A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [29]
There was a pause in conversation as he steered between the carts, drays, lorries, taxis, omnibuses, trams, and the thousand other forms of moving targets, but when eventually we had fought free, unscathed, of the greater concentration of traffic, he resumed as if without interruption.
"This manuscript, what did you call it?"
"It's called a papyrus. We should have shown it to you, but it's in a safe place and Holmes thought it best to leave it hidden. The manuscript itself is a little roll of papyrus, which is a kind of thick paper made from beaten reeds, very commonly used in ancient Egypt and the whole Middle East, apparently, though very little of it has survived. Miss Ruskin consulted authorities on it, but they decided it was not an authentic first-century document, partly because there's so little extant Palestinian papyrus. However, she thought that as it was sealed inside a glazed figurine, it could have resisted wear that long. I haven't had a chance to examine it closely, but there were definite signs of red pottery dust embedded in the fibres. It was put into the box quite recently, in the last twenty years."
"Tell me about the box."
I described it, the animals, inlay, date, and probable origin.
"I'd like to take it to the British Museum to have a friend look at it, but it's undoubtedly quite valuable. It's in excellent condition, though how it got to a Bedouin tribesman from Italy will take some figuring."
"And the manuscript itself, what's it worth?"
"I have no way of knowing."
"Guess."
"Surely you know better than to ask that of a student of Sherlock Holmes," I chided.
"Miss Russell, I am asking for a rough estimate of the thing's value, not a bid at auction. What is it worth?"
"Half a million guineas?"
"What?" he choked, and nearly had us in the ditch.
"The road, please, Inspector," I said urgently, and then: "You're certain you don't want me to drive? Very well. The thing could as easily be worth ten pounds, I have at present no means of evaluating it. But you asked two questions— one of its worth, and the other of its value. The two are related, although not the same. If it is not authentic, as merely a curiosity, the manuscript is nearly worthless and of little value. If, however— and it's a very large if— if it is authentically what it appears to be, whoever owned it could set the price. Only a handful of individuals in the world could afford it. And its value ... Its value as an agent of change? Good Lord, if the papyrus came to be generally accepted as a voice from the first century, the repercussions would be ... considerable."
My voice drifted off, and he glanced at me in surprise.
"Perhaps you had best tell me about it. It's a letter, you said?"
I sighed and tried to arrange my thoughts as if I were presenting an academic paper to a colleague. That this particular colleague knew not the first thing about the topic and that I was struggling in far over my head with it did not make the presentation any easier.
"I must begin by emphasising that I am not a qualified judge. I am no expert in Greek or in first-century Christianity. If," I was forced to add parenthetically, "you can even call it Christianity at that point. Miss Ruskin gave me the manuscript knowing this, on, as near as I can gather, a personal whim combined with annoyance at the experts, who rejected it out of hand. She thought it worth more than