The Attenbury Emeralds

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  ‘Of course,’ said Peter, ‘this is a copy of the stones as they used to be. Before they were re-set.’

  ‘Strewth!’ said Harriet. ‘These are dazzling! Whatever can the real ones have been like?’

  ‘Oh, quite terrific,’ said Peter. ‘Real hit-you-in-the-eye. But I think I prefer the phoney ones.’

  ‘It’s not like you to go for the ersatz, Peter. Why?’

  ‘These fakes are innocent,’ he said. ‘They have lain unregarded in a box with old curtains, old-fashioned frocks and hats and stage cutlasses for a generation. There is no bloodshed to lay to their account.’

  Chapter 19

  Harriet surfaced from deep sleep, dreaming of a phone ringing. Had she dreamed it, or had there really been a phone call? She turned over and looked at the pretty little alarm clock at her bedside, with luminous spots round the dial and on the hands. Two thirty. She must have dreamed it. The house was now silent, the room dark. Sometimes it was flooded with moonlight, but tonight a slender crescent moon hung in an upper pane of the window glass, surrounded by a sprinkle of stars; these astral bodies kept their light for themselves. She could hear Peter’s steady breathing where he lay beside her. Nothing had wakened him. She turned over, buried her face in her pillow and tried to return to sleep. She was cross with herself; how could she work tomorrow if she could not sleep through the night? Here she was, warm and safe and in a silent house . . . But no, the house was not silent. There were stealthy noises, someone moving about quietly, a brief whisper, a door being gently opened and shut. She was now completely awake, and listening intently for every slight sound. She heard in the quiet street outside the sound of a motor car. A car door being opened. Nothing and nobody should be stirring at two thirty. And then a light tap on the bedroom door.

  Bunter’s familiar voice: ‘My lord; my lady . . .’

  Before she could answer him he entered, and put the lights on. She sat up, blinking. Peter woke cleanly and completely; he said, ‘What’s up, Bunter?’

  Bunter was holding Peter’s shirt and trousers. ‘There has been a phone call from Duke’s Denver, my lord,’ he said.

  ‘Is it my mother?’ asked Peter, in a voice in which Harriet heard terror.

  ‘No, my lord, it is the house. There is a fire in Bredon Hall. The Duchess has asked if you can come at once.’

  Peter shook his head, as if to shake off drowsiness. ‘I’ll get dressed right away,’ he said.

  ‘When you are ready, my lord, the car is at the door, and your case is in the boot,’ said Bunter.

  ‘I’m coming too,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter, discarding his pyjamas, and pulling on a vest. ‘If you would, Harriet. And Bunter, you too, I think.’

  Bunter nodded, like a man vindicated. ‘I have taken the liberty of packing overnight cases for her ladyship, and for myself, my lord.’

  Harriet dived into her dressing-room, and got rapidly into old clothes. She ran downstairs. The front door was standing ajar and the car with engine idling was at the kerb, Peter at the wheel. A triple thump of the front door closing, followed by the car doors, and they were on their way.

  ‘If my mother asked for me, then I take it she is herself all right?’ asked Peter as they sped along Oxford Street towards the Clerkenwell Road.

  ‘I have no reason to think otherwise, my lord,’ said Bunter. ‘But it was not your mother who called. It was the Duchess, not the Dowager Duchess.’

  ‘Helen summoned me?’ said Peter. ‘Good God. What did she say exactly, Bunter?’

  ‘That the house was burning down. Would you come at once. That’s all, my lord.’

  There seemed to be not another car on the road. Peter drove straight through all the traffic lights on Old Street, and they turned on to the A10. Peter put his foot down, and Harriet closed her eyes. They sped through north London, Enfield, the miles to Cambridge and then Ely. Out on to the vast flatness of the Fens, where the first light of tomorrow was drawing a just visible faint line of grey light between earth and sky, far away on their right. They did not speak; until they reached their destination there was nothing to be said. Sitting beside Peter, Harriet sensed his tension. Saw his hands that usually lay lightly on the steering wheel clenched on it now.

