The Improbable Collector

An old patient who has spent the last thirty odd years of his life in pre-assisted living and then in an assisted living community dies.  Everything which was in his large two-bedroom apartment is placed on consignment in a nearby shop, with the mandate to get whatever they can for these worthless items.  Coincidentally, a couple who is looking for a pair of nice antique chairs walks into the shop.  The husband, of distant French origins sees a painting he likes and enquires about it.  He is told it is a copy and used to belong to an old gentleman who had a small collection of such copies, all apparently from work from the Impressionist era.  Looking at the canvass more carefully, he discovers something which leads him to wonder whether the painting might not be mischaracterized as a copy.  He and his wife further look around the shop and happen to like a couple of old Louis XVI chairs, which the shopkeeper hastens to describe as 19th century reproductions at best, possibly even more recent.  The shopkeeper adds that these two small armchairs belonged to the same gentleman who owned the impressionist reproductions. ...

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Discovering old letters, bills of sale and many other mementos, the couple is able to retrace the life of the old man’s parents and grandparents, and to uncover at least a couple of crimes committed against the family, not least of which is the murder of a great-aunt.  They tell that side of the story as well, taking the reader back to investigations carried out principally in Switzerland in the late 1940s and eventually uncovering the guilty party.