Wimsey 014 - The Attenbury Emeralds

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘You see, Harriet,’ said Peter, ‘that if my life was a stream of meaningless trivia, I was affronting Bunter. He was far too good a fellow to be a servant to a witless fool. I could just about manage to do what Bunter appeared to expect I might do, but I knew, really, that I was frittering both of us.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think Bunter saw it that way,’ said Harriet. ‘I imagine he saw you as a decently useful job. I hope we aren’t making you uncomfortable, Bunter,’ she added.

  ‘Not unusually so, my lady,’ said Bunter gravely.

  His remark brought a brief blush to Harriet’s face. All three of them laughed.

  ‘So as Bunter was saying,’ Peter continued, ‘he and my mother between them – that’s right, isn’t it, Bunter? – were on the lookout for a suitable occasion, a kind of coming-out for me, when I might show my face in public again, and try to behave normally. And they chose the Abcock engagement party. A party to present Lady Charlotte Abcock’s fiancé to Lord Attenbury’s circle.’

  ‘Abcock is the Attenbury family surname, my lady,’ said Bunter helpfully.

  ‘Thank you, Bunter,’ said Harriet. She thought wryly that she would find all that easier to remember and understand if she had ever been able to take it entirely seriously.

  ‘It seemed just the right sort of occasion,’ said Bunter, ‘with only one drawback. It wasn’t very large, but on the other hand large enough to seem like being in society. The Earl of Attenbury’s family were long-established friends of the Wimsey family. The event was not in the shooting season. His lordship had been at school with Lord Abcock – Roland, the Attenburys’ eldest son – and had known the eldest daughter as a girl. Fennybrook Hall, the Attenburys’ seat in Suffolk, was not a taxing journey from London, as I supposed. I thought we would go by train, my lady. I had not anticipated that his lordship would insist on driving us, a circumstance that certainly made the journey memorable.’

  ‘That I can well imagine,’ said Harriet sympathetically. ‘What was the drawback?’

  ‘Oh, just that brother Gerald, and my dear sister-in-law Helen were among the guests,’ said Peter.

  ‘1921,’ said Harriet thoughtfully. ‘Surely Helen was not yet the full-blown Helen of more recent years?’

  ‘Much the same, if a little less strident,’ said Peter.

  ‘In the event, my lady, another drawback emerged when we had already accepted the invitation, and it was too late to withdraw,’ said Bunter. ‘The family decided to get their jewels out of the bank for the occasion, and the press became aware of it. There was a great deal of most unwelcome publicity about it, and it seemed likely that the party would be besieged.’

  ‘I have never been able to see the point of jewels so valuable that they have to be kept in the bank,’ said Harriet.

  ‘The thing about such possessions is that their owners don’t really regard them as personal property,’ said Peter. ‘They are part of the patrimony of the eldest sons. They go with the title, like the estates and family seat. Unlike the estates and the family seat, however, they can be entailed to go down the line of daughters. They are a family responsibility. Nobody wants to be the one during whose tenure they were lost, stolen or strayed.’

  ‘The Attenbury emeralds were, or rather are, in the strict sense heirlooms, my lady,’ said Bunter.

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet doubtfully, ‘but it must greatly limit the enjoyment they can give.’

  ‘You married me wearing Delagardie earrings,’ said Peter mildly.

  ‘That was to please your mother,’ Harriet said. ‘She had been so kind to me; and she thought they would look good with that golden dress.’

  ‘She was right,’ said Peter, smiling.

  ‘My mind was on other things that day,’ said Harriet, ‘but I wouldn’t normally like to wear something that wasn’t really mine, but only on loan from history. It would be like going to the ball in a hired gown.’ Not for the first time she felt thankful that Peter was the younger son. She glanced at the blazing ruby in her engagement ring. That was completely hers.

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Peter, smiling – he must have seen that glance – ‘it lends occasions some éclat when everyone puts on their glory only now and then.’

  ‘Many families solve the difficulty by having paste replicas made for less august occasions,’ said Bunter.

  ‘And the Attenburys had done exactly that,’ said Peter, ‘which added to the complexity. But, Bunter, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Time we took the King of Heart’s advice: begin at the beginning, go on till you get to the end and then stop. That last is the most difficult, isn’t it, Harriet?’

  ‘Rough hewing our ends being easier than divinely shaping them, you mean? We seem to me to be having difficulty beginning at all,’ she said.

