Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

not paper, it's vellum. Calfskin. It gets eaten away by bacteria if it's not maintained in the right conditions. That's the interesting thing about this...see these tiny holes? Whoever made this copy even got that part right."
    "Huh." Pete mused. "Maybe it has been protected. Maybe it got stuck in that chest and no one took it out for several hundred years."
    "Yeah, but think of the journey from Ireland to here. Most of those people came on ships. The chest would have been exposed to the salt air, heat and/or cold..."
    "Yeah, but if the page was wrapped in something, the air may not have penetrated into the chest. Then when it was discovered by whatever descendant, maybe even Jennifer's old lady friend, they slid it into a big book like this for safekeeping, meaning to have it appraised someday, then forgot all about it."
    I narrowed my eyes at Pete. "You don't really think that this is the real deal."
    He smiled. "Nah. Those stolen pages probably got used to wrap fish or something."
    "Oh God. Can you imagine? Something that precious?"
    "Well, it wasn't a thousand years old then, was it? Only a couple of hundred years. And the thief may not have cared about the artwork. I can see the theft taking place for the gold on the cover, and then the missing pages were torn out for convenience and used for something else."
    I nodded. "That makes the most sense of anything. Which makes this a very beautiful piece of art, but not necessarily a valuable one."
    "Right. So you're going to show it to Conrad tomorrow?"
    "Yep." I closed the art book. "Gonna put it in my computer bag right now. What are we gonna eat this evening?"

    The next morning I drove to work, uneasy about riding the bus with the potentially valuable manuscript page. When I got to my office, I emptied my computer bag of everything except the art book, then went to Conrad's office. He was refilling the jar of pumpkin seeds from a zip lock bag. "Jamie! What a pleasant surprise! Two visits in the same quarter - to what do I owe the honor?"
    I laughed. "Jeez, Conrad, you'd think I was the Dalai Lama. I've got something to show you. But we need to go to the back."
    We went back to the area where the most fragile manuscripts were kept; it required passing through another locked door. Temperature and humidity were more closely controlled back here. We put on face masks, and I opened the art book to the page where I had inserted the piece of vellum. Conrad sucked in a breath, and took out a pair of gloves. He put them on quickly, saying "How beautiful," almost under his breath. He leaned forward over the page. “Where did you find this?”
    “We found it Saturday, at my sister-in-law’s apartment, when we went back to finish cleaning the place out. It was in a box of books that hadn’t been opened yet. When I opened this book to look at the copyright date, this page slid out onto my lap.”
    Conrad took a magnifying glass out of a drawer in the table and examined the page. “Is this what the torn bit originally looked like?”
    “Yep.”
    “My goodness.” Conrad straightened up and looked at me. “Have you told the police about this?”
    “Yes. We called them yesterday after we found it. Detective Eckhoff said that since it was in a closed box, and the page at the crime scene didn’t have any fingerprints but the dead guy’s, that we could try to find out what it was. Since the piece they have can’t be released from evidence until the killer is caught.”
    Conrad barely touched the corner of the vellum and edged it out of the book, then slid his hand under it and lifted it. He picked up the magnifying glass and started poring over the script, studying the letters and drawings intently. He laid down the magnifier, turned the vellum over, and did the same to the back. It took about ten minutes.
    Finally, he settled the vellum back onto the page of the book. He looked at me in wonder. "Jamie. I believe you have..." His voice trailed off.
    "But it's not possible, is it, Conrad? How would a manuscript like this have survived, intact, from Ireland to here?"
    Conrad spread his hands. "Other manuscripts that are close to the same age have survived. It's mostly a question of the conditions in which they have been kept. If this one has been packed away, in a dry, cool place, then it's very possible. This book - " he gestured to the art book - "is an example. The vellum has been kept dry, not exposed to the elements at all, and likely kept in cool attics or other