This all said to me that the box had some value way beyond its monetary and historical worth for Dory and possibly for others. But how could that be? As Dr. Xie had pointed out in another context, this was a large country with many millennia of history. There were thousands if not millions of treasures here worth as much, and doubtless a lot more, than one silver box. Yes, it was silver; yes, it was very old; and yes, it was valuable. What else? That it contained instructions for the production of an elixir of immortality? I suppose if you were Ponce de Leon that would be a big selling point. In this Jay and age, however, it was highly unlikely this fact alone explained anything.
Was it a peace offering of sorts on the part of Dory, an indication she’d come to terms with her past? Maybe, but I hadn’t heard anything from her that would indicate this was the case. If anything, her opinion hardened the more we had talked about it.
And if the silver box was so important, was its first owner, the concubine Lingfei, the key to this mystery? I wasn’t prepared to accept the leap to immortality that one of the boxes supported. Lingfei was dead. Maybe her body was stolen. Was this relevant? Assuming someone thought she’d made the transition successfully, would she be buried, or if not, then perhaps the clothes she’d left behind? In other words, was this about a tomb? Chances were, absolutely. The dealer who’d led me to his home for tea and a sales pitch had clearly known where a tomb was located, or at least knew someone who did. Had these silver boxes been looted from a tomb? And where might this tomb be? Lingfei hadn’t made it into the guidebooks or the Internet, so maybe her tomb hadn’t been found—officially, that is. As an imperial concubine in the court of Illustrious August, though, the likelihood of her being buried somewhere near Chang’an, which is to say Xi’an, was pretty high.
What if someone in Xi’an knew where this tomb was? What if several people did? When I’d been in the Muslim Quarter waving the photograph of the silver box around, a shopkeeper had directed me to the stall of the man in the mosque. It was the right place even if I wished I hadn’t seen what I had.
I had the feeling I was getting warm here, but I needed a lot more information. I didn’t want to leave the hotel to get it, either. Who, I wondered, would help me get what I sought? Anyone who had been in Xi’an at the time of Burton’s demise, or that of the man in the alley, or the man from the mosque for that matter, was automatically eliminated as too risky, guilty until proven otherwise. That meant I could not look to Dr. Xie, Mira Tetford, and now Liu David, who wasn’t speaking to me in any case. As for Ruby, perhaps that wasn’t the best idea either, given that all I had was her mobile number, and she could have been anywhere.
Was it actually going to be possible for me to avoid asking questions of any of these people if I wanted to get to the bottom of this? Probably not, but I was going to try. I really needed to know more about the history of those silver boxes, their provenance. Where had they been since Dory had seen them when she was young? Dory for sure wasn’t telling me anything. I didn’t want to ask George about it either. So what could I learn without consulting George? That night I called my friend, neighbor, and sometime employee, Alex Stewart. Alex has a deft way of finding out just about anything, and furthermore, he has a good sense of what’s relevant and what’s not. As a bonus, he seemed very happy to hear from me.
“I have a huge favor to ask,” I said. “Is there any way you could go into the shop today?”
“Of course. I was planning to go in any event. Give could use some help.”
“Do you recall where we keep our stash of auction catalogs?”
“Indeed I do. You must have at least ten years’ worth there. Pretty soon you’ll have to occupy the shop next door to have enough storage space for them.”
“And sometimes they come in very handy,” I said. “I need you to check the most recent Molesworth and Cox Oriental auction, the one I went to this fall. In it you will find a photograph of a silver box, T’ang dynasty. That is the one I went to New York to try to buy.”
“I remember, yes.”
“Take a good look at that one, and then if you don’t mind, go through the back issues of the catalog and see if you can find an almost identical silver box that is slightly larger.” I checked my notes and gave Alex the dimensions of George’s box, the one Dory had shown me when I went to visit. “Same shape, same type of decoration, but the smaller one would fit inside the larger. I need to know when that came on the market. It may not be there, but I’m hoping that it will be.”
“Easily done,” he said. “When will I get back to you? How many hours time difference?”
“Thirteen,” I said.
“I’ll call you tonight then, tomorrow morning for you.”
“Call me in the middle of the night,” I said. “I mean it.”
“I’ll leave right now,” he said.
The telephone rang several hours later in the early morning. I wasn’t asleep. “I’m sorry to take so long on this, Lara. It ended up being more complicated that I thought, and perhaps you will also be surprised by what I have found. Shall I just begin?”
“Yes, please, and I’m sorry to put you to so much trouble.”
“It was very interesting, and I’m glad to help. I had no trouble, of course, identifying the box you described to me. I then started to look for something similar. I started with the Molesworth and Cox catalogs, just because that is where the box you were attempting to get was to be sold, and I assume people choose auction houses that specialize in the kind of thing they want to sell. That was my theory, anyway. At first I thought that this request of yours was very simple and straightforward. I found a similar box right away, as you suggested I might, in the Molesworth and Cox Oriental auction about eighteen months ago, in the spring. Molesworth appears to hold two Oriental auctions a year. I have the information from that sale, and I’d be happy to give it to you.”
“That’s great, Alex. I’m glad it didn’t take a lot of your time. Except didn’t you say this took longer than you thought it would?”
“Exactly. I thought I was home free when I found the listing, complete with photograph, so there was no mistaking the resemblance. But just to be sure, I took the dimensions you gave me, and I compared them to the listing in the catalog. That was when I knew this was not going to be as easy as I thought: the dimensions you gave me are not the same as the one I identified in the catalog; those are about an inch bigger all ‘round, in fact.”
“Just a minute! There are two boxes in question here, the small one in this fall’s auction catalog, and then one whose dimensions I gave you that belonged to George Matthews. I measured it myself.”
“That is my point. The measurements are not the same as those that you gave me for the George Matthews box. This box is larger than either the Matthews or the stolen box.”
“I thought I was careful. Dory gave me complete access to that box of her husband’s to photograph and measure, so I should have gotten it right. I must have screwed up,” I said.
“Ah, but you didn’t. You usually don’t, that much I learned working at McClintoch and Swain. If Clive measures something, measure it again. If Lara measures it, relax. That’s what piqued my interest.”
“I’m flattered, I guess, but where are you going with this?”
“There is a third box,” he said. “Given that the measurements didn’t jive, I went on looking for one that did. I found it, too, up for auction about three years ago. These boxes are coming on the market at eighteen month intervals, and there are three of them, not two.”