The Wimseys were welcomed in Lady Sylvia Abcock’s establishment, which was a mansion flat in Victoria. There was a servant to open the door to them, and offer tea to Bunter, but the flat was very modest compared to the glories of the past, even of the recent past. The rooms were filled with furniture clearly intended for much larger spaces. Lady Abcock invited them to sit in her capacious sofas and asked for coffee to be brought to them.
‘I know that my son has asked for your help, Lord Peter. I will obviously do all I can, though I cannot imagine what that might be. I am astonished at this whole affair. How can the jewel in the box at the bank not be our jewel?’
‘I thought it might be useful to find out what we can about every movement of the jewel. Brought Harriet along because she’s heard me talk about your family till the cows come home, though it must be a while since there were homing cows in Piccadilly . . .’
‘You are very welcome, Lady Peter. I would be grateful if you would sign your latest book for me. If I can find it, that is . . .’
‘Gladly,’ said Harriet. She got up and moved to the window, contemplating the view of the fake Byzantine cathedral, and then returned and sat down on a chair out of her hostess’s eye-line, leaving the field clear for Peter.
‘Would you like to start by describing to us what was left with your family when the stones were re-mounted for Lady Diana?’ Peter asked.
‘Oh, just the big dull emerald all by itself, and the golden wire thing that let you wear it as a tiara or a necklace. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to wear it without the other stones. They had all the sparkle. So it was just kept in the bank.’
‘Do you by any chance remember why it was taken out in 1929?’ Peter asked.
‘I certainly do!’ said Lady Sylvia, suddenly animated. ‘We were short of cash. Without warning, all the family’s shares were melting away to nothing, and Roland couldn’t use them as security for a certain debt. The stone was taken out to serve as collateral, and buy a bit of time from a creditor. Troubled times, Lord Peter, troubled times.’
‘Indeed they were,’ Peter said. ‘Would you know who the creditor was? And if he retained the stone in his possession for any part of the time it was out of the bank?’
‘It was about a horse,’ she said. ‘Was it a racehorse, or a polo pony? I can’t remember. I’m afraid I have rather a blank spot about horses. I think the story was that Roland promised to buy it as a result of a bet of some kind. Then when he came to sell some shares to find the money, the stock market was falling like a stone. He sold a parcel of shares that should have been enough, but they raised only half of what was needed, and time was running out. Poor Roland, he isn’t here to tell you about it himself. And I’m afraid I’m very cloudy about the details, Peter; I didn’t take much notice at the time, because I was so cross about it.’
‘May I ask you why you were cross?’ asked Peter.
Lady Sylvia paused. Then she said, ‘It was a terrible time to buy a horse; or any other luxury. The world was falling about our ears. If my husband had taken the time to read the newspapers he would have realised. Well, of course he realised, but he somehow contrived to think it couldn’t have anything to do with a family like his. Ours.’ She paused again. ‘Just a few weeks earlier he had told our estate manager that he couldn’t afford to re-roof some of the tenants’ houses. I was angry with him. When I heard about the horse I wasn’t speaking to him for quite a few days. That makes me pretty useless to you now, I’m afraid.’
‘You are putting us in the picture, Lady Sylvia,’ said Peter.
‘Of course, for Roland it was a question of honour,’ she said. ‘If he had promised to buy the horse for a certain sum he had to buy it, whoever the fellow was. He never could get the hang of thrift. He actually told me how cheap it would be to have it, because Charlotte would stable it for him.’
‘Then perhaps Charlotte will be able to tell us some more,’ said Peter brightly. ‘Sign that book, Harriet, and we will leave Lady Sylvia in peace.’
‘Do let me know if there’s anything else I can do,’ Lady Sylvia said.
‘I will, certainly,’ said Peter.
Halfway down the stairs Harriet said, ‘You shouldn’t have reminded me to sign that book, Peter.’
‘Why ever not? Have you suddenly become bashful about your hard-earned glories?’
‘Because it wasn’t hers,’ said Harriet. ‘It was a library copy.’
‘Stroke of luck for the ratepayers of the City of Westminster,’ he said, grinning. ‘Now, when can we go and see Charlie?’
