Read Online Ibiza Surprise by Dorothy Dunnett - Free Book Online

climbing, this time past beautiful two- and three-storey houses linked together, painted brown or dazzling white. As the convertible crawled slowly onward, I looked from side to side at green double-leafed doors and wrought balconies, spilling over with red potted geraniums and creepers. Some of the windows had elaborate grilles: behind one, somewhere, someone was playing the piano. We passed, on our left, a flight of broad white-walled steps, and then a long stretch of white wall over which the garden above spilled its treasures; cactus creepers, a trail of white roses, a mat of pink and scarlet geraniums. Above the steps, you could see palm trees, purple blossoms, and a lemon tree, its globes like gold disks in the sun.
    ‘It’s plastic,’ said Janey sardonically, and drew in just past the garden and halted.
    The antique and art businesses, it was clear, were doing all right. Austin Mandleberg’s antique shop and gallery was three storeys high, with an open, arched door with a fanlight which gave on to a deep pillared hall, paved with black-and-white marble and dotted with eight-foot jugs, young palm trees in them. Against the wall on the left were two antique chairs flanking a large panelled door and a Spanish lantern that would have floodlit a ship. On the right wall was merely a small painted door, closed. Straight ahead, a palatial set of white marble steps rose up and swirled to the right, showing a lot of elaborate wrought-iron balustrade. A neat notice at the foot of the steps said, simply, Gallery 7, and another, to one side of the panelled door, said Austin M. Mandleberg. I pulled off my headscarf and got out.
    I’d changed to pink slacks and a long-sleeved, chain-store blouse, with a heavy link belt I take everywhere. Janey was in thin, ice-pink suede, sleeveless and fringed at the ends. She had one pale, square ring and a pair of thin, twisty gold earrings. It wasn’t that she was making a special effort for Austin. Janey makes a special effort all the time.
    She walked straight in and opened the door on the left, while I hung about after, catching it as it crashed back behind her. She didn’t warn me that there were three sunken steps just inside. I nearly landed in Austin’s antique shop on my pink Courtelle pelvis.
    The little man with dark crinkly hair who came forward to greet us turned out to be Senor Gregorio. The resident manager wore a tight-fitting suit and white collar. He had a big nose and bushy eyebrows and bags under his eyes you could have kept shoes in. He had hardly finished cooing over Janey when Austin ran down the steps, came across, and kissed both our hands. Continental stuff. Then he took us around.
    Actually, I can’t tell you a thing about that room, because I was so sorry for Austin. I mean, he’d be busy talking about an alabaster coffer with the apostles carved inside the lid, or some Punic pottery, or a silk shawl, or a bunch of swords, or a painted Saint Peter, or some old maps and keys and pieces of spidery embroidery, and there was Janey ̶ making challenging statements which had nothing whatever to do with what he was saying and making him laugh when he knew he was supposed to be talking to me. I got in a few shots as well, but Janey nicked the ball whenever I paused to draw breath, and it was such a pain in the neck watching poor Austin’s native American courtesy struggling with his commercial desire not to offend the daughter of a confirmed ikon buyer, that I dropped out of the game and lingered around, watching him topping his drives.
    Anyway, Janey was the expert on antiques. Going about with Daddy, of course, I’ve picked up a bit, and when I’m around cooking in a decent-sized house, I know what to admire. But, of course, Janey had been finished and trailed all through the Uffizi. The first man she ever went to bed with was a waiter in the Piazza VittorioEmanuele: she said she didn’t want to practice on her friends.
     
    At any rate, we took ages to get to