Caroline Minuscule by Andrew Taylor

amateurs – respectable people who suddenly found themselves needing temporary assistance in bending the law. Lee, on the other hand, mixed with the habitual criminals – those who found themselves in difficulties owing to a pushy rival or a consignment which they could not deliver. Lee and I had little contact except through the Canon, when he would supply us with names, telephone numbers, addresses, etc.
    He trusted us for the simple reason that he held particularly damaging information about both of us. But to give him his due, he was a generous employer.
    This secret career of his brought a comfortable income which he used so cautiously that even his wife never suspected he had more than his stipend (or whatever they call it) and a small private income. I believe he had several pet charities (for animals rather than human beings), some rather nice eighteenth-century prints and an excellent cellar. The considerable residue which remained he invested in jewellery – chiefly cut diamonds, I believe. He kept it, of all places, in a strongbox at Barclays Bank in Rosington.
    Very occasionally, I stayed with him at Rosington (Lee never) and was introduced as a distant cousin in stockbroking (a suitably vague profession). Vernon-Jones took pleasure in introducing me to local worthies, I used to suspect. He was like that. Which brings me to another characteristic of his which is directly relevant: he was malicious. Not in a crude way, but delicately, obliquely. I imagine that as a boy he was the sort who didn’t stamp on any unfortunate insect which crossed his path, but slowly removed its limbs, one by one, or drowned it in a spoonful of honey. And he was the same way with human beings – when there was no need for him to be affable. I firmly believe his wife died, gradually, in a little domestic hell which he had painstakingly constructed. Lee and I were not so expendable. I sometimes wonder if he would have been a nicer person if he hadn’t been a clergyman. He knew that Lee and I disliked one another intensely – this suited him – divide and rule. He enjoyed the tension but was too intelligent to let it reach an unbearable degree of strain.
    During his life, that is. But evidently he felt that no such scruples need restrain him after death. When he died, I went down to Rosington for the funeral. I spoke with his solicitor and his bank manager, both there, paying their last respects in a cemetery like a municipal park, and then later in a local hotel. They were, perhaps, more open about their late client’s affairs than they should have been, believing there to be a degree of consanguinity. Also they were sorry for me – the man’s will left everything to the RSPCA, which failed to surprise me. The bank manager, after three whiskies, believed that Vernon-Jones knew his death was near, for he had removed the contents of his strongbox just after Christmas. The solicitor chimed in and said that the Canon was a man of strange quirks, which to my mind was the understated epitaph of a lifetime. He also said he had promised to forward two letters on the day of the funeral. It wasn’t difficult to discover that one was addressed to me, the other to Lee.
    It arrived the next morning. The envelope contained nothing but the photograph which you have and one of Vernon-Jones’s cards which I enclose. It’s the back of it which is important – he scribbled Matthew vii 7 on it, which is,
Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
    I know all this must seem increasingly nonsensical to you. Bear with me a little longer. You see, I am convinced that the two things he sent me are, correctly interpreted, pointers to the whereabouts of his jewellery. I also believe that he sent similar – but not the same – clues to Lee. He didn’t particularly care to whom he left the diamonds – what he wanted to leave was dissension.