Malice in Miniature

by Jeanne M. Dams

  “It’s surely very large,” I interrupted, peering at the card through the bottom of my bifocals.

  “The dimensions are given in centimeters,” Susan said, smiling. “It does make everything sound huge, doesn’t it? And it’s rather awkward for the newer English and American rooms, which are usually in one-twelfth or one-twenty-fourth scale. An inch or a half-inch to the foot doesn’t make a lot of sense translated into metric.

  “Anyway, then the card is cross-referenced to separate cards for each room. Here’s the master bedroom card for the ’47 Nuremberg house, you see. It’s actually several cards, because all the furniture must be listed and briefly described, including any damage.”

  “What about something like a kitchen, though, with dozens of dishes and knives and forks and pots?”

  “Then there are sub-cards yet again, with the sets listed and described. If a set of objects is particularly valuable, it will be described in some detail. Wait, I know it’s here somewhere—ah, yes. This is the dining room card for a lovely little house that belonged to Marie Antoinette. There’s an extremely valuable tea set in that room, and it would be described on a separate card, right down to the—”

  She paused, frowning at the card in her hand. “Hmm. That’s odd.”

  “What?”

  “The card shows that the dining table in this room has a deep scratch on the bottom, and that the upholstery on the chairs is shattered.”

  “Shattered? How can upholstery shatter?”

  “It’s a term used for a certain kind of fraying that sometimes happens to old silk. But the thing is, I looked at this house last week, when I was helping Meg with inventory. I’m quite sure there was nothing wrong with the dining room furniture. Look, here in the ‘new remarks’ section, I’ve penciled in ‘ND.’ For ‘No Damage.’”

  My heart was starting to beat faster. “And you didn’t check the old damage report?”

  “No, I was working fast, basically just checking them to make sure they were still there. A few things have been stolen, you know.”

  “Is there any chance that the card is in error?”

  “I think we should ask Meg.”

  “There’s always a chance,” Meg said to Susan, when questioned. “I didn’t provide the information for the cards; Sir Mordred did. I simply entered it in coherent fashion. But it’s easy enough for you to check it again.”

  “Susan, may I come along?” This could be important.

  “Sure. Follow me.”

  She knew her way through the maze, of course. We went directly to a room I hadn’t seen before, where (according to a sign by the door) most of the French dollhouses were displayed. Susan led me to a large, elaborate house in the corner.

  I was distracted in spite of my other concerns by the elaborate details. Ormolu chandeliers, carved paneling, intricately woven rugs on parquet floors, tapestries—

  “Look! That must be the famous tea set!”

  “It is, as a matter of fact. But look here at the table.” She turned it upside down. “There’s no—” She stopped and looked more closely. “There is, though. Right there.” She pointed with her fingernail.

  The scratch was long and deep, though old enough to have darkened considerably over the years. “Susan, I don’t see how you could have missed this. It’s pretty obvious.”

  “So is this.” Her voice was deeply puzzled as she handed me a tiny chair. The upholstery of the seat was in shreds.

  We looked at each other.

  “Mrs. Martin, I don’t understand what’s going on here, but I’m sure of one thing. This is not the dining room furniture I saw in this house last week!”

  17

  Come on!” Susan seized me by the arm and pulled me out of the room.

  “Wait a minute. Where are we going?”

  “Back to the library to get more cards. Something very odd is happening here.”

  The cards Susan had checked the week before were the ones Meg was methodically entering in her data base. Susan seized them over the curator’s protests.

  “Look! There are a lot of them. See, in this section it says ‘ND’ in my writing, but here the card says there’s a nick in one leg. And there’s a discrepancy here—and here—”

  She thumbed through the cards rapidly, discarding some, but keeping a large handful.

  “Do you want to come with me? I’m going to check the rest!”

