First Impressions

by Jude Deveraux

  Eden gave a sigh. “Those blasted jewels!”

  “Jewels?” Jared asked as he sat back down, then said, “Oh, yeah. In the book. You know, I didn’t have time last night to read that, so why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “You don’t think that spy was searching for those jewels, do you?”

  “I have no idea. Could have been. We’ve always thought that maybe he swallowed your name to keep you from being thought to be part of his professional life.” He leaned his head back against the damp wall. “So tell me about the jewels.”

  “How about if I tell you the truth?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “I thought you would. It’s been my experience that liars love to hear the truth from others.”

  Again, Jared gave a one-sided smile. “You have me pegged exactly. I took on this job of risking my life for my country just to have the opportunity to lie. It’s what I live for.”

  Eden had to smile. “Okay, so maybe there is some truth in your story, but…Anyway, the jewels. You see, I’m cursed with knowing the truth through Mrs. Farrington, so I know there are no jewels to be found. How much do you want to know? From the beginning or just the facts, ma’am.”

  Jared looked at his watch again. “We have lots of time, so entertain me.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Tell me every word of the story. Maybe there’s something in there that could help me figure this thing out.”

  Eden couldn’t resist saying “Once upon a time” and smiling. Except for genocide and murder and revenge, it was a great story. Or maybe because of those things it was a great story. She started to tell a cut-and-dried version about what had happened to the necklace, but then she thought, Why not tell all of it? She’d written the entire story in her fictionalized version of the Farrington family, and she’d even told the truth, as revealed by Mrs. Farrington, of what happened at the end. She sincerely hoped that her telling of the family secret wouldn’t cause any of the Farringtons to come back from the dead and haunt her.

  “It was a necklace made for a French duchess,” Eden began. “A stunningly beautiful necklace of three sapphires, each one the size of a quail’s egg and surrounded by diamonds. It was said that the duchess’s rich old husband bought the necklace for her, but she wore it—and nothing else—to bed with her lover. Her lover was the head gardener, and it was said that the son the old duke loved so much was actually the gardener’s child.”

  Taking a breath, Eden leaned back against the wall. McBride still had his eyes closed, but she could tell that he was listening intently, and he was enjoying the story.

  She continued. “A young Farrington son, on his Grand Tour, was traveling through the French countryside when the French Revolution broke out. By chance, he was staying in a small village on the very night when the villagers decided they’d had enough of the debauchery and greed of the old duke and were going to end it all. I don’t know what the duke had done to make the villagers hate him so. There was something about a young boy in the village, but I don’t know the details,” Eden said. “And if Mrs. Farrington did, she didn’t tell me, and I certainly didn’t ask. I do know that they set the duke’s great manor house on fire. As the villagers were celebrating his death, one of them paid a visit to the outhouse, and that’s where he found the duke hiding.

  “Of course they murdered the duke, then they went in search of his wife, who, I was told, was as bad as he was. But she had dressed as a peasant woman, so she escaped. She knew that a young, rich American man was staying in the village, so she went to him. Under her dirty clothes she was wearing all her jewels, which I was told were so many that she could hardly stand up under the weight of them.

  “For all that the duchess was very beautiful and the young Farrington wasn’t handsome at all, he was quite clever. The duchess offered him a pearl necklace if he’d get her out of the country, but he held out for the prize of her collection, the sapphire and diamond necklace. Since she was in no position to bargain, she agreed. He hid her under the seat of his carriage to get her to the coast, then he stowed her away in a trunk as they crossed the Channel. I can’t imagine how horrible the trip must have been for the poor woman!

  “When they reached England, she gave him the necklace, and they parted company. Unfortunately, no one knows what happened to the duchess after that, and since there’s no record of her name, I couldn’t research her. The young Farrington man went home to Arundel with the necklace sewn inside his coat. A few years later, when he got married, he had the necklace delivered to his bride an hour before the wedding, and that was the first time anyone in his family saw it.

