by A. M. Stuart
Curran shook his head. “No, but I do know enough to say that one must be worth a fortune.”
Julian sat down and ran a hand over his forehead. “What does it all mean, Curran?”
Harriet shot her brother a look of sharp reproach. “Really, Julian, it’s obvious. Our Mr. Lawson is involved in some sort of gem thieving. Am I right, Inspector Curran?”
Curran took the stone from her, turning it over in his hand.
“You could be right, Mrs. Gordon.”
“Of course I’m right.” Harriet glanced from her brother to Curran. “But he’s not working alone, is he? He worked for Newbold in the ruby mines of Mogok. They have to be connected.”
Julian’s eyes widened. “I fear Mr. Lawson has failed in an attempt to outwit his partners in this venture. Whoever killed Newbold wants this stone and they now know Lawson had it.”
Privately Curran agreed with them, but he was a policeman first. “That’s a good theory, Reverend.”
He dropped the stone back into its pouch, repositioned the bag back inside the Buddha and replaced the statue in its box.
“What are we going to do now?” Harriet inquired.
Curran’s eyebrow quirked. “We?”
“Julian and I are involved, Curran,” Harriet said.
Curran caught the defiance in her gray eyes. They were involved and the thought troubled him. He had allowed them both to be dragged further into the investigation than he should have done. A fledgling friendship had crossed the lines of professionalism and he needed to step back.
He shook his head. “I’ll take the statue and stone away with me and request you both carry on with your normal routines.”
“What about Will?” Julian challenged.
“There’s nothing more you can do, Edwards, except trust me and my men . . . and pray.”
Julian Edwards’s lips twitched into a smile. “That goes without saying, Curran.”
Curran tucked the box under his arm, adding with more confidence than he felt, “I am returning to South Bridge Road. Thank you for your help today, Mrs. Gordon.”
“You will tell us if you hear anything about Will?”
He gave a curt nod and bid them a brusque farewell.
As the motor vehicle pulled out of the driveway of St. Tom’s House, Curran glanced back. Harriet and Julian stood on the top step of the verandah. Just ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary problem. Three people were dead and two were now missing, including an innocent child. He needed to bring this to a conclusion fast, before anybody else got hurt.
TWENTY-TWO
After Curran departed, taking the statue with its hidden sapphire, Julian returned to the school to check that the boys were settled and the place secured for the night. Harriet, her mind racing from the day’s revelations, sank into one of the wicker chairs on the verandah. She sat bathed in the soft light of the kerosene lantern, listening to the now-familiar sounds of the fine, warm night.
From the back of the house she could hear a low murmur of voices drifting through the open doors from the kitchen where the constable Curran had left to stand guard shared food with the staff in the breezeway outside the kitchens.
Shashti dozed on her lap as she mechanically stroked her little head. The presence of the kitten reminded her of Will, who was . . . where? The thought of the boy tore at her heart and she choked back the prickle of tears.
She couldn’t think of him as dead. Surely, whoever they were had taken the boy to use as bait for his father, not to do the child harm.
Whoever had taken Will, and possibly his father, wanted the sapphire. That had to be it. Lawson had tried to cheat them and had been discovered and the price was the life of his child. And if the sapphire was now safely in police hands, what would become of father and son? By handing the stone over to Curran, had she signed the Lawsons’ death warrants?
She thought of Visscher, his throat slashed for what little knowledge he must have had. No, there was no guarantee they, whoever they were, would not hurt Will Lawson.
She closed her eyes. After a largely sleepless night and a long day, weariness washed over her.
“Shashti,” she said aloud, because talking to a cat was better than talking to herself. “Just a few more minutes, then bath and bed. Hopefully there will be better news in the morning.”
Another sound broke the rhythmic peace of the night—horses’ hooves and the rattle of carriage wheels turning into St. Thomas Walk from River Valley Road. She straightened in her chair, peering out into the darkness as a closed carriage drawn by two matching chestnut horses turned in through the gates and came to a stop at the foot of the verandah stairs.
A closed carriage? Her blood ran cold and she rose to her feet, ready to call out for the constable as the carriage door swung open and a man stumbled out onto the driveway, almost falling. He caught himself in time and straightened, swaying on his feet, looking up at the house.
The cry for help stuck in her throat as John Lawson raised a heavy revolver in his left hand.
“Not a word, Mrs. Gordon,” Lawson said as he advanced up the stairs toward her, a humorless smile fixed to his bloody, bruised and unshaven face. His shirt was crumpled and stained and he held his right arm pressed to his chest, a crude bandage, stained dark, tied around the upper arm. As he approached, she caught the odor of stale sweat and something else that she could not readily identify. Fear?
The driver, a short, stocky man, jumped down from the box and remained in the shadows out of the light thrown by the kerosene lamp on the verandah but not before she caught the glint of a second revolver the driver held in his hand.
“Mr. Lawson.” Harriet tried to sound untroubled by the hideous weapon now pointed in her direction. “You look like you need help. Do you want me to send for a doctor?”
