Daintily she blotted a tear. 'I know that, Lovejoy.'
'Bernicka!' I cried, doing my aggrieved horror act. 'You can't mean ...'
'That you rescue my darling's precious creation from some undeserving owner? Of course I do!'
That's women and morality. Love is the Open sesame! that rolls aside all ethics. To some birds, love is no more than a code word; say it and you're in, physically replete and thankful it worked. To other women, it's the solemn pronouncement of serious lifelong commitment. To Bernicka, it was run-leap-splash into the hot spring of life, as long as she could convince herself that da Vinci was in there somewhere. I don't understand it.
I asked, fingers crossed, 'You can't seriously mean Lord Orpen's parchment drawing of Leonardo's horse?'
'Does he have a Leonardo drawing? Yes, him then.'
'That's unfair, Bernicka!' I cried angrily. 'I might get caught!'
'Do it, darling, or I won't seduce anybody for you.' She caught my hand and pulled me down. 'Please.'
What can you say? Broad daylight, the parlour doors wide open, curtains not drawn, we made rapturous agreement. I awoke an hour later. She'd gone back to slapping clay onto her sculpture. I finished her biscuits and tottered off to catch the bus, shouting a so-long into the garage. I'd reached town before I realized she hadn't even asked the seducee's name. I phoned from the Zodiac Tea Rooms, trying to speak quietly so the elderly ladies sipping their Earl Grey wouldn't eavesdrop.
'Wotcher, Bernicka. I called to say ta for, er, tea and that.' Then I told her the Yank at Mortimer's manor. 'That's the, ah, beneficiary. Understand? You've been there to read tea leaves, I think. Taylor Eggers, your psychic's husband.'
She paused a bit too long. I felt a twinge of worry as she asked, 'Exactly why am I doing this, Lovejoy?'
'While you're, ah, resting, you can ask him what the hell he and his missus are up to.
Ta, love. You're great. Darling? I just want you to know that I've never felt such deep emotion ...' I listened. 'Hello? Hello?'
She'd gone. Leonardo's contemporary Vascari once said the maestro's every action 'was divine'. Evidently my passion hadn't matched up. Still, I should care. I felt marvellous.
I'd received the ultimate gift from the lovely Bernicka, and my plan was one step nearer completion. I smiled weakly at the eavesdropping tea drinkers and made my way out amid the murderous traffic, where a bloke could feel safe.
Pets are a puzzle. Cats cause me anxiety because they eat birds; statistics say thirty million a year. Dogs have fangs, and eat cats. Horses are a big worry to me because they weigh ten tons. I fight unendingly against my garden birds' habits, because they scoff worms. Every dawn I feed the robin cheese, if I've got some, to wean him off various fauna. No hopes. He noshes what I give him then goes digging worms in my compost, dirty little devil.
So I was especially guarded climbing up the rickety steps of Cedric's wooden two-storey shack in the darkness that night. A snuffle sounded, very like distant thunder.
'Wotcher, Elk,' I called nervously. 'Get Cedric, okay?' Waiting, I couldn't help remembering Divina. She was one of these horsey lasses, very splendid in her pink jacket and jodhpurs. The trouble was the horse she bestrode. It was the size of Lambeth Palace. She used to do its skin with some sort of wire, hours at a time. Once, she made me – threatening celibacy if I didn't – come and see her polish the damned beast. It leaned against me, asphyxiating me by compression. While I gasped my last she exclaimed, 'Oh, Lovejoy! Animals really like you!' I was supposed to admire this monster for giving me a prolonged slobbering crush. See? The problem with pets is people.
A footfall sounded. 'That you, Lovejoy?'
'Wotcher, Cedric,' I said, then screeched as I heard a bolt slide, 'Don't open the bloody door!'
A chain settled to silence. I mopped my brow. Elk is a dog the size of, well, an elk, but with fangs not horns. It likes me. Elk's idea of a greeting is to place both its front paws on my shoulders and gaze into my eyes, its mouth open, fangs a-drool. Saying hello is an orgy, but resembles the prelude to a snack.
'Go down, Lovejoy.'
Relieved, I descended the swaying steps and he let me in. The workshop is beautiful.
Most folk would hate it: cold, badly lit except for a bank of intense lights at the workbench. Untidy as hell, but definitely the place to be.
Cedric entered, wheezing and shuffling. He's eighty-four, and the classiest manuscript forger in the Eastern Hundreds. You'll have seen those certificates of provenance on those splendid antiques at London auctions. Well, Cedric turns them out. Five a week, when he's really motoring. I like Cedric. Think of some old cartoon alchemist, floor-length robes, slippers, skull cap, specs on droopy wire, straggly beard, and you have Cedric Cobbold, Esquire, master forger.
'Evening, Lovejoy.' He grinned, gappy teeth, whiskers fluttering. A joke was on its way.
'I see,' he said, snuffling, 'they haven't hanged you yet!' He creaked and swayed. I helped him to a stool by the workbench while he recovered. He laughs like a distant zephyr. Unless you know him you think nothing is happening. I waited the riot out.
'It was only their joke, Ced.'
He sobered. 'Not so, Lovejoy. That Dennis is pressing for it. He's got into money trouble. A frightened man. And three others. Your son—'
'Mortimer's okay, wack. I've cleared it all up.'
'They mean damage, Lovejoy. That lady Mrs Eggers called the raj.'
My belly griped.
'How can she, for God's sake?' It came out as a terrified squeak. 'She's a Yank. She's no right. She can't.'
'She's got some contact in there.' He sighed, adjusted his spectacles. Respectfully I kept quiet, hoping. Instead the silly old sod finally came out with, 'The last full meeting of the raj last year was on the feast day of St Sebbi, King of Essex. I distinctly recall—'
'You daft old burke!' I yelled. A thunderous growl shook the boards upstairs as Elk stirred. I silenced. 'I meant, er, good gracious! That long ago?'
'Almost certain of it, Lovejoy. Though we can't take St Sebbi's date of AD 697 as altogether proven, can we?'
'Certainly not,' I said, sweating, because my death sentence might well be hanging out there in the dark. 'Look, Ced. Sorry about this, but I need a drawing of Leonardo's Il Cavallo.'
'What in?' The old savant didn't turn a hair. 'Silver-point? The Three Crayons? How much licence will you allow?'
You have to admire class. Here was me, disturbing this elderly sage at midnight, and he goes straight to the heart of the problem. True professionalism.
Silverpoint is a sharpened piece of lead or lead-tin alloy. Ancient artists drew outlines, leaving scarcely any indentation. They'd then maybe fill the sketch out using white chalk, black argillite or red chalk – à trois crayons, as the French have it.
'I don't want sepia, Cedric.'
There's a pathetic tendency these days among stupid forgers of Old Master drawings.
They're all duckeggs, bone idle. They assume that if they make a dilute solution of some pigment – raw ochre down to burnt umber – then call it sepia and do a drawing on Woolworth paper, it will pass as something dashed off by Michelangelo and be worth a million. Laughable. You see scores of these freaks in any country auction (and in sales in capital cities, I might add). Sepia proper is ink of the cuttlefish, only fashionable in the late eighteenth century.
'Leonardo, to modern innocents, means oak-gall and copperas.'
Cedric smiled affectionately at the bottles ranked on his workbench. I knew he loved Francis Clement's old slow recipe of 1587. It's long out of fashion, because modern forgers haven't Cedric's patience. They heat the ink with French wine and ox blood.
Clement let it fester for days. See? Patience.
'You still use the old labels, Cedric.'