‘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.’
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 laughed. ‘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 heart 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.
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 young man who awaited them was striding about the room in very obvious agitation. He looked as if he had slept in his suit, and not taken the time to do up his tie properly.
‘Oh, look here, Lord Peter,’ he exclaimed as soon as they entered the room, ‘I’m in a hell of a fix!’
‘Sit down, won’t you?’ said Peter. ‘But first, let me introduce Harriet, my wife.’
The visitor was so agitated he could barely manage the minimum courtesy of a handshake, and no sooner had he sat down than he jumped up again and resumed pacing about the room.
‘You’re going to need to calm down a bit, old chap, aren’t you,’ said Peter, taking young Attenbury by the arm, and firmly leading him back to a chair, ‘if you’re going to be able to tell us what this is about.’
Harriet rang the bell, and when Bunter appeared, asked him to bring brandy and water.
This was one of the occasions when Peter nodded discreetly to Bunter, who, having set down his tray, quietly retreated to the far end of the room, out of the eye-line of the visitor, and took a seat behind an elaborate Japanese lacquer screen.
‘I suppose you know about those damned emeralds,’ Attenbury said at last. ‘Since you famously found the things for my grandfather.’
‘Haven’t seen any of them since, though,’ said Peter. ‘Except from afar, once or twice. And I rather think they weren’t complete when they were re-mounted.’
‘No, they weren’t,’ said Attenbury. ‘Aunt Diana didn’t like the big dark chunky stone. She said it was inscribed with a curse. So Grandfather just took it back and put it in the bank. He set great store by it. When my father died he transferred ownership to me. He thought it would cover nearly half the estate duty, if it wasn’t liable to duty itself.’
‘I expect it would help with it if you didn’t mind selling,’ said Peter.
‘Mind selling?’ cried Attenbury in distress. ‘If only I could! But now I’m in terrible trouble!’
‘It wasn’t with Spink, was it?’ asked Peter. ‘Spink has a vault for its customers’ treasure, and it took a direct hit in the Blitz, you remember,’ he added for Harriet’s benefit.
‘No, no, it was still with Cavenor’s Bank,’ said Attenbury.
‘Well, has it gone missing?’ asked Harriet.
‘Or found to be a paste copy?’ asked Peter.
Suddenly the young man in front of them slumped in his chair. He took a gulp of brandy and said, quite levelly and calmly, ‘Not the one nor the other. It’s there. I don’t think it’s paste. But someone else has shown up who says it isn’t mine and he can prove it.’
‘Good lord!’ said Peter. Then after a minute or so he said, ‘I don’t suppose this person is an Indian gentleman of about my age called Nandine Osmanthus?’
‘I don’t know who he is,’ said Attenbury. ‘I haven’t clapped eyes on him. The bank won’t release the stone to me because they say there is a problem with ownership. And that’s about all I know. But what am I to do, Wimsey? The blasted pompous ass in the bank vault said I couldn’t sell the jewel anyway, because the auction houses wouldn’t touch it with a bad provenance. But I really must sell it. Without a bit of cash I might have to sell not just the la
nd from the estate right up to the front door, I’ll have to sell the house itself. I’m having to let most of the pictures and the London house go, as it is. My mother can’t stop crying…’ He looked as if he was having difficulty not crying himself.
‘How can this possibly have happened?’ he asked.
‘Well, I think, Attenbury,’ said Peter, ‘the first thing to be done is to make sure that it really has happened. There was a very similar jewel; I once saw two side by side. I think I might be able to tell yours from the other one, with a bit of luck. Write me a letter authorising me to act on your behalf, and I’ll see if I can sort this out.’
‘Oh, would you really? That’s exceptionally kind of you. I’d be for ever in your debt.’
‘Hold on, hold on. I said I’d try. I might not succeed. I have a feeling this will be difficult.’
‘I suppose it’s a bit much of me even to ask…’
‘Of course not. I was a friend of your father’s from schooldays. I really will do my best. Now your part is to write that letter.’
Bunter appeared as if by magic, lowered the flap of the little writing desk that stood between the tall windows of the room, and laid out a sheet of writing paper and a pen on the blotter.
As Attenbury sat down to write, Peter said, ‘Tell me, if you can, when the king-stone was deposited in the bank.’
‘I do know that,’ said Attenbury. ‘It was when the rest of the emeralds were re-set, just before Aunt Diana got married.’
‘March 1923, then. That’s a start. Then I’d like to know exactly when and for how long it has been taken out of the vault, in the years between then and now.’
‘I can ask my mother and aunts. I suppose they might know.’
‘I expect the bank can supply the bare dates,’ said Peter. ‘But I might have to nose round your family a bit, asking questions.’
‘They won’t mind,’ the young man said, adding, suddenly authoritative, ‘They’d better not!’
The Attenbury Emeralds Page 11