incident, I suggest you get his moon dust back.”
“I hear you,” said William. “But equally important, how do I get a train ticket to Manchester?”
“You report to Mavis in Travel on the ground floor. But I warn you, if you think Mr. Underwood is tough, compared to Mavis, he’s a softie. If it was up to her, the Queen would travel second class, and the likes of us would be shoveling coal into the engine’s furnace.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
* * *
“Mavis—”
“Mrs. Walters to you, young man. You can’t call me Mavis until you’re at least a chief inspector. Start again.”
“I’m sorry,” said William. “Mrs. Walters, I need—”
“Name, rank, and department?”
“Warwick, DC, Art and Antiques.”
“So what were you hoping for?”
“To be the commissioner.”
“Try again,” said Mrs. Walters, but she did at least manage a smile.
“A return train ticket to Manchester.”
“What is the purpose of your trip, and how long will you be in Manchester?”
“I’ll be visiting the university, and hope to go there and back on the same day.”
“Then you’ll have to catch the seven forty-two from Euston, and the last train back on a weekday is the ten forty-three. If you miss it, you’ll be spending the night on a bench on platform twelve. You are entitled to one meal, at a cost of no more than two pounds eighty, which you can claim on your duty sheet 232, but I’ll require a receipt.” Mrs. Walters began to write out a train warrant for Manchester Piccadilly. “If you’re going to the university, you’ll have to catch the 147 bus. You’ll also need an umbrella.”
“An umbrella?”
“You’ve obviously never been to Manchester before.”
* * *
“Good morning, Mr. Warwick,” said the young woman who met him at the front desk. “I’m Melanie Clore. How can I help you?”
“You have a sale coming up on July the seventeenth—”
“Which lot number do you want us to withdraw?”
“How could you possibly know—”
“The police don’t visit Sotheby’s to put something up for sale.”
William smiled. “Lot number nineteen. A phial of moon dust brought back on the Apollo 11 mission by Neil Armstrong.”
Miss Clore checked the catalog. “Offered to us by a Dr. Keith Talbot, who produced a will to confirm that the moon dust had been left to him.”
“The American Embassy is claiming ownership and say they will sue everybody in sight if you go ahead with the sale.”
“And we wouldn’t want that, would we, Mr. Warwick?”
“It wouldn’t worry me,” said William, “if I thought Dr. Talbot had the law on his side.”
“Even if he does, the legal battle could last for years.”
“My boss is expecting me to solve this one in a couple of days.”
“Is he? Well, if Dr. Talbot is willing to sign a standard release form, we will be happy to hand over the phial, and leave you to return it to the Americans. Let’s just hope Dr. Talbot isn’t another Mr. Finlay Isles.”
“Dare I ask who Mr. Finlay Isles is?”
“He sued us in 1949 over a watercolor worth a hundred pounds, and we’re still waiting for the courts to decide who the rightful owner is.”
“How come?” asked William.
“It’s a Turner which is now worth over a million.”
* * *
As the train rattled over the points on its progress to Manchester the following morning, William studied the moon dust file yet again, but learned nothing new.
He allowed his thoughts to return to the missing Rembrandt and how he could possibly find out the name of the artist who’d made the copy. He was convinced that in order to create such a convincing reproduction, the painter must have worked from the original. William still had difficulty believing that anyone who had been educated at the Slade would be capable of destroying a national treasure, but then he recalled the Hawk’s words—“Wait until you meet the man before you jump to that conclusion.”
William had read Faulkner’s file from cover to cover, and although he didn’t appear in public very often, one event he never missed was the opening night of a new James Bond film, and he was also a collector of first editions of Ian Fleming’s books. William had recently read a diary piece in The Daily Mail reporting that A View to a Kill would be opening at the Odeon Leicester Square in a month’s time. But how could he possibly get hold of a ticket? And even if he did, he couldn’t see Mrs. Walters sanctioning it as a legitimate expense.
His mind returned to Dr. Talbot. One phone call had elicited the information