by Susan Calder
“Where another servant broke the creamer.”
Florence glared at her. “I don’t like the word servant.”
“Sorry.”
“At the tea the duke presented the duchess with a brooch—the bucking horse or wild stallion or mare or whatever you call it. He’d had it made locally to commemorate their visit to Alberta. The duchess acted delighted but didn’t pin it on her dress right away, like you would a lover’s gift. Later, upstairs, the duchess asked Willie to help her pack the suitcase she’d brought for the day. A duchess doesn’t pack her own things, and she wouldn’t want the clumsy one who broke the creamer helping. During the packing, though, she was called away, and she left the brooch lying beside a paper and pen. Willie drew a picture of the brooch so she’d remember it later.”
“Was Willie that artistic?”
“Did I say she drew it? I meant photographed,” Florence said. “You asked if Willie had a camera. She took a castoff Brownie to the ranch to take pictures of the foothills.”
A pair of cyclists whizzed past. Florence waited for them to disappear from sight. The sun beating on this exposed cliff prompted Paula to roll her sleeves up to her elbows.
“When she got home,” Florence continued, “Willie had a jeweller make a replica of the brooch. Of course, she couldn’t afford real gems, but she thought it a nice souvenir. People always want remembrances of their trips.”
“She had the sugar bowl from the duchess.”
“Do you buy only one souvenir per holiday?”
“According to Brendan, she called her costume brooch The Treasure.”
“Treasures aren’t always about monetary value. I told you Caspar’s treasures—”
“Brendan remembered it catching the light far better than the brooch Johnny found.”
“Who hasn’t gone back to something from childhood and been disillusioned?” Florence glared at a grey-haired couple approaching their viewpoint.
During her summer holidays at her grandparents’ farm, Paula, her brother and her cousins had played pirates in the Secret Cave, far from the prying eyes of adults, they had thought. When she returned to the farm as an adult, she was startled and disappointed to find the cave visible from her grandparents’ home. Had her grandfather chopped down trees between the house and Secret Cave? He wasn’t alive to say, but an uncle couldn’t recall him or anyone doing this.
The man and woman stopped beside them and raved about today’s blue sky. Florence pushed Paula toward the promontory’s southern end that overlooked the zoo, its animals concealed by trees.
“You didn’t drag me all the way over here to tell me Willie made a copy of the Duchess of Windsor’s brooch,” Paula said. “She stole it.”
“You and your police friends can talk to anyone Willie or Hans worked for during their sixty years of cleaning homes. Many are still alive, highly successful and respected. Every last one of them will tell you the Beckers were honest to the core, Caspar and me, too. We had a sterling reputation with not one spot of tarnish.”
It might not only be Willie’s reputation Florence wanted to protect. “I’m going to tell the police that Willie stole the brooch. They’ll pursue my hunch.”
“The cops can pester me all they wish. I don’t have to talk to them. It’s my right.”
“Did you learn that from the prominent man you’re seeing?”
Florence balled her hands into fists. Paula leaped sideways onto the grass to avoid being decked. Instead of punching her, Florence shot daggers at the older couple strolling by.
“I’m sorry for saying that,” Paula told her. “Why am I apologizing? You’re lying to me and refusing to cooperate with the police on a case of possible murder. The truth might be the only thing that can save your son.”
“That’s melodramatic.”
“When it comes to melodrama, you and Johnny are the queen and king, or, at least, the duchess and duke.” She giggled. From nervousness? Frustration? “So what if Willie stole one object in the course of a long, unblemished career? We’re all entitled to one mistake. Nobody will hold it against her. She’s dead and can’t be charged. Becker Family Cleaners is history. This won’t affect the business.”
“It would affect the memories. One mistake leads people to suspect there were others.”
