The Attenbury Emeralds Page 3

  ‘ “How is the comparison to be made?” ’ I asked him.

  ‘ “I understand the Attenbury emeralds are to be worn in public for the first time in many years,” said he.

  ‘ “Well, not in public,” said I. “This is a party for the family and their guests.” ’ It was beginning to occur to me that perhaps the policemen shouldn’t have let him in.

  ‘ “I shall not intrude in private festivities,” said Osmanthus, “but if the jewels are in the house, the comparison is as easy as this.” And he took out of his waistcoat pocket a silk handkerchief, and unfolded it on the table. And there was an almighty great emerald, before my very eyes.’

  ‘You’ve got me hooked, Peter,’ said Harriet. ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Strange,’ said Peter. ‘Huge. Nearly an inch square – well, like a square with the corners off, and quite thick, about as thick as two sovereigns. Very dark. And carved intaglio with a flower and twining leaves. The thing is, Harriet, emeralds are very difficult to carve. They are very hard, and very frangible. That’s why they are usually table-cut rather than rose-cut, to protect them against knocks when being worn. An intricately carved emerald is a masterpiece. Beauty draws us – I reached out a hand towards it . . . “You may hold it,” said Nandine Osmanthus. I picked it up and felt the heft of it in my hand. I held it up between finger and thumb against the light. It was translucent. Not sparkling, you understand, but holding the deepest possible green lights, like a dark, clear river. Green as a dream and deep as death. I turned it over, and the back was inscribed in an oriental script, in exquisite fine calligraphy.

  ‘ “The Koran?” I asked my companion.

  ‘ “As it happens, no,” he replied. “It is a quotation from the Persian poet, Hafez. Well, what do you think of it, Lord Wimsey?”

  ‘ “It is very beautiful,” I told him. “And daunting. But you said it was a Mughal jewel? With a Persian inscription?”

  ‘ “It was made for Akbar,” he said, with a note of reverence in his voice. “And Akbar had a Persian mother. From her he must have known of the Persian poets. This inscription is in Arabic script, and in the Persian tongue. I can read it to you.”

  ‘He intoned the words – you know what it’s like, Harriet, to hear the sound of poetry in an unknown tongue. Very impressive and mysterious.

  ‘ “When did the jewels come into the possession of your Maharaja?” I asked him.

  ‘ “Long ago. They should not have been divided.”

  ‘ “Didn’t you say it was done for the relief of a famine? An act of mercy?”

  ‘ “Even a virtuous action may be regretted when its consequences are seen,” said Osmanthus. “Those who were fed are dead now. Now it seems right to try to reunite the stones.”

  ‘ “Well, I wish you luck,” I said. “But I shouldn’t think for a minute Lord Attenbury will wish to part with something that has now been in his family for several generations.” I was thinking that by this man’s account the thing had been sold, not looted or prised from its owner as tribute. Attenbury owned it with a clear conscience.’

  ‘It was no moonstone, you mean,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Exactly. Not a curse about it anywhere. And yet . . .’

  ‘Yet?’

  ‘There was certainly charisma about it. I was longing to hold it when he gave me permission, and I was reluctant to put it down.’

  ‘Did you see it, Bunter? Did it have this effect on you?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘I did not see the one that Mr Osmanthus brought to the house, my lady. But I was very struck by his lordship’s account of it. Very struck, and concerned.’

  ‘You were concerned, Bunter?’ asked Peter. ‘Why exactly? Did you say so at the time?’

  ‘I imagine not, my lord,’ said Bunter.

  ‘Can you explain now?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘A small object of very great value is a responsibility, my lady. And the servants in a household carry a large share of that responsibility. They are in the limelight as soon as anything goes wrong.’

  ‘Suspected, you mean?’

  ‘I do. A lady’s maid has access to her jewel box. To her secrets. It goes with the job. A manservant knows where keys are kept, and what is worth locking up, in the eyes of his employers, at least.’

  ‘So if a policeman like Sugg comes along, and asks who could have stolen a gem of great price, and the answer is that one of the servants could, then that is often enough for him. Off with her head! Or off with her to jail anyway,’ said Peter. ‘The very trust that has been reposed in a servant can be held against her. Or him.

