Gold by Gemini by Jonathan Gash Page A

day what else I could have done.
    The murder honestly wasn’t my fault, and I don’t think the other deaths were, either. Honest.

Chapter 7
    J ANIE HURTLED IN early next morning. Her husband had been called away to the city for the day, the early train. It wasn’t any good, though. The feeling was still on me. I sent her packing. She was wild and refused to go but I picked her up and chucked her outside in the porch. She even tried scratching my eyes as I slammed the door. To be fair, I hinted I’d work to do, quite politely. She even rushed round to the back. I reached the bolt first, pulled the curtains and with Janie banging on the door hauled up my paving. She’d be mad for days. She’d brought a picnic basket, as if there’s time for that sort of thing.
    Down in the priest’s hole the cardboard box’s contents seemed even more pathetic. I unfolded the small ledged Regency table, a godsend in these days of wobbling warping junk, and poured the buttons out. I started on them with a lens and prism. It takes time. The photos were 1930s, old churches, a beach, a boarding-house. An hour later I reached the first medal, the old ‘ration gong’ of the War. Ordinary. There seemed not a single hint among the lot.
    I have twenty shoeboxes full of what history got tip to, but I couldn’t find a trace of any Lady Isabella. Thebooks showed nothing special under the microscope, no microdots, no secret inks, no oiled-in watermarks. I cleared up and got ready to leave. The box was better left in the hidden cellar. When I came out into the garden I found Janie had driven off in a huff. Now I’d have to walk up into the village and wait for our single market bus about noon. Why have women no patience? I had no more cheese for the robin. I borrowed some budgie seed and told them I owed it.
    ‘The message is in the words,’ I told the robin. ‘And they’re only a list of places, right? All you need to do is visit each place and you’d find where he’s put the Roman . stuff. It should be obvious. Easy.’
    Easy. Even if they were in the Isle of Man, and me only with the bus fare to town. I’d walk back. Still, things were definitely looking up for Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. At least I’d a ray of hope now.
    ‘I’ll go and do a bit to the painting,’ I told the robin.
    Inevitably the phone rang.
    ‘Lovejoy. I hope you don’t mind?’ Nichole.
    ‘No. Glad to hear you.’
    We held the pause. There’s a sudden affinity between two people sometimes when nothing really needs saying.
    ‘I. . . I was ringing to ask your help. The sketch and the rubbish from Uncle James.’
    ‘Dandy Jack has them,’ I told her carefully. ‘I did some work for him but he wouldn’t part with the sketch.’
    ‘I see,’ she said icily. ‘Are you sure your girlfriend hasn’t bought them for you?’
    ‘No, look, love,’ I was saying when she slammed the phone down.
    I went out to work on my painting, whistling. She’d come round.
    In the back garden near where Manton and Wilkinson fly I have this workshop. The big work of the moment was transferring a genuine 1774 Wilson painting to a new canvas. I goggled up, apron, mask and all. Janie laughs at my garb, but what’s wrong with being not stupid?
    When your superb antique painting’s rotting to hell you must act. If you’re a beginner, take it to an expert for advice. This painting’s Richard Wilson, possibly the most underrated grand master. I’d found it being used to pad the back seat of an old Austin Ruby. The bloke thought I was off my head. He was the sort who would chuck away a First Folio and keep the string.
    If a painting’s canvas is literally falling to bits you’ve a choice, of simply (figure of speech, that – it’s really very complicated) rebacking with a new canvas, or of lifting the old delicate work of art
off
the canvas and putting it on a new one. This isn’t fraud. It saves a precious thing for another three centuries; It’s therefore essential. My method