  2

  The difficulty beginning at all was greatly increased by the unexpected arrival of the two eldest sons of the house, Bredon Wimsey and Peter Bunter. When Mervyn and Hope Bunter had christened their son ‘Peter’ it had been a conscious tribute, but now that the boy was growing up in the Wimsey household, in a world where distinctions between master and man were increasingly precarious, it had become a source of confusion, and young Peter was known as ‘PB’.

  ‘To what,’ demanded Peter of these two, ‘do we owe the honour of your presence in term-time?’

  ‘Research, Father,’ said Bredon. ‘We were sent to sit in the spectators’ gallery in the House of Commons. To make notes, of course. And we do have permission to stay overnight at home. If it’s all right by you, of course.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Peter.

  ‘Well, the food is pretty foul at school,’ said his son hopefully.

  ‘Very well then. It’s a pleasure to see you both. You may report on your impression of the Mother of Parliaments when we sit down to dinner together. Run along now and find your younger brothers and beat them at ping-pong or something.’

  ‘It’s easy to beat Paul,’ offered Bredon, ‘but little Roger is a demon player.’

  ‘Do your best,’ said Peter. ‘And off you go. The grown-ups are story-telling.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Bredon.

  But they stood in the doorway waiting.

  ‘You too, PB,’ said Bunter.

  ‘Oh, thanks, Dad,’ said PB over his shoulder as the two disappeared down the stairs.

  Harriet said, ‘I really like to see what good friends those two are.’

  ‘Well, effectively they have grown up together,’ said Peter.

  ‘Does that always make friendship?’ asked Harriet. ‘I don’t know. There’s such a lot an only child doesn’t know.’

  ‘Hope and I are very grateful, my lord, my lady,’ said Bunter, ‘that our only son has had the companionship of your sons.’

  The three of them hesitated on the brink of the treacherous social gulf that yawned between them.

  ‘You know that we love him like one of our own,’ said Harriet, full of daring.

  ‘As long as it doesn’t give him ideas,’ said Bunter gruffly.

  ‘I hope it does,’ said Peter. ‘I hope it does. And I hope his ideas make my sons buck up. It’s a changing world now. But we were in the past, weren’t we? Where were we?’

  ‘You were arriving at the Abcock girl’s engagement party,’ prompted Harriet. ‘Can you pick up the thread?’

  ‘We arrived safely, my lady,’ said Bunter, rising to the challenge. ‘His lordship was given a room at the corner of the house, and I was assigned a place below stairs.’

  ‘Do we have to explain to Harriet the layout of the bedrooms?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Perhaps we should first describe the family and the other guests,’ said Bunter.

  ‘Righty-ho. Well, Lord Attenbury was a traditional old stick. About fifty. Honourable to a fault. A bear of very little brain. But Lady Attenbury was cut from another cloth altogether. A graceful and intelligent woman. Kept her brains strictly undercover, brains not being the done thing, you know, but never missed a thing. She was a gr
eat friend of my mother’s, by the way.’

  ‘Was your mother at the party?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘No. She had been invited and declined, all for my sake. One can hardly demonstrate one’s independence while hanging on to Mother, after all. The Attenburys had four children. First a son: Roland, Lord Abcock, remarkably obtuse sort of fellow, but a good sport. I knew Roland well at school: he used to fag for me. Often had to do his prep for him. You could tease him all day long, and he never noticed. He had married his childhood sweetheart, but she wasn’t present. Looking after her sick mother in Wiltshire or something. Then a daughter, Charlotte, the one just recently engaged. Knew nothing much about her really, although I had seen her now and then before the war, when she was much younger. Then a second daughter, the joker in the pack, Diana, who was at finishing school in Switzerland on the occasion of this party. We’ll come to her later. Lastly, quite a bit younger, an after-thought, Ottalie. Sweet little girl in white pinafores with a playmate in residence. That’s the family. Now the guests. Well, I’m blowed if I can remember most of them, but the ones that matter were the ones who had been given rooms in the main wing. Help me out here, Bunter.’

  ‘Captain and Mrs Ansel,’ said Bunter, ‘army friends of Lord Abcock. Mrs and Miss Sylvester-Quicke; Mr Northerby, the lucky fiancé Mr Freddy Arbuthnot; Sir Algernon and Lady Pender; Mrs Ethel DuBerris, a young war widow, and her daughter, Ada, a child about Ottalie’s age. The Duke and Duchess of Denver. And yourself, my lord.’

  ‘The only names I recognise apart from your brother and sister-in-law are dear Freddy and Sylvester-Quicke,’ said Harriet. ‘The dreaded Amaranth. Is that where she first took a shine to you?’

  ‘I suppose it might have been. She was very young, and posing as a blue-stocking. Her mother thought my brains might make me susceptible.’

  ‘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.