Monday morning

You started at Ure & Balfour, a small auction house in Edinburgh’s New Town, five weeks ago.

On Friday at eleven o’clock, the house will sell the estate of the painter Hester Mayne (1904–1971): everything left in her studio and her flat when she died, and everything her family has gathered back since.

Two thousand paintings. The papers are calling it the Scottish sale of the year.

Your job this week is the inventory: the master list of every painting in the sale. It’s under Inventory, at the top of this page. By Friday you’ll know it better than anyone alive.

Mr Ure says it will be a quiet week. Ruth says Mr Ure always says that.

Who’s who

How to play

1. Each case asks you to find one painting in the list at the back of this book.
2. Play the cases in order: each starts where the last one ended. Within a case, use the clues in any order.
3. Read the case. The numbered sentences are your clues. Each clue helps you rule paintings out: cross them off in the list.
4. Each case uses only its own section of the list, so you can cross out in pen. Each case tells you which pages to work on.
5. When you’ve used every clue, one painting will be left. Then turn to that lot number in the endings at the back of the book: if you’re right, the story goes on.
6. Some clues need the reference pages: Hester’s life, and others you’ll meet later.

How to read the inventory

The inventory at the back of this book lists all 2,000 paintings in the order Hester painted them: by year, then by title. It falls into six sections, one for each period of her life.

Each line gives the lot number; the title, which always says what’s in the picture; the year; the medium (the paint, then what it’s painted on); the size, height × width in centimetres (always height first); how it’s signed, or “estate stamp” if Hester never signed it; who first sold it, or “the estate” if it never left the family; “exh.” if it has been in an exhibition; and the house’s lower estimate, in pounds.

Reference: Hester Mayne’s life

Start case 1

The missing painting

Which painting did Callum take?

Monday, 8.40am. Four days to the Mayne sale.

Ruth Malik, the house conservator, has brought you down to the store for the first time. The store book lies open on a packing case.

“The store book. Paintings go out only against a signature in the book. If it’s not Mr Ure or me taking the painting, one of us will countersign.”

“Do you not, you know... computers?”

Ruth gives a small, knowing look. “The computer was not entirely reliable. Hence the book: it’s not a backup for the computers, the book is everything. Never trust a frame. Never trust a family. Always trust the list.”

“OK.”

You can hear Mr Ure on the phone in the next room, his voice a muffled echo.

“Twelve o’clock, yes. No, not five past. Yes, goodbye,” he says.

Ruth turns the page and points. “Here’s the thing, though. We’re one lot short.”

On Saturday, Hester’s grandson Callum came in to collect something to have reframed for his mother. He signed for it in the book. But the lot number he wrote is a smudge. And there’s no countersignature: Jimmy, the Saturday porter, let him in, and Jimmy has never countersigned anything in his life.

“Shall I call Callum?” you say.

Ruth sighs. “I’ve tried. Callum is on the ferry to the Isle of Barra, with no signal. He didn’t say which framer, either. He never does. And the insurers need a lot number by twelve.”

Every painting in the store is already wrapped, sealed and boxed for the move to the saleroom: opening a hundred and eighty parcels to find the gap would take days, and break the condition seals Mr Ure promised the buyers.

“I’ll have to call his mammy, Fiona,” says Ruth drily, and picks up the phone.

You can hear Fiona Mayne’s voice escape the phone handset, brisk but no help. “It’s my birthday present, Ruth. He chose it, and it’s meant to be a surprise, so I’ve no idea which one. He promised he’d sort out the paperwork before he left. Typical. I’ll leave it with you Ruth.”

“So you’ll have to work out which one it was from what you’ve got,” says Ruth. “By lunch.”

The evidence

Inventory

Tap a row to cross it out. Tap again, or press Undo, to bring it back.

Endings

Type the lot number you ended on. If it isn’t one of the endings, go back over the clues: one of them rules your painting out.