The Messiah Secret

8

It was late afternoon before Mayhew finally led Angela into the kitchen at Carfax Hall. Like the rest of the house, it was constructed and equipped on a grand, albeit late nineteenth-century, scale. A huge oblong solid-wood table sat squarely in the centre of the floor, most of its surface covered with china and ceramics of various types.

A Victorian cooking range, traces of wood or coal ash visible in the fire grate, was built into one wall, and old steel and copper pans and cooking utensils hung from hooks in the walls on either side of it. Incongruously, on the counter-top to the right of the range stood a grubby white microwave oven, and next to that an electric kettle, about half a dozen modern mugs in different colours, a jar of instant coffee, a box of tea bags and an open bag of sugar. Below the counter-top, an ancient fridge emitted a constant clattering and wheezing noise.

Clustered around a cleared area at one end of the table were the other four members of the assessment team, steaming mugs in front of them. Angela had met them all individually as she and Richard Mayhew had walked around the property, and she knew them all by sight from her work at the British Museum.

Angela and Mayhew made themselves coffee, Mayhew adding milk from a one-litre plastic carton he took from the elderly fridge, then sat down.

‘You’ve inspected this old pile, then, Angela,’ said David Hughes, a thin, balding and bespectacled expert on English furniture. ‘What do you think?’

Angela shrugged. ‘Mainly, I think it’s a shame. If Bartholomew had spent less of his time and effort chasing rainbows and collecting antiques that he just locked away, and a bit more money keeping the place properly maintained and repaired, this would still be a great estate. As it is, I guess that as soon as the dust has settled Oliver’s heirs will bring in the bulldozers, flatten the house and outbuildings and a modern housing estate will spring up.’

‘They might find getting planning permission difficult though,’ Mayhew said. ‘This is firmly in the green belt, I understand.’

‘Seen any decent china yet?’ Hughes asked.

Angela shook her head. ‘I’ll make a start first thing tomorrow morning. Is this everything?’ she asked, pointing at the cluttered table.

‘That’s most of it, yes. There are a few trunks and boxes we’ve got to check up in the attics, and we’ve only had a quick look around the cellars, but it doesn’t look as if there’s anything much down there.’

‘Is there anything else you need before you start work, Angela?’ Mayhew asked.

‘Yes. I might just as well pack the stuff away as soon as I’ve looked at it, so can somebody find me a couple of crates or boxes, one for the good stuff and the other for the rest? Oh, and tape and bubble-wrap to protect the bits of china?’

‘There are about half a dozen tea chests in one of the attics,’ Hughes said, ‘and we brought a couple of rolls of bubble-wrap with us. I’ll bring everything you need in the morning.’

‘Right, people,’ Richard Mayhew said, glancing at his watch, ‘let’s call it a day.’

Silence had fallen over Carfax Hall.

About ten minutes after Richard Mayhew turned the key in the lock on the front door, a faint scraping sound became audible in one of the attic rooms, a pile of cardboard boxes was moved slowly to one side and a grubby, sweat-lined face peered out from behind it.

The man listened intently for about thirty seconds, then stepped forward. His casual clothes — jeans and a T-shirt — were covered in dust and cobwebs, and his limbs were cramped from remaining in the same position for the previous three hours, ever since he’d sneaked in through the front door and crept up into the attic to hide.

The man made his way down the main stairs to the ground floor and walked into the huge reception room on one side of the front hall. He strode across to the closest of the tall windows and cautiously looked out, checking that there were no cars left on the gravel parking area.

Then he nodded, pulled a nylon bag out of his pocket and opened it on the floor near the door. He walked over to the closest packing case and started pulling out the contents, his movements urgent, but careful and concentrated. The room was enormous and the number of boxes and packing cases huge.

Within fifteen minutes he’d selected about a dozen high-value silver objects and placed them in his bag. Ten minutes later he climbed out of a ground-floor window at the back of the house, and walked unhurriedly over to the boundary fence on one side of the property, where he’d parked his car earlier that afternoon.

With any luck, he thought, he could probably repeat the operation three or four times that night, and then do the same thing tomorrow. If he picked his prizes carefully, he’d be able to make a tidy sum from their sale. It wouldn’t be anything like as much as that devious old bastard Oliver had promised him the last time they’d talked, but it would be a big help to his bank balance.

But the antiques he was stealing were only a part of the story. The big prize, the thing he’d really like to get his hands on, was a few words written on a tattered piece of parchment. He’d never seen it, or even met Bartholomew — the old man had died several years before he was born — but Oliver had always been going on about it, back in the days when he’d been a welcome guest at Carfax Hall. He knew that Bartholomew had been incredibly secretive about the relic, but it had to be somewhere in the house.

Once he’d stashed his acquisitions in the car, he’d start searching in all the places that Oliver might have missed — and there were plenty of them.

He reached his car, popped open the boot and carefully placed his prizes inside it. He pressed the lid closed carefully, making as little noise as he could, locked it and then headed back towards the old house.

‘Up yours, Oliver, you mean old bastard,’ he muttered, as he climbed over the boundary fence again. It was a still, clear moonlit night, and the house and its belongings were all his.