REPORT A.807 – 1
Incomplete List of Purloined Items
1. Orchid bulbs from Genevieve Dupree’s award winning “Collection Luxuriante”.
Dupree’s collection was stored in a series of three increasingly secure glasshouses and watched over by guard dogs and security cameras, in addition to being within a building that was literally see-through. Each of the bulbs was the result of a lifetime’s careful breeding, growth, and experimentation.
2. Windmill, Sunlight Dappled - Edgar Winthrop’s famed (and frankly overrated) landscape.
Windmill, Sunlight Dappled was stolen as it was transported between a private collection and a museum where it was planned to be the centerpiece of a Winthrop retrospective. Why exactly a Winthrop retrospective would be staged nowadays is bizarre, as everybody knows Castelle had far better brush control and a more refined understanding of landscape painting.
3. Savatier’s Violin.
Ernst Savatier was the first violinist in the Orchestre de Paris during the golden three year period in which they cemented their reputation as Europe’s leading orchestra. Following his death, his violin was donated to the Bergamot Museum of Music, where it sat in a temperature controlled glass case before its sudden and inexplicable disappearance in the middle of the night. No other instruments were taken.
4. The Marble Bust Of Empress Elaine.
There is no historical record of an Empress Elaine throughout European history, so one has to assume that the unknown sculptor was working from their imagination. Perhaps their lover was raised to a royal status, perhaps the sculptor imagined a grand and lauded history along with the statuette.
5. Luc, a Tuscan Whistling Cockatiel, once belonging to a famed composer and rumoured to whistle the theme of his final, unreleased masterpiece.
Poor Luc.
6. The Plans For The Duvalier Altarpiece.
The Duvalier Altarpiece is one of the most striking examples of Potential Architecture in European history. Commissioned in 1654 by Hector Duvalier, mayor of Limon-Avignon, the initial plans suggested something striking and beautiful, but a construction problem meant that the final work could only be disappointing. The plans, however, remain stunning, forever relegating the altarpiece to the realms of Potential Architecture. Perhaps it is safer there.
7. Albertine Camus’ Mother of Pearl Fountain Pen, used to write four of her five famous novels.
Camus’ fifth novel, “The Bridge & The Byway”, was written on a Telleq brand typewriter. It was the novelist’s first encounter with a typewriter, and by all accounts she was not entirely impressed. After a while, however, she became more accustomed to it, and wrote her final essays on a Telleq Mark-10. She carefully stored the fountain pen in her top desk drawer, where it remained until her death when it was donated to a local museum. I wonder if it still writes? I wonder if our thief is planning to write novels?
8. Baron Karl Elsbach’s diadem.
Elsbach’s diadem was presented to him as a gift by his husband in memory of a long summer the two spent together hunting deer in the forests around their castle. Which is sweet, I suppose, but I doubt the deer enjoyed it very much. They look awfully nervous, don’t you think? This might be the most nervous diadem I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen at least three. It disappeared from the vault of the Baron’s great great granddaughter.
9. The Fiorentini Music Box, capable of playing eight haunting melodies and one jaunty one.
This is the only stolen object I’ve actually seen in real life. It came to the city a couple of years ago as part of an exhibition on machine-music, and I went down in the afternoon. It was beautiful. It sat on a little plinth and every fifteen minutes a man with a pince-nez would come and wind it. I heard two of the haunting tunes and then the bakery caught fire again so I had to go sort that whole mess out.
10. Locked Box recovered from ancient Greek shipwreck off the coast of Crete.
Nobody knows what’s contained within this box. It made the news a couple of months ago when it was picked up. There was some discussion about whether or not to open it, but they decided to keep it preserved, which was probably the right decision. Besides, what could be inside that’s more exciting than what we imagine? Perhaps the thief has some idea.