those words broke my heart and mentally I whispered an apology to the dish, but casually I replaced it on its job-lot pile. Lot 228.
    "Silence during the bidding, Lovejoy," Wheatstone warbled from the rostrum. He's an import from Stortford, all chained spectacles and degrees in fine art, but at least he can read and write, which for an auctioneer is space-age stuff. He resembles all auctioneers the world over: pinstripe suit, slicked hair, and looks deep-fried.
    "Shut your teeth, Stonie." I didn't even glance. Amid laughter and catcalls I nudged Margaret. We edged from the mob compressed round the podium. Jeb Spencer—antique jewelry, Regency fashions—and others were keeping an eye on me to see if my irritation about the Constable oil sketch was genuine.
    "Silly bitch, Margaret. I told you to bid for it if I was delayed." I spoke loudly for Jeb's benefit. His barker— Doris, a rheumy old doxy with radar ears—was shuffling innocently nearby.
    Margaret looked harassed, not sure if I was pretending. "You never said definitely, Lovejoy."
    I kept up the gripe. "Bloody hell. Do I have to decide
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    every single time there's a Constable copy around East Anglia? We're knee-deep in the sodding things ..."
    Doris trundled innocently back into the throng to report that I'd used that doom-word "copy." I breathed again. We were now in the space near the tea bar at the back. Margaret was curious, wondering what was going on. She's early middle-age, lovely, has a gammy leg from some marital campaign or other, and loves me. We've been intermittently close for years because of our unspoken agreement: I never ask after her husband, and she doesn't demand honesty from me. This is why older women are best by miles. I'd swap ten popsies for one thirty-plus any day of the week.
    "Get somebody to bid for two hundred and twenty- eight," I muttered, still pretending anger for Jeb Spencer's benefit.
    "Who?" Margaret knew better than glance back to where 228 lay. Idly I scanned the mob of dealers. God, but we look horrible in a group. Tinker was there, an old bloke milling about a cluster of overcoated dealers. He's my own barker, paid in solid blood to sniff out antiques, rumors of deals, any news at all, and sprint—well, totter—to me with the news. He's a filthy old soldier. His cough can waken the dead.
    "Flag Tinker down. Tell him to get one of his old mates in from the betting shop, sharpish. His mate can have the rest of the job lot, but keep the Arita dish."
    "Isn't it a bit Chinese for Arita?"
    The big dish had the Dutch East India Company "VOC" mark among its stylized pomegranate designs—the O and C each bestriding one limb of the V in a central circle—all in underglaze blue. The Dutch wanted replacements for the Chinese porcelains they couldn't get after
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    1658, and began their Japanese Arita shipments about then. A genuine one like 228 can keep you two months in sinful luxury.
    "You women always bloody argue. Dutch VOC Arita's supposed to be Chinese Wan Li style. Japanese potters spent half a century perfecting the phony look."
    "Did it feel genuine, Lovejoy?"
    "Yes."
    "All right." And from the way she spoke I knew she'd now arrange a serious bid. She trusts my divvying skill implicitly, though not much else. "Is Gwen's Constable sketch genuine?"
    "Genuine old, not genuine Constable."
    Margaret pulled a face. "People were saying it was a Tom Keating fake."
    "I know." I knew because I'd started the rumor to lower the price. Tom was one of East Anglia's great modern success stories in fakery.
    "Bernard will be pleased," Margaret pronounced sweetly. Gwen's husband gambles every groat Gwen brings home. It's quite an arrangement. Actually I like Gwen, but she gets on Margaret's nerves. "Seances, Lovejoy? Not Beatrice, I trust." Beatrice is our one antiquarian occultist and lives down on the wharf with a giant mariner. She and I