The A4 is a grand road, connecting the glories of London with the glories of Bath. It passes the Royal Courts of Justice, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Nelson’s Column, the National Gallery, the Royal Academy, the Ritz, Harrods, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum before descending through South Kensington to Chiswick and Hounslow. It passed what Peter still called the Great Western Aerodrome and headed out into open country going to Newbury and points beyond, sweeping through the oldest landscape in England, West Kennett and Avebury, before arriving in triumph in the Roman glories of Bath. At Hungerford, however, Peter turned off towards Chilton Foliat, and then towards Lambourn Downs.
Charlotte’s establishment was approached down a long and splendid avenue of mature trees. The carriageway was gravel, heavily grown into by grass and weeds, with two tracks down it made by the wheels of visitors. It mounted a small rise, and offered a sudden prospect of a grandiose and dilapidated Georgian mansion. The frontage was covered with a grey render, now badly cracked, and partly covered with ivy which was beginning to creep on to the window glass. At this point there was a fork in the driveway. The broad way straight ahead towards the house, on which not a pebble of gravel could now be seen for weeds, was marked ‘Horlus Hall’. The turnoff to the right was marked ‘Attenbury Stud Farm’. This led to a fine building in tip-top repair, adjacent to the main house, but which had at first been screened from view by a stand of trees.
It was a very grand stable block, brick-built in lavish style, with a clock tower above the gate to the courtyard. All around the stable, away to the right as far as the eye could see, the landscape was laid out as paddocks between smart painted white rail fences. Harriet had no particular eye for bloodstock but she could see that the animals in the nearer paddocks were handsome creatures with glossy coats, and a delicate way of stepping. They came towards the edge of their grazing area as though expecting carrots.
Peter stopped the car just outside the gate, and tootled the horn. A man appeared in jodhpurs, riding boots and a flat cap, who stared for a moment and then roared, ‘Lord Peter! Damn you, Peter, it’s good to see you! And this will be your lady wife? All these years and you haven’t brought her to see us. Come on, come on, I’ll raise Charlie.’
‘This is Frank Morney, Harriet,’ said Peter. ‘Best trainer in Berkshire.’
‘Not any more,’ said Frank. ‘We raise them for others to train these days.’
Within the stable yard the cobbles were covered with a drift of straw. Horses looked over their half-gates from the stables with long, intelligent faces, making Harriet think simultaneously of Houyhnhnms and Virginia Woolf. There was a smell of straw and manure and leather mingled with the smell of the horses themselves, a pleasant pungency.
Frank led the way across the yard to a door in the corner, behind which was the tack-room, with Charlotte sitting at a desk, grumbling over paperwork.
‘Good God!’ she said, on seeing Peter. ‘However long is it?’
‘Don’t count,’ he said. She got up from her chair, and rated, Harriet noticed, a peck on both cheeks before Peter introduced her.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve come to ride, or to buy,’ she said, having shaken Harriet’s hand. ‘You’d better come through.’
She led the way through a door from the tack-room which led into a sitting-room, with a Victorian cast-iron fireplace, and large chintzy sofas, rather sagging and bulging. There were hunting p
rints on the walls, and the mantelpiece was lavishly adorned with rosettes of coloured ribbon, and a row of silver cups either side of an elaborate carriage clock. At the far end of the room a grand piano was wedged into the corner, with rows of family faces in silver frames standing on it.
‘I see you’ve got your mother’s piano, Charlie,’ said Peter.
‘And not much else, you mean,’ she said drily. ‘And before you ask, the pile next door isn’t ours. Not our responsibility at all, thank God. Owners ran into trouble and had to sell the land. We bought all the paddocks and the stable block, and this cottage. Quite enough for Frank and me. Who wants a stately pile these days?’
‘Not me, certainly,’ said Peter.
Harriet was studying Charlotte during this exchange. She was a tall woman in middle age, with a somewhat manly deportment. Her hair was streaked with grey, and cropped rather short. She was actually wearing a pale pink twin-set, and she certainly still looked more like a girl for pearls than one for emeralds. There was a faint, fleeting likeness to the newly ennobled young Lord Attenbury, so recently seen in the Wimseys’ drawing-room in London.
