‘A duty to whom, Peter?’ she asked. ‘To the dead?’
‘To the dead we owe only the truth,’ he said, ‘but I was not thinking of them. I was thinking of the next prospective victim. Murder is addictive; each one seems easier than the last.’
It was nearly midnight before Bunter appeared and called Peter to the phone. The Maharaja’s voice was distant, and accompanied by bursts of static crackle. But Peter could understand him well enough. He had not been allowed to handle the stone other than his own at the pawnbroker. He had not had sight of the inscription on the back of it. As far as he knew it could have been either the Attenbury emerald, or – a thought that had not crossed his mind at the time – the other stone that his family had not heard tell of for the best part of a century.
Chapter 24
‘We are back to the beginning,’ said Peter the next morning. ‘Back to the time when my wits were awry, and I was in Bunter’s custodianship. Bunter had better sit in on this arm of the discussion.’
‘Okay,’ he said, when they were settled together, as usual at the library table. ‘To rethink. Osmanthus, so-called, turned up at Fennybrook Hall before lunch, with his own jewel in his pocket. He had to wait for Mr Whitehead to come from the bank in London with the Attenbury jewel. Since up to that time the jewel had been verified for a generation by Mr Van der Helms’s predecessor, I think we may take it that it was the right stone that he brought. There has to be solid ground somewhere. Mr Whitehead arrived at about three o’clock.’
‘Later, Your Grace,’ said Bunter.
‘Bunter, do you think you could possibly simply address me as you used to when I was just Lord Peter, while and when we are playing the old familiar game, and detecting? I would feel more comfortable with a pen-name in my professional life. Let the dukedom be a private sorrow. Unless, that is, you might be ready to call me simply Peter.’
Bunter looked down at his hands while he considered this request.
‘Mr Whitehead came at four, my lord,’ he said.
‘All right, at four. Then there was a little power struggle in the library, and eventually we had to call on Lady Attenbury, and the comparison of the stones was made. Fifteen? Twenty minutes maximum. Then Osmanthus pockets his stone and departs. Mr Whitehead departs with him. Osmanthus gets to hear of the uproar in the house he has left, and pawns his stone for safety. Meanwhile, the other stone is taken to Lady Attenbury’s bedroom, and put in her safe until five, when Jeannette comes for it, for them, because we are still talking about the complete set of jewels. Am I on track so far, Bunter?’
‘Perfectly, as far as I know, my lord.’
‘Jeannette puts out the set of jewels on the stand in Lady Charlotte’s room. Little Ottalie and her friend ‘borrow’ them from there, and take them back to the nursery. A few minutes later they also take the paste set from the open drawer in Lady Attenbury’s room. Jeannette finds them fooling about with a king’s ransom, and hurriedly puts the kit back as it should be, and returns it to Charlotte’s room. They muddle things; what goes on to the stand in Charlotte’s room the second time is the paste rivière and the real king-stone. Pity it wasn’t the other way around, really.’
‘Not such a good story,’ remarked Harriet.
‘We are coming up to six o’clock,’ Peter continued. ‘Charlotte comes up to dress, with Northerby with her. They step just inside her room for an embrace. Northerby pockets the king-stone. By the time Charlotte looks round it is gone, and she summons Jeannette and the panic starts. All clear so far?’
‘Both clear and puzzling,’ said Harriet.
‘Murky, isn’t it?’ said Peter. ‘Let’s keep following through. That evening Charlotte is wearing the real necklace, that she thinks is her mother’s paste copy; the paste copy is abandoned in Charlotte’s room, the paste king-stone is hanging on the lovely rivière round Charlotte’s neck in the dining room, and the real king-stone is in Northerby’s pocket. How did he get it out of the house when all the bedrooms and all the luggage were searched?’
‘I have wondered that, my lord,’ said Bunter. ‘And I have come to the conclusion that it must have been concealed in Mr Northerby’s bag of golf clubs. I remember his man having that bag in the hall when Sugg declared his curfew.’
‘But it would have been harder to hide a golf bag than it would have been to hide a jewel,’ said Harriet.
