Mourner Read Online Free PDF Page B

it must be at once, and learned that Kapor had no idea that it was anything more than an interesting piece of early-fifteenth-century statuary. I also discovered where he'd bought it. I made discreet inquiries, and gradually pieced together this little monk's history, working backward, of course, to its original home in Dijon."
    "I don't need all that," Parker interrupted. Harrow seemed ready to play the romantic all week.
    "Let him go, Chuck," Bett said. "He's just bubbling over to tell you all about it."
    "The information cost me quite a bit," Harrow added defensively. "At one point, I even had to hire a French private investigator to check on a piece of information for me.
    Parker shrugged.
    "At any rate," said Harrow, hurrying now in an attempt to keep Parker from interrupting, "this particular statue was one of those looted in 1795, when revolutionaries desecrated the tomb. Who stole it I have no idea, but it did turn up in Quebec as a result of the Rebellion of 1837. Economic reprisals against one Jacques Rommelle, a follower of Louis Joseph Papineau, forced him to sell most of his possessions and move to Nova Scotia. Among the household goods sold was this small alabaster statuette. Rommelle had a knack for aligning himself with the wrong people. He'd left France for Canada in 1795, primarily because he was one of the strongest supporters of Robespierre. It's possible Rommelle personally stole the statue from Dijon, but unlikely, because he'd lived most of his life in Rennes, which is in Brittany, on the other side of France. I think it more likely that the original looter was killed during the Terror, and that Rommelle was the second owner."
    He paused, cleared his throat, rubbed his hands together briskly, and smiled. "There's such a fascination in this," he said. "At any rate, Rommelle sold the statue in 1838, to a dealer named Smythe. Smythe didn't manage to re-sell it, and when he died in 1852, his business was inherited by a grandson who had emigrated to the United States and was at the time living in Atlanta. The grandson sold most of what he'd inherited but he did hold on to a few items he liked, among them the statue of the weeping monk, but it was stolen by a Captain Goodebloode, a Union cavalry officer in 1864, when General Sherman's army captured the city. Captain Goodebloode brought the statue to Boston, where it remained in the family till 1932, when the Goodebloode finances were depleted by the depression, and the contents of the ancestral house were sold at auction. A Miss Cannel purchased the statue in Boston and brought it home to Wittburg, a small town in upstate New York, where, for some reason best known to herself, she was attempting to set up a museum. If she'd had the wit to hire a professional curator, of course, the game would have been up right then, but this was a one-woman museum, and Miss Cannel apparently had more money than sense. At any rate, the statue went into the museum and when Miss Cannel died in 1953, the entire contents of the museum were sold to various dealers. One of them, in 1955, sold the statuette to Lepas Kapor. Finis."
    Harrow looked back and forth from Parker to his daughter, beaming and happy. "A fascinating history," he said, swelling on the words, "a fascinating history. A bloody revolution, a somewhat less bloody rebellion, a civil war, an economic crash all have touched this small statue and influenced its destiny. It has travelled from France to Canada to Atlanta to Boston and to a provincial upstate New York town. Now it is in Washington. It has been stolen at least twice, and possibly three times, and now it is to be stolen again. A fascinating, fascinating history."
    "Yeah," said Parker. He lit a cigarette and threw the match towards an ashtray. "The point is, you want me to get it for you."
    "Exactly. I will give you, of course, full particulars"
    "What's in it for me?"
    "What? Oh." Harrow looked puzzled for a second, but now he smiled radiantly. "Of course,