“Catherine Richardson, I’m arresting you for the murder of Gilbert Wood.” It was Vera, pre-empting him. Taking responsibility. Putting the world to rights.
THE UNKNOWN CRIME by Sarah Rayne
I’VE NEVER BEEN a high-profile thief. I’d better make that clear at the start. But I’m moderately prosperous and over the years I’ve developed my own line in small, rare antiques. An elegant chased silver chalice from some obscure museum, perhaps, or a Georgian sugar sifter.
But I’ve always had a yen to commit a crime that would create international headlines. The removal of the Koh-i-noor or St Edward’s Crown or a Chaucer first folio. You’re probably smiling smugly, but there are people who will pay huge sums of money for such objects. (I’d be lying if I said the money didn’t interest me.)
And then my grandfather died, leaving me all his belongings, and the dream of a theft that would echo round the world and down the years suddenly came within my grasp.
He lived in Hampstead, my grandfather, and the solicitors sent me the keys to the house. I didn’t go out there immediately; I was absorbed in a delicate operation involving the removal of a Venetian glass tazza from a private collection – very nice, too. A saucer-shaped dish on a stem, beautifully engraved. So between tazzas and fences (yes, they do still exist as a breed and I have several charming friends among the fraternity), it was a good ten days before I went out to Hampstead. And the minute I stepped through the door I had the feeling of something waiting for me. Something that could give me that elusive, longed-for crime.
I was right. I found it – at least the start of it – in a box of old letters and cards in the attic. I know that sounds hackneyed, but attics really are places where secrets are stored and Rembrandts found. And, as my grandfather used to say, if you can’t find a Rembrandt to flog, paint one yourself. My father specialized in stealing jewellery, but my grandfather was a very good forger. He was just as good at replacing the real thing with his fakes. If you’ve ever been in the National Gallery and stood in front of a certain portrait… Let’s just say he fooled a great many people.
At first look the attic wasn’t very promising. But there was a box of papers which appeared to have been my great-grandfather’s. He was a bit of mystery, my great-grandfather, but there’s a family legend that he was involved in the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907. My father used to say he had never been nearer the Irish Crown Jewels than the pub down the road, but I always hoped the legend was true. And it has to be said, the Irish Crown Jewels never were recovered.
It wasn’t the Irish Crown Jewels I found in that house, though. It was something far more intriguing.
Most of the box’s contents were of no interest. Accounts for tailoring (the old boy sounded as if he had been quite a natty dresser), and faded postcards and receipts. But at the very bottom of the box was a sheaf of yellowing notes in writing so faded it was nearly indecipherable.
How my grandfather missed those papers I can’t imagine. Perhaps he never went up to the attics, or perhaps he couldn’t be bothered to decipher the writing. If your work is forging fine art and Elizabethan manuscripts, it’d be a bit of a busman’s holiday to pore over faded spider-scrawls that will most likely turn out to be somebody’s mislaid laundry list or a recipe for Scotch broth.
But the papers were neither of those things.
They were an account of Great-grandfather’s extraordinary activities during the autumn of 1918.
October 1918
I’ve been living in an underground shelter with German shells raining down at regular intervals for what feels like years, although I believe it’s actually only three weeks. But whether it’s three weeks or three days, it’s absolute hell and I’d trade my virtue (ha!) to be back in England.
You’d expect a battlefield to be cut off from the rest of the world, but we get some news here: how the Germans have withdrawn on the Western Front, how the Kaiser’s going to abdicate, even how a peace treaty is being hammered out. It’s difficult to know what’s truth and what’s propaganda, though. And then last night I was detailed to deliver a message a couple of miles along the line.
I’m not a coward, but I’m not a hero either and it doesn’t take a genius to know that a lone soldier, scurrying along in the dark, is a lot more vulnerable than if he’s in a properly dug trench, near a gun-post. But orders are orders and I delivered the message, then returned by a different route. That’s supposed to fool the enemy, although I should think the enemy’s up to most of the tricks we play, just as we’re up to most of theirs.
I was halfway back when I saw the château. The chimes of midnight were striking in the south and there was the occasional burst of gunfire somewhere to the north. It was bitterly cold and I daresay I was temporarily mad or even suffering from what’s called shell-shock. But I stood there for almost an hour, staring at that château. It called out to me – it beckoned like Avalon or Valhalla or the Elysian Fields.
I was no longer conscious of the stench of death and cordite and the chloride of lime that’s used to sluice out the trenches. I could smell wealth: paintings, silver, tapestries…
But I can’t drag a Bayeux tapestry or a brace of French Impressionists across acres of freezing mud. Whatever I take will have to be small. And saleable. There’s no point in taking stuff that hasn’t got a market. I remember the disastrous affair of the Irish Crown Jewels…
The present
That’s as far as I read that first day. The light was going and the electricity was off, and it’s not easy to decipher a hundred-year-old scrawl in an attic in semi-darkness. Also, I had to complete the sale of the tazza. That went smoothly, of course. I never visualized otherwise. I’m very good at what I do. That night I celebrated with a couple of friends. I have no intention of including in these pages what somebody once called the interesting revelations of the bedchamber; I’ll just say when I woke up I was in a strange bed and I wasn’t alone. And since one can’t just get up and go home after breakfast in that situation (very ungentlemanly), it was a couple of days before I returned to Great-grandfather’s papers.
November 1918
For two weeks I thought I wouldn’t be able to return to the château. You can’t just climb out of the trenches and stroll across the landscape at will.
Then last night I was chosen to act as driver for several of the high-ranking officers travelling to Compiègne, and I thought – that’s it! For once the British army, God bless it, has played right into my hands. I’ll deposit my officers in Compiègne, then I’ll sneak a couple of hours on my own.
We set off early this morning – it’s 10 November, if anyone reading this likes details.
Later
I have no idea where we are, except that it’s in Picardie. I’ve been driving for almost an hour and it’s slow progress. We’ve stopped at an inn for a meal; the officers are muttering to one another and glancing round as if to make sure no one’s listening.
I’m in the garden, supposedly taking a breath of air, but actually I’m staring across at the château and writing this. I can see the place clearly, and it’s a beautiful sight.
The present
I was interrupted by the phone ringing. A furtive voice asked if it had the right number and, on being assured it had, enquired if I would be interested in discussing a jewelled egg recently brought out of Russia. Yes, it was believed to be Fabergé. No, it was not exactly for sale, simply considered surplus to requirements. A kindness, really, to remove it.
“Considered surplus by whom?”