Dead in Devon Page 6

  The most difficult part was deciding what to take. Nick had let me choose what I liked from the boxes of junk in the shop. I knew that room in Paul’s van would be limited and it had taken me days to decide. In the end I’d packed up a half a dozen boxes of assorted china and glass, most of it imperfect, and a few bits of brass.

  I brought it all back to the flat to clean it. The brass needed polishing, newspaper wrappings had left black smudges on the porcelain and the glass was dusty. I made a list of all the items in my chosen stock, and copied it out as a record for Nick.

  The problem was that I had no idea what to charge for anything. I’d read history at university, and at one time I could have written you a mean essay on life in the pottery towns in the nineteenth century, but when it came to identifying their products, I admit I was dismally ignorant. I couldn’t tell pottery from porcelain, salt glaze from slipware, bisque or cream ware from a hole in the ground. I couldn’t interpret the cryptic marks on the base of many of the pieces, and unless it was written in plain English, couldn’t tell Clarice Cliff from Bristol or Bow.

  Nick was no help at all. When I told him I didn’t know what to charge for anything he just shrugged and told me I would learn. The only person who was of any use was Morris, who’d come around one evening, eyes on stalks, in the hope of adding to his teapot collection. He went through everything with me, reassured me that I didn’t have any priceless treasures in my stock and gave a few rough suggestions about price.

  ‘Take a good look around the market when you’re there,’ he suggested, ‘see what other people are charging. You know, Juno, I’m sure Nick wouldn’t trust you with this stuff if he was worried about you making a loss, my love. It’s just bric-a-brac, really.’

  Among Nick’s stock I had also found a biscuit tin full of old glass brooches, the sort of thing that Maisie wears pinned to her coat on her rare trips out. Many of them had their catches broken or stones missing, and I’d spent hours cleaning them with soapy water, scrubbing them with a soft toothbrush and sticking in loose stones with epoxy glue. When I’d finished, I laid them all out on the kitchen table, on a piece of black velvet, the same piece that Cordelia used to display jewellery in her shop, and was busy pinning them on when I was interrupted by a knock on the living-room door.

  It was Adam. ‘Police downstairs for you,’ he told me, his face deadpan.

  I thought he was joking. But sure enough, when I followed him down, there were two lady coppers standing on the doorstep.

  ‘Juno Browne?’ one of them asked me pleasantly. ‘Could we have a word?’

  Mystified, I showed them up into the living room, where they sat side by side on the sofa, one skinny and dark, one plump and fair. ‘Would you like tea?’ I asked. ‘I’ve just boiled the kettle.’

  Fair said she wouldn’t, and Dark said she would, so I went off into the kitchen to fetch a mug, all the time wondering what on earth had led two police constables to be sitting in my living room, side by side on my sofa. I delivered the tea and sat in the armchair facing them. ‘What’s this about?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you acquainted with Mrs Verbena Clarke?’ Fair did the talking, whilst Dark clutched her tea.

  I felt a stirring of disquiet immediately. ‘Yes, I’ve known her for about two years. I clean for her once week.’

  ‘It’s just that there appears to have been a robbery. Certain valuable items have gone missing from Mrs Clarke’s home, and an amount of cash and she—’

  ‘Hold on, just a moment!’ I held up a hand. ‘She’s not accusing me …?’

  ‘Not at all! Let’s be absolutely clear about that,’ Fair said hastily, so hastily in fact, that I didn’t believe her for a moment. ‘It’s just that Mrs Clarke can’t be certain exactly when these items went missing, and as you were there on … Tuesday, was it …?’ − she glanced down at her notebook − ‘She wondered if you might be able to help.’

  I wondered why, if she wanted my help, Mrs Clarke couldn’t have phoned and asked me herself, but I didn’t say so. ‘You said there appeared to have been a robbery?’

  ‘There was no sign of a break-in but a quantity of cash was taken from her wallet.’

  ‘She does leave it lying around.’ Whenever we went through the ritual of my payment, Verbena had to search for the blasted thing and it was usually to be found lying on the coffee table, or the breakfast table, or one of the kitchen worktops. ‘She never locks her back door, either.’

