A Finer End

But tomorrow it would be different; by daybreak the stallholders would be set up for Saturday Market, and in the arcades, dealers would sell everything from antique silver to Beatles memorabilia. Alex loved the early-morning anticipation, the smell of coffee and cigarettes in the arcade cafés, the sense that this might be the day to make the sale of a lifetime. As he might, he thought with a surge of excitement, because today he’d made the buy of his lifetime.

His step quickened as he turned into Elgin Crescent and saw the familiar façade of Otto’s Café—at least that was how the regulars referred to the place; the faded sign read merely Café. Otto did a bustling daytime business in coffee, sandwiches, and pastries, but in the evening he provided simple meals much favored by the neighborhood residents.

Once inside, Alex brushed the accumulated moisture from his jacket and took a seat in the back at his favorite table—favored because he liked the nearness of the gas fire. Unfortunately, the café’s furniture had not been designed to suit anyone over five feet tall. Surprising, really, when you looked at Otto, a giant of a man. Did he ever sit in his own chairs? Alex couldn’t recall ever seeing him do so; Otto hovered, as he did now, wiping his face with the hem of his apron, his bald head gleaming even in the dim light.

“Sit down, Otto, please,” Alex said, testing his hypothesis. “Take a break.”

Otto glanced towards Wesley, his second-in-command, serving the customers who had just come in, then flipped one of the delicate curve-backed chairs round and straddled it with unexpected grace.

“Nasty out, is it?” Otto’s wide brow furrowed as he took in Alex’s damp state. Even though Otto had lived all of his adult life in London, his voice still carried an inflection of his native Russia.

“Can’t quite make up its mind to pour. What sort of warming things have you on the menu tonight?”

“Beef and barley soup; that and the lamb chops would do the trick, I think.”

“Sold. And I’ll have a bottle of your best burgundy. No plonk for me tonight.”

“Alex, my friend! Are you celebrating something?”

“You should have seen it, Otto. I’d run down to Sussex to see my aunt when I happened across an estate sale in the village. There was nothing worth a second look in the house itself, then on the tables filled with bits of rubbish in the garage, I saw it.” Savoring the memory, Alex closed his eyes. “A blue and white porcelain bowl, dirt-encrusted, filled with garden trowels and bulb planters. It wasn’t even tagged. The woman in charge sold it to me for five pounds.”

“Not rubbish, I take it?” Otto asked, an amused expression on his round face.

Alex looked round and lowered his voice. “Seventeenth-century delft, Otto. That’s English delft, with a small “d,” rather than Dutch. I’d put it at around 1650. And underneath the dirt, not a chip or a crack to be found. It’s a bloody miracle, I’m telling you.”

It was a moment Alex had lived for since his aunt had taken him with her to a jumble sale on his tenth birthday. Spying a funny dish that looked as if someone had taken a bite out of its edge, he had been so taken with it that he’d spent all his birthday money on its purchase. His Aunt Jane had contributed a book on porcelain, from which he’d learned that his find was an English delft barber’s bowl, probably early-eighteenth-century Bristol ware. In his mind, Alex had seen all the hands and lives through which the bowl had passed, and in that instant he had been hooked.

The childhood passion had stayed with him through school, through university, through a brief tenure lecturing in art history at a small college. Then he had abandoned the steady salary for the much more precarious—and infinitely more interesting—life of a dealer in English porcelain.

“So, will this bowl make your fortune? If you can bear to part with it, that is,” Otto added with a twinkle born of long association with dealers.

Alex sighed. “Needs must, I’m afraid. And I have an idea who might be interested.”

Otto gazed at him for a moment with an expression Alex couldn’t quite fathom. “You’re thinking Karl Arrowood would want it.”

“It’s right up his alley, isn’t it? You know what Karl’s like; he won’t be able to resist.” Alex imagined the bowl elegantly displayed in the window of Arrowood Antiques, one more thing of beauty for Karl to possess, and the bitterness of his envy seeped into his soul.

“Alex—” Otto seemed to hesitate, then leaned closer, his dark eyes intent. “I do know what he’s like, perhaps more than you. You’ll forgive my interfering, but I’ve heard certain things about you and Karl’s young wife. You know what this place is like—” his gesture took in more than the café “—nothing stays secret for very long. And I fear you do not realize what you’re dealing with. Karl Arrowood is a ruthless man. It doesn’t do to come between him and the things he owns.”