The Small Hand Read Free Page A

I wanted to go back because of the small hand.
    Had Denny Parsons stood there in the gathering dusk, looking at the empty house, surrounded by that green wilderness, and as she made her plans for it felt the invisible small hand creep into her own?

Four
    othing happened with any connection to the Merrimans or the part of the world in which they lived, and where I had come upon the White House, for several weeks. My trade was going through a dull patch. It happens every so often and ought not to trouble me, but after a short time without any requests from clients or phone calls about possible treasures I become nervous and irritable. If the dead patch continues for longer, I start wondering if I will have to sell some of my own few treasures, convinced that the bottom has dropped out of the business and I will never be active again. Every time it happens I remind myself that things have never failed to turn round, yet I never seem able to learn from experience.
    I was not entirely idle of course. I bought and sold one or two complete library sets, including a first edition of Thomas Hardy, and even wondered whether to take up the request from an American collector to find him a full set of the James Bond first editions, mint and in dust wrappers, price immaterial. This is not my field, but I started to ask about in a desultory way, knowing I was probably the hundredth dealer the man had employed to find the Bonds and the one least likely to unearth them.
    The summer began to stale. London emptied. I thought half-heartedly of visiting friends in Seattle.
    And then two things happened on the same day.
    In the post I received an envelope containing a card and a cutting from an old newspaper.
Mr Snow, I unearthed this clipping about the house, Denny’s House, which you came upon by chance when getting lost on your way to us in June. I thought perhaps you might still be interested as it tells a little story. I am sure there is more and if I either remember or read about it again I will let you know. But please throw this away if it is no longer of interest. Just a thought.
Sincerely, Alice Merriman.
    I poured a second cup of coffee and picked up the yellowed piece of newspaper.
    There was a photograph of a woman whom I recognised as Denisa Parsons, standing beside a large ornamental pool with a youngish man. In the centre of the pool was a bronze statue at which they were looking in the slightly artificial manner of all posed photographs. The statue was of a young boy playing with a dolphin and a golden ball and rose quite beautifully out of the still surface of the water, on which there were one or two water lilies. There might have been fish but none was visible.
    The news item was brief. The statue had been commissioned by Denisa Parsons in memory of her grandson, James Harrow, who had been drowned in what was simply described as ‘a tragic accident’. The man with her was the sculptor, whose name was not familiar to me, and the statue was now in place at ‘Mrs Parsons’s internationally famous White House garden’. That was all, apart from a couple of lines about the sculptor’s other work.
    I looked at the photograph for some time but I could read nothing into the faces, with their rather public smiles, and although the sculpture looked charming to me, I am no art critic.
    I put the cutting in a drawer of my desk, sent Lady Merriman a postcard of thanks and then forgot about the whole thing, because by the same post had come a letter from an old friend at the Bodleian Library telling me that he thought he might have news of a Shakespeare First Folio which could conceivably be for sale. If I would like to get in touch …
    Fifteen minutes later I was in a taxi on my way to Paddington station to catch the next train to Oxford.

Five
    haven’t had an extended lunch break for, what, five years? So I’m taking one today.’
    It did not surprise me. I have known quite a few librarians across the world, in major libraries