Lawrence Heath

Lawrence Heath, a twenty-five year old man with short brown hair, and dark brown eyes sat crouched in his black Range Rover, staring out the window.

It was a drizzling and grey day in Reims, France, but through his wet windscreen he could see a crowd of fifteen to twenty mourners, all dressed in black, crowding around the priest who had just sprinkled the first handful of soil on a dead mans’ coffin, that was presently being lowered into the ground.

Lawrence had been assigned by the French Intelligence to track down Jules Hart, a elderly man who had supposedly stolen three expensive, original paintings from an old Art Gallery in Rouen. Originally Lawrence had thought that his latest case would be quite simple, track down the old man, shadow him for a few days until he went to the place where he had hidden the stolen paintings, and arrest him. But it turns out Lawrence was quite wrong, his case would not be nearly so simple, seeing the old man had died of a heart attack two days previous.

Soon enough the mourners left the cemetery, scattering in all directions, some on foot, some in cars. 

But there was one person left, Lucy C. Hart, Jules Hart’s only living descendent, his 19 year old granddaughter who had lived with him for 12 years, after her parents died in a horrible car accident. She sat against an ancient oak with an art-book on her knee, concentrating hard on the picture she was painting. Getting tired of sitting in his car Lawrence decided to put on a plaid coat and go outside.

He shivered slightly as he stepped out into the freezing cold day, and made his way towards a wooden seat, carved out of an old tree.

Getting terribly bored Lawrence rubbed his hands together and hummed a tune under his breath, after what seemed like forever there was finally some action in the almost deserted cemetery, Lucy stood up and a look of total shock and confusion covered her face as she stared into the rackety wooden shed that stood ten meters in front of her. She let out a gasp and sprinted over to the shed then stood absolutely still in the middle of the tiny shed, as if in shock, then snapping out of her thoughts she began rummaging through the gardening tools until she emerged with a canvas. Unable to see what was on the canvas Lawrence squinted his eyes and saw that it was a mixture of light and dark greens, Lawrence guessed that it was a painting of a forest or something. Even from the distance that he was away from the painting he could see that it defiantly was not one of the stolen paintings, because they were all paintings of different people, always beside the same unnamed building, with absolutely no green in the paintings whatsoever, (you see, he had study the paintings well once he was assigned the case.)

Deciding that her behavior was suspicious Lawrence walked back to his car and reported it to the headquarters then went to a food hall up the road and had a spot of lunch.

After finishing his cheese and bacon croissant and long black coffee he took out a folded photocopied picture of the missing paintings, the first one simply called “Miles” was a picture of a man in a suit standing with his arms crossed, standing beside the Reims Cathedral, no one really knew much about Miles, but people thought that he was a friend of the artist, Marie G.

The second picture was of a woman in her mid thirties wearing a blue dress, holding her hands in front of her staring solemnly at the artist, beside the Cathedral. And the third was of a young boy, around seven or eight, with dark brown hair, and his hands on his hips, grinning (Also beside the Cathedral.)

These three paintings were the only ones that Marie had ever sold, but it has been said by many people that a lot of her paintings are still in the family. Jules Hart's family. Marie was Jules' mother who had sadly died at the age of 63, supposedly from a broken heart.

S.