  ‘She did admit to that fact,’ the blonde officer went on. ‘She thinks that the thief might have stolen it whilst she was working in her studio. I understand it’s separate from the main building, across the courtyard, in what was the old stable block.’

  ‘And those windows don’t face the courtyard,’ I added. ‘It would be easy enough for someone to sneak in without her seeing them. But it doesn’t make sense, does it? Why take the cash, not the whole wallet?’

  The constable shrugged. ‘Credit cards aren’t much use to a homeless person. Drug addicts are only interested in cash. But also,’ she went on, ‘certain items were taken from upstairs.’

  ‘Can you tell us, Juno,’ Dark Hair spoke up, leaning forward and fixing me with grey eyes, her mug still clutched in her hand, ‘whether you noticed anything unusual on Tuesday?’

  ‘Well, a new dresser had just been delivered,’ I told her.

  ‘The man who delivered it didn’t go upstairs,’ she responded, staring at me. ‘You did.’

  I was silent a moment. If that wasn’t an accusation, it sounded very close to one.

  ‘Did you go into Mrs Clarke’s bedroom?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s what I was there for,’ I answered steadily. ‘I cleaned her room, as I always do, and her en suite bathroom. And her dressing room,’ I added. ‘I hung up some of her clothes.’

  ‘Did you clean the dressing table?’

  ‘Yes.’ Verbena’s dressing table was concealed behind a pair of soft-close doors, which opened up to reveal a fitted vanity unit surrounded by soft lighting and mirrors. It was like a shrine.

  ‘Do you remember seeing any jewellery on the dressing table?’ Fair asked.

  I knew that most of Verbena’s jewellery, the valuable stuff, was kept in a small safe with a combination lock on it, in the bottom of one of her wardrobes. On the dressing table she kept a Chinese porcelain dish, into which she dropped her jewellery when she took it off at night, items that presumably she didn’t feel compelled to lock up straight away. I knew what was in it each week because I had to move the dish to polish the table underneath. On Tuesday, there had been a gold-coloured leaf brooch she often wore to secure scarves. Nothing else.

  ‘You didn’t see any earrings?’

  ‘Have earrings been taken?’

  ‘Some diamond drops, apparently.’ The constable handed me a photograph, obviously taken at some time for insurance purposes. The drops must have been three inches long, strings of diamonds set in a series of zig-zags. I’d certainly never seen them before.

  ‘Unusual,’ I commented.

  ‘Unique, apparently,’ the constable told me. ‘A present from her ex-husband, especially designed for her.’

  I handed her back the photograph. ‘Shouldn’t they have been kept in the safe?’

  ‘Mrs Clarke left them on the dressing table overnight, intending to put them in next morning,’ the constable informed me. ‘When she found they weren’t there, she assumed she must have done it the previous evening, after all. She’d been out late at a party, it seems, and she wasn’t remembering the details too well. Anyway, she didn’t check until much later in the day.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t see them.’

  The constable closed her notebook and thanked me, smiling. ‘That’s all we need to know,’ she said. ‘Sorry to have bothered you.’

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.’ As she and her colleague got to her feet, I made to take the mug that Dark Hair was clutching.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it to the
kitchen.’ A few moments later her voice floated through to the living room. ‘Ah! You are interested in jewellery, then?’

  I went into the kitchen, followed by her colleague. The constable was standing by the table, looking down at the black velvet on which the pinned brooches glittered accusingly. ‘Are all these yours?’ she asked.

  ‘None of them are,’ I said, feeling irrationally uncomfortable, ‘I’m selling them for a friend.’

  She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘You buy and sell jewellery?’

  ‘They’re only made of glass,’ I told her, wishing they didn’t look quite so much like a haul from De Beers.

  ‘And you’re selling them?’ Fair asked.

  ‘I’m taking them to an antiques market,’ I stated emphatically, ‘for a friend.’

  ‘And what friend would that be?’

  They were both staring at me. I hesitated. Why was I feeling so guilty when I hadn’t done anything wrong? ‘Mr Nickolai.’ I tried not to sound defensive and failed miserably. ‘You can ask him if you like. He has a shop in Shadow Lane.’

  The dark-haired constable was smiling. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, glancing sideways at her colleague. ‘We know all about Mr Nickolai.’