  The nearer they got to Duke’s Denver, the huger the load of dread she felt. She imagined a scene like that in Jane Eyre, when Jane had looked towards a stately house and seen a blackened ruin. They reached the park gates, which were standing open and unattended. And what met their eyes as they rounded the woodland plantation and had a clear view to the house was more like a scene from Rebecca than one from Jane Eyre. It looked as if an enormous party was being held in the house, with every window on two-thirds of the great Palladian frontage brightly lit. It was blinding; it took Harriet a moment or two, blinking, to discern the scene on the lawn and carriage drive in front of the house. There were fire engines, hoses running into the fountain basin, people running about backlit everywhere. The torches they were holding looked like frantic fireflies darting through the darkness.

  Peter flung open the car door and a smell of burning engulfed them. As they got out a fireman ran up to them. ‘Are you family, sir?’ he said. ‘Can you get these people to keep out of the house now? They are in mortal danger.’

  The scene resolved itself as Harriet’s eyes got used to the dark. Servants were carrying pictures and furniture out of the house and stacking stuff on the lawn. The great pictures, with two or three struggling porters carrying them, waved like the sails of ships at sea in the draught created by the fire. Peter ran forward. She heard his voice – it carried unexpectedly well considering its light timbre – giving orders. She heard him say, ‘Where the hell is Gerald?’

  And then ‘Bunter!’ Bunter had parked the car as far from the house as the drive allowed him, and was now running towards Peter.

  It was unclear to Harriet what she had best do herself. Looking away from the house she saw that there was an ambulance, which had come up the drive behind them, now slowly crunching across the gravel towards the west wing. She followed it. It stopped beside a little group of people. At first she thought that something from the house had been laid on the grass at their feet. When the ambulance men knelt down one on each side of it she realised that it was a person. The ambulance manoeuvred so that its headlights lit up the scene. Gerald. Gerald lying quite still under a blanket. Her mother-in-law was kneeling beside him, wearing a fluffy dressing-gown, and holding his hand. Helen stood rigid behind her, shaking. Gently the ambulance man removed the Dowager Duchess’s hand from that of her son, and asked her to make way. They were taking his pulse, and then pounding his chest. But not for long. ‘I’m so sorry,’ they were saying. ‘Nothing to be done, I’m afraid.’ Nevertheless they lifted Gerald into the ambulance.

  The Dowager Duchess looked up at Harriet and said, ‘Is Peter here? Find Peter.’

  Looking round, Harriet saw a group of the servants, standing close together, and silently watching their world disintegrate. ‘Go and find Lord Peter,’ she said to the nearest one. He was just a boy, holding a handkerchief over his right hand. ‘Are you hurt?’ she asked him.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ he answered. ‘I’ll find him.’

  But it was Harriet who was on the spot here. She thought that Helen must be in shock; she realised that Helen’s whole world, her status and her wealth lay dead with her husband at her feet. God knows which of her losses would hurt her most. Harriet thought that she herself was the last person to help Helen. She said to her mother-in-law, who must be in deep distress herself, ‘Will you stay with Helen exactly here, Mother, while I go and get the car? We need you both in the warm somewhere.’

  She walked back to the Daimler, hoping that Bunter or Peter would be in sight, but she could see neither of them. The fountain basin had run dry, and the firemen were dragging their hoses round the house to the lake, a quarter of a mile away. She got into the driver’s seat, and turned the ignition key, left in the lock, lu
ckily. She had never driven the Daimler before and she had to find the lever that allowed her to slide the seat forward. Time had frozen; everything seemed to be taking a long time. But it was probably only minutes before she reached the two women, and got them into the car. Then she drove towards the Dower House. The carriage drive took a long elegant curve to get there; Harriet drove straight off the drive, and across the lawns in a direct line to her destination.

  At the door of the Dower House she found her mother-in-law’s scatty maid, Franklin, standing wringing her hands. At the sight of her mistress she let out a positive wail of relief, and ran forward. Harriet said, ‘Helen needs hot sweet tea, and a warm bed as soon as possible. Will you help your mistress manage that? And then see that she is herself all right. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  It was the Blitz that had taught Harriet that in an emergency you give the less injured a useful job to do. But nothing had taught her how to deal with this – the dreadful immediate calamity that had befallen Peter. While she got his mother and sister-in-law into a warm house, somebody would have told him. Was Gerald already dead when Helen phoned for them? Someone would have told him, and she had not been at his side.

