The Attenbury Emeralds (9 page)

‘“Lord Peter, I was thunderstruck!”

‘I was pretty thunderstruck myself.

‘“Lord Peter, what am I to do?” he asked me.

‘“He gave you to understand that he had the stone?”

‘“It was in his pocket, Lord Peter. He showed it to me.”

‘“I take it you sent him packing?”

‘“Oh, yes indeed!”

‘“I don’t quite see what the problem is. Are you asking me if you should go to the police?”

‘“I could go to the police. Then the stone would be returned into the hands of a family who have said they would never sell it to my master. Or I could sit on my hands, as you say, and wait for the marriage to take place, and then attempt to buy the stone. From the new owner. I take it that after the marriage Mr Northerby would be the owner?”

‘“I think the emeralds are heirlooms, Mr Osmanthus. Lady Charlotte would still be the owner.”

‘“But young brides will do what their husbands tell them? As in my country they would…”

‘“Hmm,” I said. “An English woman might not be reliably subservient. But in the early months of a marriage, perhaps…” I was thinking aloud.

‘“I have come to ask you, Lord Peter, if you think I should tell Lord Attenbury who has got the jewel. Or do you think I should keep quiet while the young lady marries a thief? If I had not been strictly instructed to play above board in every way, I could of course arrange for the jewel to be taken from him by a cut-throat in a back alley. But the matter of the young lady’s future happiness and honour would be unresolved.”

‘“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked. “Since it imperils your chance of buying the jewel from Northerby.”

‘“There is the young lady to consider. I would like to leave it in your hands,” he said. “It is very clear you are a trusted friend of the Attenbury family. You will have the ears of his lordship. You will know best what to do.”

‘“Thank you,” I said. “I will think about it.”

‘It was tricky one, Harriet. If he went to the police with his story, it would be bound to involve unpleasantness for the family. And I rather agreed with him about young Charlotte marrying a thief. I thanked him for being concerned about Charlotte’s honour; and I suggested that he leave Mr Northerby to me. Would you like more tea, or shall we potter off home?’

‘I’ve had enough tea, thank you, Peter. Can we go home via Hatchard’s? There’s a book I’d like to find.’

‘Certainly,’ said Peter. ‘Who am I to come between an author and a book?’

They wandered along Piccadilly together, and as they went they talked of other things.

7

Harriet took up the subject again as they drank sherry before dinner. ‘So what
did
you do about the dishonest Mr Northerby?’ she asked Peter.

‘I thought a good deal about Sergeant Parker’s view of things. And I came to the conclusion, very reluctantly, I am ashamed to remember how reluctantly, Harriet, that I had a bounden duty to tell the police if I knew the whereabouts of stolen goods.’

‘Why were you so reluctant?’

‘Well, for a start I had come to feel very wary of Mr Osmanthus. It was touching, and all that, that he should be so concerned about Charlotte’s welfare, considering that as far as I knew he had never met her. Of course, I could read his message. People of his class, he was letting me know, would stick up for the reputation of people of class anywhere. And the assumption was that I would do the same. Lord Attenbury’s interests would be my main concern; any interest in the wider scene, like the need of society for justice, would be secondary. I would, as he would, wish to preserve Charlotte from marriage to a rogue, but also to preserve her from the shame of having been engaged to a rogue. He expected me to have a quiet word with Northerby, and get the jewel back, and hush everything up. As Charles had so pertinently asked me, whose interests would I act in?

‘Well, Peter?’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t do anything for a day or two. Paralysis set in. I think, you know, it was the earliest example of that nausea you know all too well. I love the fun of the chase; I had been feeling top-hole all through the uproar about jewels; I had been feeling pretty triumphant at having worked it out. You know that feeling, Harriet –
this
is what I’m good for,
this
is what I can do! But when it comes to someone trapped and suffering, someone going to prison, or, worst of all, someone hanging, then I feel as sick as I ever felt ordering men out of the trenches and over the top. So you see, I didn’t fancy doing what I clearly ought to do. I went all pitiful and shaky and went back to bed.’

‘For how long,’ said Harriet sternly, ‘did you go to bed?’

