LATERAL THINKING DRAMA: PUZZLE CONUNDRUM

TAKING a deep breath, Oliver James knocked on his father’s office door and went in.

“Ah, there you are, m’boy.” At 6ft Cameron James was just a little shorter than his son, but where Oliver was trim, his father had the broad power of a man who’d spent most of his life handling large amounts of stone and brick. “Come in, come in. Jacob and I were just discussing ornamentation for the Southwell building. Thought maybe you could lend a hand.”

Oliver winced, and braced himself. Cameron still hadn’t come to terms with his son’s preference for architectural design over actual construction, and the lectures about his future were getting tediously frequent.

“Do you remember Pick & Sons, Oliver?” Now in his forties, Jacob York had been his father’s right-hand man for as long as Oliver could remember. He at least was on Oliver’s side regarding architecture.

Oliver nodded.

“Cruz has a line on a couple of Roman statues at a very good price,” Cameron said.

“Maybe too good,” Jacob added.

“Maybe, maybe,” said Cameron. “But if not, they’d fulfil Southwell’s requirements for the frontispiece and then some, considerably under budget as well. You’ve got a good eye, Oliver. I thought maybe you’d give us your opinion on the matter.”

A relieved Oliver said he’d be delighted to help.

“Pull up a seat,” Cameron said, waving at the pile of paperwork on his desk.

Oliver sat down and ran his eye over the details. According to the papers, the statues were a matched pair of elegant caryatid columns from the region of the Roman emperor Diocletian, in surprisingly good condition. The date of construction was clear, since the sculptor had marked the bases with his own name, Emperor Diocletian’s full titles, and the year, AD 302. That year marked the start of the emperor’s bloody persecution of the Christians, during which every Roman citizen was compelled to offer sacrifices to the Greek gods. Some venues had undoubtedly been constructed for the purpose, and caryatids – supporting columns in the form of a woman – while not common in Roman times, were not unheard of either.

From the pictures that had been included, the statues looked as if they were made from marble. There was some wear and tear – it would have been miraculous if there hadn’t been – but even so, the pieces could quite easily have been in a museum.

Oliver looked up. “Where did Pick find them?”

“He got them from a Turkish fellow,” Cameron said. “The man said that they’d been sold to him by an Ottoman pasha who’d fallen on hard times, having had them in his family since the time of the Seljuks in the 13th century.”

“There is some supporting documentation,” Jacob said.

“Well, it’s not totally impossible for a couple of Diocletian pieces to have survived in private collections,” Oliver said. “Diocletian was in Antioch for several years, up to AD 302 at least. I can see temples being raised in his name, and then statuary being purloined later, as the empire shrank. In this case, however, I feel comfortable saying that those pieces are absolutely and definitely fakes. Sorry, father.”

How can Oliver be so sure?