Серебряный оклад

The Silver Cover

B2 · Upper Intermediate · fiction · 10 scenes · Premium story

An upper-intermediate detective story, played fair — every fact the investigator uses is given to the reader before she uses it. A small provincial museum loses its best icon overnight from a case nobody forced: the glass is intact, the lock is undamaged, and there are exactly three keys. The director locked up at six, the restorer had gone home at four, and the night watchman did his round at two and saw the icon in its place. All three accounts agree. One of them contains a single adjective that cannot possibly be true.

Read Серебряный оклад in Russian

Characters

Irina Sokolova (Ирина Соколова) — The investigator
Nina Pavlovna (Нина Павловна) — The director
Sonya (Соня) — The restorer
Igor (Игорь) — The night watchman

Vocabulary from this story

кража — theft
музей — museum
зал — room, hall
витрина — display case
икона — icon
оклад — icon cover
серебро — silver
доска — wooden panel
посетитель — visitor
замок — lock
ключ — key
стекло — glass