After the Armistice Ball (7 page)

McSween takes no interest in the woodland at Croys, woods being too close to ‘Nature’ to yield easily to his ministrations, and the result is charming, not least at the time of year when the last of the primroses meet the first of the bluebells and the canopy above them is unfurled but still fresh and pale. Cara, picking her way along the path ahead of me in the cool green light, would have looked like some little creature from a fairy tale, but for the fact that her rather clinging afternoon frock was covered with large, angular roses in black and pink. She sighed audibly, and again I wondered at how subdued she seemed. Such a doleful little sigh; not at all the chirruping and giggling one thought of as her wont. But then I probably had fixed in my head the Cara of years ago, a schoolgirl and then a debutante, and when I cast my mind back over our more recent meetings, it was clear that she had been on her way to this sombre state for quite some time. It is often the way, I have found, that one fixes one’s view of a person based on the time in their life when one met first them and then subsequent laziness prevents one from ever updating it. This is why, I suppose, old men who have known some old lady since she was a girl still cluster around and smooth their moustaches for no reason apparent to youngsters.

‘Do men always assume if a girl wants to talk about something, it must be something silly?’ Cara asked me presently.

‘I’m rather afraid so,’ I said. ‘But just before your wedding is no time to think of it. You must waft along on a cloud of blossom until after your honeymoon, and then you can begin on truths.’ She laughed at this. ‘And Alec is right,’ I went on. ‘Your mother and your sister are the ones for flowers and dresses and whatnot.’ She bent her head a little lower at this, studying the soft bark and old leaves under her feet. I felt an unexpected and quite fierce protectiveness towards her, but I also saw a handy opening.

‘Let’s us have a good long twitter about it,’ I said. ‘I expect your poor mother must be distracted by all this trouble about the jewels. But I should love to hear about your wedding. Where are you going afterwards? Where are you to settle?’

‘I can’t stop thinking about the jewels either,’ said Cara. ‘Everyone is being so peculiar. Mummy, of course, is bereft. Clemence is as Clemence-like as ever, although I shouldn’t say it about my own sister, I suppose. And Daddy just doesn’t say anything at all. How I wish it hadn’t come out until after I was married.’

‘How did it? Come out, I mean?’ I knew how it had come out, of course. Hugh had told me, but I needed to start her talking.

‘Haven’t you heard? Gosh, I thought everyone knew absolutely everything. I can hear whispering behind my back everywhere I go. It makes it almost a relief to be here with those dreadful little women for a few days, and I expect by the time Monday comes they will be buzzing with it too.’

I said nothing. I was quivering for more, but if I prodded her too sharply she might retreat with distaste. My recent experience with Daisy had shown me, however, that if one keeps perfectly quiet (even if one is only keeping quiet because one is utterly lost and therefore incapable of sensible speech) someone else will say something. It worked again.

‘I took them out of the bank to have them valued, and the poor jeweller’s apprentice who was inspecting them, as a special treat and with his boss breathing down his neck, took one look through his little monocle and almost died of fright.’

‘He must have, poor lamb,’ I said. And then I ventured, ‘Do you have to have them valued every so often then? I’m just being nosy because I have nothing so sumptuous of my own. Hugh’s insurers don’t force us to submit my little baubles for regular inspection.’ She seemed to find nothing strange in this. Another important lesson: say nothing at all, or say much too much – it’s the unadorned question that raises the hackles.

‘No, it wasn’t an insurance valuation, as it happens,’ said Cara, with a small suggestion of laughter in her voice. ‘I’ve no idea how often those have to be done. But I bet my eyes they just stamp the form and sign it and never look at the things. Nobody ever does. I bet more than half the “jewels” you see are fakes, no matter how closely guarded and heavily insured they are.’ She was even nearer laughter now, but a weary kind of laughter which suggested to me that she was ready to tell all to anyone just for sheer relief.

‘The last time they were all out together was here, you know. Since then they’ve been out of the bank once to have pastes made and twice to be cleaned. All at different times, too, because our usual jeweller doesn’t care to have the whole lot in his safe at once. Do you see what I’m saying?’

