The Attenbury Emeralds (27 page)

Feeling as sheepish as naughty children, they obeyed.

The day after the funeral, at breakfast, Bredon offered to show his parents what their sons had been up to. He led the way across to the barn. Within the barn Peter Bunter was waiting. It was clear at a glance what had been happening. A little makeshift table carried a row of ledgers, in which the boys had been listing the items. Harriet picked up the first ledger.
Pictures, undamaged
, she read.

‘Anything in that list is over here,’ Paul told her eagerly. ‘The number in the book corresponds to the label on the frame.’

The next ledger was labelled
Pictures, damaged
. The damage was carefully described. Harriet read: ‘Frame scorched in lower right-hand corner, three small holes in canvas,’ and ‘picture blackened over whole surface, frame broken on opposite corners.’ She put down this ledger and picked up the next:
Books, damaged
. She handed it to Peter. The three boys were standing around, eagerly waiting for parental reaction.

‘We thought this might be useful, for insurance or something,’ said Paul.

‘There’s hours of hard work here,’ said Peter, ‘and of course it’s useful. Thank you.’

‘We couldn’t have done it without Peter Bunter,’ said Bredon. ‘He dreamed up the system.’

‘And we got help moving these big pictures around,’ said Paul. ‘The gardeners helped us.’

Harriet realised that Peter was struggling with emotion. She knew full well what it was, but Bredon misread it.

‘Most of this isn’t as bad as it looks, Father,’ he said. ‘A lot of it is smoked rather than scorched. We thought we’d better leave cleaning anything to the experts, but I bet a lot of these pictures will clean up as good as new.’

‘I’m very proud of you,’ said Peter. ‘Of all of you.’

‘We think these lists will take us another three or four days, Father,’ said Bredon. ‘May we finish the job?’

‘What? Oh, more time off school, is that it? Yes; another week.’

‘Bunter says PB must go back tomorrow,’ said Paul. ‘He said: “My son has got to make his way in the world.”’

‘We all have to make our way in the world,’ said Harriet. ‘One world or another.’

‘I’ll have a word with Bunter,’ said Peter. ‘But when it comes to what PB does, what Bunter says, goes.’

‘I’ll think he’ll ask my mother,’ said PB. ‘And she will ask him if he knows what you think.’

Going back to London, when at last they were free to do so, felt like putting on again clothes that one has not worn for a while. Deep familiarity overlaid with recent unfamiliarity; welcome and strange at once. Harriet had not written a single word during their absence; too much to do, too many interruptions. And Peter, she thought, had not given a thought to detecting anything. In that she was wrong, it turned out. Having seen his mother safely on to the Southampton train, complete with Franklin and many suitcases, he came home, and, unusually for him, tapped lightly on the door of Harriet’s study, entered, and sat in the armchair facing her.

‘I am returning to you, Miss Vane,’ he said, ‘in the persona of Lord Peter, the notorious sleuth, and, moreover, a sleuth with an unsatisfied client, and an undetermined investigation on his hands.’

‘I am glad to see you back, Peter,’ she said. ‘What will you do next?’

‘Bunter says there is something I ought to read,’ he said. ‘I shall go and read it. And I believe young Attenbury has twice left his card here, and is likely to call at around three.’

‘Would you like moral support?’

‘If it doesn’t bore you overmuch. I’ll leave you to get on with your own work now.’

But he was soon back, holding in his hand a magazine with an austere, academic-looking cover. ‘Look at this,’ he said.

Harriet took it from him. ‘
The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarian Jewellers
,’ she read.

‘Page thirteen,’ he said.

Page thirteen carried a report of an address given to the society by one Miss Pevenor. She had been offering an account of her researches, including a description of the Attenbury emerald, and the translation of the inscription.

‘Quite interesting, Peter,’ said Harriet, puzzled at his agitation.

‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘That woman has just put herself in mortal danger.’

‘The reason being?’

‘The heart of the matter is those inscriptions,’ he said. ‘If you can read those, and you know anything about Persian poetry, you know there are three stones. And that’s a very dangerous thing to know. Look, I’m going to see if Charles can give her some protection.’

