The Green Jade Dragon

by Evelyn James

  He was also constantly updating his personal collection and could regularly be found at sales with his eye on some exquisite and undervalued piece that his fellow ‘experts’ had failed to recognise for what it was.

  Clara was shown into Mr Jacobs’ personal sitting room. It happened to be the room with the tower at its corner. Clara glanced over curiously and could see how the builders had affixed the octagonal structure to the side of the house, knocking through the walls so that it was possible to step straight into the tower with its three windows. There was an armchair in the awkward space, next to a pile of books sitting on a small table. It appeared to be Mr Jacobs’ reading spot, but he was not there for the moment. Instead he was sitting on a long sofa before a large Tudor style window, with its glass arranged into little diamonds by strips of lead.

  Mr Jacobs was dressed in brown tweed and had a little red bowtie at the collar of his white shirt. He looked well turned out for greeting his guest, down to the purple silk handkerchief carefully arranged in his top pocket. He was bald, except for a rim of hair about his ears. This was a light brown with no hint of grey. He was well-fed, but not to the point of being fat, rather he looked well-nurtured like a solid carthorse. Clara noted a ring on his finger, but it was not a wedding band.

  “Welcome Miss Fitzgerald, I am delighted you could come so swiftly,” Mr Jacobs rose and indicated that she should sit on the sofa beside him. Clara obeyed.

  “Your note indicated you required my help?” Clara said as she sat down. The room was warm and filled with the evening sunshine that cast glowing lines across the floor.

  “Well, the police have failed me and I am forced back upon my own resources. I had hoped you could assist me.”

  “What has precisely happened?” Clara asked.

  “Just over a week ago my property was burgled,” Mr Jacobs said sadly. He looked a tad embarrassed at admitting his misfortune. “Only one item was stolen, a very specific item, which leads me to imagine that the burglary was a professional undertaking. I have been in the antiques business a long time and I have seen things like this happen before, though I never imagined it would happen to me. I always thought my security precautions adequate.”

  Mr Jacobs looked abashed, clearly feeling ashamed that he had allowed such a thing to occur. A thin gloss of sweat was forming on his bald pate as he flushed with indignation.

  “What was stolen?” Clara asked to distract him.

  “A relatively small item. Very specific,” Mr Jacobs rose and showed Clara to what looked like a table, but which was in fact a box with a glass top – a display case for small items. Inside the case were a series of individual compartments, all divided by wooden sections. Mr Jacobs lifted the lid of the cabinet and showed Clara the trinkets inside. “These are Japanese netsukes. They were used to hold objects together, serving as a toggle, if you will on a string. Originally they were just practical little beads, but over time they became most exquisite. They became an art form.”

  Mr Jacobs lifted out one of the objects. It was white and carved into the form of several hares leaping in a circle. Each hare was tiny, but precisely carved with detailed fur and even a seeming expression on each face.

  “I am an expert on Japanese antiquities, one of the foremost in England. I even have Japanese collectors asking my opinion on objects they have bought. Naturally, I have my own collection. These netsuke are my most precious items, not that all of them have great value, but it is what they symbolise that attracts me. The great skill and craftmanship that has gone into them is just as exquisite as any British masterpiece on canvas.”

  Mr Jacobs reverently put back the small netsuke and picked up another.

  “This is made of walrus tooth,” he handed Clara the netsuke which depicted a portly man pouring out wine or perhaps beer into a container.

  “One of these was stolen?” Clara asked, handing back the small ornament.

  “Yes,” Mr Jacobs became downcast. “This one.”

  He pointed to an empty slot in the cabinet. It was at the top, in the middle of the row and it seemed to shriek out its emptiness to them.

  “This item, as it may not surprise you, was one of my most cherished. It was made of green jade, a rare material for a netsuke, and was carved into the form of a royal dragon. The dragon is a great symbol of Japan and is deemed a bringer of good fortune, as well as a creature of potential destruction. The dragon was naturally valuable but it held further significance for me, for it was the start of my collection,” Mr Jacobs quietly put down the lid of the cabinet and showed Clara back to the sofa. “My uncle Edmund was a great traveller during the last century. He particularly liked to travel to the far east. He always brought me back a gift. He was the one that sparked my interesting in Japanese antiquities and set me on the path I have pursued all my life.