‘Yes, but there’s something bothering me about that –’ I began, then I really did see what she was saying.

‘He cleaned them all,’ said Cara, burbling with a laughter that almost did away with the weariness in her voice, ‘solemnly refusing to acknowledge that they were worthless. And then he made pastes of pastes, again solemnly going along with it. Such excruciating discretion. And after the whole thing came out, it was clear that he does it all the time. It’s killing.’

I could see the funny side of this, of course, and we smiled ruefully for a moment before I spoke again.

‘I wonder what happened to them,’ I said, carefully, probing. Again Cara spoke as though letting out the words was a relief of some unbearable pressure.

‘Well, it must have been someone who had time in advance to have copies made for the substitution,’ she said. ‘Someone who had seen them before. You see? Someone we know.’ Much as I loathed to admit it, she was making perfect sense.

‘And I suppose,’ I said slowly, ‘I suppose it’s a mere fluke that you found out at all. That you decided to have them valued, and took them to a different jeweller, that a callow apprentice got his hands on them and blew the whistle.’

‘Well, not quite,’ said Cara.

I thought furiously, kicking into the path with the toe of my boot, but I could make no headway with this. Cara was chewing her lip and looking at me out of the corner of her eye. Suddenly she seemed to make up her mind and spoke again.

‘I was having them valued to sell,’ she said quietly. ‘I rather think that’s what brought the jeweller to his senses. And I’ve simply got to talk to someone about it before I burst.’

I was nodding, trying not to look too eager.

‘But you must promise not to tell anyone,’ Cara went on. ‘Oh Lord, listen to me! I’ve always hated that, haven’t you?
I
promise not to tell anyone, and then tell
you
not to tell anyone, and you’ll extract the same promise from whoever you tell . . .’ She sounded almost hysterical.

Just then we were forced to abandon the conversation to negotiate a birch sapling which had fallen most inconveniently across the path. It was slim enough for us to step over, but we had to concentrate on keeping our skirts clear of the up-thrusting branches and so I had a little time to think. My questions, none of which I could possibly have asked her out loud, were: first, why in heaven’s name with marriage to Alec Osborne weeks away was she planning to sell the diamonds she was surely to wear at her wedding; second, what could she possibly need the money for; third and most important, why on earth had she told her mother about it? Had it been me, I should have bribed the jeweller with everything I owned, and then simply slipped the things back into the bank and kept my head down.

Over the tree at last, we patted ourselves down and regarded one another.

‘You poor dear,’ I said at last. And I meant it. Mrs Duffy was not someone I should care to cross, unconnected and unbeholden as I was. I could hardly imagine Cara revealing to her mother not only that she had been planning to offload the famous collection for cash – and how did she manage to get them out of the bank, anyway? – but that the family treasure was Woolworth’s best.

Cara was shaking her head and spoke in a very calm voice.

‘Please forget I said anything at all. It’s just that I’m so very confused and I don’t know who to turn to –’ She broke off, shook her head again, then repeated even more firmly: ‘Please just forget I spoke. It’s probably nothing.’

We were just emerging from the wood then, and we could see across a stretch of parkland the coloured frocks of the ladies on the croquet lawn, and a short procession of dark-suited footmen carrying tea trays across to a ring of chairs where Alec Osborne and Daisy were seated, with Silas in turned-down waders looking like Dick Whittington standing between them. My heart sank. Tea outside in summer one must learn to put up with, but this early in the spring one ought really to be able to count on a crackling fire and an armchair; Daisy has gone terribly hearty and Scotch in some ways over the years. Still, I could see a footman on his way with a pile of rugs and at least the tea would be hot. Cara, beside me, laughed suddenly.

‘Silly old me with my wedding nerves,’ she said, unconvincingly.

‘More than likely,’ I said, unconvinced.

‘Although to be honest I don’t care how awful the wedding is, as long as it actually happens and isn’t called off.’ She had lost me again. Why should the wedding be called off? Were the diamonds her dowry and Alec unlikely to take her without them? But then why should she sell them? To get rid of him? If so, it had not worked, for he didn’t look like jilting her. What was going on? I forced myself to pay attention to what she was saying.