  ‘So by and by the riders and golfers returned to the house, and Lord Attenbury appeared in the library, still in riding gear, to see what was what. Nandine Osmanthus repeated his request. He would be infinitely grateful if it were possible to put his stone down beside the Attenbury emeralds, and see if they were alike. Attenbury took it rather well, although I saw his eyebrows go up. “I don’t see any problem with that,” he said, “do you, Wimsey?” I didn’t actually like to say, “Not as long as you watch him like a hawk.” Not with the man standing there. But I promised myself I would be the hawk in question. Just in case.

  ‘ “However,” said Attenbury, “the jewels are not in the house yet. We are expecting Mr Whitehead from the bank to bring them at about four. Look here, I suppose it wouldn’t do to compare yours with the paste copy? That would be easiest, don’t you think?”

  ‘ “Unfortunately there is the matter of the inscription on the back,” said Nandine Osmanthus. “I doubt if that could have been carved into a paste copy.”

  ‘ “Stuff on the back?” said Attenbury. “Didn’t know that.”

  ‘Osmanthus produced his stone again, and Attenbury said, “Good lord! Haven’t a clue whether ours has a scrawl on it like that. I suppose you’d like to wait and see the real one?”

  ‘ “I would be obliged to your lordship if you would allow that,” said Osmanthus.

  ‘I could see that Attenbury was in an agony of indecision about something, and indeed, he said, “A word with you, Wimsey,” and drew me away to the other end of the library.

  ‘ “Dammit,” he said, sotto voce, “do I have to ask the fellow to lunch? What will the others think?”

  ‘And I’m afraid I didn’t know what to say. I could have said, “There were brave Indian soldiers fighting with us in the trenches.” I could have said, “Ask him to lunch by all means. Your guests in your house must accept anyone you have invited.” What I did say was, “That would be kind of you.” What Attenbury did was to have a lunch laid for Osmanthus in a little breakfast-room, where he would eat alone. The official guests sat down to lunch together in glory. Well, in the kind of glory represented by white linen and family silver. Even so, one of them remarked on having seen “one of our black brethren” walking on the terrace. I ate up my potted shrimps and lamb chops, and removed myself for a toddle around the grounds. Lady Attenbury was keen on gardens, and had had Gertrude Jekyll laying them out for her. Charming.

  ‘It was there among the lilies and roses that I hit the first difficulty of the weekend. I had a little set-to with Mrs DuBerris, or, rather, I was set upon by her. I rounded a large bush and found her seated in a little bower made of a bench and boughs. She was very tense; fists clenched in her lap, and sitting bolt upright. “May I join you?” says I, trying, don’t you know, to be civil in a normal sort of way.

  ‘ “If you must,” says she.

  ‘Well, I didn’t know what to do. I was thunderstruck, so I just stood there like a great big ninny. It seemed as though I would offend her if I did sit down, and would insult her if I just walked away. Not the sort of dilemma I had any practice at back then. After a brief interval she said, “Well, make up your mind then, poor Major Wimsey. And don’t expect any sympathy from me. Every single nurse who volunteered for war service saw worse things than you did, and had to deal with them too. I don’t recall a single woman getting shell shock as you please to call it, and foo
tling around being feeble and needing sympathy.” She spoke with great bitterness in her tone. And of course she floored me, because I thought exactly that myself; that the state I was in was a form of unmanly weakness, of which I ought to have been ashamed. And it hadn’t escaped me that her emphasis on “poor Major Wimsey” sounded like a quotation from somebody else; I was excruciated by the thought that I had been talked about with that form of compassion that is indistinguishable from contempt.

  ‘I just stood on, rooted to the spot. I only needed a coat of whitewash to have served as a piece of garden statuary. I didn’t answer her. And then I was rescued. Lady Attenbury appeared, with a trug of cut flowers over her arm and a pair of secateurs in her hand, seemingly from behind a large rose bush just behind the bower. She put her arm through mine, and walked me away briskly down the path away from the house, without a word spoken to Mrs DuBerris.

  ‘ “Peter, I’m so sorry,” she said to me as soon as we were safely out of earshot.

