Murder at Teatime by Stefanie Matteson Page A

you last see the missing books, Mr. Lewis?” asked Tracey.
    “A couple of weeks ago,” he replied. “It was a Tuesday. I remember because I’d just returned from a long weekend in Boston.” He walked over to a calendar that was hanging on a wall. “June twelfth, I guess it was.”
    “The day before I looked for them and discovered that they weren’t there,” added Daria.
    “Will there be anything else?” asked John.
    “Not at the moment,” replied Tracey.
    “I’m sorry this had to happen, but maybe it will be a lesson to Frank,” he said, heading back toward the door. “Keeping books as valuable as these lying around is an open invitation to theft.”
    “I am afraid our young friend is right,” said Felix after John had gone. “Let’s hope our dear host will have a chance to put the lesson into practice once the books are recovered.”
    “A question about this notification system, Mr. Mayer,” said Tracey, pencil in hand. “Would a dealer who is offered a book for sale automatically consult the computer bulletin board, or would he have to be tipped off first that a book might have been stolen?”
    “A very good question, sir,” replied Felix, with a little nod. “Usually a dealer would suspect theft before consulting the list, the tip-off, as you say, being that the seller cannot supply a verifiable provenance.”
    “Provenance?” asked Tracey.
    “Origin. But in the case of extremely rare books such as these, the dealer would immediately suspect theft. If a seller should tell me, for instance, that he bought the books at a yard sale or found them in his grandfather’s attic, I would immediately—what is the expression in English?—smell a fish.”
    “A rat,” corrected Charlotte.
    “Ah, ja ,” replied Felix good-naturedly. “Smell a rat or suspect something fishy, nicht wahr ?”
    Charlotte nodded. She noticed with repugnance the lack of concern with which he flicked the ashes of his cigar on the fine Chinese carpet.
    “Does that mean the books are likely to be recovered?” asked Tracey.
    “ Ja —if they enter the market place,” replied Felix. “But material gain isn’t the only motive for theft. In fact, the thief who steals for material gain is usually quite easy to catch. It’s the thief who steals out of some other motive who’s hard to catch.”
    “Such as?” prompted Daria.
    Felix settled back in his chair self-importantly, delighting in his role as resident expert. “One motive is the drive to possess, which we were talking about the other day. The thief who is motivated to steal for this reason doesn’t try to sell the book, which makes it very difficult to catch him. This type of thief thinks he has a right to a book. Usually he keeps the book in a place that is directly under his control, such as a vault.”
    The group’s attention shifted to the vault, whose gaping emptiness lent a jarring note to the otherwise tranquil atmosphere of the room.
    “Then there’s the casual thief, who steals because the opportunity arises. The janitor who accidentally comes across a valuable document, the visitor who is left alone in a room with an unlocked vault full of early printed herbals. This kind of thief is easy to catch. He usually tries to sell the book, but goes about it so ineptly that he gives himself away.”
    “The vault wasn’t locked?” asked Tracey, turning to Daria.
    “Well, that’s the thing,” she replied. “It wasn’t. Not when Dr. Thornhill was here, and he was here most of the time. He only locked it when he went down to Boston. He put the books in the vault more to protect them from light and dust than to protect them from theft.”
    “So anyone could have taken them,” observed Tracey.
    “I suppose so,” said Daria in a tone of puzzlement. “But he’s here most of the time, and even when he’s not, there’s usually someone around.”
    Charlotte remembered Stan’s comment that Thornhill was in the habit of spending long hours in his