Deadly Jewels (42 page)

The story of Livia and Hans emerged finally, and, sadly, Naomi was right: her adoptive father distanced himself from her as completely as possible once it became news.

When Patricia brought the stolen diamond to Avner for appraisal, she set in motion a string of events that no one could have anticipated. It became the worst-kept secret in the city: Avner couldn't resist talking about it. Gabrielle found out; Marcus found out; Aleister found out.

Naomi didn't care about the diamond. She cared about the secret that Patricia now knew, and she killed Patricia to silence her—even though Patricia couldn't have cared less about it; for Naomi, it was the only thing that mattered. Lev was the one stunned to learn of his real parentage, but again, absorbed it and moved on; he was that sort of person.

Aleister, thinking that the Kaspis had the diamond, and party by now to the information about Naomi's real father, intended to frighten the couple with a death threat that he'd then follow up with blackmail. While Avner was ducking around town playing amateur sleuth, Naomi met Aleister in a park and gave him the diamond. She meant to kill him, but Marcus beat her to it, having access to a car and having, like us, circled the October date on his calendar.

Avner wasn't quite as innocent about Naomi's mental illness as he pretended to be, but certainly he'd no idea that she'd be able to hurt anyone.

Lukas and Claudia had ten kinds of hissy fits each before they were officially moved into our loft apartment in the Old City, and even more once they started school—in French. And after they went to bed at night Ivan and I toasted them with wine and laughed a lot together. Margery went off with Doctors Without Borders and sent regular letters to the kids, who started—maybe—seeing that she hadn't rejected them so much as having said yes to something new and important.

Jean-Luc Boulanger didn't fire me. He took full responsibility for the outcome at my apartment, and as my role in it couldn't be eliminated, he made sure that the newspapers all knew I was working at his instigation at the time. As Claudia would say, “whatever.”

Naomi was judged incompetent to stand trial and was hospitalized; Avner went to see her every day. “What can I do?” he asked me over smoked-meat sandwiches at the delicatessen now known as Schwartz's, sitting perhaps at the same counter where Livia and Hans had met. “She's my
bubbela
. You don't turn your back on people you love.”

“Rabbi Kahn did,” I reminded him.

“Ha. He's no mensch, that one. Better rid of him.” It was a refreshing point of view.

Lev stood next to me at Patricia's memorial service at McGill. “There's only one thing to do now.”

“What's that?”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “I have to get married. It's the only thing that will make my father happy.”

Élodie sent me a package from Ottawa. “Thought you'd like to see this,” she wrote. It was a declassified shipping manifest from Liverpool, England: the manifest for the treasure ships. On a soft spring day I went up to the cemetery at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges—where my own mother is buried—and sat down next to Patricia Mason's grave, now beginning to blend in with the rest of them. “They're writing it up, now,” I told her. “Your name will be associated with it forever.”

She'd stolen one of the diamonds, and died because of it; but I still thought that it was an impulse, maybe even one that she later regretted. Her priority was the priority of every academic, from my father grappling with his sea monsters to the young woman lying under this headstone: the truth.

Perhaps, like him, she'd finally found it.

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Depending on your source, either the British crown jewels were absolutely, positively stored under the Sun-Life Building in Montréal during the war—or, just as absolutely and positively, were not. You pays your money and you takes your pick, as the saying goes. I think it's probable that they
were
in Montréal: the most popular alternate “undisclosed location” is in Wales, and if Great Britain had been invaded and occupied, as Patricia pointed out, the jewels would have been as unsafe there as they'd been in London.

Wherever the jewels were eventually stored, they were first disassembled by the king and his daughters (who apparently found the process uproarious fun) and placed in—yes—hatboxes for transport.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no Templar connection to any of the current crown jewels, and nor is there a curse on them. It is true that Cromwell destroyed all of the jewels then in existence, so what's now included in the collection is of relatively recent vintage.

The passage, storage, and use of the gold and securities on the HMS
Emerald
and via Operation Fish is extremely well documented: it kept convoys moving across the dangerous North Atlantic and supplying an island nation that would have otherwise been cut off from survival throughout the war. Patricia was right about that, too: it was the largest physical movement of wealth in history. Alexander Craig was indeed the Bank of England official who went across on the
Emerald
—and did apparently enjoy the irony of his wife worrying about him having enough money with him—and Francis Cyril Flynn was her captain.

