The Attenbury Emeralds (6 page)

‘“It’s just that I have a feeling something may be going horribly wrong for somebody,” I said.

‘“If you want to know what’s going on in the gunroom,” said Abcock, “that’s no problem. It used to be the dining-room – the main hall – when the house was much smaller, and there’s a ladies’ peephole into it.”’

‘Enlighten me,’ said Harriet, ‘into the nature and uses of a ladies’ peephole. If you please.’

‘In the high and far-off times, O Best Beloved,’ said Peter, ‘it let the ladies enjoy the bawdy uproar at the tables without being seen to be part of it. I know one or two houses where such a thing remains. Anyway, Abcock led us to it. The old hall had a solar at one end of it, now used as a linen store. It had a sliding panel that opened into the room below, between one bit of carving and another on the panelling. We all three crouched down at it and slid it open a crack. Sugg’s voice came clear as a bell to us. Abcock left at once – he really wasn’t interested in his sister’s emeralds at all. The family diamonds would in due course be his, and those were still in a bank vault in London. Freddy didn’t like it either – too much a gentleman to fancy overhearing by stealth. So I sat down on a bale of sheets by myself, and listened in. Luckily Bunter found me very shortly, having looked for me in the billiard-room, and been sent along by Freddy, and he brought me pencil and paper, and joined me on the floor.’

‘So you were in effect spying on the police? Shame on you, Peter! Shame on you both!’ said Harriet, laughing.

‘I didn’t get where I am today,’ said Peter, ‘by evincing undue respect for the police.’

‘But Charles was there,’ protested Harriet.

‘We’ll come to Charles later,’ said Peter. ‘When I began to spy Inspector Sugg was in full cry, and Sergeant Parker was bringing in his witnesses one by one. He had the indomitable Sarah, Lady Attenbury’s personal maid, in front of him. I was hampered by being able to see rather little, but I heard him summing up her evidence to her, and offering her a statement to sign. There was only one key to the safe in Lady Attenbury’s room. She, Sarah, was entrusted with it, and never let it out of her sight. Last night when Jeannette came to fetch the jewels for Charlotte, she had opened the safe herself, and given Jeannette the box, exactly as it had come from the bank.

‘Had she personally opened the box and seen for herself that everything was in order?

‘Yes, naturally.’

‘And she trusted Jeannette?

‘“The servants here are one family,” she had told Sugg. “We work together and we look after each other. Jeannette is in a position of trust here, and I have seen nothing in her time with us to make me doubt the propriety of that.”

‘“Now,” said Sugg to her, “when the alarm was raised about the missing jewel you first instituted a search, and then adopted a ruse – the wearing of the paste replica – which delayed by some perhaps crucial minutes the commencement of the police enquiry. Why did you not immediately inform the police? What were you covering up? Who were you protecting?”

‘When this met with no answer, he went on: “You say that Miss Jeannette Mondur is trustworthy. Would it surprise you to know that she has a clandestine lover who she meets on her afternoons off?”

‘At this Sarah lost her composure. “No, it would not surprise me!” she exclaimed. “I and everybody else in the servants’ hall know all about it. I expect the family does too. Clandestine? It is nothing of the sort! And it is not against our terms of employment here.”

‘“All right, all right, my good woman, keep your hair on,” said Sugg. “I ask you again – why all that diversionary business with the false jewels? And why did you delay in informing the police? It is not clear to me that you would have informed the police at all had not raised voices and a commotion drawn attention to what was going on.”

‘“I assumed that the missing gem was just that – missing,” said Sarah. “I knew all too well the scandal and disturbance that would arise if there was a hue and cry after it during dinner last night when the house was full of guests. I thought the delay would allow us time to find the jewel. I was mistaken, that is all.”

‘“So you put your supposed loyalty to the family ahead of your duty to assist the police?”

‘“I did, and I do,” she said coldly. “Lady Attenbury has favoured me with a lifetime of kindness, and I put her interests before those of anyone else, myself included.”

‘“Oh, do you?” said he. “Well, your room will be searched. What have you to say to that?”

‘“You will no doubt do your duty, Inspector, as I shall do mine,” she told him. “May I go now? I have work to do.”

‘“Hoighty-toighty,” said Sugg. “Off with you, then. Parker, fetch me this Jeannette woman.”

