by James Becker
He paused for a moment, unzipped his carry-on and slid a compact umbrella inside, just in case.
Donovan glanced round his spacious penthouse apartment once again, nodded to himself and then headed for the door. He set the alarm, double-locked the door and took his personal elevator down the ten flights to street level. He walked out of the main door of the building as the cab he’d booked drew to a halt by the kerb.
It was, he hoped, a good omen.
12
By 10 a.m. that morning, Angela was in the kitchen at Carfax Hall, her laptop open and running. The cataloguing software program would, she hoped, allow her to identify most of the ceramics in the house, or at least assign them an approximate date and country of origin. Valuations would take longer, and she really wasn’t equipped to do them. The other obvious problem, she thought, as she looked at the china piled at the other end of the table, was that the period she knew most about was the first century AD. Most of the stuff in front of her dated from about two millennia later than that. She sighed. She’d just have to do her best.
By the time she finished her coffee, she’d already taken a preliminary look at the china, ceramic and earthenware utensils, and had picked out half a dozen nice pieces of early English slipware and put them to one side.
Then she settled down into her tried and tested routine. She created a free-form database on her laptop, named it ‘Carfax Hall Ceramics’, and labelled the fields from top to bottom. She started with the current date, then moved down to the probable date of the piece of china; the manufacturer, if known; a description of it; a note of any defects she could see and finally a rough estimate of its value.
She also created a second, much simpler, database for those pieces of china — and there were a lot of them — which weren’t likely to be of any interest to the museum, and which would probably end up in a local auction house. She’d already decided to look at the less valuable pieces first, to get them out of the way and clear space on the table as quickly as possible.
She photographed each piece from different angles with her digital camera before enveloping it in bubble-wrap and storing it in one of the wooden tea chests from the attics. It was soon apparent that almost everything on the table was going to end up in the ‘auction’ tea chest, because most of the china in front of her was worth only a few pounds — some even less than that. Periodically, she attached the camera to her laptop and transferred the pictures she’d taken to a new folder on her hard drive.
The other members of the team drifted into the kitchen at intervals to make coffee or tea, or just to chat while they took a break from their own cataloguing activity elsewhere in the old house.
When the team stopped for lunch, Angela had already half-filled the ‘auction’ tea chest and in the process had cleared perhaps a quarter of the pieces of china off the table.
‘Have you found anything interesting?’ David Hughes asked, his spectacles glinting in the sun that shone through the large kitchen window.
Angela shook her head. ‘Not really. There’s some English slipware and a few bits of early Wedgwood, but nothing that you couldn’t pick up in almost any halfway decent antique shop. It doesn’t look to me as if Oliver or Bartholomew were really into collecting ceramics. What about you?’
‘Actually, quite a few nice pieces. There’s a good octagonal Regency rosewood centre table, but my most exciting find so far is a really nice Jacobean wainscot chair, in beautiful condition.’
‘Are you sure it’s not a mid-nineteenth century repro?’ Mayhew had just come in, looking more florid than usual. ‘They made a lot of them around that period.’
‘You just stick to your specialization, Richard,’ Hughes replied, looking at him over his glasses in what Angela thought was a teacher-ish sort of way, ‘and I’ll stick to mine.’
‘You’re very quiet, Owen,’ Mayhew said, turning to a grey-haired man wearing bifocals who was sitting on the opposite side of the long table. ‘Anything to report?’
Owen Reynolds, one of the British Museum’s arms and militaria experts, leaned forwards. ‘I’m not sure. There’s not much here that’s obviously within my remit, apart from that suit of armour in the hall, so-’
‘Is that the real thing?’ Mayhew asked.
‘Definitely. It’s a particularly nice example of Gotischer Plattenpanzer, Gothic plate armour, dating from the fifteenth century. I’ll need to research it, but I think it might be Maximilian, which is really exciting. And I’ve found a couple of 1796-pattern heavy cavalry swords, one an Austrian pallasch and the other a British version. But apart from those, I haven’t found very much, so I’ve been checking the contents of the boxes in the salon or whatever that big room is called.’
Mayhew looked at him expectantly. ‘And?’ he asked.
Reynolds looked round the room. ‘Well, I’m not absolutely sure, but I think somebody’s been searching through them. Not one of us, I mean. In several of the chests the contents have been unwrapped and, as far as I can recall, everything in them was properly wrapped when we first inspected the boxes.’
There was a brief silence.
‘A burglar, you mean?’ Mayhew asked.
Reynolds spread his hands. ‘The problem is that we don’t know what there was in the boxes to start with. I mean, we don’t have a full inventory of their contents, do we? That’s what we’re here for.’
‘Do you think somebody has been pilfering?’
Reynolds shook his head. ‘I don’t know. There are a lot of valuable pieces on display in this house — silverware, that kind of thing — that any burglar would immediately realize were worth a lot of money, and I think one or two of those might be missing as well. But because there is no inventory I can’t be sure.’