“Who cares what people think, especially the snooty and rich?” This should reach Florence’s thinking. “The Duchess of Windsor didn’t appreciate the brooch. Did she deserve it more than Willie, who worked hard all her life? The duchess was a parasite and not a nice person, by most accounts. People would applaud Willie for stealing from her. Someone might write a story about this and make Willie the heroine.”
“They won’t, since she didn’t steal and I don’t want you spouting your suspicions to Cynthia and Brendan. Cynthia would think it a hoot and tell her son and daughter, who would lose all respect for their great-grandmother.” Florence stuck her thumbs in her jeans pockets. “What if you had done something unethical in your insurance job, like taken a kickback from someone for a claim payment they didn’t deserve?”
“I’d never do that.”
“What if you did in one moment of temptation? Would you want your daughters, grandchildren and everyone you’d ever worked with knowing about it?”
Paula couldn’t imagine herself slipping, but who was she to think herself above temptation? She would want her image preserved when, like Willie, she was no longer here to explain. Florence had a point.
“Life and death are more important,” Paula said. “If you think Johnny’s in serious trouble—”
“You made your choice.”
“I did?”
“When you refused to….”
Swear on her daughter’s life. Such oaths were magical thinking. Leah wouldn’t die if Paula broke her word. Thank heavens Florence didn’t know Paula had a second daughter, or she might want her to swear away both lives.
Florence stared over Paula’s shoulder. “There’s a rabbit.”
The hare hopped through prairie grass. For Florence to come this close to opening up, she must feel desperate and be grasping for Paula’s help in a way that didn’t involve the police. Who else knew the secret? Willie’s husband, Hans? Caspar? His brother, Kurt? All dead. Had Willie sold the original brooch and pocketed…how much? Over a million dollars? Added to their savings she and Hans would have had more than enough to buy their valuable property, renovate it and give Kurt his inheritance in cash.
Did Paula need to learn more from Florence? Mike could work on Paula’s hunch that Wilhelmina stole the original and Florence knew about the crime. Could Florence be charged for this? Paula would find that unfair when Florence had risked all by revealing this much.
“All right, I’ll swear,” Paula said.
Florence’s narrow eyes studied her face. “On your daughter’s life?
“I promise not to tell anyone.” Paula forced her gaze not to waver.
“Including the police?”
“Yes.”
“Say the whole thing, with your daughter’s name.”
Paula took a breath. “I swear on my daughter Leah’s life that I won’t tell anyone what Florence reveals to me.” Saying it felt more awful than she’d thought. Now she knew why swearing on bibles had meaning. Well, she was committed and hoped the information was irrelevant so she wouldn’t have to renege on her oath for a greater purpose.
A group of teenagers sauntered by, tossing a football between each other.
“Why are there so many people out?” Florence asked.
“There’s hardly anyone.”
Florence looked around to make sure no soul was approaching from any side, checked each direction again and fixed her gaze on the pathway. “I’d seen that brooch in Willie’s apartment for years. She’d told me it was a typical castoff gift from an employer. Most trinkets she got like that she sold for ten or twenty dollars. The ones she liked best she kept in her sewing machine drawer.”
“That antique one
blocking the entry to the kitchen?”
“It used to be in the alcove where Willie mended clothes. The year before she died, after Hans was gone, she sat me and Caspar down in her living room. She had the brooch out that day and started telling us how she’d really acquired it. Our mouths dropped. Willie hadn’t told anyone else, not even Hans. She wanted us to know so we wouldn’t sell it cheap after she died. Much of what I told you before was true. The duke presented the brooch to the duchess at that tea party. She asked Willie upstairs to help her pack. Willie noticed the brooch lying on the dresser and offered to pin it on her coat.”
Florence paused to let a young man and woman pushing a baby stroller pass. Paula rubbed her forearms, which were goose bumped despite the afternoon heat.
