The Cat in the Corner

Harold Finch was a guard at the Greenfield Museum of Art, and after thirty-one years there, he knew every painting in the building better than his own kitchen. His favorite one hung in Room Seven: "Lady with a Red Umbrella," an 1872 picture of a young woman in a park. Every morning before the doors opened, Harold said good morning to her.

One Tuesday in November, he stopped in front of the painting and frowned. Something was wrong. The lady was the same, the park was the same, and the umbrella was as red as ever. But the colors looked a little too fresh, and the shadows under the trees were softer than he remembered.

He called the museum director, Ms. Langford. She looked at the painting for a few seconds and shook her head. "Harold, you're tired. Nobody can steal a painting from this museum. We have cameras in every room."

"I wouldn't bother you if I weren't sure," Harold said. "Let me look at it more closely tonight."

She sighed. "All right. But if you're wrong, I don't want to hear about this again."

After closing time, Harold took the painting off the wall and studied it with a flashlight. In the bottom right corner, almost invisible among the leaves, there was a tiny black cat. Harold smiled. He knew that cat.

For most of that year, a young art student named Nina Cho had come to Room Seven every afternoon. The museum let her sit there and copy the painting, as art students often do. Harold liked her, and once she showed him her secret: she always hid a tiny cat somewhere in her copies, so nobody could ever sell one as the real thing.

The next morning, Harold called her. "My copy?" said Nina. "Somebody stole it from my car two weeks ago. I went to the police, but they still haven't found it."

"Did anyone at the museum know about your copy?" Harold asked.

"Only the new night cleaner, Mr. Dale. He asked a lot of questions about it, and one evening he even offered to carry it to my car."

This time, Ms. Langford listened. Together, they checked the security videos. One night the week before, the camera in Room Seven had gone dark for exactly nine minutes, and Mr. Dale was the only person in the building at the time. That afternoon, the police visited his apartment and found the real lady with the red umbrella under his bed.

A week later, the original painting was back on the wall. Ms. Langford brought Harold a cup of coffee. "I should listen to you more often," she said. "How can the museum thank you?"

"Nina's copy needs a home," Harold said. "And I know a good place for it."

From then on, Nina's copy hung in the hallway outside Room Seven, next to a small sign: "This is a copy. Can you find the cat?" Every time a child shouted, "There it is!", Harold smiled.