Peter left the room. Curious, Harriet continued to inspect Miss Pevenor’s article. She skimmed it rapidly. ‘The inscription upon the back of the jewel,
or my spirit
leaves my own body
, is clearly incomplete. Possibly the stone was once part of a collection…’

She did not look up as Peter entered the room. ‘Peter, surely this is all right,’ she said. ‘Miss Pevenor doesn’t know anything about the Maharaja’s stone. It’s all speculation. She doesn’t even know that what she thinks of as the Attenbury emerald isn’t the right one.’

When Peter didn’t answer, she looked up. He was standing in front of her, quite still.

‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘Charles tells me she was murdered last week.’

‘Horrible,’ said Harriet. ‘That poor woman! What had she done to deserve to die terrified and helpless?’

Peter had just finished describing to her what he had learned when he and Charles had visited the Middlesex Constabulary to discover what they could about the death of Miss Pevenor. It had in fact been reported in the copy of
The Times
that carried the stories about the death of Gerald; not even Bunter had spotted it, in small type way down the page. On a normal day it would have rated headlines, but it had been more fun to harass a great family with a scandal or two. The local police had been a bit bemused to find themselves visited by a senior officer in the Met and a famous amateur, over what James Vaud, the detective in charge, described as ‘a squalid case. Run of the mill’.

Someone had talked their way in to the house. No sign of forced entry. And the victim had felt secure enough to sit down at her desk, spread out some papers in front of her. ‘Must have intended to show the visitor something,’

Inspector Vaud had said. ‘And then she was attacked from behind. Bit of picture wire round the neck. Tightened with a paper knife being turned in it.’

‘Obviously the local force knew she was working on valuable things. There was a bit of disturbance in the house – books flung on the floor, broken china, dressing-table drawers all emptied. Motive, robbery, they thought. And they couldn’t find anything worth taking, so they reckoned it had all been taken. As to
what
might have been taken, they could read her ledger. She should have had the Marshal pearls, and three diamond tiaras. They had circulated descriptions.

‘They were gratifyingly amazed, Harriet, when we asked if they had found the safe. Remember she told us the book in front of the buttons to reveal it was
Urn Burial?
Well, I had a quick look roughly where I remembered
Urn Burial
to have been when we visited her, and it was a complete give-away. There was
The Garden of Cyrus
on the shelf, completely out of order – not another Thomas Browne anywhere near it. Wonderful moment! I took the book down, and in seconds I had the panel opened and the safe revealed. I haven’t felt so prestidigitous since I learned how to get a rabbit out of a hat when I was a boy.’

‘So what was in the safe, Peter?’ Harriet asked.

‘They couldn’t open it. So I called up Bill Rumm, and he trundled up on the Northern Line, and cracked it for us. It contained the Marshal pearls, and three diamond tiaras,’ he said.

‘So nothing had been stolen?’

‘Not a peppercorn. But Inspector Vaud stuck firmly to his guns. The mere fact that a robbery had not occurred did not mean that robbery was not the motive.’

‘You can’t blame him for that, Peter. Logically he is quite right.’

‘Oh, logic…I think he might have noticed how desultory the ransacking was. Not a very serious search. But why should I trouble to enlighten him? It would have taken till the middle of next week to explain to him what we thought the real motive might have been.’

‘Peter, you should face the fact that it really might have been a botched burglary. Quite a few people probably knew she wrote about jewels, and might have thought she might have some around.’

‘It doesn’t really look like that to me, Harriet. Thieves do sometimes assault a householder in the course of a crime. They have been known, even, to kill them. But it’s very unusual. After all, burglary carries a prison sentence; but murder leads to hanging. You need a professional for a jewel heist, because you have to know how to convert the loot safely into cash. And professionals, in my experience, take very good care not to go armed, in case the situation gets out of hand and they incur the death penalty.’

‘So what do you think would happen, Peter, if the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment which is under way at the moment abolished hanging? Would burglars go armed?’

‘They might,’ he said. ‘An unlooked-for result of such a decision might be more murdered householders. Whether anyone would identify a length of picture wire as a homicidal weapon unless they found it actually round the neck of a garrotted victim is another thing.’

