Chapter Eleven
George Rook was on his fortnightly visit to St Austell library when he heard about the museum’s new website. ‘You should take a look,’ remarked the librarian as she checked out his next Colin Dexter novel with a sharp beep. ‘Imagine, all those things, hidden away for so long.’
‘Is that so?’ he replied thoughtfully. He decided it would be wise to take a look straightaway and so logged onto the public computer.
The first two things that caught his professional eye were a nice-looking watch, which was probably worth a bit, and one of those WWI tobacco tins that people always thought were worth a fortune, but sadly were not.
And then he saw something far more worrying – that blasted painting, with Evelyn’s description reproduced word for word.
Anxiously, he clicked back to the homepage and scrolled down to see what else that infuriating woman had put up. And then he stopped scrolling because what he’d found was far more worrying than that little Wallis tribute. What was Evelyn Silver thinking?
When Minnie Fraser, St Austell’s longest-serving librarian, came back to check how George was getting on, she found he’d disappeared without so much as a thank you. The chair had been pushed back and when Minnie jiggled the mouse, he’d left a page from the museum’s website still open.
She remembered the place from a school trip long ago: dusty cabinets and an overwhelming reek of fish.
The item George had left on his screen was rather lovely, but not something she remembered seeing there.
But then, she reasoned, there was probably stuff squirrelled away in the dark corners of that shed that even Evelyn Silver didn’t know about.