‘I don’t say that I shall lock myself in a tower and pine to death if it all falls through, but I am very keen to be good and married, and no going back.’

I looked at the distant figure of Alec Osborne, lying back in his lawn chair, laughing at something Daisy was saying, and wondered at Cara’s easy admission of her indifference. I could quite see that she would want to be off despite it, though, since things must be unbearably frosty between her and her parents. They ought to have been grateful really; she might so easily not have told them. At the very least it had been brave of her to come clean.

‘You mustn’t berate yourself, Cara dear,’ I said, wondering if I was yet old enough to pull off this kind of wise condescension, and fearing that I was. ‘You are a good girl, you know, to tell your mother. You mustn’t fret about it. And whatever spot you have got yourself in, everything will be different after you are married.’

‘What?’ said Cara, turning towards me and blinking, clearly having drifted off and making me wonder if maybe her feelings for Alec were less impeccably modern than she had implied. ‘Oh yes, I’m a good little girl,’ she said. ‘I always have been, you know. I do exactly as I’m told every time and it brings me nothing but joy.’ I grimaced, pained to hear such world-weariness in one so young.

Mrs Duffy and Clemence came out as we arrived at the tea table and in the fuss of arranging chairs, cushions and parasols, a few whispered words were exchanged.

‘What have you been asking Cara?’ Lena demanded. ‘Much better for you to come to me.’

I was startled. Was it quite settled in her mind then that I had undertaken to do her bidding? I supposed it was.

‘Why, nothing,’ I said, my startled look backing my words nicely. ‘We were chatting about dresses and flowers, actually. But I do need to speak to you, certainly. Certainly I do.’

‘Come when we are home again,’ she hissed. ‘Come for luncheon next week.’

A few more of the men began to drift back from the river as tea got under way, and there was much protestation from the ladies, who affected to be outraged by the mud and fish scales clinging to their husbands’ clothes and shrieked at the trout tails peeping from basket lids. Daisy, as I might have predicted, was stony-faced; she has always loathed the sight of women flirting in public with their own husbands. Alec and Cara were no help, chatting quietly to each other and ignoring everyone else; Mrs Duffy and Clemence were as thick as ever, sitting close together with identical expressions of pursed disapproval on their mouths, and I’m ashamed to admit I was very poor value too, for I sat utterly silent, brooding.

What was the hold Lena believed she had over the Esslemonts, for it could not be the lame tale she had concocted about the theft? Why on earth did Cara want to sell the jewels? And how could she? Were they not her father’s? And were not all the signs that they were intended for her sister in the end? I was heartily sick of the things already and the trouble they caused. Was there any chance that they would simply turn up again? If not, how would one set about trying to track them down? In the favourite parlour game of my childhood – what was it called? – there was a set of enamel tiles to be passed around, what, who, why, where, when and how, and it did make things a great deal easier to –

Suddenly there it was. When. The little wisp I had been swiping at was in my grasp at last. It was simply this: if the pastes were good enough to fool everyone but an expert and if what Cara had said about the jeweller’s discretion were true, then how could her mother possibly know that the jewels had not
already
been stolen, by the time of the Armistice Anniversary Ball? Had Mrs Duffy had a valuation done on them just then? One that she trusted? If not, it seemed to me, the switch might have been made at any time at all. It might have been years ago. I wondered if this simple point had occurred to no one but me. What a coup if it had not.

I must pump the Duffys for more details. I might even hint at a softening of Silas’s resolve to worm my way deeper into Lena’s favour. So long as nobody signed anything, surely it was worth a sprat to catch a mackerel; ladies could not, I was sure, be accused of entering into gentlemen’s agreements. I should have to conduct the entire thing with my fingers crossed behind my back, of course. In fact, should I perhaps check with Daisy first that she approved of my spinning a line to reel them in on? No, I would fix my bait and land this all by myself.

‘Are you all right, Dandy?’ asked Alec Osborne. I had been staring in his direction, not looking at him exactly, but he and Cara had fallen silent and were both watching me.

‘You look as though you’d seen Banquo’s ghost,’ said Cara, and Alec shouted with laughter.