11 Harrowhouse

by Gerald A. Browne

  Maren needn’t have been concerned, for when it came to business Wildenstein was a man of few words. Chesser found him on the second floor of his workshop, sitting on a blue enameled stool beneath a glaring, bare light bulb. He was reading a Hebrew newspaper and sucking the juice from the core of an apple he’d just eaten. He remained seated when he saw Chesser, and, while Chesser introduced himself, Wildenstein calmly folded the newspaper and slid it into his coat pocket. He asked to see the diamond.

  He examined the stone under the illumination of a Diamondlite, which provided an artificial light equivalent to northern exposure on a clear day. He studied it for five minutes without saying a word.

  “A beauty, isn’t it?” asked Chesser.

  Wildenstein merely nodded. He placed the diamond on a nearby counter surface.

  Chesser brought out a certified check for one hundred thousand dollars. He placed it next to the stone on the counter surface. Wildenstein looked at it. He picked up the diamond and placed it on top of the check.

  “Very beautiful,” said Wildenstein. However, Chesser didn’t know whether he meant the diamond or the check.

  “It has to be finished by the first of next month,” said Chesser.

  “Three weeks,” said Wildenstein.

  “Does it have enough depth for an oval?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Whatever is best.”

  Wildenstein scratched the side of his nose. He blinked several times, as though to clear his eyes. He squeezed the fingers of his left hand with those of his right. He returned to his stool and sat. Out came the newspaper.

  Chesser had hoped for more enthusiasm, at least more discussion. He wanted to hear Wildenstein say the stone was going to cut into the most exquisite jewel he’d ever touched. But, evidently, all that was going to be said had been said. Except good-bye. Chesser said that, along with a reminder that he would return on the first.

  As he was leaving, Chesser felt the need to turn for a final look at Wildenstein. When he did, he found the old cutter’s eyes were on him.

  “Don’t worry,” advised Wildenstein, and resumed his reading, right to left.

  During the next three weeks, Chesser thought as little as possible about the diamond. At times he was almost able to forget it completely. The town of Chantilly, old and small and easy, made that other world of Meechams and Masseys seem no more than a residue of memory.

  Maren’s house was not in the town proper but a short distance out, situated on its own private acres of land off the north road to Senlis. Jean Marc had left other houses to Maren. Those in Paris, Antibes, and Deauville, for instance, were larger and more luxurious. However, whenever Maren mentioned home, Chesser knew she meant the house at Chantilly. Built in the late seventeenth century as a royal hunting lodge, the house was actually used by certain members of the royal court less for the pursuit of game than for personal fun and games. Accordingly, what they in their style categorized as a lodge was by no means rustic. Rather, the structure had the pleasing lines and proportions of a relatively small château, and its twenty rooms were planned and decorated in a manner that verified its hypothetical purpose without sacrificing any creature comforts.

  It was not difficult to picture the past: the carriages arriving from Paris with the necessary provisions, which were, of course, the most desirable choices of the court. Some of these young ladies had already been measured and found to be of adequate spirit. The others were indeed ready to experience initiation. All anticipated the delights of the chase. On the first pleasant afternoon, according to the rules, the pretty young things were sent scurrying into the woods in various directions, disrobing as they ran, leaving a trail of silks and laces and linens for the royal hunters. High hairpieces were knocked awry by low-hanging branches. Dainty slippers were left in the crotches of trees. Stockings streamed from the tips of saplings. And when the last, the most intimate of their female attire was left to mark the way, they themselves prevented the possibility of escape by revealing their locations with little cries of despair. Finally, feigning fatigue, each collapsed upon some carefully selected bed of moss or leaves, and waited to be overtaken. The stalkers were soon upon their quarry, whose ecstatic shrieks often frightened away such guileless creatures as birds, rabbits, and, sometimes, a doe.

  Maren contended that some of these merrymakers still inhabited the house and its grounds. In their spiritual forms, of course. She claimed she could literally feel their presence. Once she found a length of pink ribbon in the woods and considered it to be a supernatural confirmation. The girls were still playing around, she claimed.

  It was a provocative thought, that those lovely libertines and their gallant counterparts were scampering about the place. Certainly the premise was inspiring enough to make one want to believe. It didn’t matter, really, that the ribbon found by Maren had actually been left there unintentionally just a few days before by a young girl of the town, who, while lovemaking, had released her long hair to please her partner. Maren did not know that, and even if she had, she would have said the girl had been prompted by the pervasive spirits.

  Maren called London and asked Mildred’s opinion. Mildred heard the facts and promised to ask around. An hour later, the little medium called back collect and confirmed Maren’s perception. Yes, the spirits were there in considerable number. Mildred had communicated directly with several, particularly one named Simone who revisited every year from April to late September. Not more than a hundred yards from the house was a mossy glade where Simone had, with delightful compliance, taken and given her first with none other than the Monarch himself. An experience Simone could not repeat, naturally, but one so exquisite that she was irrepressibly drawn back to the place. Said Mildred.

