by Joan Smith
“Will tomorrow afternoon be convenient?” he asked at once.
“Any time is convenient for me. I am not so crushed under the weight of business as you,” she answered. He had always found doe eyes attractive. He discovered that doe eyes holding a hint of mischief could be devastating.
It was about five minutes into the woods of Vienna that he managed to get hold of her hand. Before they came out, he had found her agreeable to a few embraces as well. They stopped for lunch at an intimate heuriger, hardly more than the kitchen of a vintner. Mademoiselle drank several glasses of the mild white wine, which tasted so innocuous, but had a strong effect. When they returned to the carriage for the trip home, she rested her head on his shoulder. She wept a little at her predicament, telling him she was all alone.
He patted her shoulder gently, but he kept thinking all the while that whoever had replaced the diamond earrings with zircons had to have had a copy made, and who could have done that except herself? Not Chabon. Even if it turned out Chabon had the rest of the collection, he did not have that pair of earrings. And if he did have the rest of it for sale, he would not be likely to cast any doubts on their authenticity by pointing out a forgery. That made the collection very difficult to sell.
Some little lifting of the hair at the back of his scalp alerted him to danger. He was unsure whether it was due to the manipulation of Mademoiselle’s fingers around his neck, or the sudden idea that was working its way out of his brain. If someone did not want Mademoiselle to sell the collection, what better way to prevent it than to prove her first sale a fake? No—second sale. Harvey’s ruby was genuine. Very well then—one sale to tell them what she was up to. On the second, they throw a spanner into her plans. It seemed sensible to him, that Louis’s men should thwart Napoleon's men in this way. And still it did not explain how Chabon had a copy of the earrings. Unless he had managed to “borrow” the earrings for the very purpose of having a copy made.
The complexity of this possibility occupied most of his attention, so that he did not fully appreciate Mademoiselle’s soft lips, beginning to insinuate themselves against his neck. Not till she grabbed the corner of his ear lobe between her teeth did he turn his full attention to her physical presence. The possibility that she was a clever, dangerous enemy did not make her a whit the less appealing. Quite the contrary. It lent an edge to that return trip that lingered long in his memory.
* * *
Chapter 17
Chabon sent around his apology at being unable to meet Moncrief at Binder’s the next morning to look at the diamond with him, thus making it impossible to discover whether the fellow actually knew anything about gems at all. Moncrief looked forward to his meeting with Mademoiselle Feydeau. He was sure she possessed the diamonds, and also sure she meant to sell them, or at least the Blue Tavernier, to Harvey. His cousin must be talked out of it. He went to see Harvey.
There were two dogs and a cat fighting in the hallway when he arrived, and Harvey and Googie fighting in the saloon, emitting much the same sorts of sounds. “. . . haven’t so much as looked at another woman since we got here,” he heard Harvey’s high-pitched voice assure his beloved.
“You didn’t take Lady Fontaigne home last night either, I suppose, and stay out till five this morning!”
“Dash it, Goog, old Fontaigne passed out at the ball. I had to take her home."
“You didn’t have to stay till five o’clock this morning!”
“We didn’t leave the ball till four! She lives the other side of town. You were still there when we left, waltzing yourself dizzy with that drunken fool, Stewart.”
“I did it for England,” she said, assuming a tone of patriotic virtue. “If he must act the fool, it is better we keep his bad behavior within our own circle. And he is so handsome too,” she added in a more natural voice.
“You were every bit as bad as him.”
There was nothing to be gained from further eavesdropping on this domestic squabble. Moncrief entered the saloon, not deigning to take notice of the fight in progress. “Good morning Lady Palgrave, Harvey,” he said cheerfully.
“What’s so good about it?” Harvey asked.
"I am going back to bed,” Googie informed her husband, ignoring Moncrief entirely.
“I’ll go with you,” Harvey offered.
“Am I by any chance come at an inopportune moment, or were you about to ask me to join you all in bed?” Moncrief asked.
