Perfect

by Kellogg, Marne Davis

  The Cullinan cleavings—in the gemstone business, cleaving or cleavage is the term used for rough diamonds that have at some time in their history been cleaved from a larger stone—are all numbered: The 530-carat Cullinan I, the Greater Star of Africa, sits atop the royal scepter like a transparent, slightly blue, baseball-sized pear. The Second Star of Africa, the 317.4-carat Cullinan II, is in the imperial state crown, placed there in 1911 by George V for his coronation. And so on and so forth down through the Cullinan number 102, which I must admit I have no idea where it can be found today. Some lesser royal’s lesser brooch, no doubt.

  Queen Mary had power, vision, and a will of iron. In her official Durbar portrait—where she wears the now-missing Cambridge and Delhi Durbar parure—there is no question that she is empress. Although she was petite, she had the attitude of a giant.

  I love to study portraits and photographs of her—I have never seen such a stern, inflexible countenance. And, in the few images where she appears to be trying to smile, it’s clearly such a distasteful, unnecessary, unfamiliar exercise that it’s agonizing to look at—she always looks as though she’s just taken a bite of a pickle. She was aloof and unreadable. Did a real woman’s tender heart beat behind that battleship of a bosom or had the circumstances of her position, duty, and life force it to become as impenetrable as lead at an early age?

  Her family had been publicly humiliated when she was a young woman, just sixteen. Her father, Francis, duke of Teck, and her mother, Princess Mary Adelaide, had lived way beyond their means and were financially supported primarily by Mary Adelaide’s brother, the wealthy duke of Cambridge. At some point, brought on by I don’t know what monetary crisis, the duke of Cambridge had had enough. With Queen Victoria’s full knowledge and support, he demanded that the Tecks give up their “grace and favor” residence at Kensington Palace, publicly auction their furniture, and move to Florence, which they did, and where they managed to survive for a while on a very tight budget.

  I suspect after that, Queen Mary’s only real pleasure came from her jewels; they were her lovers and comforters. They kept her warm on cold nights and secure from revisiting the mortifying, impoverished circumstances she suffered as an impressionable and possibly sensitive young woman. Her jewels gave her power and independence. They would never let her down.

  Queen Mary and I have a lot in common.

  F O U R

  I removed the lid from the stew pot and let a billow of fragrant steam envelop me. I stirred and then tested a piece of lamb, cutting it with the edge of my spoon. It was as soft as butter. I put the lid back on and lowered the heat. I turned the oven to 375 degrees and double-checked that every soufflé ingredient was laid out in proper order.

  There are a number of things you need to know about making a chocolate soufflé. Unless you’re a very gifted cook, you can’t just assume it’s like anything else and jump in and get it together. After years and years of experimenting, and experiencing one version of a flop after another, I now follow exclusively Julia Child’s chocolate soufflé recipe. For me it is foolproof. This is a very different creation from other dessert soufflés because chocolate is heavy—you use potato starch instead of flour to make the roux, three rather than four egg yolks; it will need ten to fifteen minutes longer to bake (up to forty-five minutes); and the temperature of each element must be just right. One more thing: no matter how many times you’ve made a soufflé of any kind, do not talk to anyone while you are preparing it. The steps are easy to do and easy to follow, but they are precise and cannot be shortcut, tinkered with, or relaxed about. Just keep your eye on the target, there will be plenty of time to talk later when you’re all sitting around admiring the airy extravaganza and praising what a genius of a cook you are. I’ve always forced myself to adhere to this rule of total concentration, but today it was a struggle to keep my mind on the subject at hand and from sailing off into one scenario after another of how this person, this footman, could have absconded with such a huge haul from his queen. It was unbelievable.

  I buttered a six-cup soufflé mold and, in another allowance for the properties of chocolate, sprinkled it with flour, not sugar.

  I took a large, sharp knife, slivered three and half ounces of semi-sweet chocolate off a one-pound block, scraped it into the top of a double boiler over scarcely simmering water, and added a little espresso.

