Dear Mr Hesk,
You have crossed out the charge for “quantum observation” and written nonsense beside it.
On the physics, we are agreed. On the six hours, we are not.
As Mr Quist’s assistant, I prepare our accounts. I also accompany him on cases, since the incident with the revolving door. The six hours cover both our time, including calls and the written report. Below is the ordinary work for which you are being charged.
1. Opening the case: £30
You will recall that Mr Quist asked us not to open it.
“Until observed,” he said, “the accordion may be both present and absent.”
“I’ve already looked,” you said.
“That complicates matters.”
He had bought his book the previous Saturday. I do not object to his continuing education. I object to having to be present for all of it.
The black case stood on a chair in the recital room, beneath your poster. Under the concert details, small print offered free practice recordings at your website. In the photograph you held the accordion against a waistcoat with silver buttons. The instrument had red bellows and a little brass bird fixed above the keyboard. You told us the bird covered damage from a fall, and that no other instrument could be mistaken for yours.
I photographed the poster and the empty case. Then I sent the pictures to three local instrument dealers, asking them to contact us if it was offered for sale.
You said you had brought it to the hall at noon, practised, put it away and gone out for lunch at half past twelve. You returned at one to find it missing. The room had no lock. Staff used it as a passage to the kitchen, an arrangement about which you had already complained.
You were remarkably precise about what had been stolen. Instrument, shoulder straps, cleaning cloth. The cloth had no monetary value. You wanted that written down too. You needed our report by five, for the insurer, whether we found anything or not.
Mr Quist examined the window.
“Tunnelling,” he said.
We were on the second floor.
“In quantum mechanics,” he explained, “a thing need not take the obvious route.”
“Then perhaps try the stairs,” I said.
He did. Under them he found Cal Adair folding the hall’s freshly washed tablecloths into a canvas sack.
You had mentioned Mr Adair before you mentioned the window. He cleaned the hall and took its laundry to the wash place behind the bus depot. You said he had been “difficult about money.” Later we established that this meant you had not paid him for cleaning your teaching rooms on four successive Fridays.
Mr Quist asked him to open the sack.
“Are you the police?”
“No. Private inquiry.”
“Then inquire with your mouth.”
Mr Quist withdrew his hand. I asked Mr Adair whether he had been in the recital room.
“Twice. Once for the cups. Once because this gentleman said I’d left a wet mark.” He nodded at you. “I dried it. I was carrying his cup back downstairs when he went out.”
The sack could have held an accordion. Mr Adair kept it on his shoulder.
We asked him to remain available. He said he was available until four, when he had another job. You said perhaps that job should be informed.
Mr Quist looked up from his notebook.
“Not yet,” he said.
He put his book in his pocket.
2. Establishing time: £60
Mrs Orme, who took the hall bookings, had seen you arrive with the black case. At ten past twelve she had heard you playing behind the shut door. She was setting out tickets at a table on the landing.
“The beginning, over and over,” she said. “Then the dog barked.”
“A dog?” Mr Quist asked.
“One bark. A sneeze. Then Mr Hesk said, ‘Not on the rug, Hector.’ I went to tell him animals weren’t permitted upstairs, but it went quiet.”
You explained that Hector belonged to your neighbour and that you had not brought him to the hall.
“I know what I heard,” Mrs Orme said.
“There are houses opposite.”
She considered this. The windows had been open before lunch. She could not say where the bark had come from. She could say that you had been playing.
“Did you see him?” I asked.
“I didn’t open the door while he was practising.”
Mr Quist drew two columns in his notebook. In one he put seen. In the other he put heard. He wrote the case under the first and the accordion under the second.
“The uncertainty principle,” he said. “We know where the instrument was, or what it was doing, but not both.”
You said it had been in your hands, making music, which ought to cover the matter.
“That would be ordinary uncertainty,” I told Mr Quist. “About a witness.”
“I find it useful to give things their full names.”
The distinction was useful. The name was not. I have charged you for the distinction.
There were other people with access. Mrs Orme had gone in to leave programmes. A delivery man had brought a crate of glasses through to the kitchen. You wanted us to concentrate on Mr Adair, but Mr Quist made you wait while I spoke to them.
The delivery man had carried his crate in full and out empty. The kitchen steward had unpacked it. Mrs Orme had left with two old posters rolled under her arm. None of this made theft impossible. It made your confidence about Mr Adair increasingly difficult to share.
One dealer replied that the instrument was unfamiliar. Another asked for its serial number. You found an old repair bill in your email and sent it to me. I forwarded the number. The third dealer, Vale’s Music Rooms, had not replied.
“They’ll have shut for lunch,” you said.
It was nearly three.
“A late lunch.”
3. One unsuccessful experiment: £30
Mr Quist asked us all to return to the recital room. He wanted to test whether the accordion could have been carried out without being seen.
