The Attenbury Emeralds (17 page)

‘There’s not much more. Rather an odd thing; his wallet wasn’t taken. But the next day a gardener found a jeweller’s box thrown away in one of the flower-beds.’

‘It sounds as though someone thought they were killing him for that emerald. Who would have known about it, Freddy?’

‘Oh, half the world knew he had got it off Abcock. Talk of the town. And then quite a few people in the City would have known that Abcock was raising funds to get it back.’

‘And quite a few people would have known when he succeeded?’

‘Yes. But news takes a day or two to get right round the gossip channels.’

‘So someone might have thought he still had the emerald?’

‘I suppose so. Rather more your sort of thing than mine. Though I think you’d have had to be batty to think a fellow would carry the emerald around with him in his pocket.’

‘I suppose most throttlers could be described as batty,’ said Lord Peter, thoughtfully. ‘Considering that they risk a punishment that perfectly fits the crime.’

‘Must think they can get away with it. And he has got away with it; can’t remember reading about an arrest in that connection.’

The following morning Lord Peter called on his brother-in-law at Scotland Yard.

Commander Parker had a comfortable office these days, with a sideways view of the river through his windows, and when Peter asked about the murder of Captain Rannerson all those years ago he simply rang a bell on his desk, and asked the WPC who appeared to find the files for him.

‘What’s my little sister up to?’ Peter asked him while they waited. ‘She seems never to be at home now all the young are grown and flown. Whenever Harriet or I drop by we find that she’s out.’

‘She’s doing social work, mainly,’ Charles told him. ‘For the Prisoners’ Aid Association. She turns out to be very good at fund-raising.’

‘Yes, I imagine she would be. Still calming her conscience, then?’

‘There’s not a blot on her conscience, as far as I know, Peter. She’s working because she wants to work.’

‘Still expiating the abominable crime of having been born aristocratic and wealthy,’ said Peter.

‘Well, you would know more about that than I do,’ said Charles. ‘But there are plenty of discharged prisoners getting a helping hand just when it hangs in the balance whether they go straight or go wrong again.’

‘I didn’t mean to cast nasturtiums at her work, Charles. It’s an excellent thing to do.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose any of the men and women she has been helping give a damn why she does it,’ said Charles. ‘You should stop psychologising and get out more.’

Peter leaned back in his chair, and regarded his brother-in-law with affection. After all these years of marriage he was still Mary’s ready champion, springing to her defence against the least breath of criticism. And about the crime of being born aristocratic, Charles after all didn’t know where the shoe pinches.

‘Pax, Charles,’ he said softly. ‘Pax.’

And at that moment the WPC reappeared with a thick, dog-eared, rather dusty file, and they could cut to the chase.

They spread out the papers in the folder all over a table under Charles’s office window, and began to read.

There was quite a lot about Captain Rannerson. He was a captain in the Indian Army, who had been home on extended leave. Compassionate leave on account of his father’s illness. Rannerson senior had in fact died a few months before his son was murdered.

‘Better than the other way round,’ said Peter.

There had been no witnesses to the assault, although people were passing along the path beside the lake; the bench on which Captain Rannerson had been seated was, however, in a niche formed by a herbaceous border which had been in full bloom, including foxgloves and delphiniums and other tall flowers which the scene of crime officer had not been able to identify. The detective in charge of the case had quickly decided that the motive was theft, and the object of the theft was to have been the emerald. Batty though it had seemed to Freddy for anyone to think that Rannerson would be carrying the emerald around in his pocket, it seemed that during his brief possession of the jewel he had indeed been doing just that, and whipping it out to show it off to all and sundry in his club, and at cocktail parties. There were several witness statements to that effect.

‘So the murderer was in Rannerson’s social circle,’ said Charles.

‘Oh, maybe. But people talk, especially about a thing like that confounded emerald,’ said Peter.

The jeweller’s box recovered from the flower-bed, and supposed to have been thrown away in disgust by the murderer when it was found to be empty, was gold, embossed with a Fabergé label, but the police had also quickly discovered that the box did not really belong to the jewel. Abcock had borrowed it from his wife for the purpose of consigning the emerald to Rannerson.