Ignoring Peter’s placatory remark she went on, ‘I enjoy being a traitor to my class, as you see.’
‘Get off your mounting block, woman, and offer our guests a cup of tea or a tot of something,’ said Frank suddenly. Tea was opted for, and brought out in pretty china, and they all subsided into the saggy sofas, which proved remarkably comfortable despite appearances.
‘So what’s this about, Peter?’ asked Charlie when the tea was poured. ‘Are you after one of Frankie’s hot tips?’
‘I wouldn’t say no,’ said Peter.
‘But actually my nephew has been after you, I suppose.’
‘Yes, he has,’ said Peter. ‘And there is some sort of story about Roland and a horse, and how you were going to stable it for him.’
‘What does it matter now? Roland is dead.’
‘It seems he used the great emerald as collateral on a loan to buy the horse. I just wondered if you knew anything about it. As in who the seller was?’
‘I can tell you his name,’ Charlotte said. ‘But that’s practically all I know about him. Do you want the full story?’
‘Yes please,’ said Peter quietly.
‘Well, Roland used to stable a racehorse here in those days. We kept it in good fettle for him. Decent sort of horse, but not as good as Roland thought it was. He was down here one day with some friends, playing about, riding round our practice track. It was quite a party, because it was my birthday. Ada had brought a cake. All very jolly. And we had some customers there that day too. Including this fellow who had a horse at livery here; a nice little Arab filly called Red Fort who had won some local races for her owner. He was trying to sell her, but he couldn’t get the price he was asking. There was a good deal of ribbing and boasting going on. They had the stable lads all leading the horses out to be looked over, and a couple of our jockeys riding them round the track. Lots of mouth; although Frankie said to me on the side that they didn’t know the shit end from the bridle end. Anyway, Roland got into a tussle with Rannerson over who had the best horse, and offered to lay a bet on his horse against Red Fort. Rannerson said he didn’t believe in betting money, and some of the silly crowd around them were saying that he was just chicken about taking Roland’s bet because he thought he’d lose.
‘Then Roland said, “Tell you what – if your horse beats my horse I’ll buy it from you at your asking price.” He got it out before I could stop him; I thought it was a bad bargain and a damn silly way to buy a horse.’
‘Harriet’s on unfamiliar ground here,’ said Peter. ‘Would you mind explaining why it was a bad bargain, and moreover a silly way to buy a horse?’
‘A bad bargain because Red Fort was too nervy and unpredictable to make a good racehorse. Lots of style, but too much temperament. A silly way to buy a horse’ – here she looked directly at Harriet – ‘because people ought not to buy horses as though they were fast cars or just valuables. They’re not simply horse-flesh, if you see what I mean, Lady Peter; they deserve to be owned by people who can tell them apart and see their virtues. Peter says you don’t know much about horses, but admitting that you don’t is offering them a kind of respect, like admitting that you don’t know much about some human being.’
‘I understand that!’ said Harriet. ‘I can see in that case that you must have been outraged at buying a horse on a bet.’
‘Of course,’ said Charlotte, ‘Roland didn’t mean to buy the horse; he was fool enough to think that his horse would win. Red Fort was standing there, fretting and stamping and bucking a bit, and Little Jim who was in the saddle was having trouble keeping her behind the starting line. When Frank popped the starting pistol she was off. She didn’t so much run as bolt round the course, and Jim was lucky to stay mounted. But she finished first by about three lengths.’
‘Whose horse did you say she was?’ asked Peter.
‘An army chap called Rannerson. Captain Rannerson, and no, Peter, I don’t know what regiment. Pleasant enough fellow, but Frankie didn’t like him.’
‘Why not, Frank?’ asked Peter.
‘Never looked me in the eye,’ said Frank. ‘Makes you feel like a bloody footman when someone does that. You don’t get to be muck by mucking out, Lord Peter.’
‘Of course not,’ said Peter. ‘Is there more to this story of the Captain with the averted gaze?’