“Pervert!” Googie snapped, as she swept past him, a cloud of some musky perfume emanating from her. At the doorway, she looked back over her shoulder and smiled a wicked little smile, not devoid of interest, with one brow raised.
“Ah, these women,” Moncrief said to his cousin, in a commiserating way.
“Shut up, you devils!” Harvey shouted, in the general direction of the hallway. The pattering of feet heralded a footman, to drag the yelping animals from the entrance-way. The cat, with a haughty look, stalked into the saloon and began scratching at Palgrave’s boots. He reached over and lifted her up and began to stroke her.
“You know what, Tatt?” he said, his voice taking on a note of keen interest. “This cat’s got eyes like Caro Lamb. Caro hasn’t got cat eyes either. This creature’s got Lamb eyes. Well, Ponsonby eyes I suppose you’d call them, for she’s only a Lamb by marriage.”
Moncrief’s hopes for any sense after this irrelevant beginning were not high. “I am here to talk about diamonds, Harvey,” he said, without further ado.
The little body pokered up, shoulders straight, back caved in, chin in the air. “Yessir, he could be taken for a Lamb, this fellow,” he went on, and began bending over to release the cat, till he saw it injured his dignity, so he dropped it without bending, then brushed his hands. “Diamonds you say?” he asked, with the air of keenest disinterest.
“Diamonds. The Blue Tavernier, to be precise.”
“Ah yes, seems to me we spoke of it some time ago. All a hum, Tatt. Ain’t no blue diamond here at all. The French gel thought she might be able to find it, but she can’t. Boney never had it at all. Well, have you got your outfit ready for Googie’s masquerade party? Going to have a housewarming in the woods, at the chateau,” he said. “I plan to go as Punch, and Goog as Judy.”
“Appropriate. Is it Miss Feydeau you are buying it from?”
“What you might go as is John Bull. What would be the outfit for that? I mean, would a fellow wear a period costume, or what?”
“Whoever the seller is, it is highly likely what you are being offered is a fake. A pity to pay out fifty thousand pounds for a piece of strass glass.” He hoped this fabrication might deter his cousin from purchasing.
“I ain’t such a flat!” Harvey said angrily. “Naturally I’d know enough to get it authenticated if I had any intentions of buying it, which I haven’t.”
“Who would you use for the job? Pity Eynard stuck his fork in the wall. Officialdom thinks he was murdered for having made the forgery. To conceal having made it, I mean.”
“I never heard anything about that! Who says so?”
“The 'on’ who dits all those on dits.”
“Dash it, Tatt, if you know anything, tell me,” he pleaded, with such real concern that any doubt as to his intentions was cleared up.
“I know this,” Moncrief lied on glibly. “The Prince Regent has given orders he no longer wishes to purchase any part of the collection. He considers it too risky a proposition.”
“Knew bloody well that’s who was after it,” Palgrave said smiling. “And you letting on it wasn’t a patriotic thing to do. Bag of moonshine. Told Cécile so.”
“Cécile?”
“Cécile Feydeau. Told you we spoke of it. She happened to mention you trying to get hold of it. What was Prinney offering, eh? Seventy thousand she told me. Told her she’d be lucky to get the half of it. Princes don’t always pay their bills. ‘Specially our prince.”
“I told her sixty, but more to the point, he is not p
resently offering a Birmingham farthing, since we know of the fake stone.”
“Don’t worry about me, Tatt. I ain’t a Johnnie Raw. I wouldn’t lay down my blunt without having an expert look at it.”
Moncrief relaxed visibly. The air he had been holding in his lungs was expelled. That was all right then. Harvey meant to let him be present. Whatever the composition of the piece offered to Harvey, he would stake his reputation it was glass. There would be enough confusion that the deal would not be closed. “I will be happy to have a look at it for you,” he said modestly.
“You?” Harvey asked, on a surprised, questioning note, then turned bright pink, laughing his silly laugh. “Oh naturally! Of course I meant to ask your help, Tatt. Wouldn’t buy such a thing without your say-so.” He went on to repeat this lie often enough to convince his listener of its being a lie.
