The Messiah Secret

‘According to Roger Halliwell, you’re only the administrative head. That means you control the budget that buys our food and pays for the accommodation back at the pub. Otherwise, we’re here as six individuals from six different departments, with an equal say in what we do. Chris has volunteered to stay here overnight to make sure that whoever’s been burgling this house doesn’t get back inside again, and I for one think that’s a really good idea. I had hoped you’d think it was a good idea as well but, as you don’t, maybe we should take a vote on it.’

‘What’s the harm, Richard?’ Owen Reynolds suggested. ‘It’s not like one of us staying here – Chris is a police officer, well able to take care of himself. He’s the ideal man for the job.’

Mayhew glanced around the kitchen, sensing general agreement among the others there. He made one more attempt to get them to change their minds.

‘Suppose he gets hurt? What about the insurance implications, all that kind of thing?’

‘It’s not your property,’ Bronson interjected, ‘so you have nothing to do with the insurance of the building or its contents. But if it would make you any happier, I’d be pleased to sign a waiver absolving you and the museum from any responsibility for me being here overnight.’

Mayhew recognized defeat when he saw it, and raised his hands in the air. ‘Oh, very well, then. Do whatever you like,’ he muttered irritably, and stalked out of the room.

Bronson had nothing to do. His stint as an unpaid night-watchman wouldn’t start until the evening, when everyone else had left the building, so he made a point of checking every room in the house, noting possible hiding places, points of entry, and so on. He made two complete circuits of the interior of the old house, then did the same outside, before going back to the kitchen, where Angela was still working her way steadily through the collection of china and ceramics.

‘Anything interesting?’ he asked, flicking the switch on the kettle.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘You?’

Bronson shook his head. ‘Just one very slight oddity,’ he said. ‘This house has been owned by the same family for a while, hasn’t it?’

Angela nodded. ‘Since the middle of the nineteenth century, I think. Why?’

‘There’s a coat of arms above the main door, cut into the stone lintel, and others on the backs of the dining-room chairs, on the wall over the fireplace in the salon, and so on. There’s also a coat of arms in the background of each of the two paintings of Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax that are hanging in the first-floor corridor.’

‘So?’ Angela was busy packing more worthless china into her auction box.

‘Well, the crests in the paintings of Bartholomew are slightly different. Both of those have the head of a fox in the top right-hand quadrant of the shield. All the others have the head of a bird – I think it’s a hawk – in the same position.’

‘Maybe the painter made a mistake,’ Angela suggested.

Bronson shook his head. ‘Both paintings were obviously done from life. Bartholomew was sitting in a chair in the salon and the artist was painting what he saw. Why would he get three of the four quadrants of the shield right, and then substitute an entirely different image for the fourth?’

Angela stopped packing. ‘You’re very observant, Chris,’ she said, smiling. ‘For a man, anyway!’

‘I’m a policeman, remember? I’m supposed to notice things. They’re called clues.’

‘Well, I agree – the paintings are a bit odd.’ She explained about the two pictures showing Bartholomew as a young man in exotic dress, both of which had been sold shortly after they were completed. ‘And then there was the fiasco of his Folly.’

Bronson poured himself a cup of instant coffee and sat down as Angela explained about Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax’s obsession with a lost treasure hidden somewhere in the Middle East, and how it had been sparked by the discovery of a piece of parchment he’d found in a sealed earthenware vessel, a parchment that had then vanished.

‘Maybe it didn’t vanish,’ Bronson said. ‘Maybe the old man hid it somewhere and Oliver couldn’t find it. Suppose Bartholomew had the paintings done as a sort of a last laugh, so Bartholomew could tell Oliver that the clues had been staring him in the face all along.’

‘A fox’s head instead of a hawk doesn’t seem a particularly helpful clue to me,’ Angela objected.

‘It could be really simple,’ Bronson said with a grin. ‘There’s a fox in the dining room. Stuffed, of course, and in a glass case. Maybe he just hid the parchment inside it.’

Angela put down the plate she’d been wrapping. ‘Lead me to it,’ she instructed, her brown eyes shining – always a sign, in Bronson’s opinion, that she was excited.

The fox was standing on a small mound, glassy eyes staring sightlessly across the dining room towards the tall windows on the opposite side, mouth open to reveal yellowish teeth and a thin pink tongue. It was clearly old and rather mangy, a few patches of fur missing on its sides and tail. It stood on a wooden base, under an oblong glass dome.