The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (72 page)

“So no theft had been committed?”

“As you have deduced. Count Volpe, I am old and weary. Tired of pretending to something that I know that I cannot have and, frankly, that I do not want to have. My grandfather suffered a mental decline after his exile and took refuge in religion. My father was, all his life, a depressed and gloomy individual, resigned to failure from the years of ill fortune. He became a refugee, dying in Rome with only the Holy Father insisting on addressing him as King of England. My brother, as you well know, ended his life ended his years as a depressive and a drunk. I have found solace in serving Holy Mother Church. I live frugally and in poverty. Why should I keep these remaining baubles of happier times for my family? I will never be, and never want to be, King of England, Scotland or Ireland.”

Volpe waited patiently and then asked: “But the descendants of your family? They might have been entrusted with the jewels?”

“There is no issue after me. My brother had a daughter, illegitimate, who married the Duke of Albany and died the same year as my brother. I am the last of the Stuarts. Let the offspring of the Brunswick-Lúneberg-Celle family keep the throne. After all, they’ve had it for so long I’ll wager no one in England can even remember our family except with bitterness.”

“So I presume that this incident was but a surreptitious handover of these Crown Jewels to . . . ?”

“Let us say that they have been passed on to the nations over which our family once ruled.”

“What will you tell the likes of Glenbuchat? He will be angered at the demise of his cause.”

“He has lived in the past too long. I will make my confession in due course and hope the new Holy Father, once we have elected him, will allow me to retire to Frascati to end my days in peace as a due servant of the Church.”

On 14 March 1800, after three months in conclave in the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, the Cardinals elected Giorgio Barnaba Chiaramonti as Holy Father. He took the name of Pius VII. One of his first acts was to disband the Order of the Noble Knights of Our Lord and replace them with a new unit called the
Guardia Nobile del Corpo di Nostro Signore.
Count Volpe refused to renew his commission and retired to his estates of Ferarra and Imola, south of Venice. In the same year, George William Frederick, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke and Elector of Hanover, agreed to pay to Cardinal York, Bishop of Frascati, a pension of £4,000 for life. The last of the royal Stuarts died at the age of 82 at Frascati on 13 July 1807, and was buried in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

And the mystery of the Stuart Crown Jewels? When the Princess Alexandrina Victoria was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India at Westminster Abbey on 28 June 1838, she wore a newly reworked State Crown. The famous Stuart Sapphire occupied a prominent position on it and today it is one of the two famous sapphires that rest in the collection of the British Crown Jewels.

A
ll that day, the last day of March, the cableway to the top of Table Mountain had operated normally. Every half hour the car on the summit descended, and the car below ascended, both operating on the same endless cable. The entire journey took seven minutes.

Passengers going up or coming down gawked at the magnificent panorama over the head of the blase conductor in each car. In his upper-station cabin the driver of the week, Clobber, hunched conscientiously over his controls during each run, and was usually able to relax for the rest of the half hour.

In the restaurant on the summit, Mrs Orvin worked and chatted and sold curios and postcards and buttered scones, and showed customers how to post their cards in the little box which would ensure their stamps would be canceled with a special Table Mountain franking.

In the box-office at the lower station, the station master, Brander, sold tickets for the journey, and chatted with the conductor who happened to be down at the time, and drank tea.

Then, at 5.30 p.m., the siren moaned its warning that the last trip of the day was about to commence. Into the upper car came the last straggling sightseers, the engineer on duty, Mrs Orvin, and the conductor, Skager. Alone in the lower car was the other conductor, Heston, who would sleep overnight on the summit.

Then two bells rang, and the cars were on their way. For the space of seven minutes Clobber and the Native labourer, Ben, were the only two on top of the mountain. Then the cars docked, and Heston stepped jauntily on to the landing platform.

He joined Clobber, but neither spoke. Their dislike was mutual and obvious. They ate their evening meal in silence.

Clobber picked up a book. Heston took a short walk, and then went to bed.

Some hours later, he woke up. Somewhere in the blackness of the room he could hear Clobber snoring softly.

Heston bared his teeth. Snore now, he thought, snore now. But tomorrow . . .

The night began to grow less black. The stars faded first, then the lights far below in the city also winked out. The east changed colour. The sun rose.

It was tomorrow.

Brander came into the room which housed the lower landing platform, and peered myopically up along the giant stretch of steel rope.

The old Cape Coloured, Piet, was sweeping out the car which had remained overnight at the lower station – the right-hand car. He said: “
Dag
¹
, Baas Brander.”

“Dag
, Piet,” said Brander.

Two thousand feet above, the upper station looked like a doll’s house, perched on the edge of the cliff. The outlines of Table Mountain stood deep-etched by the morning sun. On the flat top of the elevation there was no sign of cloud – the tablecloth, as people in Cape Town call it – and there was no stirring of the air.

Brander thought: Good weather. We will be operating all day.

Piet was sweeping carefully, poking the broom edgeways into the corners of the car. He noticed Brander looking at him, and his old parchment flat-nosed face creased suddenly into a myriad of grins “Baas Dimble is the engineer today,” he said. “The car must be very clean.”

“That’s right, Piet,” said Brander. “Make a good job for Baas Dimble. You still have twenty minutes.”

In the upper station, Clobber settled himself in his chair in the driver’s cabin, and opened the latest issue of
Armchair Scientist.
He had just about enough time, he reckoned, to finish the latest article on the new rocket fuels before the test run at nine-thirty.

