The Messiah Secret

‘It doesn’t look like much,’ Angela commented.

‘Maybe that was the point. Bartholomew might have thought it was an ideal place to hide something.’

He lifted off the glass dome. ‘The stitches don’t look as if they’ve been disturbed since the poor little sod was stuffed.’ He turned the fox around. ‘And I can’t see any slits or cuts anywhere, so I don’t think there can be anything hidden inside the body itself.’

He ran his fingers around the base of the object, then stopped abruptly and bent down to look at the back of it.

‘This is more likely,’ he said. ‘I can see a line running along the base, just here, so it looks as if this section might open, and there are some scratches on the wood as well.’

He tugged at the base, but nothing moved. Then he tilted the fox on to its side and looked at the underside. There were half a dozen brass screw-heads showing, presumably to hold the stuffed animal and the other parts of the tableau in place. One of them looked different to the others.

‘That could be a locking screw,’ Bronson said. He pulled out a folding pocket knife and selected the correct blade. Rotating the odd screw until it dropped out on to the sideboard, he grasped the edge of the base and pulled. One section of it moved slightly. He returned the fox to an upright position and looked at the back, where a section perhaps a foot wide had now slid clear of the rest of the base.

He could hear Angela’s indrawn breath of excitement.

The section of wood opened like a drawer and, as Bronson pulled it clear of the base, they both saw what looked like a small leather-bound book lying inside it. He picked it up as soon as he’d fully opened the drawer and passed it to Angela.

‘Don’t expect too much,’ he warned. ‘My guess is that Oliver found this some time ago – he was probably the one who tried to open it – so if the parchment was here, he’ll have removed it.’

But it wasn’t a book. What they’d actually found was a slim and shallow wooden box, covered with leather, that opened like a box-file. The inside was stuffed with loose papers of various sorts and a couple of large photographs, each of them folded twice so they’d fit into the box.

Angela flicked through the contents briskly, then shook her head. ‘No lost parchment,’ she said sadly. ‘That would have been too easy, I suppose. This seems to be a collection of old bills and invoices, and also some of Bartholomew’s expedition notes.’ She held up several sheets of paper covered in small and neat handwriting. ‘I’ve spotted a couple of references to Egypt already.’

‘What about the photographs?’

‘Just pictures of the two paintings Bartholomew sold. Interesting, but not helpful.’ She shrugged. ‘Back to work for me, I’m afraid. But do keep poking around. You never know what you might find.’

It was early afternoon, and Bronson and Angela had just finished their sandwich lunch. There was an extra sandwich in the fridge, and this would be Bronson’s lonely dinner after the rest of the team had left him in the house at the end of the day.

‘Look what I’ve found in one of the attics,’ Bronson said, walking back into the kitchen carrying a dusty cardboard box. The label says “First C Corinth”, with a question mark after it.’

Angela walked across to where Bronson was standing.

‘If that label actually relates to the contents of the box, it could be quite interesting,’ she said. ‘A first-century Corinthian piece would be a lot more exciting than most of the stuff I’ve seen so far. Let me have a look.’ She lifted the newspaper-wrapped object out of the box. The pot was shaped like a tall water jug, and Angela stood it on its base while she cut the string and removed the wrappings.

‘Coffee or tea?’ Bronson asked, but got no response. When he turned round to look, Angela was staring at a tall, wide-necked, blue-green vessel with a single handle and some kind of animal images inscribed in horizontal bands around it. There was a scatter of paper and bits of string lying on the table nearby.

‘If I had champagne here, I’d drink that,’ Angela said at last. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘I’m just a simple copper, remember? What is it?’

‘I think – in fact, I’m almost sure – it’s a proto-Corinthian olpe.’

‘Really? It just looks like a big green jug to me.’

Angela came over and gave him a hug. ‘What you’ve just found is very rare, especially in such excellent condition. I’ve seen one similar one, but it’s in the Louvre in Paris. An olpe is a wine vessel. This one’s decorated with registers – these horizontal bands – of what I think are lions and bears, and it probably dates from around six hundred and fifty BC.’

‘Not first century, then, like it says on the box?’

Angela shook her head decisively. ‘Definitely not. It’s over half a millennium older than that.’

‘So it’s valuable, then?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m not an appraiser, but this could be almost priceless!’

‘So do you want me to bring the others down?’

‘Others?’ Angela went white. ‘There are others?’