‘I was pretty horrified at the tone of all this. Sergeant Parker was too. He actually suggested to Sugg that a gentler approach might elicit more information.

‘“I know how to deal with people like these, Parker,” said Sugg. And he proceeded to deal in the same inimitable fashion with Jeannette.

‘She told him simply that when Sarah had given her the box, she had taken it along to Lady Charlotte’s room, and laid out the entire parure on the stand. She had laid Lady Charlotte’s dress on the bed, and her shoes ready on the floor. Then she had left, to wait for the bell. Lady Charlotte was late coming upstairs to dress. When she did ring for Jeannette it was in distress, to ask what had been done with the central stone in the array. Jeannette saw at once that it was not where she had left it. She had no idea what had happened to it.

‘Well, Sugg weighed in very heavily. He told Jeannette that nobody would believe her. She was the person who had seen the jewel last, she was the person with the best opportunity to steal it. Her room would be searched, and she was as of this minute under arrest. Jeannette was immediately in tears, and crying, “But I didn’t do it, monsieur! I didn’t do it! I shall lose my job, and never get another one!”

‘Parker said, “Sir, wouldn’t it be better to postpone arresting anyone until we have taken statements from everybody in the house?”

‘“Why so, Sergeant? It must have been one of the servants, and this girl is the obvious suspect. We might be able to avoid annoying the high and mighty ones. The Chief Constable himself asked me to tread carefully, after all.”

‘“But we need above all, sir, to recover the jewel. And it seems it was laid out for anyone to see, in Lady Charlotte’s room, behind an unlocked door for the best part of an hour. That is right, isn’t it, Miss Mondur?”

‘“Yes, it is, sir,” she said.

‘“And who was in the habit of trampling through Lady Charlotte’s bedroom?” asked Sugg sardonically. “Apart from yourself, that is?”

‘“The chambermaids keep the room clean, and the footman makes up the fire. And the family. Nobody else.”

‘“Between the time when you put the jewels out ready and the time when Lady Charlotte went up to dress, did you actually see anyone enter her room?” asked Sugg.

‘“No, monsieur. I had retired to the servants’ sitting-room to wait for the bell.”

‘“Shouldn’t you have been dressing the girl?” asked Sugg.

‘“Lady Charlotte likes to dress herself. I help her just with her hair, and the finishing touches.”

‘“Hmph,” said Sugg. “Off you go now. And don’t make any attempt to leave the house, or communicate with anyone outside, or it will be the worse for you.”

‘As she left, he said to Parker, “Search all the servants’ rooms, starting with hers!”’

5

‘I’m afraid this is awfully Ancient Mariner, Harriet. I shall cut the tale short. Nothing was found in any of the servants’ rooms. But ransacking their rooms left the entire household below stairs resentful, wouldn’t you say, Bunter?’

‘Resentful and triumphant, my lord. There was much talk about the respectable nature of people in service, and the not so respectable affairs of some of their supposed betters above stairs. I felt as much myself, my lady. I was enraged by one of Sugg’s men who insisted on searching for the emerald by opening the back of my camera and ruining the half-exposed spool of film. To make it still worse he put a huge thumb-print on the lens while doing so.’

‘Well, what then?’ continued Peter. ‘Nothing for it but to start interviewing the guests. Sugg’s manner of doing so was cringe-makingly respectful, peppered with sirs and madams and my lords and my ladies, and met with outraged indignation, suppressed with difficulty for the sake of Attenbury, who had asked them to help the police. In the end they realised that if they ever wanted to be allowed to go home, cooperation was the only policy.’

‘And were you crouched on a pile of sheets eavesdropping all this time, Peter? Weren’t you missed from the company?’

‘Yes, I was, almost all the time, and no, I wasn’t missed as far as I know. As the ineffable Mrs DuBerris had made clear to me they all thought of me as a queer fish. Poor Peter, war’s done for his nerves…good cover, in fact. The servants all knew where I was, of course, because the chambermaids came in and out for clean linens. They seemed very happy to discover a conspiracy against Inspector Sugg. I had a worse fright when Lady Attenbury herself arrived, overseeing something domestic, I assumed, although perhaps a maid had alerted her. My brother Gerald was huffing and puffing below, perfectly willing to say where he had been between five and seven, and naming half the company as witnesses, and furiously refusing to say where he had been all night. Sugg was after discovering not only who had had a chance to lift the emerald, but where they might have had a chance of concealing it before the hue and cry was raised in the morning. Who was where overnight was proving very interesting. I could have made a fortune by selling the dirt to that news-hound Salcombe Hardy, except that I hadn’t yet met him, and wouldn’t have known where to find him.’