‘Two days. On the first day my mother dropped in to see me, and talked and talked about the Attenbury wedding, and how peaky she thought Charlotte was looking, and how oddly Lady Attenbury was behaving, when she should have been delighted, and how she, my mother, would have been delighted had either of her younger children shown any sign of doing their duty and getting married like everybody else’s children, and how Gerald had at least got married, even if his choice of wife was somewhat arguable and as I had the whole world to choose from and needn’t be bound by the sort of considerations that obtained for eldest sons, she thought I might have been able to find a jolly chorus girl with a heart of gold to gladden her heart by talking vulgarly at table, and shocking Helen; and how she couldn’t understand what the fuss was about a stolen gem when the Attenburys were dripping all over with jewellery, and could spare a rock or two better than any family in London; it was of course distressing to lose a jewel, but they should count themselves lucky, when there were families all over London who hadn’t got more than one or two jewels, and who
really
couldn’t afford to lose one.’

Harriet laughed. And then a shadow crossed her face as she thought of her adored mother-in-law, now very old and frail, and able to rattle on for only half the time she used to.

‘After a bit of this, I managed to get up and sit by the fire in my dressing-gown, and have a bite of supper brought up to me. And the next day, I would have been in bed, only Freddy just happened to call by.’

‘Good for Bunter!’ said Harriet.

‘Yes, indeed. So I dragged myself into a dressing-gown, and staggered through into the library, and there was Freddy waiting for me, stuffing his face with Bunter’s excellent cheese straws.

‘“What news on the Rialto?” I said.

‘“The usual chatter,” he told me. “But one little morsel will have you pricking up your ears, Wimsey, and that’s that Northerby seems to be in funds. He’s been paying off his debts. One pal of mine has been nearly ill with anxiety because Northerby owes him a chunk of money and he was afraid it wouldn’t get repaid in time to get him out of some hot water of his own. He’s been leaning on Northerby rather desperately, I understand, without result. Then suddenly last week Northerby showed up at his place and paid him off in cash. Dozens of lovely large crisp white fivers. What do you think of that?”

‘“I think of pawnbrokers,” I said.

‘“He could always have had a little help from his father in Darjeeling,” said Freddy doubtfully. “Although as I hear tell the tea traders are having a rather tight time at the moment. Something to do with the weather in the Himalayan foothills.”

‘“We don’t know a thing about the circumstances of Northerby senior,” said I.

‘“No. Shouldn’t jump to conclusions, I suppose.”

‘“What’s a jumped-to conclusion or two between friends?” I said. “But back to pawnbrokers, Freddy. We would be looking for a specialist, I take it? Or a shady one?”

‘“Hmm,” said Freddy. “Not quite my field. Never needed the friends at the golden balls myself.”

‘“Of course not,” I said. “Didn’t mean to imply…Let’s ask Bunter.”

‘“Have you been paying your man so little he might be pawning your silver, Wimsey?”

‘“That’s a very good idea, Freddy,” I said. “I’ll take you up on that,” and I rang for Bunter.’

Matching word to deeds, Peter rang for Bunter as he spoke.

When Bunter appeared, Peter asked him, ‘Bunter, do you remember that game of hunt-the-pawnbroker that we played in the summer of ’21?’

‘I will never forget it, my lord,’ said Bunter.

‘Explain to Harriet, will you, while you refill our glasses. And a glass for yourself, Bunter, if you feel inclined.’

Harriet noticed with a twinge of affection for Bunter that he did not feel inclined. She had long given up trying to convince him to behave informally with them, to understand that the age of iron distinctions between servants and family was over, that the war had obliterated that alongside much else. Bunter was more comfortable maintaining a degree of formality, especially, she noticed, in the drawing-room. If one wanted an intimate chat with Bunter, one went to look for him in the butler’s pantry, his own ground.

‘Pawnbroking is an arcane business, my lady. It’s one kind of business pawning a working man’s Sunday clothes every Monday to be redeemed on the following Saturday. It’s another thing altogether to be taking in a wealthy man’s goods for a high sum. For that the broker would need to be very knowledgeable, not to risk paying out more than the goods were worth. Because a person does not have to redeem his goods. He can walk away with the money in his pocket and never be seen again. There are only a few pawnbrokers in London who would be able to take on goods of very high value. And then again, you see, my lady, if the goods were to turn out to be stolen, the broker would just have lost the stake. It would be repossessed without repaying him. So one would have to be very careful, unless what one had in mind was passing the job over to the underworld immediately.’