Angela stood up. ‘Look, if Owen is right, and somebody has been here, the first thing we need to find out is how this burglar — or whatever he is — is getting inside. God,’ she lowered her voice, ‘you don’t suppose he’s in the house now, do you?’
Richard Mayhew shook his head. ‘No. But we have been leaving the front door open while we’ve been in here, so I suppose it is just possible somebody could have snuck in. We’d better keep it locked from now on.’
Angela nodded decisively. ‘I also want a complete sweep of the entire house, right now, just in case there is anyone lurking in the cellar or attic or somewhere.’ She was aware of how fast her heart was beating and took some deep breaths. She had narrowly escaped death the last time she’d been away and didn’t want to take any chances here.
‘OK, OK,’ Mayhew agreed, with a heavy sigh. ‘As soon as we’ve finished lunch we’ll search the place from top to bottom. Will that do?’
Ninety minutes later, hot and dusty from poking around at the top and bottom of the old house and everywhere in between, the team re-assembled somewhat grumpily in the kitchen. They’d found absolutely nothing to suggest that anybody else had been in the house recently, apart from an unfastened ground-floor window at the back of the house, which they’d now closed and locked, and which Angela had then jammed with a screw to ensure it couldn’t be opened from the outside.
‘Happy now?’ Richard Mayhew snapped.
Angela sighed. She still felt very uneasy. ‘I’d rather be back in London, thank you. But at least now I’m sure that there isn’t someone watching us.’
‘OK, now that we’ve finally got that cleared up, let’s get some useful work done, shall we?’ Mayhew hurried out of the kitchen.
Angela picked up another piece of china from the table to assess and catalogue. She had just opened up her laptop when she heard a startled gasp from David Hughes.
‘What is it?’ She spun round to look behind her.
‘I thought I saw something outside, some movement.’
He strode across the kitchen to the window and stared through the somewhat grubby panes of glass at the unkempt grassland outside.
Angela put down the china plate she’d been examining and stood up, joining him at the window
moments later. The land in front of them sloped gently downwards, away from the house, dotted with clumps of shrubs and bushes, many of them easily big enough to conceal a person. And there was something else Angela noticed as well.
‘You might be right,’ she said slowly. ‘Every time I’ve looked out of this window since we got here, I’ve seen at least two or three rabbits hopping about out there. Right now, I don’t see any. Rabbits are extremely nervous animals. Because they’ve vanished, it could mean there is somebody out there.’ She shivered slightly. ‘God, I’ll be pleased when we’re finished and back in London. This place gives me the creeps.’
13
Jonathan Carfax stared through a pair of compact binoculars as the last of the cars drove away from the front of Carfax Hall. He knew he was invisible to the museum people, because he was standing in the shelter of a group of trees just outside the boundary of the property, but with a clear view of the house.
Earlier that afternoon, he’d crept closer to the house, approaching it from the rear and making use of the cover provided by various small groups of bushes, but he’d obviously been seen by somebody. As he’d moved towards the building, two faces had appeared at the kitchen window and looked out, but by that time he’d already run down the slope away from the house, and ducked down into a hollow behind a large rhododendron bush, where he’d lain and fumed. Jonathan was one of Oliver’s cousins, and like the rest of his family had only recently discovered that he’d been disinherited. Well, he’d told himself, as he became gradually colder and damper, he was going to do something about that.
Fifteen minutes later, he’d finally eased up into a crouch and then sprinted the last few yards to the boundary fence. Then he’d walked through the woods back to his car, and waited for the last of the British Museum people to leave.
Darkness was falling as Carfax walked back towards the house. The cars had left, and no one seemed to be around. A solitary bat swooped through the gloaming. So far, so good, he thought.
Quickly, he made his way to the window he’d left open at the back of the house. He took one more look round and pushed the sash upwards. Or tried to. It took less than a second for Carfax to realize that somebody — obviously one of the team from the British Museum — must have spotted the open catch and locked it.
‘Bugger,’ he muttered, backing away and retracing his steps. He had come prepared, though. In the boot of his car he’d assembled a selection of tools that he hoped would be enough for him to slip the window catch if he found it locked.
Ten minutes later he was back at the window, a long thin chisel in his hand, which he slid up between the two sections of the sash window. He positioned it against the locked catch and applied sideways pressure. Nothing happened — the catch remained obstinately closed. He tried again, and then again, each time increasing the level of force on the tool, and each time with precisely the same result — the catch didn’t move.
Carfax swore again, more loudly this time. He’d chosen that window because, of all those on the ground floor, that one had the loosest catch. Finding a chunk of stone that had fallen from some part of the house he dragged it across to the window and stood up on it. Almost immediately he spotted the screw jammed into the catch, and knew he wouldn’t be able to force it from the outside.
Somebody must have guessed he’d been inside the property. He thought he’d covered his tracks, and had only taken a handful of the choicest pieces. Quickly he tried forcing the other windows in the back wall of the house, but he knew that all the other catches were stiff with rust and disuse. Within ten minutes he was certain he was wasting his time — none of the other catches had budged even a millimetre.