  “One summer he returned from a trip to Japan. It had been an exhausting trip for him, though he failed to explain why. I always suspected he had endured some misfortune during it. Anyway, he stayed at this very house on his return and he presented me with a gift – the green jade dragon. He explained what it was and its purpose. Then he asked me to keep it safe for him. I remember him placing it in the palm of my hand and folding my fingers around it, then winking at me. Naturally I promised.”

  Mr Jacobs stared across the room at the raided table cabinet. His distress at failing his uncle, despite all the years that had passed since the promise was made, was palpable.

  “A few weeks later my uncle died in a carriage accident in London. A terrible thing. He was crushed under the wheels,” Mr Jacobs scowled at the memory. “I have kept the dragon safe for him ever since, and it was the spark for my future collecting. Now it is gone, and I want you to bring it back to me.”

  Clara nodded, completely understanding why the object was so precious and why its loss had come so hard to Mr Jacobs. Had it been merely valuable he might have been able to live with the notion that it would never be restored to him, but its emotional significance meant he could not resolved himself to its permanent absence.

  “Can you tell me about the burglary?” Clara now asked. “When it occurred? And how they got in?”

  “Yes,” Mr Jacobs rose again. “This way.”

  He took her through a set of double doors at the back of the room and they found themselves in a dark hallway.

  “This passage divides the sitting room from the dining room. I believe it was originally intended as a discreet passage for servants to use when attending to guests,” Mr Jacobs pointed to his left. There was a window mounted in the wall. It was narrow and made narrower by a bar of stone that divided it in two. It was the only source of natural light in the passage and it was broken. “All my downstairs windows have shutters reinforced with steel, Miss Fitzgerald. I am well-aware of the many valuable things this house contains and I have made provisions to keep them safe. When I go away the shutters are drawn and locked across all the windows, all except this one which I always deemed too small for a person to enter by.”

  Clara stepped forward to look at the window which was high up in the wall. It was indeed narrow and would be difficult to slide through, yet someone clearly had. Perhaps a child?

  “Once through this window, there was no obstacle for the thief left. The police believe he came through the doors behind us and went straight to the table cabinet. It does not have a lock, but even if it had I doubt it would have troubled the perpetrator for long,” Mr Jacobs pulled a face at the broken window. The smashed glass had been cleared up and a wooden board placed over the hole.

  “The house was completely empty when it happened?” Clara asked, having inspected the window to her satisfaction.

  “Not entirely. My housekeeper remains on when I depart. She has a set of rooms in the attic and is meant to be another deterrent to thieves. Or so I thought. I don’t like the idea of leaving the house absolutely empty. My butler, Mr Yaxley, comes with me when I travel.”

  “Your housekeeper heard nothing?” Cla
ra asked.

  “Apparently not. She did not become aware of the crime until the next morning. Unfortunately, at first she did not realise anything had been taken and assumed it was just an act of vandalism. She cleaned up the glass and blocked the window. Only when she was dusting later did she notice the jade dragon was missing.”

  Clara nodded, it would be natural enough to at first think the incident was just someone throwing stones when the rest of the house was seemingly untouched.

  “And the police have been here?”

  “For what good it did,” Mr Jacobs shrugged his shoulders. “They looked around, complaining about the glass being removed. My housekeeper was most upset by their attitude. She has been sullen ever since. They wouldn’t believe at first that someone could crawl through that window, even when it was pointed out about the missing item. They actually suggested I might have taken it myself without my housekeeper’s knowledge when I went on my trip.”

  Mr Jacobs looked most indignant about the way his staff and himself had been treated by the police. In the dark of the hall his face had taken on a haunted look as the shadows fell over it.

