Peter left the room. Curious, Harriet continued to inspect Miss Pevenor’s article. She skimmed it rapidly. ‘The inscription upon the back of the jewel, or my spirit leaves my own body, is clearly incomplete. Possibly the stone was once part of a collection . . .’
She did not look up as Peter entered the room. ‘Peter, surely this is all right,’ she said. ‘Miss Pevenor doesn’t know anything about the Maharaja’s stone. It’s all speculation. She doesn’t even know that what she thinks of as the Attenbury emerald isn’t the right one.’
When Peter didn’t answer, she looked up. He was standing in front of her, quite still.
‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘Charles tells me she was murdered last week.’
‘Horrible,’ said Harriet. ‘That poor woman! What had she done to deserve to die terrified and helpless?’
Peter had just finished describing to her what he had learned when he and Charles had visited the Middlesex Constabulary to discover what they could about the death of Miss Pevenor. It had in fact been reported in the copy of The Times that carried the stories about the death of Gerald; not even Bunter had spotted it, in small type way down the page. On a normal day it would have rated headlines, but it had been more fun to harass a great family with a scandal or two. The local police had been a bit bemused to find themselves visited by a senior officer in the Met and a famous amateur, over what James Vaud, the detective in charge, described as ‘a squalid case. Run of the mill’.
Someone had talked their way in to the house. No sign of forced entry. And the victim had felt secure enough to sit down at her desk, spread out some papers in front of her. ‘Must have intended to show the visitor something,’ Inspector Vaud had said. ‘And then she was attacked from behind. Bit of picture wire round the neck. Tightened with a paper knife being turned in it.’
‘Obviously the local force knew she was working on valuable things. There was a bit of disturbance in the house – books flung on the floor, broken china, dressing-table drawers all emptied. Motive, robbery, they thought. And they couldn’t find anything worth taking, so they reckoned it had all been taken. As to what might have been taken, they could read her ledger. She should have had the Marshal pearls, and three diamond tiaras. They had circulated descriptions.
‘They were gratifyingly amazed, Harriet, when we asked if they had found the safe. Remember she told us the book in front of the buttons to reveal it was Urn Burial ? Well, I had a quick look roughly where I remembered Urn Burial to have been when we visited her, and it was a complete give-away. There was The Garden of Cyrus on the shelf, completely out of order – not another Thomas Browne anywhere near it. Wonderful moment! I took the book down, and in seconds I had the panel opened and the safe revealed. I haven’t felt so prestidigitous since I learned how to get a rabbit out of a hat when I was a boy.’
‘So what was in the safe, Peter?’ Harriet asked.
‘They couldn’t open it. So I called up Bill Rumm, and he trundled up on the Northern Line, and cracked it for us. It contained the Marshal pearls, and three diamond tiaras,’ he said.
‘So nothing had been stolen?’
‘Not a peppercorn. But Inspector Vaud stuck firmly to his guns. The mere fact that a robbery had not occurred did not mean that robbery was not the motive.’
‘You can’t blame him for that, Peter. Logically he is quite right.’
‘Oh, logic . . . I think he might have noticed how desultory the ransacking was. Not a very serious search. But why should I trouble to enlighten him? It would have taken till the middle of next week to explain to him what we thought the real motive might have been.’
‘Peter, you should face the fact that it really might have been a botched burglary. Quite a few people probably knew she wrote about jewels, and might have thought she might have some around.’
‘It doesn’t really look like that to me, Harriet. Thieves do sometimes assault a householder in the course of a crime. They have been known, even, to kill them. But it’s very unusual. After all, burglary carries a prison sentence; but murder leads to hanging. You need a professional for a jewel heist, because you have to know how to convert the loot safely into cash. And professionals, in my experience, take very good care not to go armed, in case the situation gets out of hand and they incur the death penalty.’
‘So what do you think would happen, Peter, if the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment which is under way at the moment abolished hanging? Would burglars go armed?’
