Murder in the Monastery (Libby Sarjeant Murder Mystery series) by Lesley Cookman Read Free Book Online Page A

chequered history, and we can’t sort it all out. Before it was sold by the family after the South Sea Bubble adventure, it had gone missing twice, both times having been recovered.’
    ‘And how had that happened?’ asked Peter. ‘Someone stole it?’
    ‘Yes, both times it was a member of the family who needed money, and both times it was sent back by whoever had bought it. The members of the family by the time it was finally sold decided it brought bad luck. The people who’d sold it both came to bad ends, and it was assumed that whoever had bought it had also had bad luck and returned it, only for the family to lose almost everything in the eighteenth century.’
    ‘But we don’t know where it went after that?’ asked Ben. ‘No more bad luck?’
    ‘Not until this poor chap Bernard Evans you told me about. Someone seems to have stolen it then, yet it’s now being sold with Beaumont documentation.’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t know exactly what these papers are?’
    ‘No.’ Libby looked round the room. ‘What could they have been, do you think?’
    ‘Probably,’ said Peter, ‘the original documents of sale from the eighteenth century.’
    ‘But,’ said Libby, frowning, ‘that’s not possible. If the family sold it all bona fide, in 1720 whatever, whoever bought it had the documents. He either left it to someone or gave it to someone with the documents. Eventually it was left to our Bernard, and then it was stolen. But we don’t know that the documents were stolen with it.’
    ‘They must have been,’ said Ben. ‘He was taking it to the Abbey, wasn’t he? He would have brought the provenance with him.’
    ‘Hmm.’ Libby was still frowning.
    ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense,’ said Alastair. ‘And the person who stole it then sold it to the collector who has just died.’
    ‘It’s such an obscure item, though,’ said Peter. ‘It’s almost as though someone has been tracking it through the years. How would anyone know about it? This is the first time it’s gone on sale – or even view – to the public.’
    The four of them looked at each other.
    ‘That’s true,’ said Alastair slowly. ‘And of course, the only people who could possibly have known anything about it would be the members of my own family.’

Chapter Seven
    B en, Libby and Peter shifted uncomfortably.
    ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ said Alastair, sounding amused. ‘Our family has more than its fair share of villains and ne’er-do-wells. If a member of the family found out that Bernard Evans had it in the seventies, he, or she, could well have stolen it from him. A bit much to murder him, I’d have thought, but perhaps it was an accident.’
    ‘But we come back to “how did they know”,’ said Libby. ‘Bernard was left it, apparently. We still don’t know by whom.’
    ‘Well,’ said Alastair, pulling a chair out from the table and indicating that the others should do the same, ‘we could start by looking at who it could have been from my family.’
    ‘That’s a bit extreme,’ muttered Peter. ‘Families can be –’
    ‘Tricky.’ Ben nodded. ‘We know all about that, Alastair.’
    Alastair quirked an eyebrow, but said nothing.
    ‘Your family must have been quite widely – er –disseminated by then, Alastair,’ said Libby hurriedly.
    ‘Oh, yes.’ He pulled a scroll towards him and began to unroll it. ‘Peter, could you weigh down the other end?’
    ‘This is a family tree we had drawn up a few years ago. I got this out as well to see if I could see any connections, and now we’ve got Bernard Evans’s name we could look for him.’
    Libby shook her head. ‘I can’t see him being a member of your family.’
    ‘He could be the issue of someone who married into it. If only we knew where it went after it was sold in the seventeen hundreds,’ said Ben.
    ‘We know who it was sold to,’ said Alastair.
    The other three stared at him.
    ‘But you said …’ said Libby.
    ‘I