  I was too bloody furious to even think about going to bed. After I’d seen the police officers out, I knocked on Adam and Kate’s door. I needed to vent my feelings, and anyway, I reckoned they had a right to know why the police had been in their house. In their student days they’d been passionate animal rights campaigners and their involvement in protests had led to them being arrested more than once. In any case, Adam thought all rich people were bastards, so on hearing my story, he and Kate were ready to sympathise with me as an innocent victim of police oppression, if not actual brutality. Over a glass of organic red wine, we happily tore Verbena Clarke’s character to shreds.

  I went upstairs feeling a lot better but I still couldn’t sleep. Several times in the night I had nearly got up to phone Mrs Clarke. I felt like telling her to stuff her job. But my quitting suddenly might not be a good move. The police might tell me the theft was the work of a random, opportunist thief, but I suspected they really thought it was an inside job, committed by someone who knew where Verbena kept her valuables. And she had pointed her finger straight at me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Next morning, I took a shortcut through Ashburton Art and Antiques Bazaar.

  I found Paul’s unit in one corner: all furniture items, beautifully restored – except for a single wooden chair, split down the middle, one half-restored, the other covered with chipped paint and old varnish; a clever ‘before and after’ advertisement.

  ‘Did you want Paul?’ A voice behind me made me turn. ‘Only, he’s not here at the moment.’

  The voice belonged to Sophie Child.

  ‘Hello, Sophie. I’m only being nosy. How’s things?’

  Sophie was an artist who produced exquisitely detailed watercolours, typically of hedgerows full of wild flowers. She could make a muddy ditch filled with dead leaves look enchanting. Despite her talent, she was not doing well. ‘Quiet today,’ she sighed. She was an elfin little waif with serious dark eyes behind enormous specs, her face framed by an urchin cut of dark hair. Today she was fluffed up against the cold in a fuzzy sweater several sizes too big for her. She looked like a baby owl. It might be summer outside, but it’s always freezing in the stone-flagged market building.

  A gaggle of day trippers had gathered around her unit, their chattering voices echoing loudly as they examined her work. ‘There might be some customers amongst that lot,’ I said.

  ‘They look like p-p-p’s to me,’ she muttered glumly. She grinned when she saw my puzzled face. ‘Pick-up, put-down and piss-off,’ she explained. ‘I suppose they might buy a few greetings cards.’

  I nodded towards the cafe in the corner, the only business in the market that made any steady money. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’ She looked like she needed warming up.

  ‘No thanks, I’ve had two cups already this morning. Actually, could you do me a favour and watch my stall while I go to the loo?’

  ‘Lovely, aren’t they?’ I said of the paintings as I squeezed myself behind Sophie’s display table so I could face the assembled horde of trippers. We chatted about how beautiful they were, but unfortunately how expensive, and my pointing out that each one was unique and hand painted didn’t make them any more affordable. There was a lot of shaking of heads. ‘Some of them are reproduced as greetings cards,’ I indicated the spinning card rack. ‘They’re very reasonable.’

  Sadly, all of the ladies turned out to be p-p-p’s except one, who bought a card for her sister’s upcoming birthday. Sophie reappeared as her customer drifted away and I told her that her takings had increased by two pounds fifty.

  ‘Which card did she buy?’

  ‘The one with the hare,’ I told her.

  She nodded. ‘It’s popular, that one. I need to get some more printed but …’ she tailed off lamely. She didn’t need to finish. She needed to get more printed but she couldn’t afford the printing costs.

  I invited her around to supper, just to cheer her up. But Sophie declined. ‘That would have been lovely, Juno, but they’ve offered me a shift waitressing at The Dartmoor Lodge tonight and I can’t afford to turn it down.’

  ‘Well, perhaps next week.’ I was just about to go when a thought occurred to me.

  ‘Isn’t Verbena Clarke a customer of yours?’

  ‘Don’t!’ Sophie shuddered. ‘The thought of her makes me want to reach for my inhaler.’

  ‘I thought she bought some paintings from you.’

  Sophie rolled her big dark eyes. ‘Not quite. She got me all excited and cost me loads of money.’

  Intrigued by now, I perched my bum on the edge of her table. I wanted to hear this.