‘They might,’ he said. ‘An unlooked-for result of such a decision might be more murdered householders. Whether anyone would identify a length of picture wire as a homicidal weapon unless they found it actually round the neck of a garrotted victim is another thing.’
‘What do you think about the death penalty? Would you like to see it abolished?’
‘Charles told me once,’ he answered, ‘that he had a friend who was a prison governor. And that man told him that he thought capital punishment was more merciful than a life sentence. And yet . . . there are too many mistaken verdicts. Think what a near thing it was that you . . .’
‘I think, Peter, that the man who really killed Philip Boyes deserved to die. And therefore, you see, that if I had really done it I would likewise have deserved death.’
He shook his head. And then he indulged himself in the urge to hug her.
‘I’ll tell you one thing, though,’ she said, in a voice muffled in his shirt. ‘If they abolish the death penalty it will mar detective fiction.’
‘Why?’ he said, releasing her. ‘Wouldn’t all that puzzle-solving retain its charm?’
‘Charm,’ she said, ‘but not bite. The public is gruesome and vengeful. Life imprisonment may be a worse fate, but from a fictional point of view, it won’t be anything like such a good ending.’
‘Ghoul!’ said Peter.
‘Peter, did you find out what was on the table in front of Miss Pevenor? Exactly what did she seem to have got out of her files to show her visitor?’
‘Oh, the description of the Attenbury emerald, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Dammit, Harriet, if I hadn’t been railroaded by a dukedom that woman would still be alive!’
Chapter 22
Lord Attenbury was agitated. Peter offered him a rueful apology for having so little to report, mentioning that family affairs had been taking up his attention recently. Whereupon the young man exploded.
‘You’ll be all right!’ he cried. ‘But what about me? What am I to do? Do I preside over the ruin of my family with nobody to help me?’
‘Believe me, I am trying to help you,’ said Peter. ‘But with the best will in the world we may not be able to get this sorted out in time for the Inland Revenue. You’d better find a bit of stoicism to meet the situation.’
‘Stoicism? That’s damned easy to say when you don’t need it yourself!’
‘I would have thought our situations are uncannily parallel,’ said Peter.
‘Do you, Wimsey? Do you indeed? As I understand matters, at the moment your brother died the house was on fire? What do you suppose is the value of a burning house? Might even be negative! So you will escape duty on that, collect the insurance and make a neat escape. Where will it be? A handy tax-free haven like Bermuda? Or Switzerland perhaps? But my family will be ruined, I tell you, ruined! We shall live out our lives in poverty!’
Harriet said quietly, ‘Lord Attenbury, many people, most people, live without hunger or misery on a fraction of what you will have left even if you must indeed sell the house to pay the duty. I have lived with barely twopence to rub together myself, and although it was hard at times, it was not demeaning. You won’t really be reduced to indigence.’
He sat down abruptly, facing Harriet. ‘That’s the devil of it,’ he said. ‘I suppose it depends what you’re used to. Or perhaps, what your womenfolk are used to. They are making such a fuss, Lady Peter! Such howls at any economy I suggest. They expect a way of life that I cannot see how to maintain for them, for any of us. An
d it’s not like selling a semi-detached villa in Finchley; selling Fennybrook Hall would humiliate us. Whatever you say.’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ she said. ‘But, Edward – may I call you Edward? – I think that most women manage whatever life throws at them. They may make an awful fuss when difficulties are in prospect; but when it comes to the point, they manage.’
‘They haven’t ever had to,’ he said, speaking quietly now. ‘I wish any of them were as sensible as you are. My girlfriend has given me up, and my mother says she doesn’t blame her. “What have you to offer her?” That line of talk.’
‘If the love of a good husband was not enough for her, then she was prime among the extravagances you cannot afford,’ said Harriet. ‘Forget her as quickly as you can.’
‘Bloody Denver has all the luck,’ he said, rising to go. ‘You’ll let me know, I suppose, if you come up with anything?’
‘We’ll run along immediately with anything of the sort,’ said Peter.
‘What did he mean by that last remark?’ said Harriet, when the door had closed behind the departing guest.
