‘Someone in her party said, “My God, if she loses any more money tonight we won’t be welcome here tomorrow.”
‘And someone else said, “Don’t worry about her. She can leave her debts on the ticket with a name like hers.”
‘So I had a pretty clear picture. Bunter and I extricated ourselves and left.
‘I didn’t quite know what to do about it, mind. It was none of my business how the Marchioness of Writtle behaved. If Writtle himself wasn’t bothered . . .’
‘But he ought to have been bothered,’ said Harriet.
‘A few wastrels can desiccate an estate,’ the Duchess was saying to Hope. ‘Is that what I mean?’
‘Perhaps you meant devastate,’ suggested Hope gently.
‘Of course, dear. Now that is just what this fellow did to the cadet branch of the Delagardies. He brought a great lineage down to the auction rooms. He has a sneaky face, don’t you think?’
‘He can’t have been more than six or seven in this picture,’ protested Hope. ‘Surely that’s a bit young for a sneaky face?’
‘You don’t think people can be born sneaky?’ said the Duchess. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right. It’s just that I happen to know what the little rat did to his family when he grew up.’
‘So did you do anything about the scandalous Diana?’ Harriet asked Peter.
‘Well, I would have done if my brother Gerald hadn’t scolded me so,’ said Peter.
‘Gerald? Where does Gerald come into it?’
‘He invited me to lunch with him in the House of Lords,’ said Peter. ‘I think it might have been the very next day.’
‘To scold you?’
‘To implore me to settle down and breed. Spare heir. You know all about that, Harriet. I’ve done my duty now, with your delectable assistance, but I wasn’t ready to do it then. It was much more fun to rile Gerald with hints of a lifetime of celibacy, or alternatively of debauchery being what I thought of. Even so, after the brandy Gerald took me to shake hands with the Lord Chancellor. Courtesy call sort of thing. So I got a close look at their lordships’ chamber. I prowled about a bit looking to see if I could spot any hidey-hole sort of place into which a necklace could have fallen, or any sticky-out thingies on which it could have caught; must have done it far too conspicuously, because the Chancellor asked me what I was doing. I told him.
‘ “Yes, I heard about that,” he said. “But you won’t find anything, Wimsey. Our cleaners are very thorough, and they’ve had a good look. The necklace isn’t here.”
‘So I changed the subject. I asked him about the Woolsack. I told him I had heard that it wasn’t stuffed with wool, really, but with horse-hair which crackled when the Chancellor sat on it. He said he didn’t know; but it did creak a bit if he fidgeted when their lordships were boring. “Not that that happens very often . . .” he said. “Don’t quote me.” ’
‘But you are quoting him,’ said Harriet.
‘What does it matter now?’ said Peter. ‘It’s alarming to think, really, how little the things that loomed at the time still matter years later. Sceptre and crown shall tumble down and all that.
‘Well, that very afternoon when the session began, it seems that he began prodding around on it, wondering if I was right. He pushed his fingers down the crack between the seat and the back-rest, and behold and lo! There was something stuffed down there – something hard and lumpy. So at the end of the session – it was very late, well after midnight before they called “Who goes home?” – he got up and leaned down and prodded with his fingers again and brought up a paper packet which when opened displayed the wonderful Attenbury emeralds, all set about with fever trees – no, what am I saying? – all set about with Writtle diamonds. Sent round to Writtle’s place in Cavendish Square first thing in the morning. Presto! The Chancellor went around for days telling everybody that he would never have prodded his cushion but for a remark by young Wimsey.’
‘Very clever of you, Peter. But I thought this case was a source of notoriety for you rather than just fame. Where’s the shock, horror element?’
‘You are not shocked by this tale of a naughty world? Are you going to tell me that this is just what you expect from my sort of people?’