Now who the deuce does he have in mind, Moncrief asked himself. “With Eynard dead, and yourself a stranger—a foreigner in town, naturally you will want someone you know and can trust,” Moncrief pointed out.
“Certainly. Quite right.”
“Well, when do you want me to look at it?”
“Oh, she hasn’t got it yet. I’ll let you know.”
Harvey was a fool, but he was a determined fool. Moncrief gauged his chances of further discovery to be minimal. In any case, he knew the important fact. It was Cécile Feydeau who was to sell him the diamond. What he must do was to make a determined effort to get the thing before the hour of selling. She would have to be got out of the house, by some ruse, and her housekeeper along with her.
He had some nebulous idea the Krugers might be helpful in this matter. Maria might have an idea, and in any case, he had to speak to her father, as he had promised to do. Kruger’s involvement was apparently that of helping Chabon. He should have no objection to helping himself as well. He pondered Maria’s conversation of the previous day. How did Kruger’s helping Chabon put any large sum of money in the father’s hands? Some little reward might be offered, but hardly enough that he could afford to spurn the Countess von Rossner and show so little interest in finding a rich husband for the daughter.
No—there was something out of line there. Helping Chabon would give him only prestige, and a minimum of money. The money was to come from the sale of the Blue Tavernier. It was Feydeau that Kruger was working with— not Chabon at all. Maria had it wrong. Kruger was chummying up to Chabon to discover what he was up to, in order to help Feydeau.
This fit in more easily with what was known; it explained Kruger’s behavior, but it made approaching the man more difficult. What was he to say? One could feel sorry for him, for he was certainly Mademoiselle’s dupe. She was the brains and the cunning behind the scheme. He had promised Maria he would help her, and thought he might manage, even at this late date, to rescue Kruger from the morass.
He took up a sheet of paper bearing the official crest of England and wrote up a strongly worded letter indicating that England would view as a hostile act the sale of French property illegally obtained to any person of English nationality. There were menacing hints of intervention from Baron Hager, though this gentleman had in fact not been informed at all of what transpired. The disgraceful thing was being kept as tight as possible. At this point, even Metternich did not know, though it was being discussed at Minoritenplatz whether he ought not to be told. A clerk was sent off to Kruger’s house and returned to say Herr Kruger would be pleased to see Lord Moncrief at once.
* * *
Chapter 18
He was admitted to Kruger’s wood-paneled study to find the man sitting with the lavender jade in his hands, caressing it lovingly, as though it were a woman. “Ah Moncrief, come in, come in. Long time no see, as you English say. Glad you decided to call. I am toying with the idea of creating a lotus blossom with this jade. Bowls are dull after all. What do you think, eh? It should be pink—the Egyptian water lilies are pink, but lavender is close enough. The lotus would be a suitable symbol for me. Luxurious idleness, a certain distaste for activity. Don’t you agree this will make a charming lotus?”
“Pity it is not blue, and you could carve it into a diamond,” was the abrupt answer. “Afraid I am not here on a social call, Herr Kruger. I have a letter from my headquarters regarding your recent activities,” he said stiffly, handing over the letter.
“I don’t see what my activities have to do with England,” Kruger replied, an expression compounded of surprise, fear and displeasure on his florid countenance. With deliberate slowness, he took a pair of spectacles up from the desk and arranged them on his nose, complaining. “Old age. The faculties degenerate in pairs—two by two. Two teeth drawn last year. The knees ache every time I go outdoors, and now the eyes have betrayed me.” He perused the letter carefully, then turned a thoroughly bewildered face on his caller.
“But what does it mean? It is a mystery to me. What are these objects that are spoken of? The little Astarte love goddess I gave to Lady Palgrave, explaining carefully too that it was my own work. It could fool experts, no doubt, but it was carved by my own hands, as I told the lady.”
“The objects referred to are not statuettes, Herr Kruger. The purchaser referred to is not Lady Palgrave either, but her husband.”