A matter of some interest was what the police had discovered about Rannerson’s financial affairs. His need to sell his horse was all too evident; he had a long list of unpaid bills, and he was living far beyond what his captain’s salary could sustain. His father had been supporting him generously, but his father’s money was, like so many other people’s, melting like snow in June as the Stock Exchange staggered to its knees under the blow of the Great Crash.

‘Nothing of much use here, I’m afraid,’ said Charles, beginning to gather up the papers to replace them in the file.

‘Except this, perhaps,’ said Peter, picking up the postmortem report. He had never heard of the doctor who had carried it out, but it was very thorough. There was no doubt of the cause of death, nor any contributory cause; Rannerson had been a well-built, well-muscled man in robust health. He could probably have fought off an assailant who used a scarf or a garrotte. But the assailant had applied pressure simultaneously to the left and right carotid artery, an expert and swiftly effective method.

Charles read over the paper which Peter handed to him.

‘This is very odd, Charles, isn’t it?’ said Peter.

‘Not unheard of,’ said Charles.

‘But the attack was supposedly made from behind,’ said Peter.

‘So it seems; there were depression footprints in the grass behind the bench, where the assailant’s feet had sunk in a bit with the strain of pulling against the victim’s weight.’

‘Well, the famous swift death attack is carried out by putting one’s thumbs on the pressure points of the neck. Fingers and thumbs work as pincers. Can that be done from behind?’

‘Turn around, Peter, and I’ll try,’ said Charles.

Peter spun his chair round, and obediently offered himself as a sacrificial lamb in the name of science. Charles put his thumbs on the nape of Peter’s neck, and pressed lightly with his index fingers on the softly pulsing arteries. ‘It’s not as easy,’ he said.

‘One would need strong hands,’ Peter said, gently removing Charles’s grasp from his neck.

‘Perhaps that would have left the bruises of two fingers each side,’ said Charles.

‘But the report in front of us just says “Bilateral bruising to the neck.” Exact kind and extent of bruising unspecified.’

‘Yes. Peter, I don’t know that anything could be done about any of this now, after so much time.’

‘I imagine this case is on the unsolved murder shelf? I thought you people never gave up on a murder case.’

‘We certainly don’t!’ said Charles emphatically. ‘But that doesn’t mean that we can think of any further measures to be taken. We are just lurking like a cat at a mouse-hole, waiting for something to come out.’

‘And ready to pounce if and when…’

‘Certainly ready to pounce.’

‘Well, in the meantime, can you corral Mary and bring her round to dinner with us? We could have a pleasant evening
à six
.’

‘Wouldn’t there be four of us?’ asked Charles.

‘And the Bunters,’ said Lord Peter, rising to go. ‘There are always Mr and Mrs Bunter.’

‘Another coincidence for you,’ said Lord Peter to his wife, on reaching home. ‘A man is murdered in full daylight in St James’s Park only a day after he has relinquished ownership of the king-stone emerald. The circumstances are curious.’

When Peter had finished an account of them Harriet agreed that they were indeed curious. ‘What’s more, Peter, that’s the second coincidental death, I think. Wasn’t the pawnbroker who had staked for both emeralds in 1921 mown down by a motor car before you appeared to redeem Lord Attenbury’s jewel?’

‘Odd, that,’ Peter agreed.

‘Perhaps more than odd,’ said Harriet. ‘Do you suppose that we shall find another fatality just about the time the emerald was next taken out of the bank?’

‘I am beginning to think that we might,’ said Peter grimly. ‘Time to discover what we can about the 1941 escapade. I think Bunter has charge of all those chits from the bank.’ Peter rang for Bunter, and asked him to produce the papers.

‘It would seem, my lord,’ said Bunter, spreading the documents out on the console table, ‘that Lady Sylvia signed the request to the bank to release the jewel. It was to be handed over to Verity Abcock. And here is that lady’s signature.’

‘Who is Verity?’ asked Harriet.