  “Mrs. Farrington told me that the necklace became what was most important in their family. They were called the Farrington Sapphires, and they would be taken out to be worn by the mistress of Farrington Manor only three times a year. People would come from miles around just to see them. The family developed traditions about who could wear the sapphires, and when. Each Farrington daughter could wear them on her wedding day, but only if the family approved of her husband. First cousins could wear the necklace once in her lifetime, but second cousins never. On and on it went. Mrs. Farrington said that it got to the point of being ludicrous, and many fights and long-standing feuds came about over that necklace.

  “It stayed in the family until the late 1800s, and that’s when the lies and the mystery began.”

  Pausing, Eden took a moment to get her breath. McBride was still listening intently. Smiling, she continued. “Mrs. Farrington told me that her great-grandfather, Minton, was a man cursed with bad luck. If he bought a racehorse, it broke a leg the next day. If he bought timberland, there would be a hurricane that turned all the trees into toothpicks. If he bought land for cotton, it would flood. Whatever the poor man planted, died. Mrs. Farrington said that if he’d just left things alone, he would have been fine financially, but he wanted to prove to his relatives that he could do as well as they had, so he tried to expand.

  “I was told that the real reason he worked so hard to be a success was that he had a beautiful wife and that he was trying to win her love. But since he was as awkward and as socially inept as he was homely, he couldn’t do it. It was said that she had married him for the Farrington Sapphires and that it broke his heart and his spirit because he knew that’s what she truly loved.

  “Now here’s where the secret comes in. Because the poor man failed in everything, in the end he had to do the unthinkable and sell the necklace in order to pay the bills to keep Farrington Manor running. When he returned from the trip to New York, where he’d secretly sold the necklace, he found the safe open and empty, and his wife dead on the floor. She’d been strangled. That same day, a handsome young man who’d worked for the Farringtons for years—a notorious womanizer—was found dead in the swamp. Everyone said that he’d stolen the necklace, been interrupted by the wife, so he’d killed her, then he’d run off into the swamp, where he’d been bitten by a poisonous snake. When the necklace wasn’t found on him, it was decided that he’d hidden it somewhere on the plantation, and that’s how the story of the missing necklace got started. The story has been printed in a hundred books, and it’s caused many years of problems with people searching for the Farrington Sapphires.”

  Jared opened his eyes and leaned forward. “The Farrington man either killed the wife or her lover or both.”

  “You’ve seen and done too many bad things,” Eden said primly. “Unfortunately, though, you’re right. On his deathbed, Minton Farrington told his eldest son the truth of what had happened. It seems that Minton had overheard his wife and her lover plotting to steal the necklace and run away together. Mrs. Farrington said that this was what made her great-grandfather want to get rid of the necklace. He decided that the sapphires were cursed and that his bad luck was caused by them, so he took the necklace to New York and sold it.

  “When Minton returned to Farrington Manor, it was late at night, and there was his wife, dead on the library floor, the safe sta
nding open and empty. He figured she’d been murdered by her lover when they discovered that the necklace was gone. Minton immediately got on a horse, took his two best hunting dogs, and went after her lover. He found the man the next day, hiding in a cabin in the swamp. Minton said he held a shotgun on the man and made him back up. What the man didn’t see, but Minton did, was the big snake sunning itself on a rock. After his wife’s lover was dead, Minton went back to Farrington Manor. By this time, his wife’s body had been discovered, and in the confusion, people thought Minton was just returning from his trip, so the truth of what he’d done wasn’t suspected.

  “Minton never told anyone that he’d sold the jewels because he was afraid that people would figure out the truth about his wife. He’d rather it was said that she’d been killed during a robbery than that she’d been planning to run off with her lover. When the legend of the missing sapphires started, he didn’t contradict it. In fact, he pretended to look for the necklace, even offering a reward.

