“I’m taking charge,” she said. “Why didn’t you report this in straightaway? I had to find out about the break-in through the grapevine.”

“Is there a grapevine?” asked Finisterre.

“I’ve heard there’s one,” I returned with a half smile.

“Very funny,” said Smalls. “I want you to turn over the command of your SLS troops to me and have a full report on my desk by tomorrow morning—after you’ve given me a debrief on what you know right now.”

“Where are your own people?” I asked, since she had arrived without any SO-27 operatives.

She glared at me. “We’re having recruitment . . . issues,” she said quietly. “I went through the list of reassignment requests. The formation of SO-27 has been on the cards for weeks. Lots of time for officers to ask to join me.”

“There weren’t any, were there?”

“Not one,” said Phoebe, “but we’ll resolve that soon enough. Now, this is SO-27 jurisdiction. The debrief, Next.”

“It’s our jurisdiction,” I said simply.

“How do you figure that?” she demanded, her mood angrier by the second. “Scriptorium, theft,thirteenth-century codices— what could be more Literary Detective about it?”

“We’ve given the Lobsterhood book collection Wessex Library status,” I said. “This library and all within comes under our control. The Special Library Services troops are legally empowered to shoot to kill. I can ask SO-27 for assistance, but that’s as far as it goes.”

Phoebe Smalls looked at me, then at Mother Daisy, who nodded agreement. Smalls could have carried on in a dopey rant, but she was smart enough to know that yelling would be pointless and degrading, plus there was a better-than-good chance I knew what I was doing.

“Very well,” she said at last. “SO-27 offers every assistance to the library in this matter. But I’d like to be kept in the loop,” she added in a softer tone, “simply as a professional courtesy.”

“Okay,” I replied, “here it is: Thieves of unknown origin with an unknown motive destroyed a single leaf from a book with marginal value, literary merits or rarity.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. But,” I added, “there might be a Goliath angle to this, and if someone is monkeying around with thirteenth-century codices for no reason, all antiquarian suppliers, dealers and collectors need to be informed so they can increase security. You can do that better than I.”

“It might not be the first time this has happened,” said Phoebe thoughtfully. “I’ll run through reports of any unexplained vandalism in the lucrative and highly buoyant seriously-ancientcodex market.”

It wasn’t a good idea—it was a great idea. So great that I should have been the one making it.

“Goes without saying,” I said, and she flashed me a quizzical look.