The Missing Diamond Murder

by Diane Janes

  ‘Yes. It’s up here.’

  Imogen continued to follow the steep little path until it met another one, which though a little wider, was still far too rough for a wheelchair. Then Fran remembered that the person Imogen had heard had not been pushing a wheelchair. If it was ‘the villain’ as her young companion liked to phrase it, then by the time he or she had been heard by Imogen, the deed must have already been done, and of course it made perfect sense to leave the scene of the crime by a slightly different route, where the trees and bushes grew more thickly and there was less chance of being seen.

  ‘Does this path lead back in the direction of the house?’ asked Fran.

  ‘If you keep going along here, it brings you to the rockery above the kitchens – you can just walk down some steps and you’re at the kitchen door. Or if you carry on along the right fork, you can go in a big circle, through the woods and back round to the cliffs, or you can take the left-hand path that’s a bit blocked by a big, dead tree trunk and that will take you on to the path that runs alongside the back lane. There’s heaps of ways to go. It would be very easy to get lost, if you didn’t know your way. I always know where I am. I’m like an Indian tracker.’

  ‘Well, that’s lucky for me,’ said Fran.

  ‘Here we are,’ Imogen announced. ‘This is the place. I know it was this bush I hid in because there’s a silver birch opposite and it’s the only one on this path.’

  Fran glanced to her right and saw the tree which the girl was indicating, at the opposite side of the path. The bush where Imogen had hidden was actually a large rhododendron, already showing an array of buds which promised an abundant flowering later in the year.

  ‘Do you think you could manage to show me how you were hiding that day, without getting yourself too muddy?’

  ‘Of course.’ Imogen needed no further bidding, but scrambled in behind the twisted lower branches and shiny dark green leaves.

  ‘Now,’ said Fran. ‘We are going to try a detective experiment. I am going to walk away down the path and then I’m going to come back and walk past your bush. I want you to keep hidden, exactly as you did that afternoon, and listen very carefully so that you can decide if the footsteps sounded like mine or not. Do you understand?’

  ‘All right.’ The girl’s voice emerged clearly from her hidey-hole. ‘I’m ready.’

  Fran headed back the way she had come for a few yards and then returned. Looking straight into the bush, she was soon able to make out the colour of Imogen’s coat and hat. But then I know she’s in there, Fran thought. I probably wouldn’t have noticed her if I hadn’t been looking on purpose.

  ‘Now then,’ she said, having returned to her original position and assisted Imogen in the act of dusting a few dead leaves and some strands of dry grass from her clothing. ‘Do you think my feet made the same sort of noise as the feet you heard that afternoon?’

  ‘The feet I heard were a bit quicker, I think. And the person might have been bigger, because they made more noise.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Imogen, that is excellent remembering,’ said Fran.

  ‘Now I have to show you the grotto.’ Imogen was hurrying ahead again and just as before, she made an abrupt deviation from the main path, in order to climb an even steeper one, which ran off to their right.

  ‘Gosh,’ said Fran. ‘Don’t go too fast. Don’t forget I need Dr Imogen, my Indian tracker, to guide me safely through the woods.’

  To her relief, however, the path climbed only a short distance before it came to a halt in front of what could best be described as an artificial cave, built from large boulders, so that it affected to be part of the natural hillside. Fran judged it to have been constructed at the same time as the clifftop shelter, where she and Tom had waited in the rain. The chief architect of the gardens and grounds at Sunnyside House was evidently fond of these little resting points and follies.

  ‘This is where I found the treasure.’ Imogen waved a proprietorial hand at the structure rather as if she had conjured it into being herself. ‘Would you like to see?’

  ‘See where you found it?’

  ‘No, silly. See the treasure itself.’

  ‘But it isn’t still here, is it? Didn’t you take it back to the house?’

