Meanwhile, in another part of town, an unremarkable front door to an unremarkable flat suddenly opened, startling the flat’s only occupant, who dropped his cup of tea in alarm.
“Who – who’s there?”
In response, a masked, hooded figure strode through the door, tucking a piece of bent coathanger which it had used to open the door into its pocket. It reached into its other pocket, withdrew a handful of postcards, sorted through them until it found the one it was looking for, and held it up for the man to read. He did so, rather timidly.
“‘Thank you for the note’,” he read. “I – I din’t send you a note –”
The hooded figure sorted through the cards again, and held up another one. “‘Yes, you did.’ Er – look, mate, I’m telling you I din’t.”
The figure jabbed the card in the air again in front of the other man’s face, and then found another.
“‘We know it was you because of your handwriting’? But it was typed – oh shit –”
Another card. “‘Ha! Busted.’ What the hell is this, some kind o’joke?”
The hooded figure paused menacingly, and found a final card. “‘Watch your back’,” the man read. “Mate,” he said, with a bravado he didn’t feel, “bugger off outta my gaff, now. Or I’m callin’ the police.”
The creature raised its head in what would presumably have been a contemptuous sneer, if it had had a visible mouth to sneer with. Then it tucked the cards back into its pocket, turned on its heel, and marched back out of the flat, closing the softly behind it as it left.
Damien Casablanca, a tall, thin man with a cadaverous face and a three-piece suit with a gold watch chain hanging from its breast pocket, stood in the doorway to the small metal room, gazing at Susan’s inherited Napoleon III cabinets with a gleam in his eye. “Well, well,” he said thoughtfully, “these are a find.”
He moved into the room and slowly around the cabinets, examining them minutely from every angle, just as Xavier had done. Susan, Paul and Xavier stood in the doorway: Paul to block his escape, Susan to make sure he didn’t damage them for any reason, and Xavier – well, who knew what could be going on in his mind. Susan certainly didn’t, despite his reassurances.
Finally, Damien straightened up. “Well, the good news is,” he announced, “they’re not fake.”
“Well, that is a relief,” Paul said. “How much?”
“There is some bad news too, unfortunately,” Damien continued, ignoring Paul. “I’m afraid they are not rightfully yours, Susan. These belong in a museum. The Jarrold Collection, to be exact.”
“What – what do you mean?” Susan asked, although she unwillingly had to admit to herself that she probably knew the answer.
“They were stolen from the Collection eighteen years ago,” Damien continued half an hour later, in his cramped office; he was standing behind his desk, reaching for some files, and the other three were squashed onto a sort of antique chaise longue obviously not designed for the purpose. He opened a box file labelled STOLEN ITEMS, and extracted from it a sheaf of papers in a cardboard sleeve. “They are quite a find simply because nobody ever thought they’d be seen again; I am intrigued as to how they ended up in your possession, although of course I am not suggesting,” he added, seeing Susan’s expression, “that you were involved in the theft.”
“I’d have been a precocious eight-year-old,” Susan pointed out. Damien smiled a thin-lipped smile.
“Quite,” he replied, and passed them some papers taken from the cardboard sleeve. “You say you inherited them from Bartholomew Opocapopopoulos.”
“Yes.”
“I probably would have hesitated to draw this conclusion while he was alive,” Damien said hesitantly, “but it would appear that he either stole them, or caused them to be stolen. The top sheet there is a photocopy of the original newspaper article that reported the theft, from the Eastwestchester Jester.”
They looked at it. The headline was: ‘Jarrold Collection Break-In: Priceless Cabinets Stolen’, and the article continued:
The Jarrold Collection was in disarray last night after it emerged that one of its most prized objects, a pair of Napoleon III ormolu-mounted tortoiseshell pietra dure side cabinets, had been stolen over the weekend. The cabinets, which date from the third Napoleonic era and are worth over £250,000, were last seen by Pollux Gnomon, the Collection’s head of security, on Saturday evening as he was conducting routine checks. The thieves appear to have broken in via a ground-floor window, which set off multiple alarm systems, but by the time the police arrived half an hour later the cabinets had been taken. A spokesman for the Collection said that they were “devastated”, adding, “Utterly devastated”. Police are trying to establish a motive for the crime other than money, but have so far drawn a blank.
“Oh,” said Susan. She re-read the article. “Do you think Bartholomew would have had anything to do with this?” she asked Xavier.
“It’s possible,” Xavier admitted. “I wouldn’t put it past him, anyway. This sounds suspiciously like it could have been one of his and Arbuthnot’s pranks.”
“Well, whether it was a prank or not,” Damien said, “the fact is that it is stolen. There was a reward offered at the time for their return –”
“Really?” Paul said, looking interested. “From the Collection, you mean?”
“Yes. I am not sure if it still stands, but it’s worth asking them. You won’t be culpable if you hand them over.”
“Fine, then,” Susan said decisively. “There was another thing, though.” She told him about the note she and Paul had found in the drawer, and he let out a brief, forced laugh.
“Destroy these? What a ludicrous idea. Why would you want to do that? They’re not even yours.”
“I don’t really want to. But I can’t help wondering why someone would have put the note in there like that.”
“Insanity, perhaps? A sadistic streak? These are priceless, Susan. When they were stolen they were one of only two surviving such examples in the world. They are now the only ones left, the others having been lost in a shipping accident in 1993. The Jester there calls them priceless, but puts a price tag on them; these days, they literally are priceless. Destroying them would not only be a crime against art history and the Napoleonic era in general, it would also be a horrible waste of a beautiful and irreplaceable pair of objets d’art.”
He sat down, exhausted.
“I am still a bit puzzled, though,” Susan persisted. “I can’t work out why Bartholomew would have left them to me, when he doesn’t appear to have left anybody else anything. I also can’t understand why he would have left a note in them like that. I mean, if he stole them or knew they were stolen, and if he was worried that he’d get exposed as an art thief after his death, why not destroy them himself? Why give me the responsibility?”
Damien spread his hands wide. “Who knows?” he asked rhetorically. “He took delight in being a difficult character to work out while he was alive; why should that change after death?”
Susan sighed, and was silent for a few moments while she weighed up her options. “I think I’ve got two options,” she decided finally. “I can’t keep them, and I can’t sell them, so I have to either destroy them, or give them back. I don’t really want to destroy them, but I’m still intrigued by that note, and who could have left it.” She suddenly had an idea. “Do you know if the Collection has a, I don’t know, some kind of workshop or something?”
“Yes, I believe they do. Why?”
“Well, look at it logically. Even a total philistine wouldn’t want something that valuable to be destroyed, assuming they knew what it was worth, without a very good reason. So I’m guessing that there’s something hidden in the cabinets somewhere – something that whoever left me the note was really desperate for me to find. So, if I give it back to the Collection under the condition that they examine them for anything that’s hidden inside, and give whatever it is to me quietly without making a fuss, then everybody’s happy.” She looked at the others. “Aren’t they?”
There was a pause while everyone considered this.
“Sounds like a plan,” Paul admitted. “Do we still get the reward?”
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