Faces in the Pool (3 page)

Sometimes misfortune is disguised as luck. I boarded the car that came and was whisked to Saxmundham. Daft as ever, I forgot the trillion fashionable antiques dealers Mrs Penelope Castell could have hired instead. Pride makes you think you matter.

She met me at the door, smiling and attractive.

‘Dr Castell was a Cambridge University academic,’ she explained. ‘I’ll make tea. You two get acquainted.’

The big deal looked a dusty fifty-year-old bookworm. All he needed was a Squire John Aubrey pillbox hat. He wittered a while about archæology, drinking stiff whiskies and making me fidgety.

‘Come on, Doc,’ I said at last. ‘Where’s the antique?’

The mansion was luxurious, but disappointingly modern. I couldn’t feel any antique tremors.

Mrs Castell bit the bullet. ‘Giles is to be elevated, Lovejoy.’ I looked from one to the other. Levitation? ‘To the peerage.’

‘Made a lord? Congrats.’

Maybe they wanted me to buy an antique for a crooked
politician? Buying antiques on commission is easy because you can’t be blamed for guesswork. Money for jam.

‘In my youth I was a scamp, Lovejoy. Endless japes.’

His dated slang was like listening to an Edwardian schoolboy read the
Boy’s Own.

‘A bounder!’ His missus trilled a merry laugh, the visit going with a swing.

‘And the relevance of your scamphood?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Could you steal something, Lovejoy?’

‘Look. Everybody on earth dreams of the perfect antiques theft, scam, con, forgery. Stay out of it. There are crooks out there who leave the police standing. You want to make money? Then hunt down Commodore EJ Smith’s last letter – he captained the
Titanic
. It’d be worth a million. Scrotch in Walberswick will knock you up a gold fake Roman brooch of the Second Legion from Vindolanda in Northumberland, AD 125. He stores the centurions’ names.’

Mrs Castell smiled. ‘Our robbery is perfectly above board, Lovejoy.’

‘An
honest
theft?’

Dr Castell said quietly. ‘Yes. The object is already mine, you see.’ Their warm, comfortable drawing room, views of a river with ducks, suddenly seemed colder. ‘One of my youthful pranks involved faking an antique. It’s in Eastwold College, where I met Penny.’

‘And you want me to borrow it back?’

Penny was quietly determined. ‘British Museum experts are due soon. Giles’s spiffing larks are problematic now.’

‘Look. I honestly don’t think—’

Penny patted Giles. She would handle it from now on. ‘We shall pay
whatever
it takes, Lovejoy.’

She was all curves. Women have no such thing as age, only what they do or don’t do. I dragged my gaze away. Giles ignored his wife’s vamping of a visiting scruff. I recognised the power of snobbery.

‘The theft will save my reputation.’ He looked at Penny with worship, and I understood how hard, how very hard, she had worked to advance his career.

He began to tell me about the Xipe Totec masks.

Archæological finds from the ancient world are
ultra-famous
. Ask any museum curator about the Xipe Totec masks, he’ll take a fortnight to explain. Simply, think Aztec gods.

Xipe Totec was a deity. To celebrate him, priests flayed some humans, then wore the poor victims’ skin for the ceremonies. Skin includes the face, so they made stone masks, always with a gaping mouth and eyes tight shut. They are seriously sickening. What religion isn’t? The British Museum has Xipe Totec stone masks. Controversy rages. Are they genuine Meso-American, or fake? Nobody knows. Ignorance makes us all experts.

‘I was very skilful, Lovejoy.’ And as Penny smiled with fond pride, ‘Researchers are re-opening the issue, and want Eastwold’s relic.’

‘Can’t you say you’ve just forgotten?’

‘Hardly, Lovejoy. Remember Piltdown Man? Imagine if that fraudulent priest Teilhard de Chardin attempted that deception nowadays. With modern technology they’d not last a week.’

Penny showed where her values lay by moaning softly.
‘Think of me, laughed out of society. The mask is in the college museum, labelled
On loan from Giles Castell, Cambridge University.
There is little security.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I visited lately. A child could take it.’

She was cool, but I was taking the risk and she wasn’t. If anything, she was amused by the obvious effect she was having on me. It was an odd do. Still, money is money, and I was skint.

‘I’ll need a motor, please, and a college plan.’

