calls for the courts are logged and tracked, for departmental billing and for security.'
'What did it show?'
'It came back with 'extension unregistered'. We had the phone people check into it, but they said it was some sort of external line fault, so we were no wiser.'
'Have they called back again?'
'No, but the second call was only yesterday. How did you know what happened?'
'I saw it before,' said Blackbird, 'a long time ago.' Her words made me think of a little girl, curled in a corner, watching a dark shape speak into a mirror.
'Would His Lordship have come back here last night? Could he have picked up a call?' I asked.
'He may have done. The calls go through to his office if I'm not here.'
'Have you been in his office today?' asked Blackbird.
'Yes, several times.'
'Can I take a look?'
'You can look, but he's not in there.'
Blackbird went to the double doors and pushed one open, standing in the doorway to observe the room. Satisfied that it was indeed empty, she stepped through. I stood in the doorway behind her. She walked around the large desk with its dark, polished surface and green leather inlay, the walls stacked with row upon row of legal texts. She slowly circled the office, drawing her forefinger across the polished surfaces.
'Not here,' she said.
'I told you he wasn't there,' said Claire, from over my shoulder.
That wasn't what she meant. She meant he hadn't died there.
I stepped back into the ante-office and she came after me and pulled the door closed behind her.
'If you get another call like that, put the telephone down straight away. Don't speak to them, don't listen to them. Just put the phone down, OK?'
She nodded. 'Do you have any idea what happened to him?'
'Perhaps. When did you speak to him last?'
'Yesterday. He had an evening engagement and I left him to it. He never went home. His wife is frantic with worry and calling here every ten minutes. I've already called all the hospitals and alerted the police, but there's no sign of him. I was sort of hoping your historical mystery might have something to do with it. He's a keen historian. It's possible he went off on some wild goose chase.'
'Does he do that a lot?'
'No, nothing like this has happened before. That's what's so worrying. What if he's been kidnapped or something? We deal with all sorts here, organised criminals, gangs, murderers, everything. The police are coming in an hour or so to talk to me, but there have been no demands or ransom. In the absence of anything else, I think they're hoping he'll just turn up.'
Blackbird glanced at me. It must have crossed her mind, as it had mine, that if one of the Seventh Court had been outside my door last night then they might have been in other places too.
'If you don't find him, the ceremony will still go ahead?' Blackbird asked her.
'It won't be the first time we've had to improvise to make sure it happens, but yes, it will go ahead.'
'So the ceremony has changed?' I asked her.
'The ceremony has been conducted under the offices of the Queen's Remembrancer for almost eight hundred years and is virtually identical to how it was originally performed. Even the words are identical, if a little archaic. In every respect, the ceremony is legally identical to the ones carried out in the thirteenth century.'
'But you said you'd had to improvise,' I challenged. 'You can't be using the same horseshoes that were used eight hundred years ago, surely?'
'Actually, the shoes are the originals and are the oldest horseshoes known to be in existence. There have been some minor changes, though, of course. Countless different people have been involved in performing the ceremony and some of the items have had to be renewed, but in every respect it is as identical as we can make it to the ceremonies performed in the reign of King John.'
'Which of the items have had to be renewed?' asked Blackbird.
'Why are you so interested in this?'
'It's possible,' Blackbird said, 'that changes in the ceremony have something to do with your missing Remembrancer.'
'Then you should inform the police. Anything that can help to find him…'
'The police aren't going to find him, Claire.'
'Then you know what's happened to him? If you do…'
'No. But there are things here that the police can't deal with. We can try to help you but you have to help us too. There is a great deal at stake.'
Claire looked from one of us to the other. 'What do you want from me?' she asked.
'We need to know what has changed in the ceremony. I can't tell you when it changed because we don't know, but something changed at some point, maybe in the last hundred years or so and it may have a lot to do with why your boss didn't make it home last night.'
She folded her arms, chewing her lip as she considered our request. 'And this will help to find Jerry?'
'It may explain what has happened to him,' Blackbird offered.
Claire weighed that. 'Come through into the office. I'll bring you what I have.'
She brushed past us and opened the doors to the Remembrancer's office. She brought two chairs forward from the wall and we were invited to sit across from the empty chair of the absent owner. Claire disappeared for a few moments, and then returned with a rectangular bundle wrapped in soft black cloth. She unfolded it on the desk, revealing a thick brown leather-bound book.
'This is the Journal of the Queen's Remembrancer, or at least the latest version of it. The earlier ones are in the restricted archives of the Public Record Office at Kew. This one is from about 1870 onwards.' She smiled apologetically. 'The duties of the Remembrancer were made largely ceremonial after the Queen's Remembrancer's Act of 1859.'
She slid the book towards us. 'Please be careful with it, it's quite delicate. There are some cotton gloves here,' she glanced at me, 'but they're probably too big for your hands.' She passed them to Blackbird who was clearly a more suitable person, in her eyes, to be handling valuable documents.
The leather binding of the journal showed its age and use. Each hand that had held it over the years had added to the smoothness of the leather until there were two burnished patches, one on each side, where you might naturally hold it to lay it out to write.
Blackbird slipped the soft cotton gloves on and moved the book in front of her. I stood up and moved behind her so I could look over her shoulder.
The book was a little smaller than a standard letter size and creaked when it opened. She turned to a page indicated by a length of red ribbon sewn into the binding. There were rows of neat script. Each short entry described an event, the annual Trial of the Pyx being one, but there were others. Each had a date, written out in long-hand, the nature of the event and a list of those present. Some small details of the event were recorded and, occasionally comments were added about some aspect of the duties or roles performed.
On the previous page was the entry for the last year's Quit Rents Ceremony. It detailed the attendees, including the City of London's Comptroller and Solicitor and various representatives of the Corporation of London. Certain attendees were starred, though why they were picked out wasn't obvious. Blackbird leafed slowly backwards through the volume, finding almost identical entries for each year of the ceremony. After we had gone back about fifteen years, the hand changed to a more circular script, but the entries remained the same. Each year the knives were submitted and the horseshoes and nails counted. A response of good service for the knives or good number for the nails was given in return. The formalities of the ceremony were completed and the entry ended with some benign comment about an amusing address or ceremonial presentation.
Blackbird leafed back to 1945 and then slowed. I realised she was checking to see if the ceremony had been disrupted by the war, but there were the entries again, good service and good number for each year between 1939 and 1945. We went back again, stepping slowly back in time. I came to understand that the role of Remembrancer lasted between ten and twenty years, almost regardless of what happened in the world at the time. There was one script that lasted only three ceremonies and I could imagine some illness overtaking the person, particularly as the
