The Devil's Moon by Peter Guttridge Read Free Book Online

fallibility of deductive reasoning.
    â€˜I work here – on the Friends of the Museum team.’
    â€˜A promotion?’
    â€˜A step up, certainly.’
    â€˜So you live in London now?’
    She shook her head. ‘I commute. And you?’
    â€˜Theoretically living in Brighton but I’m clearing out my father’s house in Barnes. He died some weeks ago.’
    â€˜I’m sorry.’
    Watts shrugged. ‘He was a good age. Packed a lot into his life.’
    â€˜And why are you here?’
    â€˜Picasso prints then lunch with a friend.’
    She smiled. ‘The Picassos are on the top floor but near the back entrance of the museum – I’ll walk you down there if you like.’
    She led the way into a long gallery stocked with a mix of objects from different ages and countries. It looked vaguely like the enormous library of a country house, with books stacked high up on a balcony above long wall cases filled with everything from African masks and Etruscan funerary urns to fourteenth-century swords and Egyptian jewellery.
    â€˜This is my favourite room,’ she said. ‘I like the eclecticism of it.’
    Two-thirds of the way down she paused at a large case and leaned in. ‘Your ex-colleagues are probably going to be called about this.’
    Watts looked into the case. A large card stated that two John Dee artefacts had been removed from display to form part of the Shakespeare and His World exhibition.
    â€˜About John Dee’s artefacts being moved?’
    â€˜About them possibly being stolen. They went missing at the end of the Shakespeare exhibition during the transfer from one display back to this one.’
    â€˜What were they?’ Watts asked.
    â€˜Magic stuff from the Elizabethan age.’
    â€˜Magic?’
    â€˜Have you heard of John Dee?’
    â€˜Just yesterday, actually.’
    â€˜One of the most learned men of his day. Expert mathematician and astronomer. Typical for the time, he was also interested in the occult as a means of learning more about the universe. The Shakespeare exhibition borrowed a big wax disc with magic signs and symbols on them and a black obsidian mirror that was originally Aztec.’ She pointed at the display. ‘You can see the mirror’s leather case there. They came to the museum in Sir Robert Cotton’s collection – one of the museum’s founding collections.’
    â€˜You know your stuff.’
    She smiled. ‘I should but I’m still learning, believe me. We know the disc was his because there’s a drawing of it in one of his manuscripts. It was used to support one of his shew-stones.’
    â€˜What’s a shew-stone?’
    â€˜Like the Aztec mirror or some other reflecting object or a crystal ball you can see into. The magician sees things in it.’ She pointed to what looked like a small glass ball. ‘That’s Dee’s crystal ball there – at least it probably belonged to him. We know he used one. We’re more certain about the mirror. Later, it was owned by Sir Horace Walpole and he put a note inside the leather case stating that it had belonged to Dee and his medium, Edward Kelly.’
    â€˜But only two of these objects have gone missing?’ Watts said. He pointed at an engraved gold disc. ‘I would have thought that would be worth nicking.’
    â€˜Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s the “vision of the four castles” – something Dee experienced in Krakow in 1584. The museum got that during the Second World War – in 1942, I think. There’s another of his crystals on a pendant in the Science Museum. Dee used that one to cure diseases and see into the future by looking for the ghosts of people in the stone. Dee’s son Arthur gave it to the medical astrologer, Nicholas Culpeper, as thanks for curing his liver complaint.’
    â€˜The herbalist with the shops?’
    She smiled.
    â€˜I think they’re