‘Perhaps not, my lady, if everyone is looking for a jewel and nobody is looking for a golf bag. I have asked myself where one would hide a golf bag, and I have supposed that one would hide it among other such. I think it must have been put in the hall lobby alongside Lord Attenbury’s own.’
‘Excellent, Bunter,’ said Peter. ‘So Northerby departs when allowed to with the loot in the bottom of his golf bag, and he pawns it at once in his desperate need for the money. And then by and by I go and get it back. Since when it has been the wrong stone. Somehow Northerby pawned the wrong stone.’
‘Are we imagining that all three stones were actually present in the house on that day?’ said Harriet. ‘That’s rather far-fetched, Peter.’
‘But we don’t know anything about the wrong stone. We don’t know who had it or when or why or how. We can’t tell how far-fetched this train of reasoning may be.’
‘I think,’ said Harriet, ‘that there is something we ought to know, that neither of you have mentioned in your accounts. Were those two children playing about alone, or was there somebody with them?’
‘Ottalie,’ said Peter. ‘We had better go and find Ottalie.’
Lady Ottalie Attenbury lived in Eaton Square. Her side of the square stood in beautiful run-down grandeur, facing the sun. At the top of the steps to the front door a row of doorbells indicated that the house was divided into flats. One of the bells was labelled ‘OA top floor’. Peter rang this bell. When nothing happened they tried the front door, found it open and began to climb the stairs. These were wide, carpeted in worn and shabby Axminster, and lit by a roof-light far above. As Harriet and Peter ascended they heard music above them. Someone was playing and singing, in a fine soprano voice.
‘Mozart,’ said Peter.
They stood on the landing for several bars, listening. Then Peter tapped lightly on the door, the singer fell silent, and the door opened. Harriet would instantly have realised that this was Charlotte’s sister; the facial likeness was marked. But this woman was shorter and slightly frail-looking. If the fashion of the day had allowed a woman of thirty-plus to be pretty, she was still pretty, and she was wearing the New Look – a full skirt and tight sweater. Her music had made her radiant, and she took a while to react to her unexpected visitors.
‘Yes?’ she said, looking at them blankly.
‘You might remember me,’ Peter said. ‘Peter Wimsey.’
‘Oh, lord, Peter!’ said Ottalie. ‘Step in here off the gloomy landing where I can’t see who you are.’
Peter did so. He introduced Harriet. The flat was very light, and the large room they stepped into was nearly empty of furniture, containing mostly a Steinway Grand. Nevertheless it was a spectacularly untidy room, with piles of books and music all over the floor.
‘We are sorry to have interrupted your music,’ Harriet offered.
‘Oh, God, did you hear that?’ was the reply. ‘I’m sorry. It needs a lot of work yet.’
Harriet didn’t know what to say. If she said, no really, it was beautiful, she risked sounding like an ignoramus; and she hardly knew how to explain to a person considerably more musical than herself the effect it had on her to hear a piece played imperfectly. It made audible the difficulty in the music; it made audible the demands made on the performer. It was moving in a fashion that a perfect performance never quite seemed to be.
Peter said, ‘A little more practice on that low note, perhaps.’
‘This one?’ she said, touching a note on the piano keyboard.
‘No,’ he said, ‘a few bars later. I’ll play it for you.’
‘Can you really?’ sh
e asked. ‘The accompanist is very late this morning.’
‘I can after a fashion,’ Peter replied, taking off his coat, casting it on to the floor over a stack of books, and sitting himself at the piano.
Harriet watched and listened. Peter’s playing sounded a bit hesitant at first. After all, it wasn’t Bach. Ottalie opened her mouth and sang full voice.
‘Dove sono i bei momenti Di dolcezza e di piacer?’
When they finished the piece they were both silent for a few seconds.
‘You could do that if you practised,’ said Ottalie. ‘But it can’t be what you came for.’
‘Of course not,’ said Peter, ‘I didn’t even know you were a singer.’
‘Well, I trained at the Royal College,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t make it professionally. I just sing in the London Bach Choir, and I do a few weddings and funerals when I’m asked. The perfect dilettante, that’s me.’
