Part 2

“I can’t believe it, Oscar,” she said, disappointment heavy in her voice. “Somebody broke in, right under our noses, and stole my most treasured book!”

“I’ll get to the bottom of it,” he told her resolutely. “You’ll get your book back.”

She passed him a mug of coffee, and he appreciated the aroma for a second before taking a sip. He then dared ask her, “Do you think somebody broke in?”

She glared at him. “Oscar! Are you implying one of my guests could have done it? Out of the question! I trust them as much as I trust you. They’re all close friends – true friends – and the library was broken into from the outside.”

He stared over her shoulder for a moment, into thin air. They had all spent a wonderful evening together and the very thought of suspecting any one of her guests gave him a little pang of guilt, but feelings weren’t facts. He wondered whether the evidence would support her assumption of outside interference.

“Oscar? Did you hear me?”

“Yes, of course,” he replied. “Thank you. Please take me to the library.”

He followed her up the marble staircase which hugged the right-hand wall and curved in elegantly at the top to meet the mezzanine. Sandra Royton was rather out of place in her surroundings, dressed in flannel pyjamas with daisies and butterflies, and a pair of fluffy pink slippers. She’d dressed up a little the previous evening, but she was always more comfortable in pyjamas or a tracksuit indoors and her sturdy lady-of-the-land work clothes when she was in the rose gardens, vineyards, or walking the dogs.

She pushed open the double doors to the library, revealing a scene very much unchanged from just a few hours earlier.

Oscar surveyed the room from the doorway and sipped his coffee. There were two windows, with bookshelves between them. The window to the left was closed, daylight softly exposing the sofas and coffee table upon which empty champagne flutes and snack trays lay. The lower left pane of the window to the right was smashed and both halves of the window were pushed inward. A whisky glass sat on the edge of the pool table in front of the window, and Oscar was quite sure it was the one he’d used. To his right, there were bookshelves in the corner, a dark-green leather armchair with an antique oak side table, and a lamp with a fringed scarlet shade. In the corner to his left stood an old Singer sewing machine table with a typewriter sitting on top where the sewing machine should have been. There was also an exquisite oriental carved wooden table with a record player on it and piles of records on the floor beside it.

“You locked the library last night before going to bed?”

“I did. I’m sure. Since the sorry business with that bastard of a husband I had – and I’m eternally grateful to you – I’ve been very careful with security. I lock up every night without even thinking about it. It’s a reflex now.”

Oscar nodded, drank his coffee, and walked straight ahead toward the bookshelves between the windows. There were ten shelves, and all her Sherlock Holmes books were kept on the seventh shelf from the bottom as it was at the most convenient height for Sandra, who reread Doyle’s works on a regular basis. In the middle of that shelf, there was a gap, and Oscar stared into it as though into the depths of a chasm. He examined the two books to either side, then proceeded to closely inspect all the shelves. Once finished, he turned to Sandra and shrugged.

His eyes followed the floor as he continued right, approaching the broken window. Shards of glass were scattered across the polished hardwood floor immediately under the broken pane. The rest of the window was intact, raindrops still clinging to the glass, not yet touched by direct sunlight. He studied the sill and bent down to look more closely at the floor.