The Jewel Box (13 page)

After replacing the receiver, Grace called Margaret into her office, closed the door and, without quite looking her in the eye, told her about the rumor, ending with, “I can’t go so you’ll have to go in my place and take notes. That is, if there’s anything worth taking note of. Then I’ll write it up.”

Margaret’s face wore an odd, fixed grimace.

“Well?” Grace tapped her desk agitatedly with the end of a pencil.

“I’d love to go, of course. I’d give my teeth to be there, if I’m honest—the whole lot of them.”

“There won’t be any need for that.”

“But…” She frowned and pushed her glasses up her nose.

“But what?”

Another adjustment of the glasses. “I think it’s wrong for you to let personal reasons get in the way of your going along this evening and writing a good piece about it.”

“I
beg
your pardon? There are no ‘personal’ reasons. I simply have another engagement.”

“You’ve been told to cover Dexter O’Connell’s first public reading in five years, and you’ve got ‘another engagement’? I’d be delighted and honored to go to the reading, and thank you for the invitation. But the fact is you should be there, too. If you’re serious about your writing, you won’t let anything get in the way of that—least of all some trivial slight.”

The pencil broke in Grace’s hands.

Piccadilly Circus on a sunny Thursday evening. Frisky dresses in bright colors, short enough to show calves and, in some cases, knees. Cloche hats, headbands, sporty spectator shoes. White scarves, starched shirts, enough hair oil to grease the length of Regent Street. Bobs of varying quality. Giggles. Gossip:

“He did.”

“He never.”

“He
did
.”

“He
never
.”

A drunk lurches off the pavement, a Bentley swerves to avoid him and a Citroën plows into its side. Honking horns.

“You bloody idiot!”

The drunk staggers on.

Over by the Piccadilly Restaurant, a hot-tempered spat is coming close to fists.

“He’s not worth it, William.”

“He
is
worth it.”

Two red-faced boys dragged apart by their girls.

“I could’ve killed him, Agnes, if you’d only let me.”

“You kill my brother and I’ll kill
you
.”

A girl with long ginger hair and a hat with an unfashionably wide brim walks practically under the feet of the ranting boy, so that he turns and shouts, “You ought to look where you’re going, miss.”

The girl and her friend slip off around the corner to Orange Street. To Ciro’s nightclub, which has opened its doors two hours earlier than normal.

Inside Ciro’s, a crowd was gathering. A very untypical crowd for this venue. Mismatched and out of context, like a box of odd shoes at a jumble sale. As they milled about, buying drinks at the bar and peering at the fixtures and fittings, waiters were setting up rows of folding chairs on the glass dance floor. A lectern had been placed on the little stage.

“It’s true, then.” Margaret was hugging her copy of
The Vision
.

“We’ll see.” Grace was fussing with the long ginger wig and
hat she was wearing. The brim was pulled so low over her eyes that she could barely see.

Half past eight. Many had taken seats, though some lingered at the bar, where business was brisk. Nobody looked confident. Everyone seemed to be eavesdropping on each other:

“Jones had it on good authority. He’s reliable, Jones is.”

“Cynthia told me about it. She’s a librarian. She knows about these things. Literature and all that.”

Margaret pointed at a couple of empty chairs. “Let’s sit down before the seats are all taken.”

Grace kept catching sight of her reflection in the shining glass and metal around them. The wig was ludicrous. She swore under her breath.

Nine o’clock. The conversation had died down into nothing. The crowd was restless.

“Do you think he’s going to turn up?” Margaret’s face was a mess of hope and dismay.

“Don’t ask me. My instincts about O’Connell have been worse than useless so far.”

Margaret gazed agitatedly about. “
Surely
he must be coming. Why would they have opened up the club if he wasn’t? Why would they have put all these chairs out, and the lectern?”

“Maybe they simply heard the rumor, like the rest of us, and thought it was worth a punt on the off chance. They’re selling plenty of drinks, after all. Sisley, the manager, is conspicuously absent. Oh!”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Grace tugged at her hat brim and slid down farther on her seat. She’d spotted someone she’d rather not have to speak to. What was
he
doing
here
of all places…?

As the minutes passed, the tension in the room spooled out into a taut, thin thread. At half past nine, the thread broke. Muttered complaints grew louder. People shrugged and shook their heads and got up to leave. Waiters began stacking chairs and moving them out.