‘Thank you, Lovejoy.’ Giles was so grateful.

‘I’ll drive you, Lovejoy.’ She handed him another whisky. ‘Tonight will be fine, don’t you think?’

The remark of a woman about to betray, of course.

‘I’ll phone a bloke who knows security systems, missus.’

‘You won’t reveal the…heist, Lovejoy?’ She sounded excited. ‘It will be quite a dashing escapade.’ We were starting to sound like Dan Dare plus Bulldog Drummond.

Hours later I entered the Dog & Duck near Long Melford and collected a thick envelope from Quemoy in the vestibule while Penny waited. Ready, steady.

After driving for yonks in the darkness, Penny gave me instructions.

‘Nine inches across. That’s two hundred millimetres. Not heavy.’

‘Right.’ Quemoy had given me all the facts about Eastwold.

‘It’s in a glass case, first on the right from the main hall.’

‘Left,’ I corrected, fed up with her.

She was surprised. ‘Is it? How do you know?’

‘Go down this cart track. There’s a lay-by two furlongs along. Stop there.’ My certainty worried her. Quemoy costs the earth, but he is never, never ever, wrong. The lay-by abutted on a pea-field, its peas just about to burgeon.

‘Have you been here before, Lovejoy?’

‘Never.’

She switched the engine off. ‘The school is across that field. The display case has one lock.’

I’d had enough.

‘There are two locks,’ I said. ‘One’s a reinforced Chubb, the second a modified Bramah. The display case is restored Indonesian mahogany. The glass is reinforced fibre-mesh Pilkington from St Helens. Three cameras, one presently inactive from spiders. The Xipe Totec mask is actually third along, if you count the Roman silver display. The green baize hasn’t been cleaned since the Great Civil War ended in 1648. The security guard is seventy-two years old, and will be watching Manchester United re-runs on BSkyB TV at eleven o’clock.’

‘How do you know all that?’ She was visibly shaken.

‘I do my homework. Saves getting nicked.’

Her tongue touched her lips, retreated slowly. ‘What will you do if you get caught?’ She took a breath. ‘Fight?’

‘Run, missus.’

‘Penny.’ Her voice went husky. ‘I’ve heard about you, Lovejoy. You’re not innocent, are you? Somebody said—’

‘Gossipy Mrs Somebody again? Rumour is a tumour feeding on itself. Be here, please.’

‘Nobody’s about.’ She looked mischievous in the dashboard glow. ‘I thought you might want to—’

‘Two hours.’

She giggled. ‘I used to sneak out through the chapel gate and meet the village boys. Now the little bitches simply invite them in. Stealing like this is far more exciting.’

For a blank moment I sat back wondering. ‘You silly cow.’

She gaped. ‘What?’

‘You’ve no idea, have you? Listen. Once upon a time, thieves nicked a Leonardo da Vinci painting. Worth about 50 million zlotniks. Owners wrung their hands, then they offered a 165,000 zlotniks reward. Mathematics aren’t my thing, but is the reward
less
than 0.0033 of the painting’s value?’

‘But this is nothing to do—’

‘You don’t think so? Back in 1989, a small oil-painting was valued at 6000 zlotniks. Then rumour hinted it was by Raphael. November 2002, the Duke of Northumberland sold this
The Madonna of the Pinks
, quite legal, to the Getty outfit in LA. The baby Christ holds some pink flowers. Price: $US 57.4 million, plus change. London’s National Gallery came unglued, then offered $34 million. Work it out, Penny. The difference was the Duke’s tax bill.
We
would pay to cover the Duke’s tax bill. Get the trick?’

‘No.’

‘The Inland Revenue came out smelling of roses, saving the Raphael for the nation, hip-hip-hooray, by screwing us all out of
their
Value Added Tax, at 17.5 per cent of every groat. Penny, love, if the Inland Revenue got proper jobs they’d starve. They make the rules.
That’s
the trade you’re frigging about with here.’

‘Is hatred why you do it?’ Her eyes were hard.

‘You’re not thinking, silly cow.
The Madonna of the 
Pinks
never was by Raphael, being only one of forty or so replicates of a fake of a copy of a sham…
So didn’t the Inland Revenue do a good deal for His Grace the Duke?
I want to know who paid what for what and to whom for a fake, but the Government won’t tell me.’

