“Yes, you have. The Asian art collection is almost completely in storage, and has been for over a year. What better time to replace some of the artifacts with replicas? People are less likely to notice any differences when they haven’t seen the originals for a long time. But Margot noticed, didn’t she? She made two trips to that storeroom, the first to do her original canvas and then only a few months later to do the second. And she saw the difference right away. You said she kept snagging things while she worked on that horse, that’s what made me realize that both times she saw it was in the storeroom. So it wasn’t a change in lighting that made her think the horse was a different shade of blue.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The T‘ang horse in your collection, the one Margot made a needlepoint copy of. The horse she saw originally matched the one-thousand series of Madeira blue silks, while the horse she saw the second time matched the seventeen-hundred series. She realized it wasn’t the same horse.

“And what does one do when one suspects there has been a theft? Why, one reports it to the person responsible—that was you, wasn’t it, Hud?”

He made a little noise in his throat, but no words came out.

“And you said you’d look into it right away. You probably asked her not to tell anyone until you’d checked it out, right? Then you came to her apartment that night, saying you needed to see the proof. So she got her sketchbook and took you down to the shop because that’s where the original needlepoint hung. And you hit her with your cane—was it the one with the head shaped like a snail? I remembered the way the slinky little head came out of the shell on the head of your cane, and it made me wonder. But maybe it was the one shaped like a bird. What kind of a bird is that, with the pointed beak?”

“Who have you told this fairy tale to? You’re going to have some explaining to do if you’ve told anyone, because you’re making a horrible mistake.”

“Whatever cane it was, you hit Sophie with it, too, but with the side, and you broke her hind leg.”

“I didn’t hit anyone with a cane. Anyhow, I thought you said Joe Mickels did it. Or Irene Potter. They both were near the store, weren’t they?”