  We made a whirlwind tour of the Museum, checking individual pieces here and there. Susan’s puzzlement, and mine, grew by the moment. Almost every piece she checked showed perfect work where it should be damaged, matching her recent notations rather than the typed description on the card. Every now and then, though, whole sets of pieces that she had noted as undamaged were noticeably marred, like the French dining room set.

  “Is that everything?” I finally said, panting in her wake.

  “No. Not by any means. But it’s a representative sampling, and I haven’t the slightest idea what it means.”

  “Well, then, do you suppose we could sit down and think about it?”

  She looked at me and blinked. “I’m sorry. I have rather dragged you about, haven’t I?”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s just my knees. They don’t like stairs, or hard floors, and they get worse as cold weather sets in.”

  “Of course. Let’s go back to the library, then, and try to sort this out.”

  There were a couple of deep leather chairs in the library, by the fireplace. I sank gratefully into one of them. I would have to be hauled out of it later, but never mind. The fireplace, like so many in modern England, was sealed up and equipped with an electric heater, but at least it provided warmth, if not atmosphere. Meg took the other easy chair, Susan pulled up a library-issue oak one, and we contemplated our puzzle.

  “You’re quite sure you’re right,” said Meg. It wasn’t really a question.

  “Quite sure,” replied Susan firmly. “They’re absolutely first-class reproductions. But they’re reproductions. You can look for yourself.”

  “I certainly shall, but for the moment I’ll take your word for it. You know something about antiques, as I recall.”

  “Rather a lot, actually. That’s one reason I wanted to work here. I’m reading for a degree in fine arts, and I want to deal in antiques when I leave the university. I haven’t had the chance to learn much about antique dolls’ houses, and they’ve always fascinated me. So . . .”

  “So. So someone has been systematically replacing our furnishings with reproductions. Expertly made reproductions.”

  We all, of course, had the same idea. I let Meg voice it.

  “Sir Mordred makes some of the finest miniature furniture in the world. But why would he make copies of his own possessions?”

  I glanced around me, rather melodramatically, perhaps, before I spoke, with lowered voice. “I had an idea, this morning. I thought perhaps Mrs. Lathrop was stealing miniatures and trying to put the blame on Bob Finch. That’s really why I came here, to see if I couldn’t find some gaps in the collection. I certainly didn’t expect to find substitutions. I don’t understand it at all.”

  “But why did you think of Mrs. Lathrop, of all people?”

  Oh, dear. “Well—if I must admit it—I looked in her rooms yesterday.”

  Meg looked shocked.

  “All right, I know I shouldn’t have, but I thought I might see something significant, something the police might have missed. And I think I did. I don’t know if the police took any notice, but she has—had—some perfectly hideous jewelry that looked as if it was worth a lot. And there’s a vase that I’m almost sure is Ming. So I got to wondering where a housekeeper would get that kind of money, and I remembered that Sir Mordred had claimed some miniatures were missing, and . . .”

  I spread my hands. “It seemed to hang together. Now I don’t know what to think. I have no trouble with the idea of Mrs. Lathrop stealing things. She struck me as the kind of woman with a strong sense of respectability, but
no particular morality. But I can’t imagine her convincing Sir Mordred to replace the things she stole, even if he was scared to death of her.”

  “No,” said Meg. “Definitely not. He loves his collection as I love my daughter. He would never agree to part with any of it, much less connive at its disappearance.”

  “Is there anyone else in the country who makes such fine miniature furniture? Do you know?”

  Meg shrugged. “A couple of people are nearly as good. But they know the value of their work, and I shouldn’t imagine a thief would end up with much profit at the end of the day. Besides, they’re very reputable men. They wouldn’t copy a piece without the permission of its owner.”

  “But it’s such a very odd thing for a thief to do,” said Susan, leaning forward intently. “Never mind how they did it. Why would anyone steal something and then put it back?”

  “And how, and when?” I added. “If it was Mrs. Lathrop, it obviously had to be before last Thursday, when she died. And since then the place has been swarming with police most of the time.”

