The Attenbury Emeralds (3 page)

‘The word posing is harsh, Peter.’

‘Accurate. Now where were we?’

‘With a catalogue of guests. I observe that you have a problem familiar to novelists. A large cast list to be introduced to the audience, and no reason why they should wish to know or remember any of it until the story starts.’

‘It starts slowly, my lady,’ said Bunter, ‘with arriving at our rooms. There was, of course, a servants’ wing, and as I said a room had been assigned to me there. But it was a long way from the room allocated to his lordship. I was unhappy about being out of call; naturally there were bells in the servants’ wing, one for each room in the main house, but they would serve to summon somebody, most likely one of the house servants, not me. I therefore discreetly removed the sheets and blankets from the bed in the room I had been given, and made up the couch in the dressing-room opening from Lord Peter’s room. We did not want to draw attention in any way to this arrangement. The whole experiment would be negated if anyone observed an undue dependence on his lordship’s part. I persuaded the housemaid for the room not to mention this below stairs. That was quite easy, because the servants’ hall was in a state of sullen resentment about the presence of the police. The young woman had been annoyed by Inspector Sugg, who had told her to report anything unusual to him. She was very eager to disoblige him.’

‘Inspector Sugg!’ exclaimed Harriet.

‘Yes, that was the first time we encountered him,’ said Peter. ‘He was in charge of a posse of policemen who were staking out the house and grounds in case of trouble over the emeralds. Attenbury had hired them for the purpose – that wouldn’t have been unusual.

‘At dinner the first night the party had not yet completely assembled, although Mr Northerby was present, and paying very conspicuous attentions to Charlotte Abcock,’ said Peter.

‘So were these attentions welcome?’ she asked.

‘Seemed to be,’ said Peter. ‘Yes, I thought so. Rather charming show, really. Stung me a bit, at the time. Green-eyed monster stuff.’

‘You fancied Charlotte yourself?’

‘Not specifically Charlotte. Just the general picture of love returned, and no war looming to spoil the prospect.’

So it was about Barbara, Harriet realised. She who had jilted Peter while he was away fighting. These emeralds really were a dangerous subject. Too late to avoid them now.

‘In the morning all the men went riding, or playing a round of golf at a course a little distance off. I decided on browsing in the library. Attenbury had a famous collection of old atlases and naval books I thought I’d like a peek at. Wonderful room, designed by Inigo Jones. So I was the only man around when the mysterious visitor showed up.’

‘A plot thickens at last,’ said Harriet. ‘Who was the mysterious visitor?’

‘Called himself Nandine Osmanthus, and presented himself as an emissary from the Maharaja of Sinorabad. Said he had urgent business with Lord Attenbury. Lady Attenbury had him shown into the library with a request that I would entertain him until her husband returned. He was quite jolly company, actually. Very suave and confident. Wellington and Sandhurst. Didn’t blink an eyelid when I couldn’t find Sinorabad on the atlas I had open on the table. Though since it was a Mercator from 1569 I couldn’t claim it was definitive. Although he was mysterious, and quite unexpected, he wasn’t suspicious. Or I didn’t think so at the time. He told me quite openly what his business was. His Maharaja owned a spectacular Mughal jewel, a carved emerald which had once been part of a necklace. The present Maharaja’s grandfather had sold a number of jewels to fund relief in a famine eighty years before, including the emerald that they thought must be the one now owned by the Attenbury family, and the Maharaja would now like to buy it back. Nandine Osmanthus had been sent to compare the jewel they had retained with the one in the Attenbury emeralds, to establish whether they were from the same bauble in origin.

‘“How is the comparison to be made?”’ I asked him.

‘“I understand the Attenbury emeralds are to be worn in public for the first time in many years,” said he.

‘“Well, not in public,” said I. “This is a party for the family and their guests.”’ It was beginning to occur to me that perhaps the policemen shouldn’t have let him in.

‘“I shall not intrude in private festivities,” said Osmanthus, “but if the jewels are in the house, the comparison is as easy as this.” And he took out of his waistcoat pocket a silk handkerchief, and unfolded it on the table. And there was an almighty great emerald, before my very eyes.’

‘You’ve got me hooked, Peter,’ said Harriet. ‘What was it like?’

