LADY ON THE WEB

When I woke, my ankle was very bad -- swollen and blue. I could only hobble about. Mrs. Grimes came over mid-morning and clucked over me, setting me up with old wooden crutches borrowed from the chemist's in town. Then, looking grave, she took something out of the pocket of her apron and handed it to me, saying she'd noticed it in the road. The color had attracted her attention. It was a fragment of the 18th-century bloodstone fireplace the workmen have been uncovering in the music room. There was no mistaking it. The carvings are of urns and griffins, with garlands of roses between them. The fragment had a piece of the griffin's wing, and the curling tip of his paintbrush tail.

We went into the music room as fast as I could go on crutches. The workmen were taking two weeks off for the holidays. They'd left everything covered with a sheet of heavy plastic, stapled all around to the hideous 1970s paneling they were in the process of removing.

They'd told me not to touch it while the special adhesive in the mended spots was curing, and I'd believed them. Now I saw how I'd been duped, as Mrs. Grimes and I undid the last of the staples and lifted away the plastic.

There was the beautiful fireplace, a masterpiece of Neo-Classical carving, something Napoleon himself might have coveted -- with one corner missing.