As the Crow Flies

“Have you completed the estimates on the silver sale yet?” she asked as they jumped into the lift just before the doors closed. She touched the “G” and the lift began its slow journey to the ground floor.

“Yes. Finished them last night. One hundred and thirty-two items in all. I reckon they might raise somewhere in the region of seven thousand po

unds.”

“I saw the catalogue for the first time this morning,” said Becky. “It looks to me as if Cathy has done another first-class job. I was only able to pick up one or two minor errors but I’d still like to check over the final proofs before they go back to the printer.”

“Of course,” said Simon. “I’ll ask her to bring all the loose sheets up to your office this afternoon.” They stepped out of the lift.

“That girl has turned out to be a real find,” said Becky. “Heaven knows what she was doing working in a hotel before she came to us. I shall certainly miss her when she goes back to Australia.”

“Rumor has it that she’s thinking of staying.”

“That’s good news,” said Becky. “I thought she was only hoping to spend a couple of years in London before she returned to Melbourne?”

“That’s what she had originally planned. However, I may have been able to convince her that she should stay on a little longer.”

Becky would have asked Simon to explain in greater detail but once they had set foot in the gallery she was quickly surrounded by staff anxious to gain her attention.

After Becky had dealt with several queries, she asked one of the girls who worked on the counter if she could locate Cathy.

“She’s not actually around at the moment, Lady Trumper,” the assistant told her. “I saw her go out about an hour ago.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“No idea, I’m sorry.”

“Well, ask her to come to my office the moment she returns. Meanwhile, could you send up those catalogue proofs for the silver sale?”

Becky stopped several times on the way back to her room to discuss other gallery problems that had arisen in her absence, so that by the time she sat down at her desk, the proofs for the silver sale were already awaiting her. She began to turn the pages slowly, checking each entry against its photograph and then the detailed description. She had to agree with Becky—Cathy Ross had done a first-class job. She was studying the photograph of the Georgian mustard pot that Charlie had overbid for at Christie’s some years before when there was a knock on the door and a young woman popped her head in.

“You asked to see me?”

“Yes. Do come in, Cathy.” Becky looked up at a tall, slim girl with a mass of curly fair hair and a face that hadn’t quite lost all its freckles. She liked to think that her own figure had once been as good as Cathy’s but the bathroom mirror unflatteringly reminded her that she was fast approaching her fiftieth birthday. “I only wanted to check over the final catalogue proofs for the silver sale before they went back to the printer.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t around when you returned from the board meeting,” Cathy said. “It’s just that something came up that worried me. I may be overreacting, but I felt you ought to know about it in any case.”

Becky took off her glasses, placed them on the desk and looked up intently. “I’m listening.”

“Do you remember that man who stood up during the Italian auction and caused all that trouble over the Bronzino?”

“Will I ever forget him?”

“Well, he was in the gallery again this morning.”

“Can you be sure?”

“I’m fairly confident. Well-built, graying hair, a brownish moustache and sallow complexion. He even had the nerve to wear that awful tweed jacket and yellow tie again.”

“What did he want this time?”

“I can’t be certain of that, although I kept a close eye on him. He didn’t speak to any member of the staff, but took a great deal of interest in some of the items that were coming up in the silver sale—in particular Lot 19.”

Becky replaced her glasses and turned the catalogue pages over quickly until she came to the item in question: “A Georgian silver tea set made up of four pieces, teapot, sugar bowl, tea strainer and sugar tongs, hallmarked with an anchor. Becky looked down at the letters “AH” printed in the margin. “Estimated value seventy pounds. One of our better items.”

“And he obviously agrees with you,” Cathy replied, “because he spent a considerable time studying each individual piece, then made copious notes before he left. He even checked the teapot against a photograph he had brought with him.”

“Our photograph?”