The Torn Leaf
Cases unlock in order, like levels. This is case 33 of 100.
Kellworth College, Oxford, 9:35 pm. On his night round, the porter found the library's manuscript room open.
On the foam cradle lay the Kellworth Psalter, from 1260, open. Folio 17, the Annunciation painted with gold leaf, had been cut flush to the binding.
The psalter spent the day on display and went back to the vault at 6 pm. Only authorized people have come and gone since then, and three people were in or near the library between 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm.
The leaf did not leave the college through the lodge. Someone here knows where it is.
The college senior common room, fireplace cold, portraits of former Masters on the oak-panelled walls.
Suspects
Imogen HartleyLibrarian in charge of the manuscripts, 58
Walter PryceVisiting professor of palaeography, 64
Tobi AdeyemiHistory scholarship student, 20
The real case
The librarians who stole from their own collections
Sweden and United States, 1986 to 2005
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
Between 1986 and 2004, the head of the manuscripts department at the National Library of Sweden removed dozens of rare books from the collection he was supposed to protect and sold them through auction houses in Germany. He confessed in 2004, when the library discovered the losses.
In 2005, in the United States, map dealer Forbes Smiley was caught at the Yale library with a utility knife blade; he admitted to cutting nearly a hundred antique maps out of atlases in American and British libraries, always close to the binding, so that the missing pages would go unnoticed.
The game borrows the custodian who steals what he guards and the clean cut of a page, given away by a detail. Characters, crime and outcome are fiction.
Sources
Case glossary
Words from this case you might not know.
- psalter
- A book containing the Psalms, often a richly illuminated manuscript in the Middle Ages.
- folio
- A single leaf of a manuscript or book, numbered on the front side only.
- gold leaf
- Gold beaten into extremely thin sheets, applied to decorate manuscripts, frames and paintings.
- Annunciation
- In Christian art, the scene of the angel Gabriel announcing to the Virgin Mary that she will bear Jesus.
- palaeography
- The study of ancient and medieval handwriting, used to read and date old manuscripts.
- senior common room
- At British colleges, a lounge reserved for the fellows and academic staff.