  St Moritz. One of the most exclusive, expensive resorts in the world. Thomas obviously didn’t have a clue what he was saying when he said “St. Moritz” and “unlimited budget” in the same sentence. But, then again, if the queen were paying . . . was there something else to this? Something Thomas hasn’t told me? What did he mean when he said he’d performed a number of covert services for the queen over the years?

  I stirred the starch and milk together in a saucepan, added a little sugar, and let them come quickly to the boil. Within seconds it was a thick, gluey mess. I immediately pulled the pan off the heat and beat in the hot, melted chocolate, laid a few pats of butter over the top, and set it aside to cool. Letting this mixture reach close to room temperature is one of the key steps to a successful chocolate soufflé.

  Now for the eggs. Five whites into a large bowl and three yolks into a small one. I threw away the other two yolks. Some cooks keep extra whites and yolks in the freezer for future use, but when I need them, I need them and I can’t use them if they’re frozen, and that’s assuming I even remember they’re in the freezer in the first place.

  A large suite at the Palace Hotel. I have a policy about traveling: I’m not interested in staying anywhere that isn’t nicer than my own home. But from what I’d heard over the years, I was quite sure Badrutt’s Palace would come close.

  The egg whites quickly came together into stiff peaks before I added a little sugar and by then the chocolate batter was cool enough to receive the yolks without cooking them. In they went, whisked until well blended. Then the egg whites folded in delicately. Then the whole affair went into the baker and into the oven.

  I sliced a loaf of bread for the crostini, laid the slices on the grill, and kept a close eye on them while they browned.

  “I thought a nice fat Syrah would be perfect with the ragout,” Thomas interrupted my reverie. He set a bottle of 1999 Chapelle Jaboulet Hermitage on the counter and began to remove the capsule.

  “Absolutely.” I brushed the toasts with olive oil, scrubbed them vigorously with sliced garlic, and sprinkled them with crunchy crystals of Fleur de Sel and ground pepper.

  Well, it can’t hurt to ask a few more questions, can it?

  By the end of lunch, he’d sunk the hook in fast and reeled me in. Thomas can be very persuasive. I agreed to take on the assignment.

  The soufflé was perfect. We ate it in bed with a bottle of Champagne.

  I slept little that night. I focused instead on creating a feasible strategy and scenario, and each time I created a plan, I ran through it from beginning to end, testing every possible angle and pitfall. Many ideas were discarded, but finally, about two-thirty in the morning, all the pieces fell into place and after another couple of hours of testing its merits, I felt confident I had a bulletproof strategy. It would be complicated and possibly even dangerous, but it would work. I got up and made a pot of coffee and sat quietly in the living room, just staring across the now moonlit valley, testing and testing, examining every contingency.

  Pierre, my houseman, arrived at seven to drop off the newspapers, croissant, and baguette. I was already dressed in my favorite pink warm-up suit and soft leather ballet slippers.

  “Pierre,” I said. “I think Monsieur has time to look at the new tractor-mower this morning. Does that suit you?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. I’ll let him know.”

  After breakfast, Thomas and Bijou left for town to pick up the mail and to meet Pierre at the tractor dealer in Salon. They would be gone for at least two hours.

  As soon as his Porsche disappeared down the drive, I went into my bathroom an
d locked the door. I pushed the rug aside and pressed a tiny, invisible button that is flush with the bottom of the window sill. With a scarcely distinguishable click, a panel of floor tiles was released. Beneath it lay a large safe containing my emergency stash—millions of dollars in diamonds and cash, both U.S. dollars and euros, dozens of identities, passports, driver’s licenses, license plates, as well as other critical tools of my trade: my highly prized jeweler’s tools that fit so familiarly and comfortably into my hands, it’s as though they’re physical extensions of myself, night-vision goggles, digital scanners, and indestructible, undetectable space-age-plastic lock-picking sticks, to name a few. I’m slightly ashamed to say I haven’t yet had an opportunity to tell Thomas about this safe or, actually, about any of the secret vaults I’d had built into the structure of the house when I bought it. One day I must. Possibly.