‘Let me decode it for you,’ said Peter. ‘By bloody Denver he meant me; and in that last comment on my luck he was complimenting you. Only for the most basic of your virtues, I’m afraid: your Johnsonian bottom of common sense. You made a good job of that, Harriet. You calmed him down admirably. I was seriously tempted to have him thrown out.’
‘I take it that we are not actually planning on pocketing the insurance money and making off with it where the remote Bermudas ride?’
‘Would you like that?’ he asked.
‘I would positively hate it.’
‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll stay here. And let’s see if we can get these pestilential emeralds laid to rest.’
‘Where, Peter, if all were solved and sorted, do you think they should be laid to rest?’
‘They should all three be in the Maharaja’s museum. Attenbury should have the value of his; and the wicked owner of the mysterious third stone should hang for murder. Now let’s see if we can bring all to come about according to the words of the prophets. A council of war this evening, I think. We shall be ourselves again, as if the glories of our blood and state really were shadows.’
‘Oh, let’s!’ said Harriet.
They dined early, and Peter invited the Bunters to join them. A bottle of Cockburn’s had been decanted, and Mrs Trapp, the cook, had managed to find a small triangle of Stilton. Not, of course, the way Stilton should be bought or served, but many times better than no Stilton at all. Harriet hoped that Hope Bunter wouldn’t find the talk too boring. She was vaguely aware that the pleasant, easy-going way of life that the four of them had adopted during the war, and which had survived six years of peace, was threatened now. It was much easier to imagine, and indeed to achieve, this party sharing a modest treat together in the London house or at Talboys than at Duke’s Denver.
‘Right,’ said Peter. ‘I thought we might try to eliminate any that we can of the three occasions since 1921 when the jewel has been out of the bank. If we can. We’ll start with the matter of the expensive horse in 1929. You first, Harriet.’
‘Well,’ said Harriet, ‘we know Captain Rannerson was holding the jewel for quite a while. Showing it to all and sundry. Supposing one of his Indian friends said, “I’ve got one just like that!” and supposing they compared the jewels and advertently or inadvertently muddled them up, and the wrong one came back to Attenbury when he found the money.’
‘Hideously plausible, Harriet. But the mistake would have to be deliberate to account for the unknown person turning up now and making the claim on the bank.’
‘Okay, so it’s deliberate.’
‘And this little twist to the tale just didn’t happen to happen where anyone who has talked to Freddy got to hear of it.’
‘But such a small thing might not get reported to all and sundry. Two people just showing each other the jewels, each one holding the other’s for a minute or two. Put them down on the table, shall we say to pick up a drink, and bob’s your uncle,’ Harriet said.
‘And this happened in 1929,’ said Hope, ‘and the perpetrator hasn’t made any move to get the advantage of it all this time? The wrong emerald has just lain in the bank?’
‘It’s pretty unlikely, Peter,’ said Harriet in agreement.
‘Well, something that he or she does seem to have done is to send a few people to their maker,’ said Peter, ‘starting with Captain Rannerson.’
Bunter, sitting at the end of the table, was holding a pencil, and had a notebook in front of him.
‘I am recording a possibility that the exchange was made during the time that Captain Rannerson had the jewel,’ said Bunter. ‘Do you consider, Your Grace, that the motive for that murder was to recover an emerald that had been swapped for the Attenbury one?’
‘That would be odd, wouldn’t it?’ said Peter. ‘Why kill someone when one has just achieved the cuckoo in the nest trick that will let one at any time recover the jewel?’
‘There was a huge reward on offer to anyone who could present the Maharaja with both,’ said Harriet.
‘But if the swap had been effected then both might be obtainable without going to the trouble of killing anyone,’ Peter said. ‘On reflection I can’t see that we can rule out anything as a result of this story. Can any of us?’
There was a general shaking of heads.
‘No progress on that one. Let’s move on to consider the Blitz.’
‘Well, that’s a terrible story of confusion and death, isn’t it?’ said Harriet.
‘Death but not murder,’ said Bunter quietly. ‘Not a targeted death.’