  “What about the bag of miniatures they thought the undergardener was trying to steal?” put in Susan. “What does that have to do with it all?”

  “Nothing, I think. I’m reasonably sure that whoever is responsible for everything that’s going on here planted that bag on purpose to incriminate poor Bob Finch. The fact that it didn’t, or not for very long, is a tribute to the intelligence of the police. But it doesn’t get us anywhere at the moment.”

  “You don’t suppose Claude . . .” said Meg.

  “My dear child, one is traditionally not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but can you see Claude ever putting back anything he had stolen?”

  “I can’t see any of it,” she said with a groan. “My brain has stopped working. The only explanation I can come up with is that Sir Mordred made copies of his own prized possessions, sold the originals, and then somehow got some of them back. That’s entirely plausible. He does very fine work, and very fast. The trouble is, it’s totally insane. Even if you can imagine him doing it, which I can’t, there’s no benefit for him.”

  “And what benefit would he derive from killing?”

  Meg and Susan were silent.

  “I don’t know about you, but with all the side issues that keep coming up, I keep losing track of the primary fact that two people are dead. Not very pleasant people, perhaps, but dead before their time and by the hand of violence. That’s the important issue here. Would Sir Mordred be capable of murder?”

  “I think he would,” said Meg slowly. “I think he’d do anything he thought necessary to protect his collection. I’m afraid he’s not really a very nice little man, in many ways. Yes, I think he could kill, if he thought there were good reason. But . . .”

  “But there wasn’t any reason. And he wasn’t here, on either occasion.”

  I stood, after considerable maneuvering.

  “Meg, I give up. I’m going home.”

  Meg stood, too. “Oh, Dorothy, go home and rest your knees, but don’t give up. We’ve got to have this settled, or go mad, and the police aren’t doing a bl—ooming thing. You’re our only hope.” To my astonishment, she flung her arms around me in a warm hug.

  I grinned back. “Oh, it was just a figure of speech. A confirmed meddler never gives up, especially an American one. I come of tough midwestern stock. Never say die, that’s us.”

  I was to remember that little speech.

  I PUT IN the usual call to Alan and had some lunch during the usual wait for him to call back. I don’t know what was in the sandwich; I was eating for sustenance, not for pleasure. My mind was working as fast as one of those little wheels in a hamster’s cage, and to as little purpose.

  When the phone rang, I wasted no time on polite chitchat. “Alan, I need you to find out something for me, if you can.”

  “If I can.” He sounded cautious.

  “Well, I know it isn’t easy, even for the police, but has anyone been looking into Mrs. Lathrop’s financial position?”

  “Ah. Derek is working on it. He hasn’t reported anything to me, but you do understand he is fully in charge of this case? He does not report to me on a regular basis, only when I ring him and ask, and I wouldn’t do even that if I weren’t personally concerned.”

  “Yes, of course, I know all that, but I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know when he finds out anything. Some very peculiar things have been going on at the Museum.”

  “More peculiar than murder?” His tone was dry.

  “In a way.” I told him about the substitutions, and more puzzling still, the replacements of some of the miniatures.

  “I see. Most unusual. Have you any theories?”

  I tried to hear a note of sarcasm, but he sounded genuinely interested in my opinion.

  “I did think maybe Mrs. Lathrop was stealing from the Museum. It would have explained—would have explained the money Claude thought he was going to get from her.”

  “And?”

  I chose to misunderstand.

  “And I decided I’m wrong. She wouldn’t have substituted copies, and she’s been in no position recently to put anything back.”

  “True.” He waited, but I had said all I intended to say until he got back and I could talk to him in person.

  “Very well, I’ll keep you informed. There is just one thing Derek has learned that might interest you.”

  “Tell, tell!”

  “The mysterious woman has been traced.”

  “Alan, that is news! Who is she?”

