William brought home an inkwell, a duff, dull runt among a haul of goods he’d picked up on Merseyside. They were about to throw it away when William suggested a bet. William bet that he could sell the worthless inkwell for £50 before Samantha could. Not to any of their regulars of course, and not to anyone who looked like they couldn’t afford it, but just as a bit of sport between the two of them. They shook on their bet and continued unpacking the real antiques.
The next day William had put the inkwell in its own locked glass display case, and with a tag saying,
Was this naughty? Yes, a bit. Should they have done it? No, they shouldn’t have, but they were bored, and in love, and they were looking to entertain each other. It’s not one of the worst crimes you could commit in the antiques business. As Samantha knows well, having now committed them all.
Regulars would come in, take a look at the case and ask what was special about the ordinary-looking inkwell. Samantha and William would give a little shrug – ‘Probably nothing, just a hunch’ – but all parties soon forgot about it. Until three weeks later when a large Canadian man, who had parked in the disabled space outside the shop, bought it for £750. ‘He haggled me down from a thousand,’ William had confided.
Samantha signs another Picasso and lights a cigarette. Two things there, smoking and wide-scale forgery, that she didn’t do before Garth. But the cigarette smoke is actually rather good for ageing the paper.
They repeated the ‘inkwell’ trick a few times. A broken clock, a vintage-style plate, a one-armed teddy bear. The ‘antiques’ went to grateful homes, and the money, most of it anyway, to charity. They would eagerly rifle through job lots of antiques to pick out the new challenge: the next occupant of the glass display case with the lock. A secret game between the two of them.
And then William died.
They were on holiday, in Crete. He went out swimming after lunch, and was carried away by the tide. Samantha returned to England with the coffin in the hold, and was dragged away by a tide of her own.
She spent her next few years too sad to live but too scared to die, reeling through a haze of grief and madness, always quick with a cup of tea and a smile for her customers, accepting their well-meaning sympathies, playing bridge, tending the shop, reciting from memory the pleasantries and the platitudes, while hoping every day might be her last.
Then one morning, three years or so after William had died, the large Canadian man who had bought the inkwell came back into her shop, with a gun.
And everything changed again.
She hears Garth coming through the door now. Even though he is able to be quiet, he chooses not to be.
It’s the middle of the night, and she wonders where he has been, but it doesn’t really do to ask sometimes. You must let Garth be Garth. He has never let her down yet.
He will see that her studio light is on, and he will be up with a whisky and a kiss for her before long.
A couple more Picassos and she will call it a night.
OK, I have a riddle for you.
How can you celebrate New Year’s Eve with your friends, and still get to bed early?
Because I have done just that this evening.
We’ve had the most wonderful New Year’s Eve bash. We drank, we counted down to midnight and watched the fireworks on TV. We sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’, Ron fell over a coffee table, and we all went home.
So a very happy New Year to one and all and, best of all, it is still only ten p.m., so I can get into bed at a reasonable hour.
And here’s how.
There is a lovely man called Bob Whittaker from Wordsworth Court – not my type, before you get ideas – and he was something in computers, before everyone was something in computers. He eats lunch by himself, but is very approachable. Last year he built a drone and flew it over Coopers Chase and invited us all into the lounge to watch the film. It was wonderful – he’d even put music on it. You could see the llamas and the lakes, and you could see that the Ocado delivery vans had OCADO written on their roofs – they really have thought of everything. I think that was in the summer, before the first murder, but you lose track, don’t you? After the film he gave a talk about drones, which was less well attended but, according to Ibrahim, very good.
So this was Bob’s idea. He hired out the lounge, and the big screen, and everyone was invited. In the end there must have been about fifty of us. Sometimes when you’re in a group like that you really see how old you are, like walking through a hall of mirrors.
We all brought along food and, mainly, drink, and watched some episodes of
