“Why the devil does Earl Clifford have it, then?” I asked. “Did you sell him the necklace to pay your way out of France?”
The anger built in de la Fontaine’s eyes. “I never sold it, Captain. Everything else, yes. Hmm. Everything. To save my daughter, it was worth it. But I kept the necklace. It was her legacy. Then it was stolen from me. I had it before I crossed the Channel—when I arrived on this shore, it was gone.”
“The ship’s captain? Or crew?”
He shrugged. “In France, I had met an Englishman—Lord Clifford—who’d agreed, for a very large sum, to arrange passage for me and my daughter and son. My wife had succumbed to illness the year before, and my children were all I had left. I feared for their lives, and so we went. The voyage was fairly easy, and the captain seemed sympathetic. But when we disembarked, I discovered the meager belongings I’d managed to carry were all gone, and we had nothing but the clothes on our backs. When I reached London, I applied to Clifford for help, but was turned away at his front door. I was too proud to beg at his scullery for scraps, so I walked away. But the necklace was gone—I assumed stolen by the captain or one of his men. Lost forever. It . . . hmm . . . broke my heart. But at least I was alive and safe and so were my children.”
“I am very sorry for your circumstance,” I said.
I too, had lost much at the hands of others, and he had my sympathy. My estimation of Lord Clifford, not high in the first place, took a decided plunge.
Fontaine leaned forward. “And then, one evening last summer, my daughter and her husband took me with them to Vauxhall.” He chuckled, still with the humming sound. “Taking the old man out to entertain him. As we supped in the pavilion, Captain, I saw the necklace. The jewels belonging to my family were hanging boldly around the neck of Countess Clifford, wife of the Englishman who’d helped me and my children fly from France.”
“You are certain it was the same?” Even as I asked it, I knew he had been.
“Very certain. My wife handed the necklace back to me the day she died, telling me she wished she could have seen our daughter wearing it. I walked up to Lady Clifford and introduced myself. She pretended to remember me as an émigré her husband had helped, but I knew she had no idea who I was. She never once blushed that she wore my daughter’s inheritance, as you say, under my nose.”
“It is likely she did not know,” I said. “I’ve met Lord Clifford.”
“Then you know what sort of man he is. I’d not have taken his assistance at all had I not been desperate. That night, he knew that I knew, but he looked at me and . . . hmm . . . dared me to say a word.”
“You did not go to a magistrate? Report the theft?”
“I am French, I am in exile. You have just finished a long war with France, and even the fact that my son lost his life fighting Napoleon for the English has not made me beloved here. What am I to tell a magistrate? I have only my word. Any paper about it, any proof I have that the necklace belongs to the de la Fontaines is long gone. Earl Clifford, he has money and influence. I have . . .” He opened his hand. “Nothing.”
He was correct. De la Fontaine knew he could not prove the diamonds had belonged to him, and even I had to decide whether to believe him. He could be luring me into finding the necklace and giving it to him, whereupon he’d be several thousand pounds richer, and I’d be in the dock.
But I did not think he lied. De la Fontaine did not have the bearing and manner of a liar, and I could verify the story by browbeating Lord Clifford—a task I’d cheerfully perform.
“And what do you wish me to do?” I asked.
De la Fontaine finished his brandy, set down the glass, and rested his hands on his knees. “What I would wish is for you to find and return the necklace to me, and tell the earl that you have failed in your quest.”
“And the moment your daughter wears the necklace to a soiree with your respectable English son-in-law? She or he will be accused of stealing it. Or at least of purchasing stolen goods.”
He closed his eyes. “I know. I have no solution. I considered having the stones reset, but given its provenance . . .”
The fact that Madame de Pompadour had commissioned the necklace would be worth as much as the diamonds themselves. I appreciated his dilemma.
“Then I do not understand why you believe I can help,” I said.
