Caroline Minuscule Read Online Free

inconvenience. My employers were paying him very adequately for a small service – all quite above board, though perhaps not the sort of thing one need mention to the Inland Revenue – and he had accepted their terms, and they his. Mutually beneficial. Then he started being difficult. He was a greedy man, you know.’
    Dougal did know; he could imagine cupidity blinding Gumper to all other considerations. It wouldn’t have been greed alone, though – Gumper had liked to make himself felt, to stamp the world around him with his image.
    â€˜Really very silly,’ Hanbury continued. ‘I don’t think he realized the sort of people my employers are. They tend to react rather sharply to threats of any kind.’
    React with a well-dressed executioner
, thought Dougal;
when in doubt, garotte
. He would be finding it increasingly difficult to take the conversation seriously, were it not for the silent witness of its seriousness which lay in a first floor room less than a mile away.
    â€˜Of course’ – Hanbury pulled his right earlobe reflectively – ‘it is rather awkward for my employers. Gumper was doing a small but important piece of work for them. And, as you say, the literary aspect of the Carolingian era is a relatively obscure field. Which brings me to the reason that I asked you for a drink. I wonder if you would be interested in doing it in his place?’
    Silence fell between them again. Dougal appreciated the leisurely pace at which Hanbury was conducting the conversation. The man was staring into his glass, now, as if he found its contents absorbing. He wasn’t rushing it, despite the urgency which the events of the past hour predicated. Dougal’s mind grappled with the choice: it was an impossible one – how much of a security risk would Hanbury consider him to be if he refused? Would acceptance lead to something more dangerous than being an accidental accessory to murder? He blurted out, ‘Look, what’s all this about? I can’t decide without knowing a little more.’
    â€˜My employers had asked Gumper to transcribe a page of a medieval manuscript. He was to have done a translation as well, and to have assessed its date and provenance and so forth. He had already said that the script was Caroline Minuscule. A very straightforward job for someone in your line of country. Not so easy if you don’t know a serif from an ampersand and haven’t the time to find out.’
    â€˜I presume the reason for all this is none of my business?’ Dougal was talking to himself as much as to Hanbury, but the latter nodded. Well, it was easy enough to think of reasons, after all – maybe Hanbury worked for a fence who had been offered a valuable stolen manuscript and wanted a discreet expert opinion on it, though Dougal hardly felt he had reached that status. It was odd, nevertheless – surely there couldn’t be much of a market for stolen medieval manuscripts, unless of course the hypothetical fence had a private buyer already in mind, one who wasn’t overscrupulous.
    Hanbury said, slowly and quietly, ‘You have my word that there’s no risk here at all – for yourself or anyone else. And, in return for quick, reliable work, my employers are willing to pay very generously. In cash. Ten-pound notes.’ He was looking at Dougal’s tatty leather jacket as he spoke and it was as if he had added, ‘And you look as though you need some money too.’
    It was the detail of ten-pound notes which decided Dougal. It made the whole thing possible, no longer an academic speculation. He asked what sort of amount Hanbury’s employers might have in mind (to have merely asked ‘How much?’ would have jarred in the circumstances).
    â€˜Twelve hundred,’ replied Hanbury. ‘Cash on delivery with a small retainer in advance – plus a bonus for speed, perhaps. Would you be able to drop everything and