  She rejoined the mêlée in front of the house, and found herself beside the boy she had sent to look for Peter. ‘I couldn’t find him, missus,’ the boy said. ‘I’ve only been here a month, and I dunno what he looks like.’

  ‘What happened to your hand?’ Harriet asked him.

  ‘It got bit burned, missus. It’s nothing much. There’s others worse hurt.’

  In the dirty grey light of early dawn, muffled in fenny mist, she saw Bunter, carrying books. Then she heard Peter’s voice. ‘Thomas, can you get to a phone? I think we might be able to reach one in the east wing. I want an ambulance to take people into King’s Lynn. I want all these burns and cuts properly seen to. We’ll round up the walking wounded while we wait for it to come.’

  ‘Won’t we be wanted here?’ asked the Denver butler.

  ‘Don’t argue, Thomas,’ said Peter. ‘Just make sure everyone with an injury gets in that ambulance.’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace,’ said Thomas.

  Peter flinched as though he had been struck in the face. ‘Much too soon for that,’ he said.

  Harriet went and stood beside him. A fireman approached them. ‘No more getting chattels out of the other end of the house, sir,’ he said. ‘The whole thing may firestorm any minute. Not safe.’

  ‘Are we sure there is nobody left inside?’ said Peter. Harriet wasn’t sure he had noticed her standing beside him, until he slipped his hand into hers. They stood together, watching the party lights in the blazing windows burn on. Bunter came running towards them, carrying, Harriet noticed, a last armful of books.

  ‘Get back, get back,’ the fire chief was calling. ‘It’ll blow in a minute. Get back!’

  ‘Blow?’ said Harriet, standing her ground until Peter moved.

  There was a loud crack and rumble. Across two-thirds of the house the roof had fallen in. Liberated, the fire leapt skywards, in a flamboyant display of flames and sparks. No longer contained within the building, it roared loudly. They could feel the warmth on their faces, and they began to edge away across the gravel. And as they went the great façade suddenly collapsed. It fell from low down, like someone flexing at the knees. It went down with a thunderous roar, and fell inwards, across the inferno behind it. It gave the fire pause; for a moment the light and warmth of the conflagration was halted. The appalled watchers on the drive could see that the back wall of the house had already partly fallen; they could see sunrise catching the surface of the lake beyond the house.

  The fire drew breath; then it began to re-emerge from the rubble pile that had damped it, not in the one huge blaze with which it had burned before, but in dozens of little flames, licking through the surface, and beginning again. Unheard in the huge sound of the fire the ambulance had arrived. Peter turned and walked away to make sure his orders about injured people were being observed. Bunter seemed to be busily directing the removal of furniture and pictures from the drive to safety in the stable block.

  Harriet thought she had better return to the Dower House to comfort Peter’s mother. It must be a terrible thing to lose a son. She felt an irrational urge to rush home and make sure her own sons were all right. The rising light showed her everyone around her covered with smuts like chimney sweeps. And surely Peter must need some rest.

  ‘Peter, come back to the Dower House, and get some rest,’ she said to him.

  ‘Later,’ he said.

  Did he mean to stand there until the last object had been put in the barn, the last servant put in the ambulance, or ordered to get some rest?

  She tried a ruse. ‘Peter, I need some sleep. Come with me and rest.’

  ‘Sorry, Harriet,’ he said, walking away from her.

  ‘Peter, your mother must need you very badly,’ she said, catching up with him. He turned towards her a face streaked with soot, lined and inexpressibly tired. ‘My mother will expect me to see to things here,’ he said. ‘Tell her I will come as soon as I can.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. And walking away she realised that although Peter had told Thomas that it was too soon to be calling him ‘Your Grace’ it was de facto who he was now. In the last hour she had seen him becoming the Duke, like it or no. And with a further shock she saw that in that same last hour she had herself become the Duchess.