‘What do you think about the death penalty? Would you like to see it abolished?’

‘Charles told me once,’ he answered, ‘that he had a friend who was a prison governor. And that man told him that he thought capital punishment was more merciful than a life sentence. And yet…there are too many mistaken verdicts. Think what a near thing it was that you…’

‘I think, Peter, that the man who really killed Philip Boyes deserved to die. And therefore, you see, that if I had really done it I would likewise have deserved death.’

He shook his head. And then he indulged himself in the urge to hug her.

‘I’ll tell you one thing, though,’ she said, in a voice muffled in his shirt. ‘If they abolish the death penalty it will mar detective fiction.’

‘Why?’ he said, releasing her. ‘Wouldn’t all that puzzle-solving retain its charm?’

‘Charm,’ she said, ‘but not bite. The public is gruesome and vengeful. Life imprisonment may be a worse fate, but from a fictional point of view, it won’t be anything like such a good ending.’

‘Ghoul!’ said Peter.

‘Peter, did you find out what was on the table in front of Miss Pevenor? Exactly what did she seem to have got out of her files to show her visitor?’

‘Oh, the description of the Attenbury emerald, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Dammit, Harriet, if I hadn’t been railroaded by a dukedom that woman would still be alive!’

22

Lord Attenbury was agitated. Peter offered him a rueful apology for having so little to report, mentioning that family affairs had been taking up his attention recently. Whereupon the young man exploded.

‘
You’ll
be all right!’ he cried. ‘But what about me? What am I to do? Do I preside over the ruin of my family with nobody to help me?’

‘Believe me, I am trying to help you,’ said Peter. ‘But with the best will in the world we may not be able to get this sorted out in time for the Inland Revenue. You’d better find a bit of stoicism to meet the situation.’

‘Stoicism? That’s damned easy to say when you don’t need it yourself!’

‘I would have thought our situations are uncannily parallel,’ said Peter.

‘Do you, Wimsey? Do you indeed? As I understand matters, at the moment your brother died the house was on fire? What do you suppose is the value of a burning house? Might even be negative! So you will escape duty on that, collect the insurance and make a neat escape. Where will it be? A handy tax-free haven like Bermuda? Or Switzerland perhaps? But my family will be ruined, I tell you,
ruined
! We shall live out our lives in poverty!’

Harriet said quietly, ‘Lord Attenbury, many people,
most
people, live without hunger or misery on a fraction of what you will have left even if you must indeed sell the house to pay the duty. I have lived with barely twopence to rub together myself, and although it was hard at times, it was not demeaning. You won’t really be reduced to indigence.’

He sat down abruptly, facing Harriet. ‘That’s the devil of it,’ he said. ‘I suppose it depends what you’re used to. Or perhaps, what your womenfolk are used to. They are making such a
fuss
, Lady Peter! Such howls at any economy I suggest. They expect a way of life that I cannot see how to maintain for them, for any of us. And it’s not like selling a semi-detached villa in Finchley; selling Fennybrook Hall would humiliate us. Whatever you say.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ she said. ‘But, Edward – may I call you Edward? – I think that most women manage whatever life throws at them. They may make an awful fuss when difficulties are in prospect; but when it comes to the point, they manage.’

‘They haven’t ever had to,’ he said, speaking quietly now. ‘I wish any of them were as sensible as you are. My girlfriend has given me up, and my mother says she doesn’t blame her. “What have you to offer her?” That line of talk.’

‘If the love of a good husband was not enough for her, then she was prime among the extravagances you cannot afford,’ said Harriet. ‘Forget her as quickly as you can.’

‘Bloody Denver has all the luck,’ he said, rising to go. ‘You’ll let me know, I suppose, if you come up with anything?’

‘We’ll run along immediately with anything of the sort,’ said Peter.

‘What did he mean by that last remark?’ said Harriet, when the door had closed behind the departing guest.

‘Let me decode it for you,’ said Peter. ‘By bloody Denver he meant me; and in that last comment on my luck he was complimenting you. Only for the most basic of your virtues, I’m afraid: your Johnsonian bottom of common sense. You made a good job of that, Harriet. You calmed him down admirably. I was seriously tempted to have him thrown out.’