Grace felt quietly satisfied. In the faces all around her, she saw reflected the disappointment and anger she’d been feeling with O’Connell for over a week. It was a sort of vindication. Positively cheery, she turned to Margaret. “I’m heading off to the Tutankhamun on the Strand. Do you want to come?”

Margaret shook her head. “I’ll stay on here a bit longer. Just in case.”

The Tutankhamun Club was styled as a grand Egyptian palace: all marble columns and murals showing pyramids and slaves and nobles with huge eyes standing side-on. There were masks, statues and jeweled scarabs which Grace knew to be genuine ancient artifacts shipped over from Egypt. Waiters, clad in gold loincloths, carried drink trays high above their heads. Women in white robes fanned the guests with purple plumes and palm fronds. The dance orchestra wore black wigs and makeup.

Grace (having discarded the wig and hat) was greeted by Monique, the manageress, a great precipice of a woman wearing a lot of lace. They’d barely begun speaking when there was a whoop of “Darling! How marvelous!”—and she was being kissed on both cheeks and guided off to the best table by the effusive owner, Sheridan Hamilton-Shapcott, a man so stick thin that even the most expensive of Savile Row suits hung off him like a sack. (Really, he and Monique looked most peculiar side by side. Barely the same species.)

“Dwinks, dwinks.” Sheridan clapped his hands at a waiter.
“Gwace, you’re to twy my new cocktail, the Luxor Lizard. I concocted it myself so I can assure you of its deliciosity, and bla bla.”

“What’s in it?”

“Twy and you will know.” This was Sheridan’s motto. It was hung above the bar, inscribed in characters reminiscent of hieroglyphics. Grace had heard a rumor that he had it hanging over his bed, too.

The golden drink had a honeyed, golden taste. “It’s yummy. Is it dreadfully potent?”

“Don’t be so suspicious.” He crossed his legs and frowned at her, a frown exaggerated by the Egyptian-style kohl all around his doe eyes. “Wemember to be nice, Gwace. I’m still cwoss with you for not coming here sooner. You—my oldest fwiend, and I’ve been open over a month!”

“I thought perhaps I should let you get properly started before I came in to distract you. Let you get your feet under the table, so to speak.” This was almost the truth. She knew Sheridan too well to have wanted to be there on those first nights. Indeed, stories quickly reached her of his foolishness in letting the staff help themselves to free drinks—encouraging them even, for fun. The result was mayhem. On the third night someone had called the police in, and it was all Sheridan could do to keep the place open. The chaos ended only with Monique’s arrival. She’d run bars and clubs for years and quickly knocked the Tutankhamun into shape, tolerating no nonsense from her supposed boss, a self-confessed nightclub virgin.

Sheridan had inherited the Shapcott Brewery and Distillery from his late father, Edward, but had failed to acquire the great man’s drive and work ethic. His fluttering-butterfly
attention span (hailing, along with his doe-eyed foppery, from his late mother, Amelia) did not mix well with the world of business, and he quickly passed all onerous responsibility over to his father’s long-term deputy, the better to devote his time and energy to his evolving hobbies. And “evolving” really was the right term: It had all begun, before his father’s death, with a brief stint studying ancient history at Cambridge. While there, he had fallen in with a group of archaeologists, who had persuaded him to drop out, join up with their forthcoming Egyptian venture and provide all funding. Shapcott Senior, keeper of the purse, had fallen in with the plan on being promised by his son that archaeology, and not ancient history, was “the thing.” The Shapcotts’ old friends Catherine and Harold Rutherford backed up Amelia’s view that “the boy will settle back to his studies once he’s got it out of his system.” In fact, Edward wasn’t at all bothered about the university degree. He could understand why a man might want to go digging about in foreign countries unearthing treasures. The desire to sit about in libraries reading dusty volumes, on the other hand, was a far less tangible one—and it was good to think of his son finally getting his hands dirty.

In the event, Sheridan fell in love with Egypt but not with archaeology. The pyramids were truly magnificent, and it was heavenly to float down the Nile on a lovely boat. Why would one want to spend all one’s time grubbing about in the hot sun? One had simply to grease the right palms to get hold of the most fabulous treasures and ship them home, where one kept them as trophies or sold them.