‘Strange,’ said Peter. ‘Huge. Nearly an inch square – well, like a square with the corners off, and quite thick, about as thick as two sovereigns. Very dark. And carved intaglio with a flower and twining leaves. The thing is, Harriet, emeralds are very difficult to carve. They are very hard, and very frangible. That’s why they are usually table-cut rather than rose-cut, to protect them against knocks when being worn. An intricately carved emerald is a masterpiece. Beauty draws us – I reached out a hand towards it…“You may hold it,” said Nandine Osmanthus. I picked it up and felt the heft of it in my hand. I held it up between finger and thumb against the light. It was translucent. Not sparkling, you understand, but holding the deepest possible green lights, like a dark, clear river. Green as a dream and deep as death. I turned it over, and the back was inscribed in an oriental script, in exquisite fine calligraphy.

‘“The Koran?” I asked my companion.

‘“As it happens, no,” he replied. “It is a quotation from the Persian poet, Hafez. Well, what do you think of it, Lord Wimsey?”

‘“It is very beautiful,” I told him. “And daunting. But you said it was a Mughal jewel? With a Persian inscription?”

‘“It was made for Akbar,” he said, with a note of reverence in his voice. “And Akbar had a Persian mother. From her he must have known of the Persian poets. This inscription is in Arabic script, and in the Persian tongue. I can read it to you.”

‘He intoned the words – you know what it’s like, Harriet, to hear the sound of poetry in an unknown tongue. Very impressive and mysterious.

‘“When did the jewels come into the possession of your Maharaja?” I asked him.

‘“Long ago. They should not have been divided.”

‘“Didn’t you say it was done for the relief of a famine? An act of mercy?”

‘“Even a virtuous action may be regretted when its consequences are seen,” said Osmanthus. “Those who were fed are dead now. Now it seems right to try to reunite the stones.”

‘“Well, I wish you luck,” I said. “But I shouldn’t think for a minute Lord Attenbury will wish to part with something that has now been in his family for several generations.” I was thinking that by this man’s account the thing had been sold, not looted or prised from its owner as tribute. Attenbury owned it with a clear conscience.’

‘It was no moonstone, you mean,’ said Harriet.

‘Exactly. Not a curse about it anywhere. And yet…’

‘Yet?’

‘There was certainly charisma about it. I was longing to hold it when he gave me permission, and I was reluctant to put it down.’

‘Did you see it, Bunter? Did it have this effect on you?’ asked Harriet.

‘I did not see the one that Mr Osmanthus brought to the house, my lady. But I was very struck by his lordship’s account of it. Very struck, and concerned.’

‘You were concerned, Bunter?’ asked Peter. ‘Why exactly? Did you say so at the time?’

‘I imagine not, my lord,’ said Bunter.

‘Can you explain now?’ asked Harriet.

‘A small object of very great value is a responsibility, my lady. And the servants in a household carry a large share of that responsibility. They are in the limelight as soon as anything goes wrong.’

‘Suspected, you mean?’

‘I do. A lady’s maid has access to her jewel box. To her secrets. It goes with the job. A manservant knows where keys are kept, and what is worth locking up, in the eyes of his employers, at least.’

‘So if a policeman like Sugg comes along, and asks who could have stolen a gem of great price, and the answer is that one of the servants could, then that is often enough for him. Off with her head! Or off with her to jail anyway,’ said Peter. ‘The very trust that has been reposed in a servant can be held against her. Or him.

‘So by and by the riders and golfers returned to the house, and Lord Attenbury appeared in the library, still in riding gear, to see what was what. Nandine Osmanthus repeated his request. He would be infinitely grateful if it were possible to put his stone down beside the Attenbury emeralds, and see if they were alike. Attenbury took it rather well, although I saw his eyebrows go up. “I don’t see any problem with that,” he said, “do you, Wimsey?” I didn’t actually like to say, “Not as long as you watch him like a hawk.” Not with the man standing there. But I promised myself I would be the hawk in question. Just in case.

‘“However,” said Attenbury, “the jewels are not in the house yet. We are expecting Mr Whitehead from the bank to bring them at about four. Look here, I suppose it wouldn’t do to compare yours with the paste copy? That would be easiest, don’t you think?”

‘“Unfortunately there is the matter of the inscription on the back,” said Nandine Osmanthus. “I doubt if that could have been carved into a paste copy.”