In the dull light of the kerosene lamp, his eyes were sunk into dark pools, giving him the look of something unreal, a corpse come back to life.
He shook his head. “I’ve only come for the box.”
Harriet’s heart skipped a beat. “The box?”
“The boy’s trunk. You have it?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Where is it?”
“In my bedroom.”
She took a step back but was stopped by the chair. Lawson loomed over her and pressed the muzzle of the revolver against her throat. She swallowed, feeling the heavy metal cold against her skin.
“Trust me, I’m desperate, and I will kill you if I have to. Not a sound,” he said. “Bring the lamp.”
She picked up the kerosene lamp in her right hand. Lawson gripped her left forearm, pushing her ahead of him into the house. Their feet echoed hollowly on the floorboards and the door to her bedroom opened with a creak. Every noise seemed to be amplified tenfold.
The second man followed, heading for the back door and the kitchen.
Huo Jin’s cry of alarm was cut short and Harriet heard the sound of scuffling and slamming doors coming from the servants’ quarters.
Harriet pointed at the trunk Curran had restored to its place underneath her bed. Lawson let out his breath in a long sigh and the hand holding the weapon to her throat dropped away.
He waved the revolver at the box. “Open it.”
When Harriet hesitated, he brought the weapon up again. “Open it!”
She set the lamp down on the chest of drawers and with shaking fingers located the key in the top drawer of her dressing table. The back door slammed and the driver stood in the bedroom door. He addressed a few curt words to Lawson in a language Harriet did not recognize.
Lawson replied in the same language without looking at the man.
“What did he say? Are my servants all right?” Harriet demanded.
“They’re fine. My friend has locked them up with that useless police constable. They won’t be bothering us.”
Lawson’s breath came in audible gasps as she dragged the box out, fumbling with the key in the lock. She threw the lid open and stood back, her heart thudding in her chest. Lawson laid the weapon on the bed and knelt, rifling through the contents with his left hand. Harriet glanced at the discarded revolver but the coach driver now stood in the doorway watching, the muzzle of his own weapon pointed at Harriet. Now that she could see him, he frightened her all the more. His dark face betrayed no emotion and his eyes were fixed on her without blinking.
Lawson looked up at Harriet, his face glistening with perspiration and his eyes wide with horror. “Where . . . is . . . it?”
Harriet swallowed, her mouth dry. “Do you mean the box with the statue? The police have it.”
A roar, like that of a wounded animal, issued from Lawson and he seized up his revolver, lunging at her and forcing her back against the wall.
“What have you done?” he screamed as he pressed the muzzle of the revolver to her throat.
“Harriet?” Julian’s voice came from the hall. He must have returned home and entered by the front door.
The driver in the doorway swung around, raising his weapon in Julian’s direction.
“Harriet, are you all right!” Julian sounded desperate.
“Julian. It’s Lawson. He wants the statue,” Harriet gasped.
“Where’s the police constable?” Julian demanded.
“Locked up with the servants,” Lawson replied. “Stand aside, Edwards. I don’t want to hurt your sister.”
“Please do as he says, Julian.” Harriet’s voice sounded high and tight, even to her own ears.
Lawson wrenched Harriet forward by the arm, forcing her in front of him, the revolver pressed into her skin, just behind her left ear. He pushed her toward the bedroom door and out into the hall.
The driver jerked his revolver, indicating for Julian to move. Faced with the weapon, Julian had no choice and backed into the unlit living room. Lawson followed, shoving Harriet ahead of him. As he reached the living room, he turned to face Julian, pushing the revolver harder into Harriet’s neck. She yelped as the metal bit into her flesh. She had no doubt that in his present state of mind, Lawson was quite capable of killing her.
“Take me instead,” Julian said.
Lawson shook his head. “No. Mrs. Gordon makes a much better hostage and she’s my guarantee they don’t hurt my son. I want the sapphire, Edwards. Tell Curran, I want the stone.”
“How do we get it to you?”
“You’ll get a message. Now, get down on your knees, Reverend, and don’t move.”
Harriet screamed as the shadowy figure of the driver moved behind the kneeling man, bringing the butt of his weapon down on the back of Julian’s head with a sickening crack. Julian fell forward, hitting the floor with a dull thump.
Tears of panic and fear pricked the back of Harriet’s eyes as Lawson dragged her down the front steps toward the waiting carriage. He pushed her into the darkened box and up against a corner, pulling the door shut behind him.
The carriage jerked as the second man swung into the driver’s seat above them. He cracked the reins and the carriage jolted forward, carrying them out into the dark night.
TWENTY-THREE
Harriet shrank back against the dry and cracked leather of the seat. The shutters on the English-style carriage had been closed, making the interior of the carriage dark and unbearably hot and stuffy. Perspiration had already begun to sting her eyes and she fumbled in the pocket of her skirt for her handkerchief.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Lawson said from the gloom.
“Do you really think I have a weapon concealed in my skirt?” Harriet demanded as she dabbed her face. “What do you mean by . . .” She struggled for the word. There seemed no polite way to put it. “. . . kidnapping me? I’ve never done you any harm.”