“To her astonishment,” Florence said, “the duchess scorned her offer, saying something like, ‘Why would I wear a thing that reminds me of this backward place?’ I thought about telling you Mrs. Simpson gave Willie the brooch she didn’t want, but who’d believe she’d give a valuable item to a servant who’d only worked for her one day? The Duchess of Windsor wasn’t known for her generosity. People say she treated the duke like a child and he enjoyed that. Willie wondered if she was punishing him for something.”
“Like dragging her to the middle of nowhere?” Paula said.
“While they were packing, someone called the duchess out of the bedroom. The beautiful, rejected brooch lay on the dresser. Willie stashed it her apron pocket. It was spontaneous. She’d hardly known she’d done it when it was there. She remembered thinking, at the time: here’s this woman with masses of jewellery, and now she’s got another piece she’ll never wear or look twice at again.”
Paula followed Florence’s gaze to a man reading the signs about the history of Tom Campbell’s Hill.
“Willie took a terrible risk.” Florence lowered her voice. “What if the duchess had changed her mind when she returned to the room? Or the duke pleased her the next day in Calgary and she’d wanted to wear it for him, discovered it missing and traced the loss back to Willie. The duchess and duke left Canada, and Willie didn’t hear a word about the brooch after that. Her regular employers, who were friends of the duke, didn’t gossip about it having disappeared, and she never read about any theft in the newspaper.”
“It must have been stressful to live with that worry,” Paula said. “You’d think, at some point, the duchess would have noticed it gone. There might be reports of her collecting the insurance.”
“I think the duchess forgot about the brooch and never gave it another thought.”
“Wouldn’t she be interested in its value and try to sell it at some point?”
“Who knows how those people think? Willie told us that her idea, after she took the brooch, was to use the money from it to buy the house she always wanted. Then she realized the brooch was one of a kind and would be recognized as belonging to the famous duchess. How could Willie explain how it came into her possession?”
Below them, a C-Train left the zoo station and sped west.
“She couldn’t,” Florence said. “Willie didn’t dare take the chance. So she held on to it, thinking someone down the line in the family would benefit.”
“Are you saying that after Willie died Caspar had a copy made and sold the original?”
“No.” Florence stepped back, in apparent shock at the notion. “But he was curious about its worth and took it to a jeweller for an appraisal. The man told him it was a fake. Caspar and I didn’t know what to think. Why would Willie make up a story that made her look bad?”
“Or did she have a costume copy made and sell the original?”
“Where was all the money from it?”
“She bought a pretty expensive house.”
“The company profits paid for it,” Florence said. “She and Hans had to wait for over forty years and a real estate crash to afford it.”
“What about the cash they gave Kurt for his share of the inheritance?”
“The company paid for that, too. I know because I did the books.”
“The parents must have been awfully frugal.”
“What did they need to spend money on?”
“Could Willie have had a secret bank account?”
“Wouldn’t it have turned up by now?”
“She might have let the hot jewel go for considerably less than it was worth,” Paula suggested. “The crook who fenced it would take advantage of her fear of discovery.”
“All Caspar and I could think of was that someone had taken the original from Willie’s sewing machine and replaced it with a copy. But who would have done that, and when? It could have been anytime between 1950, when Willie got the brooch, and a few years ago, when Caspar discovered the loss.”
“But more likely in the last twenty or so years, if Brendan’s memory of the more beautiful stones he saw as a child was accurate.”
“I wouldn’t trust what he says about that.”
A woman with three miniature schnauzers paused to let the dogs sniff the grass. When they didn’t move on, Florence nudged Paula along the gravel path to the east side of the park. They looked out to the zoo parking lot and cars zooming along Deerfoot Trail.
Florence did another survey of the area to make sure no one was in hearing range. “Caspar thinks—thought—Brendan was the most likely. The thievery stopped two years ago, right after he went away to university.”
“There were other thefts?”
“Caspar bought jewellery now and then at estate sales. I don’t know why, since he didn’t think of reselling them. He was like Willie in that he liked to look at them sparkling. After Caspar discovered the brooch was fake, he had his own pieces examined. All of them fakes. But he knew those ones he’d bought were real since they came with papers.”