The blank face that met this speech was a surprise to Moncrief. “He offered to buy my entire collection of jade, but it is not for sale. Sooner would I part with my arm. If Palgrave has contrived to make some unwise purchases, it would be more to the point to speak to him. Quite frankly, it gives us a poor opinion of Englishmen, for that fellow to be poking about one’s house, making an offer to buy everything he sees, as though we were all merchants. Bonaparte was only half right. England is half a nation of shopkeepers, and half a nation of shoppers. Bad shoppers too! Palgrave has a poor eye. He always offers too much.”
“The letter refers to diamonds, Herr Kruger. Precisely, those diamonds stolen from France in 1793, and presently in the possession of your tenant, Mademoiselle Feydeau.”
A cunning light appeared in Kruger’s eyes. He removed the spectacles and allowed them to dangle through his fingers. “Ah, those diamonds,” he said, smiling contentedly, like a cat who has just lapped up a saucer of milk. Then he lounged back in his chair, crossed his legs, and settled his hands on the chair’s aims. “Do you know, milord, I think the English are but little understood abroad. We think of them as deep, meditative people, saying little and acting with caution—even wisdom. No one acts with wisdom nowadays. Look at this carnival of a Congress. The Tsar is mad, for a certainty. I suspected as much in England last year. His challenging Metternich to a duel confirms it. Imagine, to be trying to precipitate a duel, when he is here to make peace, and the whole world looking on. A fine example to give. And the others as bad.”
“About the diamonds, Herr Kruger,” Moncrief said impatiently.
“I approach the subject circuitously. Patience, Sir, patience. I shall elucidate for you the true state of affairs. In confidence, you understand. One, I do not have the diamonds. Two, I am not helping Mademoiselle Feydeau with anything at all. Three, when we discover their whereabouts, we do not plan to sell them to anyone, but to return them to King Louis XVIII of France. How your foolish delegation could think for one moment that I, Herr Kruger, could be so criminal and insane—in fact, so ungentlemanly—quite boggles the mind.”
“This ‘we’ you speak of—it is Chabon and yourself?”
“But of course. It is no secret that we are the best of friends. A charming fellow.”
“Do you think you can find out where the diamonds are?”
“Induction leads us to believe they are in this house!” he said, and throwing back his head, laughed exultantly. “Yes, the crown jewels stolen from France are under my roof, brought here by that little trollop, Feydeau. It will be a footnote for history, eh? A plaque on the door, to tell goggling tourists what transpired on this spot, anno Domini 1815. Of course it i
s thus far an induction only,” he added, sobering.
“May I know what leads you to this induction?”
“It is really a matter that concerns England not at all,” he began, high on his dignity, but there was as well a keen eagerness to reveal the wonderful secret, to boast a little of it. Then too that hint that Baron Hager might be interested . . . Just like old Hager to seize the diamonds, taking the glory (and reward money) for himself. “However, I tell you, as a friend, what I know. You do as you think fit with the information, but not a word to Hager. On that point I must extract your word, as a gentleman.”
“There is no need for Hager to know.”
“Quite. Well then, you know of Mademoiselle Feydeau’s having taken up residence with me. An act of kindness on my part. She was in the city, with nowhere to go, and all the hotels and rooms full. She saw, from the back of my house, that the knocker was off the door, the curtains drawn. She came and inquired of my housekeeper if she might rent the back part. She was refused, naturally. The place is a mess. Mademoiselle was on her way out the door, when I chanced to enter. There were tears in her big dark eyes, and something more besides. A promise—you know these French women.” He smiled and jiggled his head a little, as one man of the world to another.
“I envisioned a discreet liaison,” he continued. “The knees have gone, the eyes are going, but certain parts of the anatomy still function despite my advancing decrepitude. Malheureusement, Mademoiselle, when she came the next day to take up residence, was accompanied by a dragon who sits like St. Peter at the door of heaven, barring entry. Mademoiselle too turned from fille de joie to angel. Ah well!” he exclaimed, and threw up his hands in resignation.