‘Your sort of people? They don’t sound at all like your sort of people,’ said Harriet, musing. ‘Except in being rich enough to pay for their vices. Having unthinkably more money than my sort of people rather exposes their taste, I suppose. You spent your money on incunabula, rather than on vice. But if you had been born poor and could have afforded neither books nor debauchery it couldn’t have been known which you would have preferred given a chance. I don’t think poorer people are more virtuous than richer ones; they just have a narrower choice of vices.’
‘Except gambling,’ said Peter. ‘Rich and poor alike, each in their own way, succumb to that.’
‘And that is how the deplorable Diana got into trouble.’
‘Exactly. And unfortunately simply retrieving the emeralds from the Woolsack didn’t put all to rest, because of that insurance claim. Writtle had made the claim a whole fortnight before the recovery of the jewels, and the assessor had trotted along and interviewed the Marchioness, and heard her artless story. The Marquess withdrew the claim, but not before the insurers had called the police. The whole thing landed up in the courts with the Marchioness on trial for fraud. And there’s your scandal.’
‘It certainly was fraud,’ said Harriet severely. ‘One of my sort of people would have gone to jail for it.’
Chapter 11
‘Diana didn’t go to jail,’ said Peter. ‘She had Sir Impey Biggs defending, and he hoodwinked and beguiled the jury as only he can do. She had a desperate time in the witness box. Prosecuting counsel dragged out of her, morsel by morsel, what she had done. She had squandered her entire inheritance from her godmother, and completely failed to live on her allowance from her father. She was deeply in debt. And she hadn’t wanted to admit as much to her fiancé. In view of the attitude he took after her marriage she probably could have done so, and he would just have thought, Well, girls will be girls. But I suppose she didn’t know him well enough to rely on that. And she was terrified of confessing to her father.
‘You would have enjoyed seeing Impey Biggs at work, Harriet, because at first you would have thought he was doing the prosecution’s work for them. He teased out of the wretched girl a picture of her lifestyle, and got her to admit that although she had lost thousands at cards, she had also been lending money to friends, and paying their debts for them. I wondered what the devil he was up to as he extracted accounts of those friends – spendthrift hangers-on with a liking for expensive things like gambling and cocaine. He had already extracted from the Marquess, who at first claimed to know all his wife’s friends, that what he actually meant was that he had been at school with their fathers. I was fascinated – it’s a funny way of defending someone to drag their name through the mud.’
‘Were you allowed to listen to him, Peter, being yourself a witness?’
‘Oh, he finished with me early on. I gave them my halfpence worth, and then retired to the public gallery to squeeze in beside Mother, who was having the time of her life. I got there just in time to hear the evidence of the accomplice, one Mrs Prout.’
‘Enlighten me. What was the scandal of your evidence that famously so upset your elder brother?’
‘There was nothing to it. Just the mere fact that I had been doing a spot of sleuthing while possessed of a title was enough. But you can imagine, Harriet, what the gutter press was making of all that stuff. Gerald just hated the fact that the family name was coming up in connection with the trial. The words “noble sleuth” simply maddened him.’
‘You can’t really blame him for that, dear,’ contributed the Duchess. ‘You must remember that he was brought up Edwardian. Your grandfather was very severe upon Gerald, in case he took after any of these crocodiles . . .’ She waved her hands across the table of family photographs. Everyone l
aughed. ‘I expect that’s not what I mean,’ said the Duchess, joining in the laughter. ‘What do I mean, Peter?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea, Mama,’ said Peter serenely. ‘I’m telling Harriet about the Writtle trial. And you were there, I remember.’
‘Wouldn’t have missed a minute of it!’ said the Duchess. ‘I was so proud of you!’
‘Were you?’ said Peter, sounding astonished.
‘Gerald was wittering on and on about the family name, as if the family name hadn’t got a lot of blotches already, what with all these wicked ancestors, and in any case what does all that matter nowadays – well, I suppose 1923 isn’t nowadays now even if we thought it was then, although we of all people ought to be able to imagine how times change, what with the family habit of lasting through everything – why isn’t 1923 called thenadays, do you know, Harriet, dear? And all I could think about was worrying whether Peter would be able to manage the witness box, or whether it would remind him of being under fire, and send him into a jellyfish again; and he spoke up so well and sensibly, it would warm the molluscs of any mother’s heart to see him, although if my heart has molluscs I’m not quite sure what they actually are . . .’
