The Grail Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

not.’ They were indignant enough to be truthful.
    ‘Sorry. Well, funnier things have happened.’ I tried to help. ‘You want me to find some particular antique?’ This is the commonest thing.
    ‘Oh, no,’ said Henry earnestly. ‘We already have it, you see.’
    ‘And you want it examined? Dated?’
    There were three Imari plates in the cabinet. The lovely precious colours were exactly right, but nowadays dealers will call any porcelain ‘Imari ware’ if it’s got those delectable royal blues and mandarin reds even vaguely approximated. I’d known since I’d arrived they weren’t legitimate. Oh, genuine antiques. But Dutch copies of the true Japanese. No Nippon potter ever drew bamboos in layers with a ruler like that. It’s the really wooden feeling of the artistry that gives these copies away every time, so beware. I came back to earth.
    ‘Your porcelains?’ I nodded at the Imaris.
    ‘Er, no.’
    ‘But you want something authenticated?’
    ‘That’s correct.’ More glances. I felt part of one of those music hall melodramas.
    ‘Is it here?’
    ‘Er, no. I’ll bring it. We must explain about it first.’
    ‘What is it?’ I demanded. ‘I might have to bring documents, references.’
    Martha took a quick breath. ‘It’s –’ She smiled at me with something approaching defiance. ‘It’s – it’s the Grail.’
    ‘Grail?’ For a moment the penny didn’t drop.
    ‘Yes.’ They stood together, gazing at me.
    ‘I only know of
one
Grail,’ I jibed pleasantly, still stupid. ‘And that’s –’ I looked from Henry to Martha. Then back. Then from Henry to Martha again.
    ‘Exactly, Lovejoy.’ Henry let me in on it gently. ‘I have it.’
    I gaped back at the two lunatics for a second. Then turned on my heel and walked out, blazing.
    I’d cripple Tinker. That was why he’d been evasive in the pub, the great Neanderthal buffoon. He’salways doing this. Bloody barkers are all at it, hoping something will turn up without doing any proper bloody legwork. Supplying me with duds when I was on my uppers for proper worthwhile collectors. No wonder I’m always starving.
    I swung the Ruby’s starting handle viciously. It knows me too well to push its luck when I’m wild. An obedient first-time start.
    ‘Lovejoy.’
    Martha Cookson had followed me. As I clunked the handbrake down I saw old Henry peering anxiously from the doorstep behind her.
    ‘You won’t forget lunch tomorrow?’ she said, rather pale. ‘And he really has got it, you know, Lovejoy.’
    ‘Missus,’ I gave back like ice, ‘you had Excalibur till this afternoon.’
    She said something more but I was too upset to listen. I coaxed all ten ccs into throbbing power and spluttered the Ruby down the gravel drive. What a waste of a whole bloody day. First, Betty. Then, Jean Evans getting mad at me. Then, Martha Cookson and her tame nutter. Tinker had better not be around for a day or two, that’s all.
    You get times when everything goes wrong all at once. And it’s always women at the back of them, every blinking time. Ever noticed that?

Chapter 3
    I STORMED ANGRILY homewards down the Buresford road. The Ruby’s G-force even made me blink once or twice on the slope past St Margaret’s Well. Who the hell makes up all these tales of Grails and tombs I don’t know. Only I wish they’d pack it in.
    Dusk fell when I still had about four miles more to go. I needed to borrow some matches so I called in at an antiques shop in Dragonsdale, a giant metropolis of seventeen houses, three shops, two pubs and a twelfth-century church. That’s modern hereabouts. Liz Sandwell was just closing up. She came out to watch me do the twin oil lamps on the Ruby. Well, you can’t have everything. Liz is basically oil paintings and Georgian incidental household furnishings. She has a lovely set of pole-screens and swing dressing mirrors.
    ‘I love your little Noddy car, Lovejoy.’ She’s a great leg-puller. Twenty-five, shiny dun hair and style.