Grumbling to himself, Carfax gathered together his tools and equipment. His best option seemed to be a ladder that he could use to reach one of the first-floor windows. Hopefully he’d be able to force one of them. His only other choice was to break a pane of glass and open a window on the ground floor but then the police would get involved and he really didn’t want that.
There were a couple of pieces of really good Georgian silver somewhere in the house that he hadn’t found yet, and a tray made by Paul Storr that he guessed would have a five-figure price tag, so being able to get inside undetected was vital.
No, he’d just have to come back tomorrow with a ladder. He had a right to Oliver’s possessions, and he was going to make damn sure they came to him, not to any museum.
14
‘Nice place,’ Chris Bronson remarked as Angela parked her Mini outside Carfax Hall the next morning.
Despite being divorced, he and Angela had remained the closest of friends, talking every day on the phone, and had come to trust and rely on each other perhaps even more than some married couples. Bronson was hoping they might get back together as man and wife, but Angela was still cautious about committing to that, the painful recollection of their separation and divorce still fresh in her memory. He was doing all he could to make her change her mind.
He had taken a couple of days’ leave and had driven up the previous evening, after Angela had told him about the possible intruder at Carfax Hall. Angela said she’d feel a lot happier having him around, and he’d agreed to come immediately. It was, he hoped, a sign that she might be about to put the past behind her.
‘I’m afraid the house is virtually falling apart. All those lumps of stone’ — she pointed — ‘have fallen off the roof and the upper walls. That’s why we can’t park any closer. The building’s losing bricks and masonry like a snake shedding its skin. We reckon it’ll be bulldozed inside a year.’
‘That’s a shame. I suppose it’s just deteriorated too much to save.’
‘That, plus the fact that the ungrateful relative who’s actually inherited the place — he’s a second cousin twice removed or something like that, according to Richard Mayhew — has already applied for planning permission to build houses in the parkland.’
The front door was locked, so Angela rang the bell. ‘This is just a precaution,’ she said, ‘until we — or, to be exact, you — tell us we’re all imagining things.’
The heavy door swung open and Richard Mayhew peered out at them, looking the image of a museum curator, Bronson thought.
‘Oh, it’s you, Angela,’ he said, testily. ‘Hello, Chris. This is completely unnecessary, you know. Angela’s reading far too much into things.’
‘If you don’t mind, Richard, I’ll be the judge of that. In my experience, Angela rarely overreacts.’
Mayhew grunted, pulled the door wide open and stepped aside to let them enter the hall.
‘Thanks,’ Angela said, leading Bronson around the base of the main staircase and down a corridor towards the back of the house. ‘Thanks for backing me up like that. Richard’s one of those annoying people who always think they’re right.’
Bronson smiled at her. ‘If you say there’s a problem, there’s a problem, and I’m here to fix it for you. Or at least I’ll try to.’
Angela pushed open the door at the end of the short corridor and stepped through into the kitchen. ‘This is where I’ve been working,’ she said, indicating the old table partially covered in assorted china and ceramics.
‘You make coffee and tea for the chaps in here, do you?’ Bronson asked.
‘In their dreams.’ Angela put her bag at the end of the table. ‘If they want drinks, they make their own. But I am prepared to make you a coffee, if you’d like one.’
Bronson nodded. ‘While you’re doing that, let me take a quick look at that window.’
Angela plugged in the kettle and pointed towards a door on one side of the kitchen. ‘Down there,’ she said. ‘That corridor runs along the back of the house. The window we found unlocked was at the far end.’
Bronson strode out of the room. He wasn’t gone for long. Angela had only just finished making two mugs of coffee when he walked back into the kitchen.
‘Did one of you jam the catch with a screw?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I d
id. It seemed very loose, so I thought it was a good idea.’
‘I’ve found what look like fresh scratch marks on that catch. I think they’re recent because there are a couple of flakes of paint still attached to one of the scratches. It looks to me like somebody has tried slipping the catch with something like a Slim Jim — you know, a thin length of steel?’
Angela looked alarmed.
‘Well, someone’s been using something similar to try to get that window open,’ Bronson continued. ‘He’s been sliding a steel tool between the two parts of the sash window and trying to undo the catch. The marks are quite unmistakable. The good news is that the screw you jammed into the mechanism stopped him from doing it. The bad news is that I found similar marks on the catches of all the windows along that corridor, so it was obviously a very determined attempt to break in.’
‘Are you sure? I mean, couldn’t those marks have been there for some time?’
Bronson picked up his mug of coffee. ‘Not really, no. I reckon your intruder tried really hard to open the window with the loose catch, because there are more scratches on that than any of the others. He didn’t get anywhere, because you’d jammed it, so he tried all the other windows at the back of the house, then he gave up.’
Angela shivered and rubbed her arms.