‘So everyone is unfair to you, Lovejoy,’ she taunted. Narked, I got out, and she said something that made me look back.

‘I’m wearing stockings, Lovejoy,’ she said, smiling. ‘And I’ve brought enough hankies. Hurry back.’

I thought, Did I hear right? I followed the badger path across the pea field. There was just enough sky-gloaming to see by.

Quemoy is a Taiwanese bloke, and had done his usual sound job. You get enough details to invade Cambridgeshire. He’s one of these computer blokes who can’t stop himself. In that instant, I suppressed my unease, but I’m thick where women are concerned.

I’m useless in countryside. I sound like a bag of popcorn however quiet I try to be.

Eastwold College was a black shadow, with a few lights showing. Dormitories? I did the fifth window from the end, as Quemoy advised. It took me half an hour. Some blokes I know would have gone through without breaking step.

Using Quemoy’s pencil torch, batteries provided, I found the museum next to the library. I did both locks on the case and took out the fake mask. No strange quivering in my chest. I paused for a serious think.

Penny Castell all but promised to ravish me. I’m no
Handsome Jack. OK, she was desperate for Giles to get lorded, but her lust didn’t quite ring true. I can understand a married woman getting bored, but posh Penny actually sought me out – me, a gaolbird without a bean. Why? To set me up.

Risking my pencil flashlight, I checked the label:
On Loan from Giles Castell, Cambridge University
, and pondered these new worries. I took a discus from a sports collage, and slipped it in the cloth bag Penny had given me. Going through to the library, I paused in Reference, and used the library steps to slip Giles’s mask, the crowbar and washing-up gloves, behind the dustiest tomes on the highest shelf I could reach, before eeling into the night.

She was in the motor, breathless with expectation. ‘Did you get it?’

‘Yes.’ I showed her the heavy bag. ‘Click open the boot. I’ll put it in.’

‘No need. I’ll—’

Quickly I went round to the boot. In the darkness, I removed the discus and flung it into the pea field, slammed the boot shut and joined her.

She gave a whimper of delight. ‘All done? Payment time.’ She spoke in a thick voice. ‘I want your hands first, lover, then…’

Some things don’t make me proud. I don’t have to be. Pride is OK if you’re rich, but it’s grubby stuff down among us bottom feeders (sorry for the pun). Of seven hundred East Anglian antiques dealers, only three can afford a holiday. The rest fiddle expenses and hope for the Big Break.

Penny fell on me like a mad thing. I was relieved I’d
misjudged her. We made tumultuous smiles, the windows steaming up. A new car park is planned in Vinci, Tuscany – where else? – for snoggers. In that new love zone, police are not to arrest lovers who are hard at it. Essentials, if you follow, are on hand in slot machines. The only concession Penny made to propriety was to gasp, ‘Don’t mark me!’ If I’m on Planet Mongo how could I control events in her car?

Afterwards, she dozed, a novelty, because after making smiles women always want to talk. They’d be loved for ever if they let their bloke’s soul marinate for a minute afterwards. She got me to hook her brassiere. She got mad when her blouse tore, but whose fault was that?

The crunch came just outside St Edmundsbury. She stopped for petrol and went to pay in the well-lit garage shop. Dopey from galactic pleasure, I nodded off. A bobby tapped the window and arrested me, while she watched smiling from the window among other customers. The motor was searched, and thirty minutes later I was back in the pokey.

Ten o’clock next morning, Penny came in dazzling yellow and sat with glittering knees to vamp the beaks. She testified I’d simply appeared while she stopped to adjust her driving mirror. Cruel, vicious, animal Lovejoy ravished her (‘with an angry snarl,’ she perjured sweetly), and took her hostage.

She outwitted me, she testified, by phoning the police. Put not your trust in…or have I already said that, Titus Oates on the scaffold? I conducted my own defence, as lawyers can’t be trusted, law being so fragile. She said I’d told her that I’d just done a robbery nearby and stowed 
the loot in her car boot. She couldn’t mention the truth without giving her game away.

The court remanded me in custody, to decide random guilt later.

In the nick I grumbled as usual about police starvation, and slept the peace of innocence while East Anglia’s finest watched football re-runs. Manchester United, I can report, won 2-0, but the referee was clearly bribed. I guessed he was also a lawyer.

They fed me a runny egg, truly vile. I could have made furniture out of the bread.