De la Fontaine opened his eyes. He had deep blue eyes, and now they looked old and tired. “I want someone to know the truth. I want you to find the diamonds and make certain they are safe. If they must reside with Lady Clifford forever, then so be it.”
His resignation decided the question for me. Remembering Clifford snarling at Grenville that he ought to be ashamed to interest himself in the affair, and then watching this aged, exiled man slump in defeat, angered me not a little.
“You may leave things in my hands,” I said. “I might be able to find you some justice.”
De la Fontaine shook his head, his ghost of a smile returning. “Do not make promises, Captain. I have grown used to losing.”
I rose, made my way to the brandy decanter, and poured him another glass. We’d finish all the brandy quickly at this rate, but Grenville would be happy to know it had been drunk by two men who appreciated it.
“Why do you not return to France?” I asked as the liquid trickled into his glass. “The king is restored, the emperor dead. There is peace now.”
Fontaine saluted me with his goblet before he drank. “All I had in France is gone. My daughter is here, married to her fussy Englishman, and I have grandchildren who are growing rapidly. This has been my life for nearly thirty years. I have no reason to return.”
I nodded, understanding. I was much like him—except for the fact of his ancestors ruling France and having diamonds set for them by Louis XV’s beautiful mistress. My ancestors had been wealthy landholders, but their little estate in Norfolk was as nothing compared to the vast acreage this man must have commanded.
Now we both had nothing, reduced to wearing secondhand clothes and enjoying brandy gifted to us by a wealthy acquaintance. Out of place, wondering how this came to be, and not knowing what to do with ourselves.
We did finish the brandy. De la Fontaine seemed to want to linger, and I let him. He asked me how I came by my injury, and winced in sympathy when I described how I’d been beaten to a bloody pulp by a band of French soldiers then strung up by the ankles. One of the more sympathetic men had cut me down after a time, but when English and Prussian soldiers had attacked the French deserters’ camp, killing them to the last man, they hadn’t noticed me among the dead.
De la Fontaine shook his head at my story and told me how his son had been in the infantry, dying at Badajoz. I hadn’t met the young man—I’d been cavalry in the Thirty-Fifth Light Dragoons, and we’d been fairly snobbish about the infantry.
“Bad fighting there,” I said. “Brave lad.”
“Oui. So I have heard.”
We finished the decanter in silence. When de la Fontaine made to depart, I gave him a box of finely blended snuff—another gift from Grenville. I rarely took snuff, preferring a pipe the rare times I took tobacco, but de la Fontaine thanked me profusely.
I led him back down the stairs, and we took leave of each other. De la Fontaine shook my hand in the English way, lips twitching when he saw me bracing myself for a farewell in the French way.
Still smiling, he walked down Grimpen Lane, a bit unsteadily, through the rain. I leaned on the doorframe and watched him, wondering how the devil I was going to find the blasted necklace for him.
Three days passed. I told Grenville about de la Fontaine’s visit and his assertion that the necklace was his. Grenville professed to be amazed, and his anger and disgust at Lord Clifford escalated to match my own.
Grenville and I continued searching for the necklace, taking into account Lady Breckenridge’s intelligence that a lady wishing to sell her jewels to pay her creditors would find someone very discreet to make the transaction for her. Her man
of business, perhaps, if she could hide such a dealing from her husband.
However, when Grenville and I visited Lady Clifford’s man of business, we found a dry, very exact man who seemed to march in step with Lord Clifford regarding household affairs. Ladies were fools and ought to do nothing without the approval of their husbands. In his opinion, Lady Clifford had carelessly lost the necklace and tried to pretend it stolen to shift the blame from herself.
This left us no further forward.
I could see that Grenville was losing interest in the problem. Lord Clifford’s grumbles about Grenville poking his nose into other gentlemen’s business were beginning to circulate through the ton. While Grenville refused to bow to public opinion—any indication that he cared about such a thing could spell his downfall—he also did not believe there was much more to be done. Though Grenville agreed that de la Fontaine’s story was creditable, he also suspected that the necklace would never see the light of day.