  ‘She was working on refurbishing a big hotel up on Dartmoor,’ Sophie explained. ‘She’d seen my stuff in here and thought my hedgerow paintings might fit in with the new decor. So she took a couple up there. Well, the owners really liked the paintings, they wanted me to paint two more, but they didn’t like the frames. So I offered to change the frames on the existing two, and frame the new ones to match. It cost me a fortune because they wanted heavy gilt mouldings, really expensive.’

  ‘But they bought them in the end?’ I asked.

  Sophie shook her head. ‘No, they didn’t. Verbena brought them back. She said the hotel had decided they weren’t right after all. I was really pissed off after what the frames had cost me, so I rang the hotel to have it out with the owners. And it turned out that they’d turned the paintings down because they were too expensive. Verbena had put a whacking great commission on top of my asking price,’ she said indignantly. ‘In fact, she would have made more money on the paintings than I would.’

  ‘Didn’t you tackle her about it?’

  ‘Course! She just shrugged and told me that it was the same commission that any gallery would have added if they’d been selling the paintings for me. Unfortunately, she’s right about that.’ Sophie sighed. ‘The world is full of bastards,’ she added glumly.

  I didn’t disagree. I stopped on my way out of the bazaar, at the stall run by Honeysuckle Farm, a local animal sanctuary for injured wildlife, abandoned farm animals and pets. The wall behind the stall was decorated, if that’s the right word, with sheets of printed photographs and information about guinea pigs, ponies, ducks and other waifs and strays who needed a loving home. I nodded a hello at Pat, who ran the sanctuary with her sister and brother-in-law.

  Pat looked like a waif and stray herself, thin and spare and angular, an old crocheted cardigan buttoned across her bony chest. A homely woman, not blessed by any physical bounteousness, she wore a permanently woeful expression that disguised great fortitude and a heart of gold. She was sitting behind the table, nose red with cold, knitting.

  I frowned. ‘Didn’t your stall used to be over there − on the opposite wall?’

  Pat nodded, her knitti
ng needles not missing a click. ‘I’ve been moved,’ she answered, aggrieved. ‘They complained about me.’ She nodded again, this time her nod aimed at two dealers across the aisle, whose displays of bric-a-brac and collectables occupied a large area of the bazaar. ‘They say I’m not art or antiques and I shouldn’t be in here,’ Pat went on, her voice trembling with emotion. ‘They say I look like a jumble sale, that I lower the tone.’

  I made sympathetic noises but I could see their point. The ladies who dealt in antiques had been to some trouble and expense, their pretty porcelain and silver displayed in glass cabinets, their tables artfully and tastefully arranged. Pat had just thrown an old blanket over her tabletop. Beyond a few paperbacks, second-hand children’s toys and old Blue Peter annuals, she had almost nothing to sell. There was a small basket of costume jewellery, most of it plastic, and that was that. Her table looked like something from a car boot sale. It was never going to raise any money for the animal sanctuary, and probably barely made the rent. The best items were a few beautifully made babies’ clothes that Pat had knitted herself, for sale at ridiculously cheap prices because nobody buys layettes for their babies any more.

  ‘Trouble, is, Pat, you haven’t got enough decent stuff to sell.’

  ‘Well, I know that, don’t I?’ she agreed. ‘But I have to rely on donations. And we’re not allowed to sell our farm eggs here any more,’ she went on crossly. ‘Now they’re talking about putting the rent up. And with the cost of animal feed going up all the time …’ She shook her head hopelessly.

  ‘Well, don’t worry, Pat, they can’t just throw you out.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ she muttered. ‘That one there’ − she jerked her head at one of the antiques traders in question − ‘she’s on the Chamber of Commerce.’

  ‘Well, tell her to get stuffed,’ I recommended.

  Cordelia must have given me a nudge at that moment. I noticed something coiled up in the basket of plastic jewellery. I pulled out an old three-string necklace, mostly composed of glass beads and held it up. ‘I haven’t seen these for years.’ I fingered the beads. ‘See this pale-green glass? It comes from Czechoslovakia … or it did. You can’t get it any more. You can only find it in old jewellery. There’s nothing else that’s quite this shade of green. Cordelia used to love it.’