“Mrs. Gordon.” Lawson’s voice cracked. “This is a damnable mess. If you only had the sapphire, none of this would have happened.”
“The sapphire I presume you stole!” Harriet said.
“I only took what I considered was owed to me.” Lawson sounded petulant.
“And now your thieving friends are holding Will as a surety for the sapphire?”
In the gloom, she heard him swallow hard. “Yes.”
“So, who are these friends of yours?”
“They’re not friends,” Lawson said, his tone bitter. “Once they have their cursed sapphire and I have Will back, I’ll be on the next boat to England.”
Harriet wondered if people with the ruthlessness to murder Visscher and Newbold would let him go so easily . . . or her. The sour tang of nausea rose in her throat and her fingers tightened on the handkerchief she held, twisting it hard.
She straightened in the seat and took a deep breath of the cloying air. “Mr. Lawson, where am I being taken?”
“I don’t know,” Lawson mumbled. “I’m as much a dupe in this as you. They sent me to get the statue back. That’s all I know.”
In the suffocating dark, she could make out no more than his shape on the seat across from her, and now that his fear and anger had passed, he slumped back in the corner. The light from a streetlamp briefly illuminated his face, contorted in pain as he clutched his right arm and groaned.
“How badly are you hurt?” she asked.
“When they came for me I stupidly put up a fight and he . . . the man out there . . . he stuck me in the arm with his knife,” he said. “They only let me live on condition I retrieved the sapphire and now . . .” His voice cracked. “They will kill William.” He straightened, the anger back in his voice as he said, “What right did you have to open that trunk?”
“I just wanted to check that Will had suitable clothes for the journey. I was going to take him shopping . . .” Betraying tears pricked at her eyes and she looked away, swiping at them with the sodden handkerchief.
“Mrs. Gordon . . . I . . . please don’t cry . . . I’m sorry to drag you into this mess. You and your brother are good people. I should never have involved you.”
“No,” Harriet agreed. “And you should never have got yourself embroiled in the first place. It is too late to consider the might-have-beens.”
“I just wanted enough to set William and myself up in comfort back in England. That’s all,” he said.
“Was the sapphire Newbold’s?”
“Yes. He told me he found it on that first expedition to northern Burma and he’d kept it safe and hidden all these years.”
“Why?”
Lawson sighed. “It’s difficult to sell a stone of that quality and he couldn’t bring himself to break it up. Over the years I think it had become his talisman. I didn’t think the others even knew about the sapphire.”
Lawson slumped lower on the seat, stretching his legs out and forcing Harriet to move her feet. “My life has been a failure, or should I say a long succession of failures. I . . . I got into trouble in England over gambling debts, so I took Annie out to Burma for a fresh start but it didn’t take long before the old habits took hold. Newbold was good to me, settled the creditors and gave me a good talking-to. Little did I know there would be a price to pay for his kindness. I can’t say I was even a very good mine engineer and certainly I’m a worse rubber planter.”
“What is the VOC?” Harriet cut across him, weary of his maundering self-pity.
The man gave a visible start. “What do you know about the VOC?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, except it is the acronym for an old company of Dutch merchants. What was your role?”
The silence that followed her question prompted her to kick his leg. “Lawson?”
“Your brother is a clergyman. They say confession is good for the soul?”
“Julian would say God forgives even if you can’t forgive yourself.”
L
awson gave a snort of laughter. “That is an easy platitude.” He sighed. “The price Newbold demanded of me? I stole the rubies, Mrs. Gordon. All I had to do was select the best stones, falsify the entries in the ledger and hand them over to Newbold.”
“How many stones?”
Lawson shrugged. “Sixty, at least. It was done slowly over the five years I was tied to Newbold.”
“And what did Newbold do with them?”
“He couldn’t sell them. It would have attracted attention so he bided his time. After the baby died, I got into an awful funk. Started going down to town, drinking and gambling again. Annie persuaded me it was time to move. She wanted to go back to England, but I couldn’t. The creditors would have pounced the moment the ship docked, so I accepted the rubber plantation contract here in Singapore.”
“Newbold let you go?”
“Yes, or so I thought, but then he turned up in Singapore. He said I still owed him for the debts he’d paid in Burma.” He laughed bitterly. “Oh, I repaid that debt with interest. Newbold had found a way to get his rubies onto the market and needed someone like me to do the hard work.”
“How was he going to sell them?”
“A little partnership with a couple of others of a similar disposition. That’s your VOC, a little play on their names. They thought themselves so clever.” Lawson gave a hollow laugh and Harriet caught her breath.
“O stood for Oswald Newbold?”
Lawson grunted assent.
Her heart hammering, Harriet said. “Who are V and C?”
Lawson shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Do you know?”
“No.”
Harriet wondered if he was lying but judged it best to hold her peace.
There had been no more streetlights for a little while and the road beneath the wheels had become rougher, forcing Harriet to reach for the strap as the carriage jerked through a pothole.
“Where did the rubies come from?”
“Newbold brought them into Singapore.”