‘I’m starving, Mr Kine,’ I told the plod.

‘Then don’t keep coming back, Lovejoy.’

Kine is skeletal and affects a bowler hat and pinstripes. All ploddites pretend to be respectable.

‘Spoken to anyone?’ My hopes lay in Laura Moon. And Lydia, always assuming she wasn’t livid. ‘Who’s that lady?’

A super-elegant lady was seated on a chair. Fiftyish, dark complexion, guinea-an-inch, as East Enders say down Brick Lane. A huge driver waited with two besuited butties.

‘Do you know her, Lovejoy?’

‘No.’ He frowned. ‘Honest. Whose are the butties?’

A butty is an inexpert lawyer named from living on sandwiches.

‘Yours, Lovejoy.’ I cheered up. Sad ploddites are good. ‘First see the Castells.’

‘No, ta, Mr Kine. I’ve done insanity this week.’

Kine has this cadaverous smile. Everything is recorded
in the cop shop, even in the loos, so never say anything. In came Dr Giles and Penny, looking less than their usual exalted selves.

Kine doffed his bowler. ‘Lovejoy, vital evidence is missing.’ A plod fiddled with a tape deck, yet more pretence. ‘Namely, the mask you stole.’

‘Good gracious,’ I said mildly. ‘What mask?’

‘We have no evidence. We searched your cottage,’ he added casually. ‘Your henchman, Tinker Dill, allowed us.’

‘Tinker’s out of remand, then?’ More jubilation.

‘A college window had been forced.’

‘Tut tut. Maybe those girls slip out to meet village lads in the lantern hours, eh?’ I looked at Penny.

Silence spread. The policeman’s machine whirred.

Shadows fascinate me. We’ve lost the Victorian art of watching shadows. They reveal so much. Shadows can recapture memories when we are alone and sorrowing. This accounts for our modern lack of insight, and shows how barbarous we really are. Nowadays we want instant everything. We want diplomas without study, money without work. We want the woman to undress, not even knowing who the hell she is. It doesn’t do.

Sometimes when I’m melancholy, I light a candle and look at shadows. They are a gift. Reminiscences bring light to the recesses of the heart where forgotten things live – people, children, memories welcoming you back. Shadows gladden in bad times.

Look at Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Lady Ginevra de’ Benci. Not a shadow on her lovely face? Oh, but there
is
, so fleetingly slight you don’t see it at first. Incidentally (I’m not one to spread gossip) I don’t believe the great L da V
really did use that rent boy Jacopo from the goldsmith’s shop in the Vacchereccia, Florence, though it landed Leonardo in the pokey…

‘Eh?’ Kline was speaking.

‘Your chat will not be recorded.’

The ploddites left. No shadows here. It’s odd, meeting some woman you’ve ravished. Penny was enjoying herself. I felt in a tableau.

‘Lovejoy,’ Giles pronounced in his superb timbre. ‘Where is the Xipe Totec mask, please?’

‘Dunno. I did as you said, Giles. Penny told me to burgle Eastwold College. I got scared by a guard dog so I returned to Penny. We drove off.’ I spoke clearly, police recording machines being naff. ‘Penny stopped at a garage. The plod collared me.’

Keeping a straight face took effort. Quemoy’s note on this life-threatening wolfhound read:
The patrol-man’s dog is called Daffodil. An English Lurcher aged eleven months, it responds to bribes of Peak Frean biscuits. Two are included in this envelope. Further supplies are obtainable from Gunton’s, address in Appendix 2A
…Quemoy is class.

‘Look.’ I was arguing for freedom, and I had a marriage to avoid. ‘I can’t find things that aren’t there, can I?’

‘Is there a possibility the mask was stolen by someone else?’

This was new. ‘Who?’

‘A group of overseas visitors is in East Anglia. They made me an investment proposition.’

‘You have criminal contacts?’

Penny chipped in. ‘Lovejoy, they might blackmail Giles. He was once in the diplomatic service. Please help us.’

‘I don’t get it. You’re in the clear. Get yourself lorded.’

She crossed her legs at me, though she already had my complete attention. I ached with anatomical proof.

‘The overseas people do not brook failure. Come round this evening to settle your fee.’

‘I can’t. I’m in this dump.’

‘That is already settled, Lovejoy.’ She gathered her handbag, smiling as they left. Moments later, Kine beckoned me out.