‘Surely a pawnbroker wouldn’t like to be a fence for some famous jewel like that emerald?’ Harriet asked.

‘People will take risks for large sums of money,’ Peter said.

‘There are several ships a day from Harwich to the Hook of Holland, my lady,’ said Bunter, ‘and many expert gem-cutters in Amsterdam.’

‘I had rather thought, if I understood it correctly, that the special virtue of that king-stone was the carving; that it would be reduced to nothing special if it were re-cut.’

‘It would be reduced,’ said Bunter, ‘to a handful of small stones, of very fine quality pure green, each of which would be worth a tidy sum. Each of which would make a fine ring, for instance.’

‘I see,’ said Harriet. ‘So Peter despatched you to find a pawnbroker with a guilty secret.’

‘We set a sprat to catch a mackerel,’ said Peter. ‘I reckoned we needed to find a pawnbroker who was willing to take things of very high value. Someone in a position to lend tidy sums of money – none of your two-and-sixpence-till-Saturday people.’

‘Although as it turned out,’ said Bunter, ‘they were not necessarily two establishments working at different levels, but one and the same, depending on who came in. The high-value merchants were discreetly working behind windows full of boots, suits and gewgaws. But Mr Arbuthnot mentioning silver gave his lordship the idea; we zipped up to Bredon Hall and borrowed a Tudor jewel from the Dowager Duchess.’

Peter added, ‘She got very excited, Harriet, because she thought that could only mean a girl in prospect to whom I intended to become engaged; she was so disappointed when we returned the thing a couple of weeks later. By then she had run through everything she knew about me in her mind and concluded that it could only be the Sylvester-Quicke girl. She had practically chosen the wedding dress. I hoped fervently that she had been moonshining by herself, and not in collaboration with Amaranth’s mother. Sorry, I digress.’

‘The idea, my lady,’ said Bunter, returning to the subject, ‘was to take something comparably exotic and valuable, and find by the experiment which pawnbrokers would consider it. His lordship drove me round, and waited outside each shop in turn while I tried my luck.’

‘Why didn’t you do it yourself, Peter?’ asked Harriet.

‘It would have been potentially legit had it been me in person. Bunter took the family bangle into one place after another, with mixed results.’

‘It wasn’t a question of being offered very poor value, my lady,’ said Bunter, ‘but of being turned away empty-handed. Not at all the sort of security they liked to have. But at last someone said it was more the sort of thing that Mr Handley in Isleworth might be interested in. So his lordship drove us to Isleworth.

‘Mr Handley was not quite what I would have expected in a pawnbroker. He was an English man of a pallid complexion wearing an expensive suit. He offered me a thousand pounds against the family jewel, remarking as he did so what pleasure it gave him to have the guardianship of such a fine piece, and what a pity it was that the scions of great families couldn’t take proper care of their wealth.

‘So then I told him that I was not actually wanting to pawn the pendant, but was hoping to find a person who might have been willing to take in pawn something even more spectacular.

‘“And what would that be?” he asked me.

‘“A dark emerald of a squarish sort of shape.”

‘“I have put out a fair sum on such a jewel as that,” he said. “But what is your interest in it, may I ask?’

‘I said it had, in a manner of speaking, gone missing from its proper place. I confessed I had not myself seen the jewel, and begged permission to bring in my friend who was waiting outside to identify it.’

‘I introduced myself,’ Peter continued. ‘Mr Handley was very reluctant to show us his pawn. I had to mention that it would be a pity if the police got involved and arrived with search warrants and the like, because if that happened he would almost certainly lose his money.

‘Then he took us into a back room, and left us there for a little while. When he reappeared he was holding a square piece of suede. He put it down on the table and carefully unfolded it to reveal – shall we tell Harriet what was revealed, Bunter, or shall we make her guess?’

‘It is a difficult guess, my lord,’ said Bunter cautiously.

‘Oh, come, Bunter. Surely not beyond the powers of the finest mind in detective fiction?’

To her great annoyance, Harriet felt herself blushing slightly. ‘I don’t compare with Conan Doyle, or Agatha Christie, or Dorothy Sayers,’ she said reproachfully. ‘Just for a start. And to prove it I cannot guess what Mr Handley had to show you, unless it was simply the Attenbury jewel. Besides, Peter, what I do is fiction. When faced with a difficulty in writing fiction one has always the option of making it up. The real world is much tougher and more resilient.’