I saw that I would be soldiering on alone. I had not yet heard from Lady Breckenridge, but I did hear again from Denis, whose carriage pulled in behind me when I left Grenville’s on a wet evening three days after de la Fontaine’s visit.
The rain that had begun the afternoon I’d met de la Fontaine had continued with little abatement. The downpour was not as freezing as a winter rain, but still as drenching. When the carriage halted next to me and the door opened, I could not help but yearn for the warmth of its plush interior, in spite of the coldness of the man inside.
“De la Fontaine,” Denis began as soon as I was sitting opposite him, the carriage moving on its way to Covent Garden. “One of the wealthiest men in France before the terror. Now living in a back bedroom in his proper English son-in-law’s house, treated like a poor relation.” Denis shook his head, but no emotion crossed his face. “Not a happy tale.”
Chapter 6
I do not remember mentioning de la Fontaine to you,” I said. Not that I was amazed that Denis knew all about de la Fontaine’s visit to my rooms. He kept himself well informed.
“He is quite right about the necklace’s provenance,” Denis said, ignoring my statement. “A heavy blow to him that he lost it.”
“Am I correct in guessing that you did not know that Lord Clifford had de la Fontaine’s famous necklace?” Unusual for Denis, who hired people to roam Europe looking for such things for him, the rightful ownership of which was, to Denis, a trivial matter.
“I confess that I did not.” Denis’s brows drew together the slightest bit, a sign that the man behind the cold eyes was angry. “Hence why I wish to examine the piece myself. I knew the de la Fontaine necklace had disappeared many years ago, but not until Lady Clifford made a fuss about hers being stolen and involved Bow Street did it come to my attention that the two were one and the same. I had not thought Clifford resourceful enough to steal such a thing, but perhaps he seized an opportunity. Or perhaps the ship’s captain stole it and sold it to Clifford, neither man appreciating what it was.” Again the small frown. “Clifford owes me much money and has been reluctant to pay. He might have reported the necklace stolen to prevent himself from having to sell it to pay me, or in case I took it in lieu.”
“Lord Clifford owes you money,” I said. “I might have known.”
“Many gentlemen owe me. Including you.”
I let the remark pass. It was an old argument.
“If Clifford were to sell the necklace,” I asked, “or his wife were to, how would they go about such a thing? Beyond common pawnbrokers and jewelers I mean. Who would they contact?”
Denis gave me a touch of a smile. “Me. I know of no other who could discreetly dispose of so obvious a piece.”
“But if they did not realize what it was?”
“They might try the usual avenues, of course, but as soon as it came onto the market, jewelers in the know would put two and two together. Most likely the jewelers or pawnbrokers would offer the necklace to me, or at least ask for my help in shifting it.”
“And you have not heard of it coming up for sale?”
“No. Not yet.”
I twisted my walking stick under my hand. “If you do hear of it, will you tell me?”
“As I said, I want a look at it first.”
“I am aware of that. But I’ve pledged myself to find it. Will you tell me?”
Denis regarded me in silence while I kept twisting the stick. There was a sword inside the cane, a fact he well knew.
When he spoke, Denis’s voice held a careful note. “You have done me good turns in the past, Captain, and you are fair-minded. But I like to keep the balance clean, or at least bending slightly in my favor. If I do keep you in the know regarding this necklace, I will expect a like intelligence in return.”
I hadn’t the faintest idea what I could know that would interest him, but I was certain he’d come up with something devious. Denis liked things all his own way.
“It is a simple matter,” I said. “I want to be informed if the necklace comes up for sale or when you lay your hands on it.”
“Certainly. I will allow you to be in on the bidding.”
“Bidding?” I clenched the walking stick, which stopped its twirl.
“If the necklace proves to be the de la Fontaine diamonds, I will assuredly wish to sell it,” Denis said. “I am not in the business of assisting impoverished French émigrés or feckless English aristocrats. Clifford owes me money, and whatever price I can obtain for the necklace will more than suffice to pay his debt. He will not fight me for it.”