It was around this time—as the family home began to fill with amulets and sarcophagi—that the disgruntled and tubercular Edward departed the corporeal plain while gazing confusedly at the mask of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of
cemeteries and embalming, which had mysteriously appeared on his bedroom wall.

Not long after his father’s death, Sheridan was contacted by Cecile Joubet, a Parisian costumier, who wrote to request permission to view the famed Egyptian collection, and to make free use of its motifs, colors and “spirit” in the creation of a fashion line for the House of Myrbor. Watching this tiny, passionate French girl running her hands over his bronzes, staring intently at his hieroglyphic slabs and holding his jewels up so that the light shone through them, Sheridan was reminded strongly of Cleopatra herself. One month later, he was married to Miss Joubet and utterly in thrall to her world of Egyptian-influenced fashion and interior design.

The present phase of Sheridan’s existence, as the new owner of the Tutankhamun, came about after the untimely and abrupt end of his marriage. Cecile, when finished with Egypt, moved on to Orientalism and a passion for a French university professor with an expansive collection of Chinese objets d’art.

“The girl had no staying power,” Sheridan moaned as he slumped on the zinc bar at the Coyote Club in Paris. “Changes her men along with her hemlines.”

“Courage,
mon ami.
” Monique, manageress of the Coyote, patted him on the back and handed him another drink. “All you need is a project—something to help you forget the girl. What you lack is a dream to follow. Now me—I have the dream but no means of making it real. We can help each other.
Vous comprenez?
”

“She’s tewwibly cwoss with me.” Sheridan jerked a thumb in the direction of Monique, who was back at the door, greeting newcomers. “Would you help me talk her wound?”

“What’s she cross about?”

“Oh, she’s always cwoss.” Sheridan rolled his eyes. “You know who she weminds me of? That old nanny of mine. The cwotchety Iwish one. You wemember? She beat me with a poker, you know.”

“Monique?”

“The Iwish nanny. Oh, you wemember her, Gwace. Big warty nose and bla bla.”

“Yes.” She could see them all as children, playing together: Sheridan, Nancy and herself, while their parents ate dinner and talked about grown-up things downstairs. Sheridan had always preferred it at the Rutherfords’ because of their more amenable nanny and also the dolls’ tea set. He’d not been allowed one of his own, being a boy. She and Nancy had liked having him about. Being a few years younger than them, he’d been quite easy to order around. That was the only real change in him: the fact that these days he didn’t allow anybody to order him around. Except Monique, perhaps. In all other respects, he was just the same as when he was a little boy. “Funny,” said Grace after a moment. “I remember your nanny pretty well but I don’t remember the warty nose.”

He flapped a hand. “Well, perhaps that was poetic license. She jolly well
should
have had a warty nose. Anyway, I think it’s the snakes.”

“Snakes?”

“The weason Monique’s cwoss with me. I met this old snake charmer chappy, used to twavel with one of the big circuses. Gave me a vewwy good pwice on a couple of pythons. Big ones, you know. I thought they could lounge about the place, dwape themselves awound the artifacts. Exotic atmosphere and bla bla.”

“
Sheridan!
No wonder Monique’s cross with you! I tell you something, if you start draping snakes about this club, you won’t catch me in here again.”

“Spoilsport. You’re as bad as Monique. They don’t bite—pythons. They can’t even squeeze much if you dwug them. That’s what the chappy said. You just dwug the blighters.”

Grace had spotted someone. “Margaret! Over here!”

Sheridan tutted. “Darling, what are you about, dwagging such a dwab personage into my club? She has the look of a secwetawy. Vamoose her, if you please, and I’ll see you later.”

With that he was off, leaving Grace slightly indignant on Margaret’s behalf.

“Dwink? I mean, drink?” she asked as Margaret, rather breathless, took Sheridan’s place.

Margaret shook her head. “I’m not staying. It’s getting late. Work tomorrow and all that. Just had to come and tell you what happened.”

“Well?”

A sly smile. “He was there among the crowd. I spotted him. He was wearing a fake beard and mustache, but it didn’t fool
me
.”

“Really?”

“I went up and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Mr. O’Connell,’ I said. ‘Would you kindly sign my book?’”