  “Eventually they were persuaded I had not taken the dragon, when I came home the following evening and told them so,” Mr Jacobs explained. “Even then, I suspect they think I did this as an insurance fraud. They are all fools, naturally I did not. But they look at all this with disbelieving eyes. Anyway, one of the more sympathetic constables took me aside and made it plain how difficult it is to retrieve stolen property. They don’t hold out much hope of finding my dragon.”

  “They have not offered a suggestion of a suspect?”

  “No, nothing,” Mr Jacobs gave a gruff huff. “I gave them time to act, but whenever I pay a call on them to discover their progress I am given platitudes and sent on my way. Eventually I decided I needed an independent pair of eyes on the matter. Which is why I asked for you.”

  Mr Jacobs hesitated, a sudden pang of unease came over him.

  “Can you help me?” he asked anxiously, perhaps fearing Clara would offer him the same sympathetic platitudes the police had done.

  “I shall certainly endeavour,” Clara replied, reassuring him with a smile. “I can make no promises, but there may be hope in the fact that the dragon was clearly targeted for a reason. Someone knew you had it and just where to look.”

  “Yes!” Mr Jacobs almost cried out with renewed hope. “Yes, that is quite right.”

  “Who would know about the jade dragon?” Clara asked. “Has it been shown to many people recently?”

  Mr Jacobs’ jubilant face now turned downwards into a parody of one of the tragedy masks seen at theatres. He motioned that Clara should follow him back into the sitting room. Opening a drawer, he pulled out a booklet and handed it to Clara. She instantly saw that it was a catalogue from a recent exhibition at the British Museum. The catalogue proudly declared that the exhibition was of Japanese antiquities.

  “Turn to page sixteen,” Mr Jacobs said glumly.

  Clara did as she was told and was greeted by a black and white photograph of a tiny carved netsuke. She could not tell from the photograph that the item was made of green jade, but she could see that it was shaped like a dragon curling around on itself. The text beneath the picture identified the item and also gave a polite credit to Mr Humphry Jacobs of Brighton for loaning the object from his private collection. Clara looked up and met Mr Jacobs’ eyes.

  “To answer your question,” he said, “yes it has been shown to many people. I might offer a guess at thousands.”

  Clara sighed. That was an awful lot of suspects.

  Chapter Three

  Clara was introduced to Mrs Crocker, Mr Jacobs’ housekeeper, in the kitchen. She was a woman who appeared to have been lumped together by an ungainly hand. She had an oval, nondescript body atop stubby legs, ornamented by two chubby arms and a head that merged alarmingly with her shoulders. She did not improve her appearance of being made from uncooked dough by the hearty scowl that seemed deeply ingrained on her face. Whereas some people have smile lines, she had scowl lines.

  “Mrs Crocker, this is Miss Fitzgerald who will be investigating the disappearance of the dragon netsuke,” Mr Jacobs introduced them.

  The housekeeper said nothing, but her scowl seemed to deepen and Clara suspected her presence was resented. Perhaps Mrs Crocker was feeling guilt over her failure to realise sooner that the netsuke had been stolen.

  “Miss Fitzgerald has a few questions for you, I am sure you will be accommodating,” Mr Jacobs continued easily. “I shall not interfere. I shall return to my sitting room.”

  Mr Jacobs departed, leaving Clara alone with the unhappy housekeeper. Mrs Crocker had been in the process of ironing linen handkerchiefs when they had arrived in her domain. She quietly put the flat iron back on the stove.

  “Perhaps you could tell me about the night someone broke in?” Clara asked her, smiling to try and ease the tension.

  “What is there to tell?” Mrs Crocker shrugged her fat shoulders. “I was in bed.”

  “You have rooms up in the attic?” Clara asked.

  “Yes. It’s a long way from up there to down here,” Mrs Crocker said pointedly. “I was asleep when it happened and heard nothing.”

  If Mrs Crocker was lying, she was certainly not going to admit it. Clara could see she was going to be belligerent over everything Clara asked her.