‘Diletto, after all, is the Italian for pleasure,’ said Peter. ‘Look, is there anywhere we can sit?’
‘Through here,’ Ottalie said, and led them into a much smaller room with a settee and armchairs and side tables, all deep in clutter. She made room for them to sit by simply throwing stuff on to the floor. ‘I’m no good at this,’ she said to Harriet. ‘Are you any good at this? It’s growing up with servants that does the damage.’
Harriet said, ‘I’m very lucky.’
‘Of course I had help before the war,’ Ottalie said. She was standing in the middle of the room with a volume of Grove in her hand, looking around for somewhere to put it. Harriet was glad she wasn’t going to throw it down in the corner – it was a thick book that might break its binding if treated roughly.
‘Mind you, I adored the war,’ Ottalie said. ‘It was very easy to be useful. Fire-watching and first aid and then, when someone found out I could do Italian, transcribing Mussolini’s broadcasts for our people. When I started out all the Italian I knew was from Da Ponte libretti; with a touch of Verdi for good luck.’ She giggled.
‘May we sit down?’ said Peter, doing so. Harriet sat also, and Ottalie slipped down on to the floor in front of a still encumbered chair, and leaned against it, looking up at Peter from somewhere near the height at which she had looked up at him all those years ago.
‘You know your nephew is in trouble?’ Peter asked her.
‘Yes; and how!’ she said. ‘And you are sleuthing for him. Jolly kind of you. He hasn’t a spare bean to pay you with.’
‘I’ve known your family since I was a boy,’ said Peter.
‘So you have. Peter, I can’t imagine how I can be the least help to you. Your jolly wife here would be far better at detecting than I can be.’
‘She is a great help,’ he said gravely. ‘It was Harriet’s idea that we ought to come and talk to you. It is what you may be able to remember that we need.’
‘I have a lousy memory,’ said Ottalie.
‘Except for songs, perhaps?’
‘Oh, songs . . .’ she said. ‘That’s different. They have music to go by.’
‘Cast your mind back, Ottalie, to that evening when Charlotte’s engagement party was in progress, and you were playing with the emeralds. You and a friend.’
‘Ada DuBerris,’ said Ottalie. ‘Still a friend as it happens.’
‘And the maid Jeannette found you . . .’
‘God, was she angry!’ Ottalie said. ‘I’d never heard a grown-up talk to another like that.’
‘But that is just what we have come to ask you,’ said Peter. ‘If you and Ada were playing alone, or if there was somebody else there.’
‘Just Ada’s mother, popping in and out,’ said Ottalie. ‘She was showing us how to wear the stuff, and how to preen in the mirror. And then Jeannette arrived in a high dudgeon, and started attacking us all, especially Mrs DuBerris. A lot of ought to know better at her age, and how the gems were Jeannette’s responsibility, and how it was unfair for a guest who couldn’t be held to account for anything to risk the livelihood of a servant . . . well, you can imagine. We were all very abashed, and crept around doing just as Jeannette said. Didn’t I tell you all this at the time? I seem to remember confiding in you.’
‘You didn’t confide in me about Mrs DuBerris,’ said Peter quietly.
‘She asked me not to tell anyone. I thought she didn’t want the grown-ups to know she had been ticked off. I used to try to keep it from Mummy when I had been in trouble, so I knew how she felt.’
‘How did she take being stripped off by Jeannette?’
‘She was as timid as a mouse. Said sorry a couple of times. Thoughtless of her . . . that sort of thing. But look here, Peter, I really don’t see how this has any bearing on what happened next. On that awful Northerby man’s box of tricks. That can’t have had anything to do with who was in the nursery. I don’t get it.’
‘You are being more helpful than you know, Ottalie,’ said Peter. An undertone had entered his voice, audible to Harriet, though perhaps not to Ottalie.
‘Did you say that you still know Mrs DuBerris?’ he asked.