Where I deviated from the truth is in not respecting what is perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Operation Fish: its complete secrecy. The needs of my novel dictated leaks, stolen jewels, and rumors; in fact there were none. This and other successful British naval operations, undertaken with unspeakable courage in the face of appalling odds, are documented in Alfred Draper's
Operation Fish
as well as in Robert Switky's
Wealth of an Empire: The Treasure Shipments that Saved Britain and the World
, and it is with complete respect and amazement that I write about them here.
No one knew.
There were no leaks. There were no rumors. They did this extraordinary thing and they kept it secret and it saved Great Britain from German occupation.

The story of Dunkirk and the famous evacuation known as Operation Dynamo—including the heroic role of the “little ships”—occurred between May 27 and June 4, 1940. Dunkirk has been referred to as both a miracle and a myth, and I invite you to explore both analyses of the operation. What is true is that 700 private boats took part and helped rescue more than 338,000 trapped British and French soldiers. A river ferry, the
Royal Daffodil,
alone rescued 7,461 service personnel; the paddle steamer
Medway Queen
made seven round trips under heavy fire; the yacht
Sundowner
(owned and captained by
Titanic
survivor and second officer Charles Lightolier) nearly capsized before getting 130 men to safety. The smallest craft, the
Tamzine
, was only fifteen feet long. Some small craft took men across the Channel; others ferried them off the beaches and onto waiting Royal Navy ships. The operation inspired Churchill's famous “we shall fight on the beaches” speech.

The relationship between the Gestapo and the occult is fairly well documented, even if some of the work veers into the conspiracy-theory arena. There
is
a distinct line to be drawn connecting racial-purity theorizing about the beginning of the world with several strains of occult belief and practice, and Himmler believed that the SS were the twentieth century's answer to the Teutonic Knights. He held ceremonies at night in castles lit by flaming torches, used a King Arthur–type roundtable for meetings, and believed himself to be the reincarnation of Heinrich I of Saxony.

It's true that there is, blessedly for the city, less neo-Nazi activity in Montréal than elsewhere in the country: western Canada seems to be the unfortunate host to a number of ever-shifting Aryan groups. Kyle McKee is a real person and as of this writing one of the leaders of the “Nationalist” movement, sometimes known as Calgary's “micro-führer.” If you're interested in learning more, read Warren Kinsella's scary book,
Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network
, which is where I also found the story about the founding of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Pointe-à-Callière archaeological and anthropological museum does exist in Montréal, and it is in fact opening up some of the underground tunnels and buried rivers as part of an ambitious expansion program; but its director is not named Pierre LaTour, and he is not meant to resemble anyone connected with the museum. Visit Pointe-à-Callière next time you're in Montréal: it has some amazing collections.

If you're interested in urban exploration, watch this fascinating TED Talk on the subject by a passionate practitioner:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS1kuG-Z78g
.

Lev was right about the studies made of second- and third-generation survivors of the concentration camps; the
Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences
, doctoral work by Melissa Kahane-Nissenbaum and Perella Perlstein, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and the Anti-Defamation League, the Hidden Child Foundation, and others continue to engage in understanding the lasting effects of this particular trauma.

The rest of the book is fiction. I hope that you enjoyed reading it.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, thanks to my very lovely first readers with their quick eyes, patience, and fabulous suggestions: Carem Bennett, Marion Hughes, Alicia Sovas, Dianne Kopser, Assaf Levavy, and Fred Biddle. I come to you with plot holes and inconsistencies and impossible situations, and you help me mend them all.

And to all of those who continue to open up the world of this amazing city to me, especially to my very dear friend Edward Franchuk, for giving me Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu; I cannot wait to share those amazing fish and chips at Capitaine Pouf with you again! A nod also to the real-life François and those who, every day, show the world how very special Montréal is.

Thanks to Daniel Rosenbaum for his kind help with Avner, the diamond business, and proper manners, and to Richard and Poppy Quintal for help translating my “French” French into more appropriate language for Québec.

The people I work with are fabulous, and I'm grateful beyond words to them: my literary agent from the Philip G. Spitzer Agency, Lukas Ortiz, and my amazing team from St. Martin's/Minotaur, Daniela Rapp, Lauren Jablonski, Lisa Davis, and Ken Diamond: Without you, there would be no book. Thanks also to publicity guru PJ Nunn from Breakthrough Promotions for helping me introduce Martine LeDuc to mystery readers everywhere.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JEANNETTE DE BEAUVOIR
is an award-winning novelist and poet whose work has been translated into twelve languages and has appeared in fifteen countries. She finds that the past always has some hold on the present, and writes mysteries and historical fiction that reflect that resonance.

www.jeannetteauthor.com
. Or sign up for email updates
here
.

 

ALSO BY
JEANNETTE DE BEAUVOIR

Asylum

 

Thank you for buying this

St. Martin's Press ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.