“Someone had taken the originals and had copies made, as they’d done with the brooch?”
“One item substituted was a bracelet Caspar bought shortly after Willie’s death, so we knew the thefts were going on then. A few months after Brendan left for school, Caspar bought a necklace at an estate sale and set it in the sewing machine as a trap. The thief didn’t bite.”
“So Caspar wrote the holograph will to exclude Brendan from his estate?”
“I knew nothing about that will until you found it in the wardrobe. If Caspar wanted to disinherit Brendan, why didn’t he do it directly? Why leave the property to me?”
“To be indirect and not accuse Brendan openly?”
“That would be Caspar.” Florence nodded. “Neither of us wanted Brendan to go to jail. He’s family. Caspar said it was natural for a boy to be tempted by valuables, but Brendan needed to know he’d done wrong. Caspar’s solution must have been the new will.”
“Rather than confront Brendan?”
“Caspar hated conflict. It wasn’t my place in the family to push him into an unpleasant position with Brendan.”
“Brendan certainly got the message in the will. He felt right away he was Caspar’s target.”
“I disagreed with Caspar about Brendan being the thief,” Florence said. “To my thinking, the obvious one was Kurt.”
“Your ex-husband? Caspar’s own brother?”
“Kurt was always running up bills for his failed businesses. Why not pawn a piece of jewellery to bail himself out until the next time and then pawn another jewel? Kurt was alive at the time of the last known theft. He died only a year before Brendan left for school.
“Did you suggest Kurt as the suspect to Caspar?”
“Caspar refused to believe his brother would steal from the family,” Florence said. “He could be naive about people, but maybe my suggestion of Kurt cast doubts in Caspar’s mind. I think he left me the property because he wasn’t sure if the thief was Brendan or not. He wanted me to sit on it until I figured that out.”
“And then do what?”
“Nothing, until I’m certain.”
“If you were to die today—I don’t mean to be morbid.”
> “Don’t be coy about dying. Any of us could go like that.” Florence snapped her fingers.
“Do you have a will?”
“Everything goes to Cynthia and Johnny. That’s why I have to figure it out as soon as I can, to do right by Brendan.”
“Would you leave him a third if he’s innocent?”
“Caspar entrusted me.”
“I’ve had the sense you don’t care for Brendan much.”
“I didn’t like how Caspar and Willie favoured him over my children, but to disinherit him if he doesn’t deserve it would be like…like stealing from the family. Or you blabbing this to the cops when you swore on your daughter’s life.”
“I don’t know what I can do with this information on my own.”
“That’s your problem.”
“Why tell me but tie my hands?”
“Who else is there, when I can’t go to the police?”
“I doubt they’d charge you for your knowledge of Willie’s theft. What she told you is hearsay. The original brooch has vanished and can’t be produced as evidence against her.”
Florence folded her arms. “I will not soil Willie’s reputation.”
There was no point arguing around that circle.
“For all we know, Johnny is already dead.” Florence’s arms dropped to her sides.
“Why do you think that? What did he say he was going to do? I can’t help if you won’t tell me everything.”
“Remember your oath.” Florence edged forward on the path. “Brendan and Cynthia will be wondering what’s taking us so long. We’ve got to go pick up some groceries.”
Chapter Thirty
The detour to the convenience store struck Paula as needlessly dramatic. Brendan was too absorbed in his yard sale and Cynthia too absorbed in herself to care if Florence and Paula returned with groceries from their alleged shopping trip.
“Cereal,” Florence said as they approached the store. “It’s bulky, light and keeps forever.”
“And it was Caspar’s food staple,” Paula said.
In the cereal aisle they grabbed armloads of the healthier varieties. The sales clerk rang up their order with indifference to the unusual purchase. He didn’t appear to recognize Florence.