‘“Stuff on the back?” said Attenbury. “Didn’t know that.”

‘Osmanthus produced his stone again, and Attenbury said, “Good lord! Haven’t a clue whether ours has a scrawl on it like that. I suppose you’d like to wait and see the real one?”

‘“I would be obliged to your lordship if you would allow that,” said Osmanthus.

‘I could see that Attenbury was in an agony of indecision about something, and indeed, he said, “A word with you, Wimsey,” and drew me away to the other end of the library.

‘“Dammit,” he said,
sotto voce
, “do I have to ask the fellow to lunch? What will the others think?”

‘And I’m afraid I didn’t know what to say. I could have said, “There were brave Indian soldiers fighting with us in the trenches.” I could have said, “Ask him to lunch by all means. Your guests in your house must accept anyone you have invited.” What I did say was, “That would be kind of you.” What Attenbury did was to have a lunch laid for Osmanthus in a little breakfast-room, where he would eat alone. The official guests sat down to lunch together in glory. Well, in the kind of glory represented by white linen and family silver. Even so, one of them remarked on having seen “one of our black brethren” walking on the terrace. I ate up my potted shrimps and lamb chops, and removed myself for a toddle around the grounds. Lady Attenbury was keen on gardens, and had had Gertrude Jekyll laying them out for her. Charming.

‘It was there among the lilies and roses that I hit the first difficulty of the weekend. I had a little set-to with Mrs DuBerris, or, rather, I was set upon by her. I rounded a large bush and found her seated in a little bower made of a bench and boughs. She was very tense; fists clenched in her lap, and sitting bolt upright. “May I join you?” says I, trying, don’t you know, to be civil in a normal sort of way.

‘“If you must,” says she.

‘Well, I didn’t know what to do. I was thunderstruck, so I just stood there like a great big ninny. It seemed as though I would offend her if I did sit down, and would insult her if I just walked away. Not the sort of dilemma I had any practice at back then. After a brief interval she said, “Well, make up your mind then, poor Major Wimsey. And don’t expect any sympathy from me. Every single nurse who volunteered for war service saw worse things than you did, and had to deal with them too. I don’t recall a single woman getting shell shock as you please to call it, and footling around being feeble and needing sympathy.” She spoke with great bitterness in her tone. And of course she floored me, because I thought exactly that myself; that the state I was in was a form of unmanly weakness, of which I ought to have been ashamed. And it hadn’t escaped me that her emphasis on “
poor
Major Wimsey” sounded like a quotation from somebody else; I was excruciated by the thought that I had been talked about with that form of compassion that is indistinguishable from contempt.

‘I just stood on, rooted to the spot. I only needed a coat of whitewash to have served as a piece of garden statuary. I didn’t answer her. And then I was rescued. Lady Attenbury appeared, with a trug of cut flowers over her arm and a pair of secateurs in her hand, seemingly from behind a large rose bush just behind the bower. She put her arm through mine, and walked me away briskly down the path away from the house, without a word spoken to Mrs DuBerris.

‘“Peter, I’m so sorry,” she said to me as soon as we were safely out of earshot.

‘“Not your fault,” I managed to say.

‘We walked a little further. “You might be wondering why I invited her,” Lady Attenbury said. “Not quite our sort of person.”

‘“It’s not for me…”

‘“She is a sad case,” Lady Attenbury continued. “She was indeed a brave volunteer nurse. She encountered my nephew, William DuBerris, when he was lying horribly wounded in a field hospital, and accompanied him on a hospital train to a town behind the lines. He recovered enough to be escorted home, but before he reached England he had married her. His family refused to accept her, and disinherited him. He died a few months later in poverty, leaving his wife to bring up their daughter – little Ada, whom you might have seen playing with Ottalie. He left his wife only a few bits and pieces, and she is struggling.”

‘“And you don’t feel inclined to follow the family line?” I said.

‘“My brother deems her a fortune-hunter who took advantage of his son. But I think my nephew might genuinely have loved her. She is a handsome enough woman of some education. Isn’t it perfectly possible?”

‘“It might be hard to distinguish love from gratitude and dependency in that situation,” I told her. “But there is nothing criminal about gratitude.”

‘“In any case,” she said, “Ada is my great-niece. I am entitled to take an interest.”

‘“Rather hard luck when your lame ducks start pecking each other,” I said.