The Grail Tree Read Free Page A

old Sowerby said it was real.’ Sowerby’s been the village schoolmaster since Adam dressed. I wasn’t mollified. Betty would be raging at me for days now, women being notoriously unreasonable. We might not get another chance to meet till the next Open Championship. Her husband’s a golfer.
    ‘Next time . . .’ I let the threat hang. Of course both of us were smiling affably, just being a dealer and his barker chatting in the pub. You don’t advertise arguments in our game.
    ‘I didn’t know it was naughty,’ he said defensively.
    Naughty is also dealers’ slang. Old pewterers’ marks, if forged, were called ‘naughty’ hundreds of years ago. Now it means crooked, fake, wrong, in the sense of being deliberately falsified.
    ‘Never mind,’ I said, hoping some kind recording angel would note my forgiveness and somehowpersuade Betty to say the same to me. ‘What’ll you have?’
    ‘Ta, Lovejoy.’ Tinker was relieved. ‘Here.’ He pulled out of the depths of his filthy old overcoat a piece of paper. ‘That fat lady gave me this.’ He meant Mrs Cookson.
    I took in gingerly. A group of helpers gusted in from the pageant calling greetings and orders. It must be about finished. They had a lorry outside the pub’s garden, laden with wood and scaffolding, obviously thirsty work.
    Her letter asked me to call on her at my earliest convenience. An elegant little scribble on a page torn from a notebook, obviously done hurriedly on the spur of the moment. The address was in Buresford, a larger village about seven miles north.
    ‘What the hell’s she want?’ I grumbled.
    ‘You must have made an impression,’ Tinker leered, nudging me suggestively.
    ‘Shut your teeth.’
    ‘It, er, looks a good tickle, Lovejoy,’ he urged. I eyed him suspiciously.
    You can always tell when a barker doesn’t come clean. Barkers are a curious mob. They’re never precisely honest on principle. This doesn’t mean they’re treacherous. On the contrary, it requires a very durable kind of morality to be a barker – you’ll see why later on.
    I decided I’d better go, even if it only turned out a commission job for a quid.
    ‘Look, Tinker.’ I spoke fast. ‘When Lardie comes, tell him I’ll have that Gujerat silver brooch, but his Whiff-Waff’s too dear. Okay?’ Lardie’s a wealthy po-faced lanky dealer from Norfolk, in love withantique jewellery, old West African ethnology, a rich Clacton widow and himself, in reverse order. To him that hath shall be given.
    ‘His what?’
    ‘Whiff-Waff. Table tennis was called that years ago.’ The cased sets aren’t worth much even now but they add colour to any antiques shop which displays one. Our trade admires touches like this.
    I pushed to the exit, waving to Angela. Honkworth barged into me at the door, arriving with sundry crawlers. There are only two kinds of people who can’t go about without an entourage. One kind’s the real leader of men, like your actual Napoleon. The other kind’s the born duck-egg. Guess which category Honkworth’s in.
    ‘Why, it’s Lovejoy!’ he boomed. ‘Let’s see him off!’ They trailed me outside, to my embarrassment. We all park our cars end-on towards the old inn’s forecourt. Honkie had cleverly placed his massive Rolls-Bentley tourer blocking my little Ruby in, a typical touch of light humour. He made a noisy exhibition of shifting it, revving and backing. I just waited while this pantomime was going on, leaning on the wall and saying nothing. A few people emerged from the public bar to cheer him on. Honkworth attracts sightseers, but so did Attila the Hun.
    He had three adorers with him. One was a bleak unsmiling man, young and tall with a waistcoat like a flag day. Hair slicked down, thin tash, early Gable. I’d seen him before somewhere, a property agent if ever I saw one. Even when he smiled it came out as a faint sneer. You know the sort. The two women were sharp contrasts. The younger was looking slightly uncomfortable at