  ‘I did, when I first found it,’ Imogen said. ‘I hid it in my tin box in the schoolroom. But at Christmas time, I wanted to make a treasure hunt for everyone else to do, so I brought it out here and hid it again in the place where I’d first found it. Only no one wanted to do an outside treasure hunt at Christmas. Instead we had lots of games and things indoors and I forgot all about it. I was meaning to bring it back inside again, but I kept on forgetting – and then I thought I might as well leave it here until it’s warm enough for outdoor games again.’

  As she was speaking, Imogen led the way into the grotto and Fran followed her, then watched as the girl reached up to the point where the sloping roof met the back wall. There was evidently a narrow, hidden ledge there, for Imogen produced from the shadows a small black velvet bag. Fran gave a gasp as she realized, without a shadow of a doubt, what the bag contained.

  TWENTY-TWO

  At the outset of her return journey, Fran had been fortunate enough to get a compartment to herself and as the train steamed steadily north and east, away from Devon, she gazed out of the window with unseeing eyes, picturing the expressions of astonishment when she had entered the drawing room the afternoon before and produced the missing diamond from behind her back.

  Henrietta had gasped in wonder and clapped her hands together, like someone who has just witnessed a baffling magic trick. Roly jumped to his feet and insisted on pumping her hand up and down, as one might on encountering a winning sportsman or a famous military hero.

  ‘I knew it!’ Edie had exclaimed. ‘I knew you’d solve it. Fran is an absolute genius, didn’t I say so from the very first?’

  Fran’s protestations that she had virtually found the gem by accident were waved away by all the family except Mellie, who on learning the circumstances of the discovery had immediately stated her conviction that she’d always known ‘that wretched girl would be involved in it somehow. I expect she took it and hid it there herself, to play a trick on us all.’

  However, Mellie had quickly put aside her dire suspicions regarding her husband’s youngest cousin, eager as she was to drop the broadest of hints about some news of her own. ‘Don’t you think,’ she asked Roly, ‘that the terrific news we had confirmed today and the discovery of the diamond are somehow linked? If we have a girl, perhaps we ought to call her Diamond.’

  Roly winced slightly. ‘That sort of thing might do for the Cunards, my sweet, but I’m not sure that it’s quite the thing for the Edgertons.’

  ‘I’m sure it would be OK,’ Henrietta said, somewhat mischievously. ‘She would be called Di, for short, so people who weren’t in the know would think it was a perfectly normal name, like Diana.’

  Eddie had still been full of praise for Fran when he drove her to the station next day. ‘You know,’ he said. ‘I half think that you had solved the mystery ages ago and simply waited to produce your rabbit out of a hat on the very last evening, in order to create the maximum sensation.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Fran said quickly. ‘I would never do anything like that, I assure you.’

  ‘To think that you have managed to solve the whole thing in only seven days. You really are a marvel, you know.’

  ‘But I haven’t really solved the whole thing, have I?’ said Fran. ‘There is still the question of how the diamond came to be in the grotto in the first place, to say nothing of how your grandfather met his death.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Eddie had said, sounding rather more sober. ‘In all the excitement last night, I think everyone forgot about those aspects of it.’

  Though Fran had tried to insist it was unnecessary, Eddie had waited with her on the platform and seen her on to the train, catching hold of her hand at the last minute and saying, ‘You can’t imagine how mu
ch I long to kiss you goodbye.’

  ‘Eddie, please,’ she had lowered her voice, which was entirely pointless, given the amount of noise the engine was making. The Edgertons were so fearfully modern and unconventional that she was momentarily fearful he might put desire into action, which would be horribly embarrassing, as respectable people did not go about canoodling in public places – not even if they were married to one another – and certainly not if they were potentially under observation by that terrible unseen entity the King’s Proctor. (Mo was right – the name did put one in mind of an unpleasant medical procedure).

  ‘You will think about what I’ve said, won’t you?’ His eyes were full of such undisguised adoration that it was impossible to remain unmoved.

  ‘Of course,’ she’d said. ‘I’m thinking about it all the time, only … only … I can’t rush into anything. You do understand, don’t you, that I am still legally married to someone else?’

  ‘I’m willing to wait.’

