Page 30 of Kate and Clara's Curious Cornish Craft Shop
‘An orange juice will be fine, thank you,’ I say, still irked by his slight, unintentional or not, on my shop.
Jack puts his hands on his wheels.
‘Would you like me to get—’ I begin, about to stand up. ‘No, of course you wouldn’t. Go ahead.’ I say, holding out my hand as I settle back on the sofa.
‘At least you didn’t say sorry this time,’ Jack answers, grinning at me as he expertly wheels himself through the small doorway.
He returns a few moments later with two glasses of juice balanced on a small tray on his lap.
‘Can I take that from you?’ I ask, trying not to sound sarcastic. I was still getting used to Jack and his ways, and it was difficult to find the right balance between being too helpful and ill-mannered.
‘You can indeed,’ Jack says.
I lift the tray on to a little coffee table, take a glass of juice for myself and pass the other to him.
‘So, these pictures …’ Jack begins, resting his glass down on the table. ‘You’ve brought yours, I assume?’
‘I have indeed.’ I reach into my bag and retrieve the embroidery, then I pass it to Jack.
‘Wow, they’re exactly like parts of my paintings,’ he says, examining the two pieces. ‘I meanreallyalike.’
‘I know they are. I wish I knew why though. I thought about it so much this afternoon in between customers, and I still can’t come up with any sort of sensible explanation.’
‘Me either,’ Jack says, passing the embroidery back to me.
‘Are your pictures still downstairs? Shall I fetch them so we can take a look at them together?’
‘They’re still in the store cupboard at the back of the shop. The key is hanging on a hook at the top of the stairs. Oh, and you’ll need to reset the alarm when you go in – it’s just inside the interior door downstairs. The code is five, five, two, four.’
‘Five, five, two, four. Got it! I’ll be back in a bit.’
I head down the stairs again to the door that leads from the hallway into the side entrance of Jack’s shop. I turn the key, open the door and then quickly silence the alarm by inputting the digits. I make two trips, carrying the pictures back up the stairs first and then the easel.
‘Right,’ I finally say as I stand the easel up in Jack’s sitting room. ‘First, the harbour pictures.’
I place the oil painting of the harbour up on the easel and hold my matching embroidery picture up next to it.
‘Way too similar to be a coincidence,’ Jack says, studying the two pieces of artwork.
‘I know,’ I reply, looking at them. ‘But what does it mean? Who would do this and why? It makes no sense.’
‘Do you think it’s something to do with the fact that both of the items that seem to be – and I hesitate to use this term –creatingthese pictures come from the same house?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know really?’ Jack says, shrugging. ‘I’m grasping at straws, but the easel and the sewing machine came from the same house clearance, didn’t they? Do you think they were owned by the same person?’
‘They might have been, I guess. Perhaps it might help us if we found out more about the elderly lady who used to live there. It’s that big old Victorian house with the blue door up on the coast road. Noah told me.’
‘Has anyone new moved in there since the house clearance, do you know?’
‘I don’t. But we could probably find out easily enough. There’s always someone who knows what’s going on around here – you only have to speak to a few people before you find out the information you want.’
‘Great, that’s where we should start then.’ Jack wheels himself closer to the easel to look at the two pictures. ‘Let me have your embroidery again,’ he says, holding his hand out.
I pass him the fabric.
‘The scale is almost exactly the same,’ he says, holding the fabric up next to the painting. ‘Look – when I hold the embroidery up it’s like a section that has been cut out of the painting.’