‘Lovejoy,’ he said, ‘things don’t add up. You are a toad. Shagging Mrs Castell in Suffolk’s leafy lanes seems about right. But forcible abduction and rape of a society lady? You wouldn’t know how.’ He chuckled, hoof-hoof-hoof, a laryngitic owl trying to announce its vigilance. He knocked out his pipe on a radiator. A passing policeman said, ‘Excuse, sir, but—’

Kine said testily, ‘I know, Mason. Bloody rules.’ We walked outside while he filled and lit his pipe, pop-pop. ‘The Castells withdrew the charges, Lovejoy.’

‘I’m free?’

‘As air. Just one thing. What’s this marriage business?’

‘Rumour’s wrong,’ I said sharply. Free as air? That’d be the day.

By six o’clock, I was up. Cracking an egg scares me in case I find a chick staring up in reproach. This time I was lucky, and fried them in a pan over a petrol-filled hole in the garden. Defying Lydia, I ate all the bread. My tea is horrible. I don’t drink coffee, because only Yanks can brew it. I decided to find Colleen, a daft bat with visions, so I got a lift into town from Eleison, a priest defrocked for
giving the parish of Underlanes, Norfolk, to the poor, so of course he had to suffer. He now trundles manure to farms.

‘Wotcher, Lovejoy,’ he said, snickering. ‘Orf on your honeymoon? All the booys be larffin’. That bitch Laura scrubs up well.’

‘Thank you, Sir Galahad.’ Morosely I clung on near the garbage.

‘Her husband Ted Moon were a pleasant bugger, though. He’m estuary folk.’ Eleison shivered. ‘He killt and yirded some lass.’

God Almighty. I felt like going back to bed. ‘Laura’s husband Ted killed and buried a girl?’ And I’d just been imprisoned for being innocent. ‘I hadn’t heard that, Eleison.’

He gave me a wizened eye. ‘You hear everything, booy, and know nothing. Want to sing the ‘Kyrie eleison’ wi’ me?’

I declined, but he sang it anyway (read
any
way) and dropped me off at the War Memorial. I gave a nod to the poor dead blokes and went to the Antiques Arcade where Colleen sits.

Life in antiques is war and has the same three ignorances. One is what you
assume
, like the date of the Battle of Hastings. Second is what you
believe
. Third is what you
guess
. Last week I saw two ninety-year-old historians brawl, actually try to knock each other’s block off. Their students had to drag the silly old sods apart. The big dispute? The Battle of Lepanto, 1571, and if Admiral Andrea Doria was a coward. (He was, incidentally.) Is that rational? Eliminate the three ignorances to make a fortune in antiques, then concentrate on bits that matter. Colleen for instance.

She sells wishes in the Arcade. Meaning she charges for each mystic wish, closing her eyes and swaying. People really believe Colleen. A rotund lady in a giant flowery skirt, hair in a Carolean mound, a vast bosom glittering with cubic zirconia, and there she is. She smokes black malodorous French cigarettes.

She was seated on her stool, knees a-splay so you have to look away. The Arcade’s stalls are merely three sheets of sacking on poles, a plank between two wooden beer crates and bring your own stool. Sandy and Mel, Arcade owners, charge the earth for each nook. Betsy runs the tea stall. I paint pictures of garden ghosts for Colleen. Truth is, I never see any ghosts, but my Ghosts Among Flowers paintings sell. I invent the ghosts. Dealers saw me enter and bawled abuse, mostly to do with parentage and my famed IOUs.

‘Morning, Lovejoy. That woman’s a whore.’

‘Could you be specific?’

‘The horrid bitch loved Sandy’s camp-gay-queer-trolling act.’

Sandy goes mad for an audience. ‘Did you know either of them?’

‘The lawyer woman’s had a facelift, cow collagen and that botox poison. I can smell a lawyer at seven furlongs, love. She’s as rich as that Greek king who became a donkey. Her lottery win was in the paper. Her husband, Ted, did a flit over some tart who got topped.’ She smiled a wintry smile. ‘Safe from her, I’d say.’

‘Tell me about Ted Moon.’

‘Information will cost you, Lovejoy.’ She belched and lit a fag one-handed. ‘Two ghost paintings. And not acrylic.’

