A December to Remember (21)
“Oh, I’m sure it is. Your father was meticulous about that sort of thing.”
“Are we talking about the same man?” asked Simone. “I can’t imagine him being meticulous about anything.”
“I have all his documents with me. You’re welcome to look through them. He ensured that his certificates of authenticity were in order and insured certain items accordingly.”
“Good lord.” Maggie looked bewildered. “I’m beginning to think our father had multiple personalities.”
“I don’t suppose he sent you stock sheets, did he?” asked Star, looking up and down the crowded shelves. “Any clues that might make it easier to sift through this lot?”
“Unfortunately not,” said Duncan, though his expression said that he felt there was nothing unfortunate about it at all. “But we are given to believe that some of the items here were antiques when Patience purchased them, and to our knowledge, she never sold them on. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask me. I will keep you fully updated as I go along. After all, this all belongs to you now.”
The women looked about them with expressions that ranged from intrigued to exhausted.
“I have a question,” Star piped up.
“Of course, fire away.”
“What were you knitting?”
She had the pleasure of seeing him look bashful. Definitely Clark Kent! she thought dreamily.
“I’m making my niece a unicorn jumper for Christmas. Although at the rate I’m going she’ll be getting it for Easter.”
“How lovely,” said Star. Her glittery feeling was dangerously close to going full snow globe.
She saw Maggie cast a look at Simone, who rolled her eyes in response, and Star wished her face didn’t betray her every thought and emotion. Maybe she could use this enforced togetherness to try to harness some of Simone’s poker-faced attitude.
“Are you going to travel in every day all the way from Tunbridge Wells?” Star continued, and then, turning to her sisters, she added, “He got off the train at Tunbridge Wells. Don’t you think it’s funny that we were on the same train?”
“Hilarious,” said Simone.
“I’m staying in Rowan Thorp, at the Stag and Hound while I look for somewhere to rent; this job is liable to take a couple of months at least. But I visited my sister in Tunbridge Wells yesterday.”
Star could not seem to wipe the smile off her face and was painfully aware of the side-eye she was getting from Maggie and Simone.
“Well, we better start sifting through all this mess,” said Maggie, looking around at the cluttered shelves.
“Oh, this isn’t mess,” said Duncan enthusiastically. “This is history. Do you happen to have your father’s ledger to hand?”
“Ah, slight problem there,” Simone interjected. “Our father thought it would be amusing to hide it.”
“But as soon as we find it, it’s yours,” Star added.
She’d always been a believer in coincidence. The world turned on it: one random event colliding with another to create a perfect storm. Could these be the first rumblings of her own perfect storm?
8
Duncan was keen to begin work right away. After stashing his briefcase in the drawer of a Queen Anne sideboard beneath the wall of clocks, he began moving slowly along the aisles, picking up seemingly random items and jotting notes down in his notebook before replacing the objects exactly where he had found them.
The North sisters’ approach to the shop’s contents was less exacting. Boxes were rifled through, jugs and vases upturned, drawers ransacked as the quest to find thirty-two Monopoly houses began in earnest. It felt like an overwhelming task.
“This is the proverbial needle in a haystack.” Maggie had her hands clasped on top of her head, seeds of defeatism already germinating.
“A wooden house in a junkyard,” Star agreed.
“Thirty-two of them,” added Simone. “That’s practically a housing estate.”
“Would you like some help?” Duncan asked, glancing up from a black bangle, which he advised was a Whitby jet Victorian mourning bracelet.
“No, you’re all right, you stick with your antique hunting, see if you can find us something worth cold hard cash in this hellhole,” Simone replied.
Duncan looked pleased; it was clear that all he wanted to do was get down and dirty with Augustus’s novelties and curios.
The shop was well and truly living up to its name. All day long the bell above the door jangled as a stream of helpful—nosy—villagers came in bearing gifts of cakes, biscuits, thermoses of tea and coffee, and advice. With the place having been undisturbed for five years, it was understandable that its opening should incite curiosity.
“I can smell the dust,” said Betty as she laid a tray boasting four takeaway coffees onto the fold-down door of a 1950s cocktail cabinet. Maggie held her hands up to show that her fingers were black with the stuff, and Betty screwed her nose up in distaste. “Monopoly houses, you say?”
“Yes.” Star peeped through a gap in an aisle. She had cobwebs in her hair. “Thirty-two of them. Any ideas?”
Betty put her hands on her round hips and surveyed the shop. “Instrument cases,” she returned with certainty. “Your father was a musical man, and I’ll eat my apron if he hasn’t hidden at least one of them in with an instrument.”