  The section of tile swung aside smoothly and I knelt down on the floor, leaned over, and entered the electronic code. Seconds later, the seal released and the vault opened with a satisfying hiss—the most beautiful sound a jewel thief can hear. A breath of cold, sterile air blew over my face as I hefted up the heavy door and locked it into place, much the way one opens up and secures the bonnet of a car to check the engine. Then I sat back on my heels and ran my eyes across the twelve large safety-deposit-type boxes that were lined up vertically. I removed the boxes one at a time and withdrew what I needed to complete my mission.

  Next, a thick shawl draped around my shoulders, I tiptoed through the melting slush across the gravel stable yard to the garage. I backed my British racing green Jaguar XJ-8 convertible out of its space and then pushed a small button concealed behind the track for the automatic garage door. A large section of floor opened hydraulically, revealing a secret stair that leads to my archives—arguably the most complete library in the world on the subject of jewels, gems, and the people who own them. I quickly located and copied every image and description I had of the missing loot.

  Finally, I went to my main jewelry safe, which is hidden behind the kitchen pantry, and pulled out a few especially impressive wintertime pieces.

  By the time Thomas got home, lunch was on the stove and everything was secure in the false bottoms of my Hermès canvas-and-leather overnight cases.

  F I V E

  “Here’s David’s phone number.” We faced each other in the private compartment of the train. Thomas handed me a slip of paper and an envelope. “I know you haven’t met him, but after twenty years of working together hand in glove, I would—and have—trusted him with my life. If you need anything, anything at all, David will be right there. Please don’t hesitate to call him. He’ll meet you in Zurich—he’s a tall, thin fellow, sandy hair and blue eyes—and will help you make the connection to St. Moritz. He’ll be on your train to St. Moritz, as well. Different compartment, of course.”

  “Thank you, Thomas. That’s very reassuring. It sounds as though you’ve thought of everything.”

  “And this is five thousand pounds’ worth of Swiss francs for you to travel with. You do have the bank card and cell phone I gave you?”

  I nodded and raised a sleeping pill to my lips and swallowed a glass of water. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the back of the door. I was as pale as a ghost.

  “I’m so sorry you don’t feel well, Kick. Please call me as soon as you get to Zurich. I’ll be there tomorrow—I think my flight lands about two—so I’ll be within a stone’s throw of St. Moritz. Now, here’s the phone number of the Baur au Lac in Zurich where I’ll be staying, but you know you can call my cell phone anytime.”

  I tucked the paper into my pocket.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your doing this—if there were any other way to make it work, I would have done it. But you’re the only one who even has a chance of pulling this off.” He checked the tiny bathroom in my train compartment, a stainless-steel work of art when it came to making maximum use of minimal space—there was even a small portholelike window in the shower. “Very nice. I wish I were coming with you.”

  “So do I.”

  The porter had secured my two large Louis Vuitton suitcases in a storage closet. My overnight cases were stacked on one of two overstuffed armchairs that could swivel. The compartment, like the train, was sleek and high-tech. It was paneled in burled walnut and upholstered in brown-and-gold industrial fabric in a flame-stitch pattern. There was a banquette that converted to a bed opposite the armchairs. A shiny chrome vase of yellow rosebuds sat on a table beneath the large window. Outside, the platform bustled with departure preparations.

  “How’s your headache?”

  “Excruciating.”

  “Maybe this will help.” Thomas pulled the semitransparent privacy shades, putting the cabin in pleasurable twilight and blocking prying eyes from outside. “See if you can get some sleep—you’ve got almost seven hours.”

  “I will—I’ll probably be dead to the world before we even leave the station.” I put my hands on his cheeks and looked into his eyes. “I love you, Thomas.”

  “I love you, too, Kick. Thank you again for taking this on.”

  We kissed good-bye.