‘Well, both horses stayed with us,’ said Charlotte. ‘But then there was huge bother about finding the price for Red Fort. Rannerson had asked a thousand guineas, and Roland went off looking rather glum to raise it. And then the punch line – it was 24th October.’
‘That was dreadful bad luck,’ said Peter. ‘As far as I remember nobody saw the Great Crash coming till it came. Look, Charlotte, I know that Roland used the family emerald as collateral while he tried—’
‘It was awful, Peter. He simply couldn’t bear the disgrace if he hadn’t stood by his word and paid for the horse. He’d made his offer in front of all those friends. And you know what Roland’s fancy friends were; some of them are smooth as cream to your face, and can’t wait to spread bad news about you if they get the chance. Anyway, the stockbrokers couldn’t sell the shares fast enough; all Roland’s money was melting away. In the end he had to ask Rannerson for more time, and Rannerson said he would agree to that if he could have the emerald as a pledge. It took Roland nearly a month to find the cash and get the blasted thing back. And it was ruinous. Most expensive horse in the history of England, I should think. And she never did win a major race. His wife wasn’t very sympathetic. Neither was I. Daddy washed his hands of the whole thing; said Abcock was old enough to get himself out of a scrape he had got himself into.’
‘The thing is,’ said Peter, ‘it would be good to know exactly how the emerald was used. Was it actually handed over to Rannerson?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’m sure it was. I remember a furious family conference in which we were contemplating disaster on another front, if Roland couldn’t get it back, and Rannerson sold it. Scandal; disgrace! You couldn’t sell such a thing in secret. If it had been up to me, mind, I would just have let the damn thing go. It’s been trouble all my life, and none of us likes it. But that was too sensible for my brother. And in the end he did get it back.’
‘What became of Captain Rannerson?’ asked Peter.
‘Search me. He never showed up here again once he no longer owned a horse here. Never met him at a race meeting, or a hunt. Simply vanished. Some of his friends were around for a bit.’
‘Well, I have to ask you, who were they? Anybody special?’
‘Not unless you count that friend of yours – Freddy, Freddy Arbuthnot as special.’
‘Indeed I do! I’ll trot off and talk to Freddy.’
‘Do you want a bit of a canter before you go?’ asked Charlotte. ‘I take it Lady Peter doesn’t ride?’
‘I’d love
to,’ said Peter.
‘I’ll watch,’ said Harriet in the same breath.
So for the next half hour she watched Peter riding a very frisky chestnut mare round the circuit, and although he looked at ease on horseback and she admired him very greatly, she perhaps didn’t sufficiently appreciate his ram-rod back in the saddle, and the slack and easy way in which he managed the reins.
Chapter 14
The moment Peter mentioned Captain Rannerson, Freddy lost his usual urbane and confident manner, and began to look a bit uneasy. ‘What about him?’ he asked.
‘About him and a horse called Red Fort,’ said Peter. They were sitting comfortably in the library of the London house, with coffee and buns on a table before them.
‘Well, I remember the horse all right,’ said Freddy. ‘Your friend Lord Abcock bought it.’
‘And offered the famous emerald as security?’
‘That’s right,’ said Freddy. ‘I know about that because Rannerson asked me to give the thing a look-over to make sure it was kosher. What’s this about, Peter? Whole deal was made and paid long ago.’
‘What was Rannerson like?’
‘Decent enough chap. Well mannered, well dressed. Anyway, I took him round to Hatton Garden to show his booty to a fellow I know. Thing was quite all right.’
‘Had your friend seen it before?’
‘Don’t believe he had, no. But he could tell a fine old emerald from a newer one all right. Anyway, as you know, Peter, Abcock found the money and took his stone back.’
‘Leaving Rannerson with a wad of cash.’
‘I believe so. Poor fellow didn’t enjoy it long enough to spend it, though.’
‘How so?’
‘He got murdered by a pick-pocket the very next day. Just sitting looking at the ducks in St James’s Park. Someone came up behind him and throttled him. I read all about it in the Evening Star. Didn’t you happen to see it, Peter?’
The Attenbury Emeralds Page 13