  ‘All aboard.’ The railway official who doubled up as guard and porter was moving along the platform, slamming carriage doors.

  ‘I have to go.’

  He released her hand and she withdrew into the compartment, where she remained at the window, smiling and waving to him until the moving train took her out of sight.

  ‘Tickets, please!’ Her reverie was interrupted as the compartment door slid open and the train guard held out an expectant hand, while she fumbled in her handbag, blushing for no reason at all.

  I’m such an idiot, she thought. I could blush for England if we were fielding a team.

  When the guard had examined her ticket, clipped a small square gap in one side of it, and gone on his way, she turned her thoughts back to the discovery of the diamond and how it impacted on the mystery of old Mr Edgerton’s fall from the cliffs.

  Unlike Mellie, Fran did not subscribe to the theory that Imogen herself had been responsible for the initial presence of the diamond in the grotto. To begin with, the child apparently had no conception of the item’s value or significance. On their walk back to the house, once Fran had successfully bargained with Imogen, persuading her to trade the little black bag and what it contained for a necklace of glass beads – a bargain which pleased Imogen considerably as she considered the original treasure to be ‘just a sparkly stone’ which wasn’t nearly so much use to her as a pretty necklace would be – Fran had elicited a few further details regarding the location of the find.

  Yes, Imogen had said, everyone would know about the little ledge at the back of the grotto, because it had been a regular place for leaving clues, messages and occasionally treasure – except of course that there had been no further treasure hunts or games which involved the grotto since the one which she assumed her grandfather had been organizing on the day he died.

  And yet, Fran thought, ‘everyone’ in this context probably did not include the servants, or the gardeners, or indeed anyone else who had never participated in these family games. She herself would not have suspected the existence of the hiding pace, if Imogen had not led her to it. What was more, the grotto itself was in an out of the way place, reached by a narrow path which seemed unlikely to attract the attentions of any unauthorized explorers looking for a shortcut to the sea.

  When talking with the family that evening, Fran had established that no one had thought to look in the grotto during their initial searches for the diamond (though, of course, the diamond would not have been there in any case, as Imogen had temporarily removed it) and also that nothing as valuable as the diamond would normally have been used in a family treasure hunt.

  ‘Crumbs, no!’ Henrietta had laughed at the suggestion. ‘It was usually sweets or the sort of token trinkets one gets in a Christmas cracker.’

  ‘You did say that your grandfather was becoming a little bit confused towards the end of his life …’

  Henrietta had only looked even more doubtful. ‘I’m not sure he was ever that confused,’ she’d said.

  In the general euphoria over the recovery of the diamond, nothing had really been said about continuing to explore the question of old Mr Edgerton’s death. Fran sensed that both Roly’s mother and Mellie would now be perfectly happy to let the matter drop. The possibility of murder, which had been suggested by a potential theft, now appeared to have receded from everyone’s minds, and with the diamond found, why rake up some sort of scandal, when the matter had long since been put to bed as an unfortunate accident?

  On the other hand, no one had specifically forbidden her to carry on the investigation. And once we get started on something, Fran thought, we don’t stop, even when we’re told to. We? Well yes, in the past it had always been ‘we’. Herself and Tom and darling Mo, of course, who had generally managed to help in some inadvertent way or another. If only Mo hadn’t gone off to see Terence in Malaya.

  It was dangerous to initiate contact with Tom. She could not forget that wretched anonymous letter, attempting to suggest that she had an ulterior motive for wanting to divorce her husband. Until she received her decree absolute, there always remained a possibility that her petition might be denied, on the grounds that her own conduct had been just as bad as her estranged husband’s. Oh, it was so ridiculous and unfair! Michael and Winnie’s child must be due at any time, which was surely tangible evidence of his culpability in the matter. Damn the King’s Proctor and the nasty minded suspicions of mean old judges. Had any of them the slightest idea of how difficult it was to keep unwarranted suspicions at bay? She had travelled the length of the country to avoid Tom and he had turned up anyway, on the hunt for cauliflowers, so he said. And what would these spiteful arbiters of private morality make of the admission that she had been alone on at least a dozen occasions with Eddie Edgerton, during which she had allowed him to kiss her and get as far as proposing marriage? Was any of this her fault? And anyway, what of it? It was 1930 not 1830!