‘I think you mean cockles, Mother,’ said Harriet. ‘And I don’t know what they are except on beaches. If you please, Bunter, will you go and look them up for us?’
‘The curse of the Wimseys strikes again,’ said Peter.
‘What is that, dear?’ asked his mother. ‘Have I heard of it?’
‘You are a prime example of it, Mother,’ said Peter. ‘It is a congenital inability to stick to the point.’
‘Pray silence for his lordship,’ said Harriet. ‘He would like to resume his tale. Although you were doing only slightly worse than the Ancient Mariner, Peter.’
‘Stopping one of three?’
‘I was listening. So you had one of four.’
‘Two of four. Bunter always listens to me.’
‘Bunter has left us to consult the OED. As you were saying, Peter . . .’
‘I was, I think, about to tell you how cunningly Sir Impey Biggs had managed things. I thought he was ruining the egregious Marchioness Diana. He had succeeded in showing her to the jury as spendthrift, louche – well, I just said all that. He got her to admit that some huge sum of money had been spent over just a few months on dope, mostly heroin. But then he asked her how much of the stuff she had sniffed or smoked herself; and she said she had tried it once when somebody pressed her hard, and it made her sick, so she didn’t do it again. Then he asked her to estimate how much of the champagne she had paid for she had drunk herself. “Oh, quite a bit,” she said. “I like champagne.”
‘And he produced with a flourish a bill from the Hot Potato, and waved it round the courtroom. “Twenty-seven bottles of Moët et Chandon in the course of a week?” he asked. “Surely you don’t like it that much?”
‘ “I like to treat my friends,” she said.
‘ “Indeed you do,” said he. “I suppose some of the roulette chips on this bill may have been staked and lost by you in person, if you spent a lot of time at the wheel.”
‘And then his coup de théâtre. “But I suppose also that the items on this bill which cover the use of prostitutes are not down to you personally? You were often picking up the tabs for other people, weren’t you? Would you tell the court the name of the person for whom you paid the price of Lulu, Francine and Ziggy?”
‘She raised her head, so you could see the tears in her wicked eyes, and clutched the rail of the witness box, and said, “No, I won’t. You can’t make me.”
‘The judge warned her that he could make her – he could send her to prison for contempt. Still she said no. Impey said, “Your loyalty is misguided, your ladyship. And it is all in vain. The name of the client entertained by these ladies is on the bill. It is Mr Northerby.” So you see, Harriet, Charlotte had a narrow escape, all told.
‘There was uproar in court. Hooting and cat-calling from the spectators’ gallery . . .
‘The judge suspended the session.
‘When the session resumed Biggy suddenly asked his witness whose idea it was to fix up that fraudulent claim. “It wasn’t your idea, was it?” he asked. She shook her head. This is what he got out of her. She had pledged the necklace as security against a loan to tide her over till the next instalment of her allowance was due. Then she learned that her father was stopping the allowance, now that the marriage settlement with the Marquess of Writtle was providing for her. She was terrified of losing the necklace, on which both families set such store. A friend suggested that she had better “lose” it in a place of safety, and hold off her creditor for a while with that story. So she recruited a girl she knew from the club scene, whose day job was as a cloakroom attendant and cleaner in the House of Lords. Diana slipped the necklace to her as she collected her cloak at the end of the ceremony, and the girl hid it in the fold in the Woolsack. A Mrs Prout who confirmed all this when called as a witness, said that she was to be paid when she was asked to retrieve it.
‘All would have been well had Writtle not wanted to show the jewels to a visiting friend, and asked to see them. Then she had to tell him they were lost.