  ‘ “Not your fault,” I managed to say.

  ‘We walked a little further. “You might be wondering why I invited her,” Lady Attenbury said. “Not quite our sort of person.”

  ‘ “It’s not for me . . .”

  ‘ “She is a sad case,” Lady Attenbury continued. “She was indeed a brave volunteer nurse. She encountered my nephew, William DuBerris, when he was lying horribly wounded in a field hospital, and accompanied him on a hospital train to a town behind the lines. He recovered enough to be escorted home, but before he reached England he had married her. His family refused to accept her, and disinherited him. He died a few months later in poverty, leaving his wife to bring up their daughter – little Ada, whom you might have seen playing with Ottalie. He left his wife only a few bits and pieces, and she is struggling.”

  ‘ “And you don’t feel inclined to follow the family line?” I said.

  ‘ “My brother deems her a fortune-hunter who took advantage of his son. But I think my nephew might genuinely have loved her. She is a handsome enough woman of some education. Isn’t it perfectly possible?”

  ‘ “It might be hard to distinguish love from gratitude and dependency in that situation,” I told her. “But there is nothing criminal about gratitude.”

  ‘ “In any case,” she said, “Ada is my great-niece. I am entitled to take an interest.”

  ‘ “Rather hard luck when your lame ducks start pecking each other,” I said.

  ‘ “She should not have spoken to you like that. I shall have a word with her and it will not happen again.”

  ‘ “I wish you wouldn’t take it up with her,” I said. “Rather reinforces the idea that I can’t look after myself, don’t you think? Best left alone.”

  ‘ “If you think so, Peter,” she said. “Now, I must be off with these flowers. The staff need them for the table setting.” ’

  Chapter 3

  ‘I didn’t see Osmanthus again until I got back from my walk. The party were at play – the young at tennis and the older at croquet, and Attenbury himself was playing a round of bowls when Mr Whitehead from the bank arrived. Attenbury asked me to see to Osmanthus’s little business with the jewels, and bid him farewell. He didn’t want to break off his game.

  ‘So I galloped back into the house, and intercepted Whitehead and took him to meet Osmanthus in the library. It was dashed awkward. Whitehead was very reluctant to open the jewel case for anybody except family. Quite right, I suppose. Anyway, in the end I got Lady Attenbury to come and lend her authority to the proceedings. Whitehead got a written receipt for the jewels he was carrying, and we opened the case. The Attenbury emeralds were a parure – a complete suite of jewels. There was an ingenious setting which could be worn as a necklace with the Mughal jewel hanging from it, or inverted as a tiara with the jewel suspended in it at the centre. There was a separate clip with a pin on it, so you could wear the centre stone as a brooch if you liked. There was a bracelet and pendant earrings and three rings. They were all big emeralds, mounted in platinum with a snowstorm of tiny diamonds – quite dazzling things, in which to be honest the big square carved centrepiece looked rather sombre. Obviously the big stone could be detached from the setting, because it could be suspended either way up, depending if you were wearing it as necklace or tiara. It had not been drilled, but was mounted in a gold clip with a little loop.

  ‘Anyway, Osmanthus put down his jewel, and Lady Attenbury unhooked the one in the parure, and they were laid side by side. They were identical from the front. A swirl of leaves and a single flower had been cut into each. When they were turned over there was indeed an inscription on the Attenbury jewel, partly obscured by the mount. Osmanthus expressed regret that he could not read it all, and Lady Attenbury picked up the jewel, and unclipped it from the mount. Osmanthus took a jeweller’s loupe from his pocket and examined it carefully.

  ‘ “What does it say?” I asked him.

  ‘He said, “It means: ‘I will not cease striving until I achieve my desire . . .’ This is indeed one of the jewels we are trying to trace. I think my master the Maharaja will offer to buy this stone from you, Lady Attenbury.”

  ‘ “It is not for sale, Mr Osmanthus,” she said.

  ‘So he bowed, and made fulsome thanks and said that at least the family he served could be sure that the jewel was safe. There were many Indian princely families sending their jewels to Cartier and others to be re-cut in western style, he said. Obviously nothing of that kind would happen to the Attenbury jewels.