  “Remember,” he said, standing at the door, “call me anytime you want. Have a safe journey and lock this behind me.”

  He disembarked and stood outside my cabin. I raised the shade enough to wave and blow him a kiss before pulling it back down. I checked my watch. The train didn’t leave for five minutes.

  I dropped the sleeping pill that had been tucked under my pinkie finger back into my pillbox, and while I didn’t think Thomas would come back in, I switched on the radio in the bathroom full blast and closed the bathroom door, just in case. I also laid the cell phone he’d given me on the side of the sink. It was a British government-issued phone and I was quite certain it had a GPS beacon attached to it so he could keep an eye on me and my whereabouts. Then, I turned my black mink coat inside out, converting it to a tan raincoat, tied an uninteresting brown scarf over my hair, grabbed my canvas travel cases, and moved as fast as I could down four cars before sticking my head out the door. Thomas was still there, his back to me, talking on his phone. I put on my dark glasses, stepped off the train, and dashed through the station to the taxi stand.

  “Airport, s’il vous plait. Vîte.”

  The secret of my success is that I have never had a partner, and from the moment I began to contemplate taking on this rescue project, I knew I would do it on my terms and without assistance. I appreciated all the trouble Thomas had gone to, the hotel, the train, the phone, cash and credit card, and even though I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone and trusted him as much as I could—he was still a policeman. If I were going to commit to using my highly developed skills and signature techniques, I wouldn’t dream of putting myself in jeopardy or making myself vulnerable to capture by letting him, or anyone, see into my secret world. My secret world of Swiss bank vaults packed with stones and currency and identities. I could vanish in seconds.

  In fact, I just had.

  S I X

  Thomas and I are grown, well into the second halves of our lives. Neither one of us had been married until a year ago. We were willingly, happily single—both of us spoiled by our independence and richly fulfilled by our careers, not looking to muddle them up with love, especially a love where any sort of compromise or making allowances would be required. I think to both of us, “love” and “entanglement” were synonymous. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a man-hater. I just never had very good luck in the romance department. Actually, I gave up on love when I was fifteen.

  Actually, I gave up on my life as it was when I was fifteen. It was so different from my life today, and I was so different from who I am today. Sometimes when I look back on it, which I seldom do, it all seems like a highly improbable, practically impossible transition.

  My mother, little more than a girl herself, dragged her trailer, with me inside it, around the Oklahoma oil fields and made her livin
g entertaining the roustabouts in the only way she could. I knew that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go—I would never let myself live her life. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw someone special looking back at me. I was going to be somebody. Unfortunately, I got off on the wrong foot, and accidentally ended up pregnant when I was fifteen. So, I did what girls in trouble did in those days, I went off to the Florence Crittenden Home for Girls in Omaha to have the baby.

  I’ll never forget lying there in that clean, crisp, all-white room—having signed the papers to give away my baby, whose face I never even looked at, never even inquired if it was a boy or a girl—that I somehow had the grace to realize and accept that no matter what it took, I had to change. And I was the only one who could make that happen. I realized I couldn’t go much further down, all I could do was go up. I was also aware that no one knew who I was or where I was. I could be anything or anybody I wanted to be. I’d been offered a second chance. I got to start over. I never saw my mother again.

  The Florence Crittenden people—the kindest people I’d ever met in my life—found a room for me in a safe, clean boardinghouse and a job in a department store in Tulsa. The salary was an appropriate wage for a junior clerk, but I was in a hurry. I wasn’t going to get anywhere on $1.65 an hour, minimum wage at that time. So that’s when I started stealing, and before long, I realized I really had a knack for it. I was gifted! I was onto something—not only was I good at it, but the tiny jeweled pieces gave me a wonderful, confident power and an almost erotic pleasure. They provided me with independence and more than doubled my income. Some people search their whole lives for their calling—I’d found mine with little or no effort just by being willing to take a risk, by making the best of a bad situation, by being willing to try to make lemonade from the lemons of my life.