Gold By Gemini

'Just the little mannikin I've prayed for!' he screeched, false eyelashes and fingers all aflutter. 'Lovejoy! Come here this very instant!' Heads were turning and people gaped at the apparition posturing in his shop doorway. 'This way, Lovejoy, dearie!' he trilled. I was a yard away by then.

'Shut your row, Patrick.' I entered the shop's dusk. 'And must you wear a blue frock?'

'Ultramarine, you great buffoon!' he snapped. 'Everybody pay attention!' He did a pivot and pointed at me in tableau. 'Lovejoy's in one of his moods.' The trouble is I always go red and shuffle. I can only think of cutting remarks on the way home.

'Don't mind Patrick, Lovejoy.' I might have known Lily would be there. I don't have time to tell you everything that goes on, but Lily (married) loves and desires Patrick (single and bent). Lily insists - in the long tradition of women hooked on sacrificial martyrdom -

that she's just the bird to straighten Patrick. As if that's not enough, both are antique dealers. You see the problem. 'He tried to get a museum expert over,' Lily explained,

'but he's gone to Norfolk.' She spoke as if Norfolk's in Ursa Major. Our locals are very clannish.

'This way, Dear Heart!' Patrick sailed to the rear followed by the adoring Lily. Three or four customers hastily got out of the way of someone so obviously and flamboyantly an expert as Patrick. I trailed along. 'Regardez!'

It was a stoneware bottle. A large fish swam lazily in brushed iron design under the celadon glaze. I reached out reverently, chest tight and breath dry. My mind was clanging with greed and love as I turned the little table round to see better.

'Pick it up, Lovejoy,' Patrick offered.

'Shut up.'

'Oh!' he snapped petulantly. 'Isn't he absolutely vulgar.'

I sat and let the beauty wash from the brilliant work of art into the shop. The master had coated the bottle's body with a luscious white slip. It was lovely, a lovely miracle.

The ninth-century Korean pots are very different - those imprinted with hundreds of those tiny whorled designs in vertical rows tend to get me down a bit. This was from a much later period.

'It's genuine, Patrick,' I said brokenly. 'Superb.'

'You perfect dear, Lovejoy!' he whooped ecstatically.

'Korean, about latish fifteenth century.'

Excited, he dragged me away and showed me a few other items - a phoney Meissen, a modern Hong Kong copy of a Persian-influenced Russian silver gilt tea and coffee service, supposedly 1840 (it's surprising, but modern eastern copies always give themselves away by too rigid a design) and suchlike. We had a final row about a William and Mary commemorative plate. He was furious, wanting everything he showed me to be genuine now.

'It's a genuine blue-and-yellow, Lovejoy!' he protested.

'I'm sure it is, Lovejoy.' That from the anxious Lily, unbiased as ever.

'It's modern,' I said. I touched it. Not a single beat of life in the poor thing. 'They always get the weight and colours wrong. The yellow should be mustard. The blue should be very blue.' The dazzling loveliness of that Korean bottle was making me irritable. I added, 'You know, Patrick. Blue. Like your frock.'

He wailed into tears at that. I left, feeling poorer than ever and a swine. For all I knew ultramarine might have been his colour.

Still two hours to wait for a bus home. And still all blank. I strolled towards the Castle museum. It was time I saw what sort of antique coins had been stolen, in case.

The town museum is in the Castle. Its curator's a small tidy man called Popplewell. I got to him by telling a succession of uniformed opponents I wanted to make a donation to the museum. One even tried to charge me admission, the cheek of it. People take my breath away sometimes.

'Donation?' I told Popplewell, puzzled at the mistake. 'I'm afraid one of your assistants got it wrong. I said nothing about any donation. I'm here about the robbery.'

'Ah,' he said dismally. 'Insurance?'

Now, to digress one split second. Insurance and I - and I strongly urge this to include you as well - do not mix. As far as antiques are concerned, forget insurance.

Concentrate what money you have on the antique's protection in the first place. Don't go throwing good money away.

'No,' I said, rapidly going off him. 'I'm an antique dealer.'

'Really,' he said in that drawl which means, I've met your sort before.

'I want to know what was nicked in case it gets offered me.'

'Is that so?' He eyed me suspiciously, reclassifying me as a lout.

'Yes. They'll start looking for a fence,' I explained. 'They may take the goods to one of us respectable dealers.'

'I see.' He came to a decision. 'Very well. I'll show you. This way please.'

I didn't tell him Lovejoy's Law for the detection of stolen antiques, which runs: any genuine antique offered to you at a third of its known price has been stolen. Blokes like this curator chap are just out of this world. You need somebody like me to amass a collection, not a dozen committees.

We puffed on to the Roman landing. Popplewell halted at a sloping case. He removed a board and its covering beige cloth. The glass beneath was shattered and the display cards all awry. The legend card read 'Gold Coins of the Roman Period: Britain.'

Popplewell took my stricken expression for criticism.

'We haven't had time to establish a substitute display,'

he said. 'And the police have taken scrapings and photos for prints.'

'Could you be more specific about the items?'

'A set of Roman staters. Gold. Claudius. And some silver.' He saw me reading the cards scattered in the case. It had been a rough smash-and-grab. 'Those are Mr. Bexon's own labels.'

'Er, Bexon?' I sounded hoarse all of a sudden.

'Top right-hand corner.' He pointed. 'The donor wanted his own labels retained. Quite incorrect, of course, but…' he shrugged.

I read them through the broken glass, careful not to touch because police can be very funny about fingerprints. The cards all said the same: 'Gold coins, Roman period.' Then a curious sentence on each: 'Found by the donor, Roman Province of IOM.' I read this aloud.

'Was he serious? Isle of Man? But the Romans -'

Popplewell shrugged again. 'He was a somewhat eccentric old gentleman. He insisted that we adhere to that wording exactly, though we all know that the Isle of Man never was colonized.' He covered the scene of the crime. 'We have the most amazing conditions appended to our gifts sometimes. I could tell you -'

'Thank you,' I interrupted hastily. 'One thing. Were they genuine?'

'Of course.' He got nasty. 'If you mean to imply this museum doesn't examine properly and in detail all -'

'Er, fine, fine,' I said, and moved off. If I hear anything I'll let you know.'

'Good. You have the phone number?'

The Castle galleries run three sides of the square, leaving a huge central well crowded with visitors at this time of year. Helen saw me looking and waved upwards quite calmly from where she was inspecting one of the coaches on display there. I waved back. Helen wasn't thinking of going in for Queen Anne coaches, that was for sure.

When I'd climbed down she'd gone.

I walked thoughtfully across the drawbridge among tourists and children, and found I was worried sick. Bexon isn't all that common a name. I decided to look in at Margaret's. I still had time before the bus.

Hers is the only shop with a good dose of sunshine. She looked up and came limping to welcome me with a smile. I'm too fond of Margaret. There's a husband somewhere in the background but I've never had the courage to ask, though I do know she has a good range of some man's suitings in her bedroom wardrobe. We know each other fairly well. I like Margaret more than I ought, but you get days, don't you? I slouched in like a refugee.

'Stop that,' I told her irritably.

Margaret was twisting a pewter burette. On a good day it turns my stomach. You can imagine what it does to me on a bad one.

'Hello, Lovejoy.' She hesitated. 'I'm seeing if it's genuine.'