‘You diverge. What did Lady Attenbury think of finding you
in flagrante
?’

‘
Flagrante
? Not much
delicto
, though. She slid the panel shut, and said to me in a low voice, “Have you heard anything useful, Peter?”

‘“No,” I told her. “I rather doubt if anything useful can come of this.”

‘“I understand our poor Jeannette has been threatened. If I am any judge of character…”

‘“I think you might be better at judging character than Inspector Sugg is. Do you mind my poking my nose into all this? Obviously impertinent, you know. Under your roof.”

‘“Weren’t you in intelligence in the war, Peter?”

‘“Yes. Rather different sort of thing, though.”

‘“Do you think our Indian visitor might have anything to do with this?”

‘“It’s odd, certainly. I hate coincidence, it demolishes rational causation.”’

‘That’s interesting,’ said Harriet. ‘You can’t have coincidences in detective stories, either. Readers simply can’t accept them. Though in real life they do keep happening.’

‘And this was real life,’ said Peter. ‘I told Lady Attenbury that I didn’t see how Nandine Osmanthus could have had a hand in it. She and I both had seen the gem back in the box. I admitted to having been watching Osmanthus carefully. Mr Whitehead had been sitting there watching too. She nodded.

‘“I shall regard you as a son of the house in this matter, Peter,” she said. And then perhaps because she had betrayed herself just a little she added, “It isn’t really Roland’s sort of thing, I think.”

‘“You are about to have reinforcements in the son department,” I said to her. “A new son-in-law.”

‘She moved away and turned her back to me, looking out of a small window. She made no comment about Northerby’s intelligence, but she said, “He has a kind heart, I think. I have seen him walking in the garden with Mrs DuBerris, and playing with little Ada, when Charlotte has been busy with something or other. None of our other guests has paid her the least attention, and they don’t have the cause she has given you, Peter, for keeping clear of her.”

‘Then she turned back into the room, reached past me, and very quietly opened the panel again. She smiled at me and left. Silent permission to sleuth. Changed my life, now I come to think of it. All down to Claire Attenbury.

‘She had opened the panel further than I had had it before – I could now see quite well. I was looking over Sugg’s head and facing the witnesses sitting opposite him. Their voices rose up to me. When I resumed spying my sister-in-law was asserting with icy fury that Gerald had been with her all night. Poor Helen; how was she to know that Gerald had just been confessing to a midnight ramble in search of a bite to eat?

‘He wasn’t the only one, of course. Northerby and I were about the only fellows present who slept well all night, or who at least didn’t open their doors and prowl the corridors.’

‘After a full formal dinner, Peter? Can everyone have been hungry?’

‘Oh, not at all. Merely rearranging themselves in the bedrooms. But what can you tell a policeman? Hardly that you have been sleeping with another man’s wife, with that man’s connivance and consent. Chivalry obliges you to lie. Anyway, the long and the short of all this was that everybody with rooms on the main corridor had an alibi that could be corroborated if they were prepared to tell the truth. And the truth thus told would have ruined reputations and set the London beau monde ablaze with scandal. Sugg had put a policeman in the broom cupboard, who had watched all the coming and going and written it down. Attenbury’s party was turning into a general catastrophe.

‘But Sugg wasn’t much further forward. Because the crucial time was not overnight, when the thief might have hidden his pelf, but the hour before dinner when he might have taken it. And during that time everybody had been milling about in the public rooms downstairs, and alibis and corroborations were thick as autumnal leaves that lie in Vallombrosa. But just before the gathering for dinner every single guest had returned to their rooms to dress. There had been coming and going all along the corridor, and then throngs of people descending the main stairs. But the copper in the broom cupboard had reported seeing nobody enter Lady Charlotte’s room between the time Jeannette came with the jewel box, and left again, and the time Lady Charlotte came up to dress. Impasse! Sugg proceeded to have all the luggage returned to the bedrooms and searched. Indignation and discomfiture on every side.’