  “Not traced that far. But she’s from Sherebury, apparently. She was seen getting off the first train from London on the Thursday morning, the 5:33. The stationmaster noticed, because it’s very uncommon for anyone at all to arrive so early, or even for the train to stop. It’s really the train for Hastings, and stops at Sherebury only by request. In any event, he noticed the lady. She had no luggage, just a handbag, and she made directly for the car park. He quite distinctly saw her unlock a bicycle that was in the stall, and ride off.”

  “So she was a local who had gone to London the day before—”

  “At some time before. The stationmaster doesn’t recall seeing her leave the bike there, and didn’t notice it, especially, on the Wednesday. There are usually quite a number of bicycles coming and going.”

  “—at some time before, and left the bike to provide her transportation home. But who is she? And where does she live? And why was she stopping on the road near Brocklesby Hall? And what did she have against Emma Lathrop? And—”

  “We’re working on it, love. And you’re making some unwarranted assumptions, you know. There is no proof at all that she had anything to do with the murder of Mrs. Lathrop, and nothing even to connect her with Claude’s.”

  “I know. I simply refuse to accept too many coincidences. She’ll turn out to have something to do with it, even if she isn’t the murderer. But I wish I had even the faintest clue who she was!”

  “You don’t wish it as much as Derek does.”

  “I’m sure. Alan, when do you expect to be home tomorrow?”

  “Mid-afternoon. Would you like me to ring you just before I leave here?”

  “No, as long as it isn’t a question of having a meal ready or not, it doesn’t matter. But the sooner the better!”

  “I agree.”

  I spent the rest of the day cleaning house. I’d really been neglecting my duties, and it showed. But all the time I was dusting, and scrubbing, and vacuuming (to the cats’ distress), I was thinking.

  Why would a person steal something and then put it back?

  Because the thief didn’t want anyone to find out it was stolen in the first place.

  Did that make sense? Embezzlers did that, or always said they were going to do that. They were “borrowing” the money, not stealing it, and their goal was to get the funds back in the account before their little withdrawals were noticed. I had fleeting thoughts once more of little Mr. Thoreston, and
dismissed them. He had “borrowed” money, not miniatures. Even if, for some silly reason, he had also pilfered from the dollhouses, he had been missing from Sherebury since last Thursday and had had no chance to replace anything.

  But the embezzling thought had raised the ghost of an idea, somewhere deep in my brain. I teased at it, but it remained stubbornly elusive until I finally gave it up and devoted my whole energy to scrubbing the bathtub. Then, of course, it popped to the surface obligingly.

  Embezzlers put the money back, sometimes, when they no longer have need of it. The temporary crisis has passed, the thief has been able to sell something or otherwise realize some cash, and he or she replaces what was stolen.

  Suppose somebody stole the miniatures, sold them, and then bought them back when the need for money had abated?

  I tested that theory while I cleaned out the fireplace and laid a fresh fire ready to light when Alan came home the next day. It seemed to hold together, as far as it went. It would explain why most of the substitutions were still in place. Those were pieces that the thief was having trouble getting back, or couldn’t yet afford to buy, or simply had not yet gotten around to dealing with.

  It would even explain the nature of the pieces that had been swapped back. They were all in sets: dining room, bedroom, living room. A table and chairs, or a matching bed, dresser, and wardrobe, or a velvet couch and two chairs. Couldn’t it be that these had been sold to collectors who were furnishing a dollhouse of their own, and who would actually prefer new work to antiques? Who would be happy to buy Sir Mordred’s exquisite work, or take it in exchange for the old, somewhat battered pieces?

  I crumpled some newspaper to put in the grate, and both cats jumped on it. There was a fierce struggle for possession, in the midst of which I got a scratch on my hand. “Bad cats! Stop it!” I slapped the floor with a newspaper, scattering my erring companions, and dabbed at my bleeding hand with a tissue. It slowed down to an ooze after a while, and I finished the job, collecting thoughts that had scattered like the cats.