The Toy Cupboard

By: Lee Jordan

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Synopsis: Joanna Townsend is watching the man watch her--a stranger in a red parka browsing among the stalls in London’s Camden Market, but always keeping his eye on Jo in her antiques booth. With her husband Michael away on business and her sister Flora already gone home for the day, Jo yearns for the safety of her flat. But there she finds a sinister German called Willy waiting for her. After knocking her about Willi leaves a cryptic message for Michael. Fleeing to Flora’s for comfort, Jo finds that her sister has just been entertaining the mysterious lover she has so far refused to introduce to Jo. Then Michael unexpectedly appears at Flora's house and explains that Willi is after him because he’s obtained a valuable pre-Columbian statuette on the black market. Soon Jo is drawn into Michael’s scheme for evading Willi. She must take the statuette to the south of France, to her childhood home, and hide out until Willi--one of the original thieves--is thrown off the scent. It’s only stealing from a crook, Michael argues. Jo is persuaded, but on the way to La Motte she makes the acquaintance of journalist Roger Maillet, enchanting company until she begins to suspect that he too wants something from her. Jo races for her childhood home little realizing that there she faces another danger. Marcel Drac, the man convicted of murdering Jo's father and his lover on the testimony of the then five-year-old Jo is