For this he used the case, three folded tablecloths and the book. He put the book inside to approximate the missing weight. I told him an accordion would weigh considerably more.
“The principle is independent of scale.”
I have since asked a physics teacher about this. She requested that we stop using her subject in our advertising.
Mr Adair agreed to take the sack upstairs, provided we did not put his clean cloths on the floor. He was not playing the thief. He was showing us how he had done his job.
I stood at Mrs Orme’s ticket table. Mr Quist carried the case from the room and attempted to pass behind me.
“Seen,” I said.
He went back. Mr Adair came down with the sack.
“Also seen.”
“Suppose,” Mr Quist said, “the observer’s attention is elsewhere.”
“Then she might miss you. That is attention.”
He considered this. “A branch of observation.”
Mr Quist stopped at the recital-room door with the case in his hands.
“What tune did you hear, Mrs Orme?”
She hummed a few bars, then supplied a wheezing note that had given you trouble. You told her it was an ornament.
Mr Quist looked at the poster. “Miss Pike, let’s hear an example.”
I opened the website listed beneath the concert details. Your practice page had six recordings. Mrs Orme knew the tune’s name and pointed it out. You said listening to your entire repertoire would not help us find a thief.
The tune filled the little landing. Mrs Orme stopped shifting the posters from one hand to the other.
“That one,” she said.
The wheezing note arrived. Then Hector barked.
It was a single bark, followed by a sneeze. Your voice told him not to do it on the rug.
Mr Adair started to laugh. He stopped before anyone else did.
“That’s what I heard,” Mrs Orme said.
I stopped the recording.
“A practice track. I play along with it.”
That was possible. We had found a reason to doubt the rehearsal as proof. We had not found your accordion.
Mr Quist set down the case, which he had continued to carry with both hands although we all knew what was in it.
“When you arrived,” he asked, “who saw you take it out?”
You said you could not remember. You asked whether we intended to question everybody who had ever listened to you play.
“No,” he said. “One person would do.”
Mrs Orme looked at the case. I took the phone number for Vale’s Music Rooms from my notebook and stepped into the kitchen to call again.
4. Locating the instrument: £60
Vale’s had not shut for lunch. Mr Vale was alone in the shop and had been with a customer when my message arrived.
He had your accordion. He read the serial number back to me. The brass bird was there, along with the red bellows, the shoulder straps and the cloth. You had asked him for a short loan against it at a quarter to ten that morning. You had kept the case because you said he would not have room for it.
I asked whether he would show us the dated receipt. He said he would, with you present. I went back and told Mr Quist exactly that.
You did not wish to visit the shop.
“Then we have located it,” Mr Quist said. “You may collect it under whatever terms you agreed.”
You asked him to step inside the recital room. He asked me to come too. This was not an additional service and has not been charged separately.
“I needed to get through the month,” you said. “Then I could redeem it. Pay everybody.”
“With the insurance money?” Mr Quist asked.
“Yes.”
“What were we meant to write?”
“That it was gone. It was gone.”
“You should have told us not to be thorough,” Mr Quist said. “We’d still have refused, but you’d have saved yourself the suspense.”
There was some money in your wallet. You put it on the chair beside the case. Mr Quist did not count it.
For a moment I thought about our office rent. Our landlord does not accept an interesting explanation in place of payment.
“You can have the rest of your fee now,” you said.
“Send it when you receive the invoice.”
“I haven’t actually claimed.”
“Good,” Mr Quist said. “Our report will say where it is.”
He opened the door.
Mr Adair was on the landing with his sack over one shoulder. It was ten to four. Mrs Orme was beside him.
You said there had been a misunderstanding.
“About me,” Mr Adair said.
You agreed.
“Tell her.”
Mrs Orme waited. You told her that he had not taken the accordion. He asked you to tell the kitchen steward as well. Then he took a folded sheet from his pocket and gave it to you: four Fridays, the dates written beside the amounts.
You offered him the money from the chair.
He counted it. It was less than you owed. He wrote the amount received on his sheet, photographed it, and handed you the paper.
Then he went to his next job. He had to run for the bus, which is why I object to your description of the afternoon as an amusing waste of time.
You asked us to take the case to our office while you spoke to the concert organizers. Mr Quist returned the tablecloths to Mrs Orme first.
5. Quantum supplement: £0
Mr Quist has withdrawn this charge. He has not withdrawn from the subject. He is now reading a chapter about entanglement and has asked whether our filing cabinets can be separated without disturbing their contents.
The ordinary work totals £180. Fares and refreshments were £9.60. The £100 deposit already received leaves £89.60 to pay.
You may also collect the case from our office. It contains Mr Quist’s book, which he has asked me to remove before you arrive.
I have removed it twice. He keeps putting it back to see whether I notice.
Yours sincerely,
D. Pike
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