  A family doctor was in the Dower House when Harriet reached it. A pleasant, grey-haired gentleman in a three-piece suit with a gold watch on a watch chain who reminded Harriet immediately of her own father. He had, Franklin had told her, sedated Helen, and was now in the drawing-room with the Dowager Duchess. When Harriet entered the room he was taking her mother-in-law’s pulse, one hand on her frail wrist, the other holding his watch. She was sitting in her favourite chair, still in her sooty dressing-gown, steadily and silently weeping.

  ‘Hot tea for you too, Duchess, and a bath and a rest,’ he said, releasing her wrist.

  ‘But I don’t know what is happening out there!’ she cried.

  ‘Nothing is happening that will not wait for you,’ he said.

  ‘What happened to my son, Dr Fakenham?’ the Dowager Duchess asked him.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  Peter appeared in the doorway, and stood there, listening.

  ‘I had warned him twice,’ Dr Fakenham said. ‘He took no notice, I imagine. But his heart was dicey. Standing outside on a cold night wearing only a silk dressing-gown over his pyjamas, and watching his house burn down triggered, I think, a heart attack. I will sign the death certificate to that effect. Now will you yourself, Duchess, please take my advice, or shall I expect to be called out again shortly to another avoidable calamity?’

  ‘My dear Honoria,’ said Harriet, ‘please . . .’

  ‘Come, Mother,’ said Peter. He stepped forward, picked up his mother in his arms, and simply carried her away and up the wide, winding staircase towards her bedroom.

  ‘Now there’s a man who keeps himself fit for his age!’ said the doctor admiringly. But Harriet thought her mother-in-law, frail and bird-boned as she now was, was not much of a burden.

  ‘Is there anyone else needing attention before I go on my rounds?’ Dr Fakenham asked her.

  Harriet said, ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to see if any of the firemen have been hurt?’

  ‘Certainly, Duchess,’ he said.

  She must have flinched as visibly as she had seen Peter flinch.

  ‘Come now,’ he said to her. ‘These things happen to the best of us. Only to the best of us, of course. Common folk have other hazards in life.’

  ‘My father was a family doctor like you,’ Harriet told him.

  ‘Well, doctors breed a good line in sensible daughters,’ he said. ‘I wish you luck.’

  Chapter 20

  Harriet dragged herself upstairs. She found a hot bath ready for her, clean clothes laid out on a
chair, her sponge bag in the bathroom, and a wide bed in which Peter was lying already asleep. It took a while to scrub herself clean. When she emerged into the bedroom again she found coffee, eggs and toast on a tray waiting for her. Bunter appeared and said, ‘Is there anything else you require, my lady?’

  ‘Nothing thank you, Bunter. Get some sleep yourself; this cannot be a good day ahead of us.’

  He thanked her and left. She got into the bed beside Peter and was instantly asleep.

  When she woke Peter had slipped away quietly. The tray of uneaten breakfast had been removed. She looked at her watch: ten thirty! She dressed rapidly and went downstairs. She found Peter and his mother in the yellow drawing-room, talking quietly.

  ‘My poor Gerald!’ said the Dowager Duchess. ‘I know he was a pompous man. A man for all the stuffiest conventions you could find. But he didn’t have a happy life. The responsibilities weighed him down. And I don’t think Helen looked after him properly. There should have been another son. He never got over Lord St George’s death. Not even when you had a son to supply the need, Peter. And the one time he did break out and look for some happiness it all went desperately wrong. He never left the beaten track again, as far as I know. My poor son. And now it will all land on you, Peter. And I shan’t like to see you and Harriet bearing it.’

  ‘We’ll manage,’ said Peter.

  Harriet slipped away. She went to telephone the children’s schools and make sure her sons heard the news from her, and not from hearing about the inevitable fuss in the newspapers.

  Coming back, she found Helen in the room, still shaking, though with anger this time, not shock. ‘Your outrageous manservant has been giving servants all the bedrooms!’ she said to Peter. ‘When I told them to get themselves to the servants’ quarters at once, they said they had been assigned the guest rooms to sleep in. Damned insolence!’