  “When did you first notice there had been an incident?” she asked, still smiling and giving the appearance of not being fazed by the housekeeper’s surliness.

  “When I came downstairs,” Mrs Crocker shrugged again, it was an abrupt, sharp action, almost as if the question was so foolish it was hardly worth her time to shrug at it.

  “You came straight down into the hallway where the window was broken?” Clara queried with a pretence of innocence.

  “No, of course not. I came down to the kitchen first. It was when I went about to do my dusting that I saw it,” Mrs Crocker brindled at having to explain herself further. “I stood on the glass before I saw it.”

  “That hallway is quite dark, even with the window,” Clara nodded, now trying the tactic of being sympathetic to the housekeeper.

  Whether it was working was difficult to say. Mrs Crocker had sat herself at the kitchen table and folded her stout arms in front of her. Clara, in contrast, relaxed more in her own chair and tried to appear nonchalant.

  “I never liked that hallway. Always thought it was a pointless piece of design. Idea seems to have been that it would prevent servants going through the sitting room to the dining room directly. It was a secret passage they could use to service each room without stumbling upon the household,” this was the most Mrs Crocker had said, and it seemed Clara had touched on something that irritated her deeply. Mrs Crocker was the sort of servant who doesn’t like to be reminded that that is exactly what they are. “It gathers spiders too. They like the dark and all the corners. I have to dust the ceiling for cobwebs at least twice a week.”

  “And you were doing that when you stood on the broken glass?”

  “Well, I wasn’t expecting to find that, was I?” Mrs Crocker tutted to herself. “The entire pane had been knocked out, not a fragment of glass left. When I stepped into the hallway, what with it being dark, I didn’t realise there was no glass in the window until I heard it crunching under my feet.”

  Mrs Crocker’s lips squirmed, it seemed a pang of conscience was coming over her. One large finger toyed with the cuff of the sleeve of her dress, teasing at a loose thread.

  “It took me by surprise.”

  “There were no other obvious signs that someone had been in the house?”

  “What do you want me to say? The police asked me exactly the same thing,” Mrs Crocker glowered at the memory; the police had harassed her, made her feel she had something to hide when she did not. “It was not as though there were wet footprints on the carpet or something. There was just the broken glass. None of the doors were eve
n open. I thought some kids had been playing silly beggars and thrown a stone at the window. So I swept up the glass and asked the gardener when he arrived to fix a board over the window.”

  “How long afterwards did you realise something was missing?” Clara asked steadily, gradually dragging the story from Mrs Crocker.

  The woman gave another of her short, sharp shrugs.

  “It was probably about an hour. I had to sweep up the glass and beat the rug from the hallway to make sure none remained. Then I spoke to Mr Hobbs the gardener. Finally I got back to my dusting,” Mrs Crocker pulled in her lips, her face seeming to squeeze in on itself. “That was when I noticed the empty space in the netsuke cabinet. I dust that case every day and I know what should be in there. I realised the little green dragon was missing. That was when I knew it had not just been kids messing about.”

  “You rang the police?”

  “Yes. For what good it did me,” Mrs Crocker looked hurt. “At first they didn’t believe me, said that maybe Mr Jacobs had taken the dragon with him. I said that was most unlikely, it was not the sort of thing you carry around in your pocket. Anyway, there was all that broken glass to think about. But they didn’t take much heed of that either, because of the window being so small.”

  “They didn’t think a person could squeeze through it?”

  “No,” Mrs Crocker stopped toying with her sleeve. “They made me feel like a silly old woman causing trouble for no reason. It was only when Mr Jacobs came home and he agreed that the dragon was missing that they took me seriously. Then I got it in the neck for clearing up the glass. They said if there had been fingerprints on it, I would now have destroyed them.”

  Mrs Crocker had clearly been rather offended by the attitude of the police. Clara began to see why she was so defensive towards her.

  “I doubt there were fingerprints on the glass,” Clara reassured her. “This sounds a professional job, and professionals know not to leave fingerprints.”