‘Was,’ said Bunter. ‘Now dead. Here is her signed receipt. You will notice, my lord, my lady, the significance of the date.’

‘I think she was young Abcock’s sister,’ said Peter.

‘I have taken the precaution of consulting
Debrett’s
for you, my lord,’ said Bunter, fetching the stout volume from a side table, and bringing it with a bookmark already in it.

‘Oh, Lord,’ said Peter.

‘What is it?’ asked Harriet, coming to lean over his shoulder at the closely printed page.

But she saw at once. ‘Verity Abcock, b. Dec. 1924, d. 8 March 1941…Daughter of Roland and Sylvia Abcock…educ. Ascot…’

‘So she withdrew the jewel on Wednesday, and died on Saturday of the same week,’ said Harriet.

‘And the jewel was not returned to the bank for a month afterwards,’ said Peter.

‘But the oddest thing of all – doesn’t it strike you, Peter? – is that Lady Sylvia, talking to us about the brouhaha over the purchase of that horse, didn’t mention this at all. Not a word.’

‘I do find that curious, yes,’ said Peter.

Bunter cleared his throat discreetly. ‘Perhaps the whole subject was too painful for her,’ he said.

‘You could be right, Bunter,’ said Peter. ‘She had lost her husband the year before. The loss of her daughter must have been a terrible blow.’

‘She did offer further help if we needed it,’ said Harriet. ‘And we do need her to help, don’t we?’

‘Will you obtain an invitation for us, Bunter?’ said Peter.

Lady Sylvia’s distress was evident immediately Peter asked her about Verity. She went very white, and took a few moments to collect herself to reply. ‘I feel the lack of a daughter every day of my life,’ she said. ‘Of course, I have a dutiful son; but for a woman, to have a daughter…I wish I had had more children, although no child can substitute for another…’

Peter glanced anxiously at Harriet, also a woman without a daughter. Their eyes met, and he saw her tranquil.

‘Could you tell us why she wanted to wear the emerald?’ Harriet asked gently.

‘Oh, it was for a fancy dress party,’ said Lady Sylvia. ‘No, wait, I must tell you more. That girl was having such a dismal time. I thought the war was terrible for young women. No nice dresses, clothing coupons even to buy underwear, all the men away and in danger, nothing nice to eat, blackout all evening every evening; when I compared her life with mine at a similar age, balls and court occasions and lavish dresses, and eager young men paying attention – so deprived. So deprived. But you remember all that. It’s just that when the war started you were already married, I think. Of course she was doing war work. She was with another young woman, a green-grocer’s daughter if you would believe it, but Verity kept telling me the war was a great leveller and a good thing too; and they were driving a van with showers in it, to help bomb victims and rescue workers clean up. Going wherever the trouble had been worst the night before. Once they were nearly blown up themselves when they parked their van next to a collapsed house where the Home Guard were digging people out, and there was an unexploded bomb that went off within yards of them. I asked her over and over to stop; she was looking so drawn and tired. I saw all her young beauty fading before she had a chance…She simply told me she was needed doing a useful job.

‘Well, I mustn’t run on. But you see, when her aunt, my sister-in-law Diana, invited her to a ball, I implored her to go. I have to live with that; she was reluctant, and I implored her to go. First she said she couldn’t because it was fancy dress, and where could we get a costume with a war on? Diana’s friends had wardrobes full of fancy clothes from before the war no doubt, but we hadn’t anything. Then I had a brilliant idea: if she went as an Indian princess, she could wear a sari; and we could easily make her a sari, because I had a bale of a light green silk that had been meant for curtains, and had never been used. She would look lovely in a sari, just lovely, though we had a bit of trouble working out how it should be worn.

‘But I had a friend, Susan, who had been brought up in Bombay, and who had brought her ayah home with her as a family servant, and so we asked advice. And the ayah was so helpful. She showed us how to wear the sari, and she lent Verity a dozen glass bangles for bracelets and showed her how to make a caste mark on her forehead with a dark red lipstick; we were all so happy playing dressing-up together, and forgetting our troubles.