Colleen and I once made smiles when she was glamorous Miss Eastern Hundreds. She gave me the elbow for saying her mysticism was rubbish, accusing me of unfaith. I hope I’m not making her out to be ugly, because she’s lovely, just different. I like Colleen.

Laconically, I kept smiling. I do Colleen two ghost paintings a month. She hates acrylic and underpays me, the rotten bitch. Oils sell for ten times as much and are easily antiqued.

‘Very well.’ A lie always helps so I said, ‘I like doing those.’

‘By Sunday? And no more magnolias.’

‘Can I help it?’ I demanded, indignant. ‘If a ghost appears beside my magnolia what can I do? Lend me money for the canvases, love?’

‘Sod off.’ She yawned, a wondrous sight. ‘See Fibber Hollohan about marrying that bitch. He’s our best marriage lawyer.’

As she turned back to her astrological chart, I asked, ‘What about her husband?’

‘Him? Had two homes down on the water and a naff antiques collection. Some woman met him, and off he went to Derby. That’s men for you.’

‘Won’t he come back? Laura’s rich.’

‘Not for a gold clock. Hated Laura.’

‘God Almighty. The seductress must be dynamite, when his ex-wife Laura had zillions.’

‘Sandy knew him. Ted Moon never killed that girl.’

Sandy was by the door in a booth, with mercury-vapour lamps showing off his magenta hair. He was talking to Veronica from Bromley Cross.

It’s hard to know what to make of Sandy. He has tantrums and wears anything that glitters, radiates, reflects. His hair changes colour faster than traffic lights. He wears enough make-up to keep the Old Vic going in high season and loves himself, money and Mel, in that order.

Sandy admired himself in his cheval mirror. ‘Mel, dear. Have we had our wedding invite?’

Mel glowered. He glowers a lot. Their lack of scruple is legendary, and they only pay under torture.

Veronica is a nervous, rather plain lass I rather like. Her husband makes ends meet teaching handicapped children while she combs the Home Counties for antiques. In any pantomime she’d be Mistress Poverty. She was in tears.

‘I’ll miss the Hook of Holland tourists!’

‘If you can’t pay, dearie, you’re out. Life is tragic.’ Sandy swished his silver lamé cape.

Desperation scares me. I do a lot of it. ‘Sandy, I’ll pay Veronica’s rent.’

He pivoted, his eyes large. ‘But you’re pig, Lovejoy.’

Pig in a poke, broke, Cockney rhyming slang. ‘I’ve just sold Colleen two ghost paintings.’

‘Oh, all right.’ He recoiled as she tried to buss him. ‘No! I don’t
do
ugly. And for God’s sake rescue that mare’s nest on your head.’

‘Look, Sandy. Was Laura really after your tatty miniatures?’

‘Tat?’ he screeched. Every head turned. ‘My ceramics are exquisite, you swine!’ He simpered roguishly.

‘Don’t trust her, Lovejoy,’ from Mel.

‘Oh, that’s
nice
!’ Sandy spat, viperish. ‘Lovejoy sells himself, and
I’m
untrustworthy?’

‘Then what did she want?’

‘
Moi
, dwahhling!’ he crooned, eyelashes fluttering.

I’d been his audience long enough. ‘Ta-ra, mate. I’ll send Veronica’s rent.’

Sandy’s ceramics drew me. These so-called
apprentice-piece
porcelains are collectors’ items. Craftsmen made diminutive wares for Minton or Royal Worcester travelling salesmen. Astonishingly you can still pick up miniature Spode blue-and-white tureens, genuine 1820s, for a quarter of a week’s average wage. Sandy had a Limoges miniature early 1900s gilt-edged tea set. Victorian families bought them for doll’s houses, with which mothers taught their daughters domestic duties. (Tip: hunt miniature ceramics at boot fairs and junk stalls, because they’ll have soared by the time this ink’s dry. Named decorators, like Roberts of Royal Worcester, are highly favoured. Quick sticks, off you go.)

‘Overpriced, Sandy,’ I said to nark him. ‘And your mascara’s running.’

He started to wail. Mel shouted, ‘Bully!’ I felt a wart.

‘Thank you, Lovejoy,’ Veronica called. ‘You’re sweet.’

In my mind was the germ of a plot. Could I stay out of prison long enough to make something of it? It would be lovely to start eating again.