  So drat them all, she had written Tom a note, suggesting that if he wanted to return the book she had loaned him in Liverpool, and it happened to be convenient, then he would be able to catch her in the station refreshment rooms when she was changing trains at New Street.

  TWENTY-THREE

  It was crowded in the refreshment rooms, but Tom had already secured a table and was waiting for her. He stood up as soon as he saw her approaching, doffed his hat and pulled out a chair for her.

  ‘It’s counter service, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘What can I get you? The teacakes are unexpectedly good. A generous size and plenty of fruit.’

  ‘Just tea will be lovely, thank you.’

  When he returned, carrying a cup and saucer in each hand, he asked a little anxiously, ‘Is everything all right? You’re not in any danger, are you?’

  ‘Goodness, no. I just wanted to bring you up to date and talk things over with you.’

  ‘But I thought you said we weren’t to meet one another?’

  ‘This is just a brief stop for a cup of tea and the exchange of a book in a completely public place,’ Fran said. ‘I really don’t see how somewhere as utterly unromantic as the refreshment rooms of a railway station could possibly be interpreted as an improper meeting. Who ever heard of anything romantic happening in a station refreshment room?’ As she spoke she glanced around, taking in the woman who was dispensing stewed tea from a huge metal urn on the counter and the variety of travellers, sitting at the surrounding tables, some consuming the ubiquitous ham sandwiches or rock buns which were always to be had in such places, others stringing out a solitary cup of tea, glancing every now and then at their watches or at the huge black-and-white clock which hung on the wall behind the counter, above the shelves and shelves of crockery.

  ‘Unlike a clifftop shelter,’ Tom agreed. ‘I’m sorry about that. It was entirely my fault. Anyway, you’ve got something exciting to tell me about. I can see it in your face.’

  ‘I’ve found the diamond. Well, no, to be absolutely honest, it simply fell into my lap in an entirely unexpected way.’<
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  After a single exclamation of surprise and congratulation, Tom listened intently, only occasionally interrupting with a quick question as Fran brought him completely up to date.

  ‘So,’ he said eventually, ‘there is just the possibility that the old man really had lost the plot.’

  ‘What do you mean? Why?’

  ‘Well, he could have hidden the diamond there as Imogen thought he had, then become confused about his direction and pushed himself over the cliffs.’

  ‘Not a chance,’ said Fran emphatically. ‘I’ve thought that through and absolutely dismissed it. If we can be sure of anything, it’s that the one person who certainly did not put the diamond on that ledge was old Mr Edgerton. He couldn’t have reached up to the ledge from his wheelchair, and even if he could have stood up momentarily to do it, he would never have got that far in the first place, because the path to the grotto is far too steep and narrow. I’ve looked at the place from all angles and there’s no way it is accessible for anyone in a wheelchair.’

  ‘I see.’ Tom was silent for a moment, revising his mental picture of events. ‘I suppose we can’t be sure that the diamond and the death are linked at all.’

  ‘No, strictly speaking we can’t. We know that the diamond was discovered by Imogen on the same afternoon that her grandfather died, which is suggestive, but that doesn’t mean it was definitely put there that day.’

  ‘But you’ve also got the fact that Imogen heard someone walking along the path, coming from the direction of the cliffs, back towards the house and not so very far from the grotto. Someone whose feet sounded a little bit louder than yours.’

  ‘We have to be careful not to read too much into that,’ Fran said. ‘First of all, we’re expecting her to compare two sounds she heard months and months apart, and secondly, the path may have sounded different in the summer. There had been a long dry spell in the summer, but it had rained quite a bit around the time when I walked along it. That might make a difference. It’s only a beaten earth path.’