“The necklace is de la Fontaine’s,” I said angrily.
“De la Fontaine’s family stole the original diamonds themselves, you might be interested to learn, during some continental war long ago. And who knows from whence it was originally looted? Such famous pieces often have murky histories.”
“You are splitting hairs. The necklace belongs to de la Fontaine, and I intend to give it back to him.”
Another twitch of lips. “Of course you do. I will inform you if I come into possession of it, to that I will agree.”
I sat still and looked at him, the impeccably dressed young man, kid-gloved hands folded on his walking stick.
I wondered, as I always did, how he’d come to be like this. Who was James Denis? What of his family? What sort of child had he been that he’d become a man who bought and sold precious objects, people, secrets? Had he loved and lost? Raised himself from nothing? Or been defeated and climbed out of the ashes?
If I asked, he’d never tell me, so I did not ask.
Denis looked at me as though guessing my thoughts. He knew by now exactly where I’d come from, who my people were, and what I’d done for the last forty years of my life. Denis was that thorough. I would have to be just as thorough about him.
One of his brows twitched upward. “Did you truly think I would tell you exactly where to find the necklace, Captain?” he asked. “It is worth far more than Lord Clifford understands. De la Fontaine understands. Perhaps it will ease your conscience if I tell you how many peasants de la Fontaine and his family worked to death in France during the height of their power. They lived quite well on the backs of many.”
I knew that if de la Fontaine had come from landed wealth, then yes, he’d worked it out of others. But I couldn’t help thinking of the broken man whose only joy these days was the chance sampling of Grenville’s brandy and the occasional treat outing with his daughter and her stuffy husband.
“Have you become a republican?” I asked Denis.
He gave me a small shrug. “I must believe in every man being allowed to do what is best for himself, or I would be out of business.”
He fell silent to look out the window at the rain, the conversation finished. We didn’t speak until Covent Garden, where Denis had his coachman halt, and he bade me good night.
Now four people wanted the necklace: Lady Clifford, Lord Clifford, de la Fontaine, and Denis. Five people. Me.
I’d find the damn thing, and to he
ll with the lot of them. I would check de la Fontaine’s story, and if he hadn’t told me false, he would win the diamonds. I’d do something to placate Lord Clifford to keep him from turning his wrath on Lady Clifford. Clifford was the sort of man to blame his wife for his troubles. I cared nothing for what Denis thought of the matter. He’d find some other piece of art or jewelry on which to turn his attention soon enough.
When I entered my rooms in Grimpen Lane, Bartholomew was there, my fire roaring, my coffee hot. There were compensations for allowing him to practice valeting on me.
“Post’s come,” he said, pointing to a small pile of letters on my writing table. “I say, Captain, Mr. Grenville is asking for my help tonight. I’ve got your dinner in. Can you manage on your own?”
“It will be a struggle,” I said, sitting down at the writing table. Bartholomew had left a plate of beef in juice sitting perilously close to my post.
Bartholomew grinned. “Aye, sir. I’ll be back before morning.”
“Stay at Grenville’s and return tomorrow. No need for you to be rushing across town in the middle of the night in the rain. I can manage to hobble downstairs for a bit of bread on my own for breakfast.”
“Are you certain, sir?” Bartholomew liked to believe I’d be hopelessly lost without him. “I can tell Mr. Grenville you can’t spare me if you like.”
“Mr. Grenville pays your wages, not me. What entertainment is he having tonight? I’m not expected, am I?”
“No, sir. It’s his circle of art fanciers. They have supper and talk about Constable and Dah-veed and that French chap with the name like the sound of your throat closing up.”
“Ingre?” I asked.
“That’s the sausage. Sorry, sir, Mr. Grenville didn’t tell me to tell you to come.”
Past Crimes: A Compendium of Historical Mysteries Page 25