  “About six months after his wife’s death, Minton met a plain-faced young woman who was said to adore him, and they got married and produced four healthy children. It was only on his deathbed that he told his eldest son the truth. The son told his eldest son, until it came down to Mrs. Farrington, who was an only child. As for Minton Farrington, he was glad he’d sold the necklace, because after it was gone, his luck changed. It seemed that everything he touched turned to gold, and when he died, the plantation was in the best shape that it had been in a century.

  “And that’s the end of the story,” Eden said, rubbing her arms against the cold of the cellar. The candles were burning down, and she didn’t see any more on the shelves. It wouldn’t be long before they were in darkness.

  “Great story,” Jared said. “But I don’t see any connection to Applegate. Jewels would be too hard to fence. He’d have to cut them.”

  “Pardon me, but I think you missed the point of the story. The jewels were sold, not stolen. By now they’ve been disassembled and sold to movie stars with big lips and artificial breasts. No one knows they were ever called the Farrington Sapphires, and certainly no one knows that they once belonged to an unfaithful French duchess.”

  “Hmmm,” Jared said.

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  He put his elbows on his knees and looked at her. “It means that there are so many holes in that story that I don’t know where to begin. Do you think that man overheard his wife and the gardener plotting to steal his family’s pride and joy and run away together, and all he did was take the necklace to a pawnbroker? Do you want me to believe that he didn’t want revenge? What was he planning to do when he got back from selling the necklace? Continue living with the woman? Give the gardener things to plant? You showed me that Minton was a man of revenge when you told me that he went after the gardener, held a gun on him, then watched him back into a deadly poisonous snake. You even said that ‘after his wife’s lover was dead’ this Minton character went back to his house. What does that mean? That he stood there and watched the man die? If he did, don’t you think he did it for his own enjoyment? And when Minton got back to his house he let people think that he’d just returned from his trip. Don’t you think that there were men in the stables who knew that he’d jumped on a horse in the wee hours and gone off with a couple of dogs and a firearm or two? Did Minton bribe them or shoot them so they wouldn’t tell his secret? I think your story tells the character of this man Minton very well. I think he killed both his wife and her lover. I think it’s probable that the story of the trip to New York was just to give him an alibi, and I doubt if he went at all.”

  Eden sat there blinking at him. Every word he’d said made sense, but she’d never looked at the story as he was doing. “What about the jewels?”

  “From your story, I agree that the first wife, the beautiful one, married the ugly man for the jewels. But then he probably married her for her beauty, so they had a bargain. I think what probably sent ol’ Minton into a rage was that his wife broke their agreement. He knew she was having an affair. He was lord and master of the place, so he’d know what was going on. I think what sent him over the edge was that she thought she could leave him and take the jewels. That was a total breaking of their agreement. I think he strangled his adulterous wife, then killed her lover in a clever way, and wisely told the people the jewels had been stolen. With the jewels gone, a lot of the anger in the family was taken away, and he’d never again have to risk some woman marrying him for the sapphires. As for his bad luck, if he had a wife who hated him and was diddling the gardener, he was probably so stressed out that he couldn’t make a decent decision. He took that accursed necklace out of the public’s eye, found himself a faithful wife, had some kids, and he could think again, so his luck changed. That he committed two murders probably never bothered him any more than walking out of a bad land deal.”

  “Oh,” Eden said, blinking. “Have you ever thought of writing? I think you could come up with some great plots.”

  “I’ve seen too much,” he said. “I tend to think only the worst of people. They—” He broke off as he reached for his cell phone, which was vibrating. Opening the phone, he smiled. “Bill, where—” Jared paused. “Tell me that again slowly,” he said, looking away from Eden. After a couple of minutes, Jared said, “Then who the hell are the men upstairs if they aren’t ours?” As he said that, he glanced at Eden quickly. “Yeah, she’s down here with me. Yeah, send some men. I think the guys upstairs are gone, but they knew this house well enough to know where the cellar door is, and they’ve locked us in. No, don’t worry about it. I can shoot the lock off and get out.” Again, he looked at Eden briefly. “Yeah, but go ahead and send them. Plain-clothes. This town gossips about everything.”