‘And much confusion,’ said Harriet. ‘However certain our ladies are that they could not have mixed up the stones, and all that system of shoe-boxes, it plainly could have happened.’
‘The interesting question there is: who was wearing the rogue emerald? If we knew that we would be hot on the scent,’ said Peter. ‘All we know is that they were both there together, Attenbury’s and the third stone.’
‘And if the cuckoo trick had already been carried out, they were the wrong way round,’ Harriet pointed out. ‘Verity would have been wearing the third stone, and the unknown Miss Smith Attenbury’s. Very odd.’
‘Yes, but we are running ahead of ourselves. We don’t know that the trick had already happened.’
‘I shall record the possibility that it happened in the morgue, Your Grace,’ said Bunter.
‘Now what about Miss Pevenor?’ said Harriet. ‘Killed in the course of an unsuccessful burglary?’
‘The other way about,’ Peter said. ‘A fake burglary used to cover up a murder. We need to think what, if anything, these occasions have in common.’
‘This sounds like an eleven-plus question,’ said Hope. ‘I saw a sample paper while I was doing some school photographs last week. Underline the odd one out – peat, wood, coal, gas, bricks.’
‘Gas,’ said Peter. ‘All the others are solids.’
‘Bricks,’ said Harriet in the same breath, ‘all the others are fuels.’
Hope laughed. ‘Who knows which of you passed and which failed that question?’ she said.
‘Well, we are all failing this task,’ said Peter. ‘The Blitz is the odd one out, in that two jewels were involved; only one put in an appearance on the other two occasions. The Blitz is also the odd one out in that nobody was murdered, unless Rita was pushed down that manhole . . . The horse trading is the odd one out in that Rannerson had an Indian connection absent on the other two occasions.’
‘Unless the Indian costumes being worn by the ladies make that connection,’ said Harriet.
‘I suppose they might,’ said Peter, ‘but it’s a bit thin compared to a rank in the Indian Army. Miss Pevenor is the odd one out in that she was interested in the back of the stone instead of only the front . . .’
‘Didn’t Susie say that Rita had made
some friendly remark to Miss Smith about the writing on the stone?’ said Harriet.
‘Yes, she did,’ said Peter. ‘I think we had better find out a bit more about Rita. Would you like to see what you can dig up for us about her, Bunter?’
Bunter did not quite manage to conceal his delight at being asked.
‘I have taken the liberty of looking up what I could find about the lady already,’ he said. ‘I was a little uneasy when you mentioned to me that the lady who had actually returned the second emerald had met with death a short while afterwards. She was not difficult to find. I visited the British Museum newspaper library on a remote chance that the lady had merited an obituary. And there she was.’ He opened his notebook and read his notes: ‘Rita Patel, Anglo-Indian origin. Lecturer at the LSE in developing economies. Accidental death on 9th March, 1941. Great loss to oriental studies . . . fine linguist . . . devoted herself to war work . . .’
‘Bunter, you are a marvel!’ said Peter.
Harriet contemplated Bunter with astonishment. ‘What put you on to the idea she might have an obituary?’ she asked.
‘I thought I remembered her name, my lady, in an article about the London School of Economics.’
Is Bunter thinking of taking a degree? Harriet wondered. Then, No, of course, it is Peter Bunter that he is thinking about. That’s how he sees his son making a way in the world.
‘How very clever of you, Bunter,’ she said.
He acknowledged her with the very slightest inclination of the head.
‘It provides an Indian connection with the Blitz occasion,’ he said.
‘So now Miss Pevenor is the odd one out. No Indian connection arises in her case, as far as we know,’ said Harriet.
‘But it’s staring us in the face now, isn’t it?’ said Peter. ‘It’s about the inscriptions. The inscriptions not only allow one to distinguish one stone from another, they allow the deduction that there are three. Miss Pevenor had obtained a transcription of the lines from us, and told the world that she had done so. The owner of the third stone will kill to keep its existence secret.’
The Attenbury Emeralds Page 22