‘Well, not exactly her. But Ada is a friend, yes. She’s a bit musical; couldn’t afford to train, but she plays the fiddle a little, and we often go to concerts together. I sometimes take her along when I need a companion on a trip. We’ve known each other since childhood, after all. And I sometimes give her things. So does Charlotte.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Oh, you know, when we clear our wardrobes some of the clothes fit her. Nothing valuable. Charlotte says she is a hanger-on and a scrounge, but then she was too old to play with Ada as I did. And I don’t think Ada is into horses as she is into music, although she always tries to please. She doesn’t have much in common with Charlotte.’
‘And even less, I imagine, with Diana?’
‘Poor Diana,’ said Ottalie. ‘No, no love lost there at all. I don’t see where all this is getting us.’
‘Tell us more about Ada. She never married?’
‘No. Various boyfriends in the war that didn’t last. You know what that was like. She’s quite good-looking, but she doesn’t have a penny piece to her name, and to be honest, I think it’s her mother that’s the trouble. When I was very little I thought it was wonderful for Ada to have a mother who was always close, and put her above everything else. I thought my own mother was distant and cool. The servants did a lot for us that Ada’s mother did for her in person. But later Ada’s mother was a bit much. Is a bit much, actually. Always knows exactly where Ada is, and who she is with. Imagine that for a woman who is my age! Like having a cobra round your neck. I’m sure that’s what frightens the men away, and I don’t blame them.’
‘You don’t like Mrs DuBerris, I see.’
‘No,’ said Ottalie, ‘I don’t like stranglers.’
‘What did you say?’ asked Peter.
‘Oh, I only mean that she is choking the life out of Ada. Ada ought to cut free, but she doesn’t seem able to.’
Peter said, ‘Ottalie, would Ada have known, do you think, when the family emerald was taken out of the bank? Could she have got to hear of it?’
A shadow passed across Ottalie’s face. ‘So that’s what you’re getting at,’ she said.
‘I’m afraid it is.’
‘Well, Ada certainly knew when it was all about a horse. She and I were with Charlotte over the weekend when the bet was made. She was one of the party.’ Ottalie paused, frowning. ‘I really don’t see how she could have known when my sister-in-law borrowed it for Verity. I didn’t know about that till long afterwards. Charlotte wasn’t in London, and Ada has never been on talking terms with Diana. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, Peter. Because she couldn’t have known about letting Miss Pevenor have it, either . . . Oh, God, hang on a mo, I think she could. Father was getting a bit doddery by then, and he wanted to ask Edward what he thought about it, and Edward was round here having supper, and Father rang to ask if I knew where Edward was . . . and of course we talked a
bout it. Edward couldn’t see why we shouldn’t lend it to the Pevenor woman; Father had said it would be a good thing when Edward came to sell it. And Ada was here that evening. We had been to a matinée at the cinema.’
There was another pause while all this sank in.
Then Ottalie said, ‘Peter, this has got to be wrong. Whoever is playing tricks with us has got one of those emeralds of their own. And in all the years I’ve known them Ada and her mother have been really, really hard up. It doesn’t make sense. They don’t even like jewellery, so if they had an emerald they would have sold it, and done themselves a favour with the money.’
‘Why do you say they don’t like jewellery?’ asked Harriet, chipping in.
‘Well, they speak very contemptuously about wearing what they call baubles,’ Ottalie said. ‘And we’ve learned not to offer them jewellery. I gave Ada a diamond pin once; I thought if she didn’t like it she could sell it and buy a frock. But it came back the next day with a note from her mother.’
‘Perhaps what is known to them is told to another,’ said Peter. ‘Perhaps we are looking for a friend of theirs. Now, Ottalie, I must ask you not to let a word of this conversation get to Ada. Can I trust you for that?’
‘I suppose so,’ Ottalie said. ‘I usually tell her everything.’
‘I will keep Ada out of this if I can,’ said Peter. ‘But if she has been warned of this conversation I may not be able to. It’s in her own best interests not to know what we have been saying.’
‘Okay,’ said Ottalie.
As they were leaving, Peter said to her, ‘Your mother was one of the best women I have known.’
‘I understand that now,’ she said. ‘I try to be like her.’
‘Good for you,’ said Peter, kissing her lightly on the cheek.
‘So that’s how it was done,’ said Harriet, when they were walking away down the street.
The Attenbury Emeralds Page 24