  Closing the telephone, he looked at Eden as though preparing himself for a lecture.

  She was calm. “Let me get this straight. I want my facts to be very clear. You staged all this just to get me alone so you could ask me what I know? But then you’ve already asked me that and know that I know nothing. But still, you thought maybe I was lying, so you dragged me out of bed in my nightgown, and put on an elaborate charade about bad men being in the house. All the while you thought they were your own men—who you had arranged to be here—but now you’ve found out that the men up there really are bad guys. And, oh, yes, all along you’ve had a concealed weapon that you could have used to get us out of here.”

  Jared seemed to consider what she’d said. “You’re pretty much right. But I hate to use firearms around civilians. Too often they panic and get in the way and get themselves shot.”

  “How considerate of you,” Eden said nicely. “May I ask what the man on the telephone said?”

  Jared ducked his head for a moment. “His son was hit in the head by a golf ball last night, so he’s been in the hospital with his kid, and he forgot to send the men I requested. His son’s doing fine, though.”

  “How nice. So who are the men who were tearing up my house?”

  “I have no idea. You want to get out of here? It’s getting a bit chilly. Besides, I’m hungry.”

  If there had been an instrument of destruction nearby, Eden would have used it on Jared McBride. As it was, all she could do was try to control her anger enough to keep herself from throwing jars of pickled beets at him. She took a deep, calming breath. “Mr. McBride, I would like for you to get me out of here this minute. I too am cold and hungry, and I have an appointment”—she looked at her watch—“in one hour and forty-six and a half minutes. I plan to make that appointment in spite of all that you’re trying to do to stop me.”

  “You’re still planning to meet with Granville?” he asked, but she didn’t answer him.

  Bending, Jared lifted his trouser leg and pulled a small pistol out of a holster strapped to his ankle. “Get in the corner and cover your ears,” he said, and Eden did what he told her to. In the next minute, Jared shot the lock on the door in the ceiling, then pushed the door up
. Eden shoved past him and into the pantry. She was so angry that she couldn’t look at him.

  Once she was in the kitchen, she blinked in the bright daylight and glanced around the room. The kitchen looked much worse in the daylight than it had at night. Someone had dumped out the freshly filled flour bin onto the floor, then walked in it. Flour was everywhere, including the countertops. It looked as though someone had climbed onto the counter and walked around. Eden looked up and saw that someone had cut a three-foot-square hole in the ceiling. So they could see into that part of the attic? she wondered.

  Behind her she felt rather than saw or heard McBride. “Your agency is going to pay for this,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Good luck on getting that,” Jared said amiably, seeming to be unperturbed by what he saw. “Stay here,” he said, then, with his gun drawn, headed toward the dining room.

  Eden stormed past him, into the main hall, and nearly burst into tears. The big secretary was on its face, and the top ornamentation had broken off. She stood there for a few moments, fighting back tears, then she took off running to look at what had been done to the rest of the house. The living room was the biggest mess. The furniture had been overturned and the cushions on the couch cut. The pictures on the walls, painted by a Farrington ancestor who had no talent whatever, were in a heap by the fireplace. Had they been about to burn them? Why? To save their delicate sensibilities?

  Jared came up behind her and put his gun away. There were no other people in the house and he knew it. When he put his hand on her shoulder, she jerked away from him and turned to go back into the hall. There was a powder room behind the main stairs. It had once been part of the master bedroom, but the big pecan tree outside had taken over the space. Rather than cut down the glorious tree, a Farrington had reduced the size of the bedroom so much that when the house had been plumbed, the room was made into a half bath. It was a smallish bedroom but an enormous powder room. In here, too, the ceiling had been cut and there were footprints on the counter of the sink.