Before getting into the story finale, read Part 1 and Part 2. Alright, sue me, for I have dragged this story out for months! It’s time this short fantasy ended. Thank you all for your patient reading!

I kept remembering Geobaldar‘s face and expression. “Idiot!” Why would he say so? I didn’t cause any grief to it. In the darkness, I couldn’t make out its details, but there was some facial feature in it that kept bothering me. “What is it?” I wondered out loud. The fairy gave me an annoying look and started a monologue, “WHAT it is, is that the cussing bast*** got stolen, and now we have to be exposed to that bright sunlight because apparently, people think we don’t need beauty sleep! If we are ignored like this, every bit of our oil paint will corrode off into dust and nothingness!” I could understand the frustration, but isn’t it the very reason why I needed to see it to the end?

“Good gracious!” I leapt, metaphorically of course! The same strange beard I saw on the thief, was present in the Geobaldar too! The same beard – otherwise the portrait and the thief looked as different as a maiden to an old spinster. How could this be? And what does that have to do with the death of Danvers?

The three men came inside the hall and closed the doors. “Finally”, the fairy sighed and then went to sleep. However, the conversations were far from over. Officer Joffer had now shed his monotonous attitude. “I have telephoned my team, and they will be here in no time. Strange, isn’t it? The Geobaldar was in the storeroom, and Danvers was dead beside it, with a knife up his back. Was he the one who stole the painting, or was Danvers stabbed when he confronted the real thief? There was definitely a second pair of footprints there.” I won’t lie, I was impressed with the officer’s observational capabilities.

The guard was looking very nervous, maybe the Officer was suspecting him to be that second person. One cannot just stab in the back by themselves. Danvers was killed, probably by the person who had Geobaldar‘s beard. “Geobaldar, Geobaldar…”, the Officer wondered aloud, “Where did you get the painting? Who had it?”

“A gentleman by the good name of Thomas Fletcher, Geobaldar’s grandson-in-law. The family has fallen into tough days recently, with their property being usurped by the Royals for defaulting on the taxes and putting some mayoral work on hold. So they sold off a ton of things six months back, and Geobaldar was one of them. Geobaldar was a famous mayor in his day, who used tax money for making drinking water handpumps in the city. Oh, the irony!” The curator tried to laugh but thought it inappropriate mid-way, so all that came out from him was a strangled cough.

The morning was filled with the opening and closing of front doors, police dusting for footprints, the guard being holed and sulky at a small cell near the entrance, and the fairy spitting expletives too vulgar to be replicated in my accounts. Some facts became clear during this time: Danvers was an art procurer who brought Thomas Fletcher in contact with the curator and brought in Geobaldar; the footprints near Geobaldar‘s exhibition revealed a third unknown pair beside the curator’s and Danvers’, which matched with the footprints near the killing spot; the killer had the keys to the storeroom, which was stolen from the guard’s counter (the guard vehemently denied giving the keys to anyone); and the killing knife had the family crest of Geobaldar engraved on it.

The guard, being trapped in the same cell where he himself was supposed to hold rowdy intruders, continually pleaded with the police with his hands together. “I am innocent! I didn’t kill Danvers, he was like a brother to me! I want that frickin’ murderer behind bars as much as you do, believe me! I know who it is. It’s that Fletcher guy! He’s the thief!”

“Officer Joffer!”, shouted a young lad in his jumpsuit. “This strange hair was in Danver’s pocket. He has been using this… this beard for a long time, masquerading as someone else.” Officer Joffer only raised his eyebrows. “This means nothing unless we assume the guard’s testimony to be true. He did say that the thief had a strange beard. But he thought that was Fletcher, not confirmed though. The thief preferred to remain anonymous to him. So it might have been Danvers himself.”

Suddenly there was a commotion outside. A middle-aged person wearing the same black coat and top hat had entered the museum. “Fletcher, you ass!”, the guard screamed in a frenzy! Fletcher seemed terrified. He walked up timidly to Officer Joffer and mumbled, “It was an accident.” The police came flurrying to the man, handcuffed him to the guard table, and took his shoes. The jumpsuit person was delighted, “It is him indeed! He is the killer.”

“But why kill Danvers? Because he stole the portrait? And how did you even know?” asked Officer Joffers.

Fletcher was still terrified of this whole business, his face sunken from a good amount of tears shed from probably last night. “He…he stole the portrait because I told him! You don’t know what… it has been horrible for my family! We barely have anything to eat! And then in the opium den, I found a person. He… he told me he could take me to a black market dealer, who will pay handsomely for a revered art piece! I didn’t know what else to do!” He wailed and crumpled to the ground.

“I nee…needed money, because of the damn taxes! So I thought, I can make a counterfeit from the original Geobaldar. I pleaded with Danvers to help me, but he said it was simply not possible for the museum to give the portrait back even for a few days. So I told him to steal it. I would then mail back the portrait secretively once I was done with it. I convinced him to let me steal it, but he thought it was too risky, and decided to steal it himself. He came in last night, stole Geobaldar, and hid in the room at the back. He had all the keys, so it was easy for him.” Fletcher sniffed and sighed. He fell silent for two minutes, no doubt replaying everything in his head.

“Then what happened?”, asked the Officer, all the while keeping the curator at bay, who seemed ready to commit another murder.

“I met him just a while back, in the room. He gave me the painting, but something… something gnawed at me. He was not himself, he kept threatening to report the thief to the police. He wanted to wash his hands of the crime. I begged him not to do that. I have my two ailing parents, a wife, and three children to take care of!” Fletcher had lowered his tone, which sounded like a ghost was strangulating him. “I was too afraid, he had seen you get off your car. I had the knife with me, you see I was going to meet with the forger after taking the painting. I tried to stop him from going to you, and … well you know the rest! But I now understand why he was so beside himself. The guilt… it crushes your soul, you cannot live with it!”

“Ohh there is a whole difference between your mistake and his. Let’s take this up to the police station, mister! Take the guard too. And you”, he pointed at a young constable, “Keep Geobaldar in its place, that portrait is alright for now.” The curator seemed satisfied and relieved.

When the Geobaldar was taken inside the room, he seemed to wink at me and shout, “That Thomas was always an idiot! But even I was fooled. Good ol’ Danvers, I will miss him!” I guess, as an inanimate painting, we would never understand the troubles humans face. Only stories would be told of their hardships. But we neither had a painting of Danvers, nor his story. That good man was now forever lost to the abyss. And I wondered, why was I made? Who was Sydney? Would I ever come to know my origin, and would anyone come to visit and tell me her story?

Instead, Danvers would always be there, his face reflected upon my oil, his bearded imprint static in my memory. It seemed like the adventure of Danvers, his mischief that night, and his unfortunate ending would be the only origin story I would ever know.