  ‘Lady Attenbury made no reply to this remark. She replaced the jewel in the clip and put it back in the silk-lined box, and courteously but firmly bade Osmanthus goodbye.

  ‘She offered Mr Whitehead tea, but he declined, having a train to catch, and the two of them were shown out of the house together.

  ‘I was glad to be done with dealing with this for Attenbury; I didn’t think it was quite the thing, although I was an old family friend. Lady Attenbury didn’t think so either. “We have been imposing on you, Peter,” she said. “Although of course, Arthur is very busy with so many guests in the house.”

  ‘ “A pleasure, I assure you,” I said. “I am lucky to have seen the things so close up. What dazzlers.”

  ‘ “I can’t imagine what Arthur was thinking of, letting that fellow near them,” she said. “And as it is, we should perhaps have left them in the bank. Charlotte doesn’t want to wear them. She says they are grim and horribly dated, and couldn’t she just borrow my pearls.”

  ‘ “All the girls like pearls,” I said, foolishly. Privately I rather agreed with Charlotte.’

  ‘Why, Peter?’ asked Harriet.

  Bunter, presumably having decided the conversation would be long and rambling, had resumed dusting books.

  ‘Well, Charlotte was certainly a beauty,’ said Peter, ‘but of a pallid kind. Very light brown hair, pale hazel eyes, slender and willowy. There wasn’t much substance to her. She became a fine figure or a woman, but she was a wispy sort of a girl back then. And those great jewels take a bit of wearing, Harriet. They take a bit of carrying off. If they are more striking than the woman wearing them they quench her fire. You could have worn them . . .’

  ‘ “Nobody asked me, sir, she said.” And I would have been as reluctant as Charlotte. Green is not my colour.’

  ‘Well, there we are. Lady Attenbury told me she had told Charlotte sharply that the emeralds were to be her father’s marriage gift to her, and she must wear them when she was told to. Then she took the jewels from the library to the little safe in her bedroom, and we all pottered about until it was time to dress for dinner.’

  ‘There was an element of showing off the dowry?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Precisely. Well, so we all went down for drinks at the appointed hour. Charlotte didn’t appear, but I supposed she could be forgiven for wanting to make a grand entrance. I had time to study the prospective fiancé. He addressed a few nondescript remarks to me, but naturally his chief concern was to be charming to his f
uture parents-in-law. Discreet flattery was his line of talk. Asked me about my regiment. Asked Gerald about the estate at Duke’s Denver. Asked Freddy about prospects for investing in South American railways. Thoroughly presentable chap. Awfully boring. Attenbury seemed pleased with him. Lot of talk about how the golf had gone. I could hardly have endured it if Lady Attenbury hadn’t noticed my difficulty and plied me with questions about the books in the library. Well, everyone had been assembled for some time. Even little Ottalie was there, done up Adèle-style, with her nanny sitting in a corner beside her. Special dispensation – she was allowed to stay to see Charlotte in glory, and then she had to scamper back to the schoolroom. She told me that herself.

  ‘Time went on, and both Lady Attenbury and Lord Attenbury began to glance discreetly at their watches. I saw Lady Attenbury beckon the butler, and speak to him quietly. In his turn he spoke to a maidservant, who put down her tray of glasses and left the room. Miss Sylvester-Quicke eased her way through the crush and said to Mr Northerby, “Where are your people, Reggie? I should have thought we might have seen them tonight.”

  ‘ “My father has retired from the army, Miss Sylvester-Quicke,” said he, “and is now in charge of extensive tea plantations on the lower slopes of the Himalayas. My parents are sorry not to be here. They are delighted at . . . all this,” he finished lamely, stopping himself from making an announcement that Lord Attenbury would shortly be making.

  ‘ “Good heavens!” said she. “Delighted? I should rather think they would be!”

  ‘On that far from tactful remark there was a hush, as Charlotte entered the room. She was indeed all festooned about with emeralds, her cheeks were flushed, and she looked very flustered. As she moved towards her father the gong was sounded, and we all went in to dinner. Freddy and I were placed at the foot of the table, with a good view of the company. I wondered what had upset Charlotte, though whatever it was had transformed her – she didn’t look pallid one bit.