Page 18 of Right Place, Right Time
‘It certainly is. But I guess we’ll never know now.’
‘I bet that really irks you?’ Adam says, tilting his head to one side. ‘A mystery in your family you can’t solve. It’s like one of your antiques you can’t give its full story to.’
‘I don’t think you can compare my great-grandmother’s disappearance with an antique!’
Adam pulls a disapproving face. ‘Even I wouldn’t do that. But it does bother you, though, doesn’t it, this mystery?’
‘A bit.’
Adam raises his eyebrows.
‘OK, a lot. But there’s not much I can do now to try to solve it. It all happened eighty years ago. I’ve been told I look a bit like her, though.’
‘Really, you must have seen photos of her?’
‘A few. I can’t say I see the resemblance. But everyone else seems to.’
‘Amazing. Well, I hate to disappoint, but I’m sure my family history will seem very dull compared to yours.’
‘You might be surprised. Do you know if there are any documents in the house that would tell us anything more about your family? Or photograph albums, perhaps.’
‘Why do you want them?’
‘I just like to get a picture of where the items I’m going to sell have originated from. I don’t need to see the house deeds or anything. But sometimes invoices or bills for expensive items are kept, and they help me a lot with both valuation and provenance. And a photograph album showing people with their furniture, or their precious objects, can tell you so much.’
‘Right, er … there might be something in my grandfather’s study – his name was George, by the way.’
‘Yes, Ben said last night.’
‘Oh, so he did, you’re right. And my great-grandfather was Archie – I do know that much.’
‘Good.’
‘If we don’t find anything in the study, it might be worth trying the attic. There could be boxes up there we’ve not even thought about yet.’
‘Great idea. We’ll try the study first though. I do love a good rummage in an attic!’
Adam looks at me with a puzzled expression. ‘Really? Aren’t they usually dusty old places full of junk in my experience.’
‘Trust me. An attic is not always where the most valuable items are found, but it’s often where the most interesting treasures are hidden.’
5
‘Are you coming up?’ Adam asks from the top of the staircase that magically appeared from the attic once we opened up a little trapdoor in the ceiling. ‘Or do you want me to start passing boxes down to you?’
After we finished lunch, we looked through Adam’s grandfather’s study. Adam said he was keeping all the books that lined the walls, so other than the rather large grandfather clock, an oak writing desk, a couple of interesting paintings and the cabinet full of action figures and comic books, there wasn’t too much of interest to me. We looked inside the desk, where there was a lot of paperwork, but, again, nothing of interest, so we climbed the stairs again and made a beeline for the attic. Adam seemed a bit hesitant at first, but once he found the light switch and he could see properly, he described it as quite a spacious area, which to my enormous relief didn’t appear to be packed to the rafters with junk, as many attics and lofts are.
‘How much is there?’
‘Other than a lot of boxes, there’s some suitcases and a few bits of old furniture.’
‘We may as well get it down, then. It’s all got to be sorted.’
Adam begins to pass the contents of the attic down to me.
‘You don’t have to go through all this, you know?’ he says when we’ve been emptying the attic for about ten minutes. ‘You’re really only here for the good stuff, I know that. It’s up to me to sort through all this junk and see what might be important.’
‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘Anything we find could be of interest to me. Yes, I need to make a profit for my business on some things. But I’m also looking for interesting items that might not be worth as much, but could have a fascinating history.’ I reach up to take an old vintage suitcase from him. ‘Whoa, that’s a heavy one. I assumed it would be empty.’