Line by line his eyes swallowed words, phrases and sentences. Then, interrupting the even flow of his thoughts, he felt the uneasy consciousness of eyes staring at the back of his neck. He had an annoying mental image of Heston’s thin lips contorting in a sardonic smile.

He turned. It was Heston, but this time his face was unusually serious. “Did I interrupt you?” he asked.

“Oh, go to hell,” said Clobber. He marked the place in his magazine, and put it down. He asked: “Well?”

“I wanted a few words with you,” said Heston.

“If it’s chit-chat you’re after, find someone else.”

Heston looked hurt. “It’s . . . well, it’s rather a personal problem. Do you mind?”

“All right. Go ahead.”

“I’m a bit worried about the trip down.”

“Why? You know as well as I do that nothing can go wrong with the cable.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just . . . Look, Clobber, I don’t want you to think I’m pulling your leg, because I’m really very serious. I don’t think I’m going to get down alive. You see, yesterday was my birthday – I turned thirty-one and it was 31 March – and I had to spend last night up here. Now, I’m not being superstitious or anything, but I’ve been warned that the day after my birthday I’d not be alive if my first trip was from the top to the bottom of the mountain. If I hadn’t forgotten, I’d have changed shifts with someone, but as it is . . .”

“Look here, Heston, if you’re not bluffing, you’re the biggest damned fool—”

“I’m not bluffing, Clobber. I mean it. You see, I haven’t got a relation in the world. If anything does happen, I’d like to see that each of the men gets something of mine as a sort of keepsake. You can have my watch. Dimble gets my binoculars—”

“Sure, sure. And your million-rand bank account goes to Little Orphan Annie. Don’t be a damned fool. Who gave you this idiotic warning, anyway?”

“I had a dream—”

“Get to hell out of here, you little rat! Coming here and—”

“But I mean it, Clobber—”

“Get out! It would be a damned good thing for all of us if you didn’t reach the bottom alive!”

Dimble, neat and officious but friendly, arrived at the lower station wagon, and with him were Skager and Mrs Orvin.

Brander shuffled forward to meet them.

“Nice day,” said Dimble. “What’s your time, Brander? Nine twenty-five? Good, our watches agree. Everything ship-shape here? Fine.”

Skager scratched a pimple on his neck.

Mrs Orvin said: “How’s your hand, Mr Brander?”

The station-master peered below his glasses at his left hand, which was neatly bound with fresh white bandages. “Getting better slowly, thanks. It’s still a little painful. I can’t use it much, yet.”

“Don’t like that Heston,” said Dimble. “Nasty trick he played on you, Brander.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t a trick, Mr Dimble. Perhaps he didn’t know the other end of the iron was hot.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs Orvin. “He probably heated it up, specially. I can believe anything of him. Impertinent, that’s what he is.”

“Even if he did do it,” said Brander, “I can’t bear any hard feelings.”

Dimble said: “You’re a religious man, eh, Brander? All right in its way, but too impractical. No good turning the other cheek to a chap like Heston. Probably give you another clout for good measure. No, I’m different. If he’d done it to me, I’d have my knife into him.”

“He’ll get a knife into him one of these days,” said Skager, darkly. He hesitated. “He’ll be coming down in the first car, won’t he?”

“Yes,” said Brander.

“And it’s just about time,” said Dimble. “We’d better get in our car. After you, Mrs Orvin. So long, Brander.”

“Goodbye, Mr Dimble – Mrs Orvin – Skager.”

Heston came through the door leading to the landing platform at the upper station. In the car, the Native Ben was still sweeping.

“Hurry up, you lazy black swine,” said Heston. “What in hell have you been doing with yourself this morning? It’s almost time to go, and you’re still messing about. Get out of my way.”

The Native looked at him with a snarl. “You mustn’t talk to me like that. I’m not your dog. I’ve been twenty years with this company, and in all that time nobody’s ever spoken to me like that—”

“Then it’s time someone started. Go on-get out!”

Ben muttered: “I’d like to—”

“You’d like to what? Come up behind me when I’m not looking, I suppose? Well, you won’t get much chance for that. And don’t hang around –
voetsak
!”
²

From the driver’s cabin they heard the two sharp bells that indicated that the cars were ready to move. Ben stepped aside. As the upper car began to slide down and away Heston went through the door, up the short flight of stairs and into the driver’s cabin. Ben looked over Clobber’s shoulder at the plate-glass window.

The upper car was then 20 or 30 yards from the station. Both men saw Heston lean over the side of the car, and salute them with an exaggerated sweep of his right arm. Both men muttered under their breath.

As the seconds ticked by, the two cars approached each other in mid-air.

In the ascending car Dimble looked at the one that was descending with a critical eye. Suddenly, he became annoyed. “That fool,” he said. “Look how he’s leaning out over the door. Dangerous . . .”

His voice tailed off. As the cars passed each other, he saw something protruding from Heston’s back – something that gleamed silver for an inch or two, and was surmounted by a handle of bright scarlet. Dimble said: “God!” He reached and jerked the emergency brake. Both cars stopped suddenly, swaying drunkenly over the abyss.

Skager moaned: “He’s not leaning . . .”

Mrs Orvin gulped audibly. “That’s my knife,” she said, “the one he said . . .”