The National Gallery's memo template didn't care about adjectives, so I gave it what it wanted: Week 3 update filed; carrier ledgers cross-checked; Household equerry name corroborated in Round Tower warrants; no anomalies detected. Next steps: dealer correspondence; probate inventories; shipping manifests.
I hit send and closed the laptop. The job was doing what jobs do — moving forward in neat, numbered lines. The other thing wasn't.
I opened Ashcombe's journal again and turned to the entries I'd marked with a narrow paper slip. “Waste bundle for pulping — loose leaves, typescripts, a wrapper split. A few sheets slid free. I tucked them into my waistcoat.” (27 July 1910)
Two years later he ties off the act: “Down in the cellars I slipped the twelve leaves into an archive marked Miscellaneous Correspondence. Between a sheaf of invoices and a letter about rum. No one will look there.” (22 November 1912)
That was the route. Not romance — mechanics. Twelve leaves that escaped the mill, then disappeared into a label bland enough to survive tidying: Miscellaneous Correspondence.
Could any of it still exist? A century of moves and housekeeping said no. But Windsor had told me enough to know where not to look. If those leaves were ever to be found, they would be where Ashcombe left them — in a merchant cellar's archive, filed where no clerk had a reason to read.
I wrote two lists. One headed National Gallery — dealer daybooks, probate files, frame-maker directories. The other headed Berry Bros. — had the firm begun digitising its archives; where Miscellaneous Correspondence would surface on a cart; how close I could stand without getting in anyone's way.