‘And whose idea had it been, asked Sir Impey Biggs, to make an insurance claim? Was it her idea? No, it had been her husband’s idea. Had the Marquess consulted her about the claim? Or even told her he was about to make it? No, he had acted without telling her.
‘ “So you were trapped in your lie?”
‘ “Yes,” she said, so softly the court could hardly hear her.
‘ “How did you feel,” he asked her, “when at Lord Peter Wimsey’s suggestion the Lord Chancellor recovered the jewels? Were you relieved?”
‘ “Immensely relieved.”
‘ “What about the debt against which they were pledged?”
‘ “In the meantime I had made a clean breast of the matter to my husband, and he paid the debt for me.”
‘ “Your husband must love you very much.”
‘ “Yes,” she said, blushing deeply, “I believe he does.”
‘Well, you can now imagine, Harriet, Biggy’s summing-up. Young, trusting, gullible and beautiful girl; secluded childhood with nannies and chaperones, and schooling in Switzerland, where by common consent nothing ever happens to stain the pure white snow . . . let loose with money in a tranche of London society deeply corrupted by the wastrel hangers-on of the rich . . . after some fun, as it’s natural young people should be . . . too good-hearted to suspect that friendship offered her was two-faced exploitation . . . Misled – and here he paused for effect – by supposing that the friends and associates of her family and her prospective husband were “good society” when in fact some of them were deeply wicked, and using their status and titles as no more than a means to escape paying their debts . . . He actually used her folly and stupidity to gain sympathy for her. Brilliant, simply brilliant!’
‘Yes, Peter, but fraud.’
‘Of course he emphasised that Diana had not herself made the insurance claim, which would have been fraud. She had just got herself into a terrible tangle in which it took time for her to face up to the need to confess to her husband. But, members of the jury, if this husband can find it in his heart to forgive the peccadilloes of his young wife, surely you, too . . . You could write it yourself, I’ll bet.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Not guilty.’
‘But she was guilty,’ said Harriet firmly.
‘Oh, I expect so,’ said Lord Peter breezily. ‘I expect she thought she could pay off her debts with the insurance money, and get the jewels back too. But she didn’t make out and sign the claim form herself. Writtle did. So the judge told the jury she was entitled to the benefit of the doubt.’
‘Cockles, my lord, your ladyships,’ said Bunter, who had returned some minutes since, and was waiting for a pause in the talk, ‘are so called in reference to hearts because of the likeness of a he
art to a cockleshell; the base of the former being compared to the hinge of the latter.’
‘A pilgrim heart is mine,’ said Peter. ‘Give me my cockle-shell of quiet . . .’
‘Wrong shellfish again,’ said Harriet. ‘Shall we go to dinner?’
Only as they were on their way to bed, much later, did Harriet say to Peter: ‘You know, Peter, when your mother described Diana’s necklace in such glowing terms, she didn’t mention the king-stone. It had made a deep impression upon you . . .’
‘Remember, it got left out of the remake and shoved away in the bank,’ said Peter, yawning, and turning out the light. The room filled with moonlight, and on the walls fell faint moon-shadows of the leafy trees in the London square outside. It was a high window, and they never drew the curtains across the mysterious night.
Chapter 12
It was just after breakfast two days later that Bunter reappeared after clearing the coffee, and said, ‘Lord Attenbury to see you, my lord.’
Harriet looked very startled, but Peter said, ‘The king is dead, long live the king! Show him up, Bunter, show him up. We’ll see him in the library, I think.’
To Harriet he said, ‘Are you working this morning, or would you like to join in this encounter?’
‘I’d like to join, if I may, Peter.’
‘This will be Edward, the old man’s grandson,’ Peter told her as they crossed the landing to the library. ‘The Abcock whose name you know from the story was Roland, killed at Dunkirk.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Harriet. ‘Didn’t I meet him once? Just briefly, at Denver?’
‘Oh, you could have. But the new Lord Attenbury is unknown, I think, to both of us.’
They had reached the library doors, and Peter stood back to let Harriet precede him.
The Attenbury Emeralds Page 11