From Agathe to Voinica and Oprea

In response to your last mails. I don’t know for sure what the date means and I am not the least certain the date is significant. The door of the archive room has been broken and several photographs of the bell have been stolen. And so has the translation of the Chinese writings !

The source of the last photo is the website of the museum itself.

My father has always kept the bunch of keys with him but the director has got a second bunch. The very day after the burglary, my father went to the director’s office to report on the theft and he noticed the keys lying about on the desk.

The bell is not really famous in Montargis. It was offered to our town by Admiral Rigault de Genouilly in 1860. The museum is definitely equipped with an alarm but it seems that it had been unplugged. My father cannot remember anything about it since that day, he was so exhausted that he fell asleep all of a sudden.

The bell may have been moved on a stretcher or a hand truck. The bell was located in a corner of a small room on the first floor. The Chinese teacher’s name is Paihwen Wang.

My father had an argument with the cleaning lady since he had found her in the room where the bell stood late in the evening, which looked quite suspicious to him. As a response, she went and saw the director to accuse my father of sexual harassment. Anyway, my father was soon found innocent.

Agathe Dubois