44. Back to Work
In which Boiledbeetle surprises the Bluestocking
Griffin was doing up her coat when @Boiledbeetle sidled up to her and held out a small grey object no longer than a sunflower seed.
“Data stick,” she said. “Insert it into the laptop. Open the spreadsheet, go to File, then Save as, then Browse. On the lefthand side go down to the bit that says, Boily, it will have D: or another letter in brackets after it. Then click Save. Don’t save it anywhere else or Halcyon will find it. Once that’s done, close the spreadsheet, pull the stick out and put it in your pocket.”
Griffin took the stick. “But what about clicking the ‘safely remove hardware’ thing on the right hand side?”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Boiledbeetle. “I never have.”
“But how do you know about data sticks?”
“I’ve got a laptop.”
Gimbal and Graphic were already at the door. Griffin put the stick in the pocket of her inside jacket and did the button up over it and the three of them left for the workshop.
“Did anyone know Boily has a laptop?” asked @Hedgehogforshort.
Nobody had.
@ifIwerenotanandroid came in ten minutes later with her camera on its strap and a road atlas under one arm and put both on the table without sitting down.
“Chichester,” she said.
@AngleofRepose opened her notebook. “Go on.”
“North quire aisle. There’s a Chagall window there, from 1978, on Psalm 150. It was made at Charles Marq’s studio in Reims. Very red. You’d walk past the aisle if you didn’t know it was there, it’s tucked away where nobody goes unless they’re looking for the loo.”
Glossy’s door opened and she picked up the camera without a word.
Android continued, “I went over every centimetre of the leading I could reach, then found a verger with a stool and did the rest. Nothing there, no mark.”
“Chagall,” said Angle, writing. “That’s the second one.”
Android looked at her. “Second what?”
“Magpie found a church in Kent full of them. Tudeley. Twelve windows,” Angle said. “No mark there either.”
Angle wrote Chichester, Chagall, Psalm 150, 1978, Reims, no mark, and after a moment wrote second Chagall location.
Gosie’s bag was by the door. @EmpressaurusKitty’s case stood next to it, considerably larger and considerably better labelled. Kitty was sitting on top of the case.
“She travels on the case,” said Empressaurus, when Gasket asked about a carrier. “She always has. She would regard a carrier as an insult.”
“Is that allowed? On the aeroplane?”
“Nobody has ever stopped her.”
Hedgehog came to the door with them. She did not say anything about Umeå or Pernilla Ågren or what Gosie was to do when she got there. She looked at Empressaurus, and at the cat on the case, and nodded.
·
When the gerbils arrived at the workshop Graphic went to the far bench, where the magnifying glass and the side light were set up and the new lead lay waiting for its marks. Griffin went to the laptop, sat down, and did not look at the spreadsheet. The data stick sat in her inside pocket under the button, and she did not touch that either.
Gimbal and Halcyon had worked on filling the Stamps tab in the spreadsheet for two days. Instead of typing the details in number by number, Halcyon had jumped about seemingly randomly, skipping any lines that were not completely blank. Halcyon would call out a number and Gimbal would say the details from memory while Halcyon typed them into the tab. There were still around 50 stamps to complete.
“I’m busy this morning,” said Halcyon. “You’ll have to write them all down on paper and I’ll type them later.” Then Halcyon went into the office and closed the door.
Gimbal took a pencil and a sheet of paper and decided to start at row one and check every compartment in the Stamp box and write them all down from the beginning, so that when the list was finished it would be finished properly.
Gimbal lifted the lid of the stamp box. Everything was in order and it was a pleasure to see the numbers running straight for once, 1 to 200, all facing the same way. She began at 1 and wrote down the die number and what it represented, then worked quickly along the first row of compartments.
At compartment 23 she stopped.
It was empty. There was nothing in it at all, only the bare wood bottom of the compartment with the number 23 stencilled on it. Gimbal looked at it and then went on, because that was her plan, and she liked being a gerbil who followed a plan. She worked down through the fifties and the seventies and the nineties, and every compartment had its stamp in it.
At 106 she stopped a second time.
Bare wood. The number stencilled on the bottom. Nothing else.
She had put 23 in its compartment herself. She had put 106 in its compartment as well. She had not touched either since. Nobody had asked her for either.
Gimbal put the lid back on the box, very carefully, so it made no sound. Then she lifted it again, in case she had been wrong, and looked at the two squares, and saw she had not been wrong.
She looked up and saw Fenella Burnish at her bench with her back turned, with Graphic next to her watching. Halcyon was in the office. Griffin was at the laptop with her paws in her lap. Nobody was looking at the stamp box at all.
https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/44-back-to-work