  The following day, without explaining to Chesser, Maren arbitrarily chose a direction and made him count off a hundred paces into the woods. Coincidentally or not, it brought them to a moss-covered spot. Maren was overjoyed. She circled the small area, respectfully. She transmitted some silent, sisterly communion to Simone, and received feelings she translated as invitation more than impulse.

  Maren removed her shoes and placed them precisely on the peak of a jutting rock.

  Chesser asked what she was doing. She didn’t reply, so he shrugged and leaned against a tree to watch.

  Next, she took off her skirt and blouse and, with some care for arrangement, draped them over a dipped bough. All that remained were her bikini panties. She got quickly out of those, bent a young, pliant tree and placed them on its highest point. She released the tree and the panties were swished up out of reach, high, like a guiding pennant.

  Then she lay face down on the spread of moss, motionless for a long moment, pressed by her weight against the natural cushion. There was the sensation of countless tiny curls of touch. And her own of nutmeg color at her intersection coiled among those of the green.

  She rolled over slowly, her eyes and her mouth open. From her came a prolonged sound of helpless submission. Her Viking hair fanned out around her head. Her legs arched up left and right and relaxed apart.

  It was time for Chesser to get into the act. And he did. With appropriate spirit.

  If the sybaritic Simone was observing them from her invisible vantage on the other side, no doubt she approved. For, naturally, it was quite exceptional.

  Almost daily thereafter Maren made long-distance calls to Mildred, who soon got the picture and relayed directions. It seemed there were a great many mossy beds and grassy bowers within easy pacing distance from the house; ideal, lovely places, just waiting to again be put to use with the permission of a Geneviève, a Dominique, a Françoise, a Beatrice, a Sylvie, or Danielle.

  After a dozen days of such renascent behavior, including one twilight in a chill rain, Chesser looked forward to the more customary comforts of sheets and man-made bed. He didn’t mention that to Maren. However, she shared that feeling because the previous time out, in the nice lap of an open field, she just happened to catch
sight of a pair of farm boys peeking and ducking over a bordering rock wall. By then, of course, it was a bit late to feel self-conscious. Actually, much later than either Maren or Chesser realized, for there had also been another, more deliberate eyewitness to all their outdoor intimacies, an expertly quiet little man with a powerful longdistance lens on his 35-mm. Nikon camera.

  From then on Maren and Chesser did their lovemaking indoors. Mildred validated that decision, conveying a message from the spirits, who said they were bored with the whole thing anyway. They were, after all, the type of souls prone to ennui. Said Mildred.

  One night Chesser and Maren went into Paris for a soiree at the home of an acquaintance. They both had secretly looked forward to it as a sort of relief, but, after less than an hour of exposure to all the practiced remarks and thinly camouflaged unhappiness, they were eager to escape and went rushing back to Chantilly feeling even more grateful for one another.

  Another morning, two Citroen-loads of lawyers arrived at the house with documents requiring Maren’s signature. Chesser thought the lawyers all resembled rodents cautiously eyeing a big hunk of cheese and trying to devise some way of snapping it out of the trap. They were cordial to him, for he was, after all, their most promising means to a very lucrative end. Maren invited them to stay for lunch and, when they expressed polite hesitation, she abruptly accepted that as their refusal and suggested a vague “some other time.”

  After the lawyers had departed, Maren and Chesser walked into town, down rue du Connetable to the Relais Conde, where they enjoyed double helpings of cold tiny crawfish taken from the local canal. They sipped Cassis and discussed such things as the universal need for contraception and the merits of various sports cars. Maren informed Chesser that she’d ordered a special Ferrari 365 GTB and asked him to remind her to call and inquire why it hadn’t been delivered as promised. From the Conde they went home the long way, around the Château de Chantilly, paying a franc each for entrance, and it was worth every sou because, as they walked by the moat, they witnessed the splashing, flapping, beaking mating of a pair of swans, one black and one white. It appeared more combative than amorous.

  Nearly every night Chesser and Maren played backgammon. She threw many pairs but misjudged her advantages and doubled carelessly. As a result her gambling debt to Chesser increased to nearly two million dollars. Quite earnestly, she told Chesser she was going to have the lawyers issue him a check, because it was as valid an obligation as her account at Cardin or Saint Laurent. She was serious at the time but, apparently, it slipped her mind.

  On the twenty-fifth, Chesser called Antwerp.

  Wildenstein told him the diamond was ready.

  “How does it look?”

  “Fine,” replied Wildenstein.

  “How many carats did it finish at?”

  “Come see and get it.”

  That same afternoon, Maren’s new Ferrari was delivered. It was a convertible, deep blue in color, with a boldly designed body and enough horses under the hood to qualify for the Grand Prix circuit. She wanted to drive it immediately and Chesser knew it was hopeless to try to dissuade her. He thought she might at least take it slowly until she’d gotten the feel of the powerful car. But no. She started with a snapping getaway and put the machine through an excruciating test run over the narrow, unpredictable country roads. She handled the Ferrari as though it had always been hers, and when Chesser warned that she ought not put such a strain on the engine until it was properly broken in, she pointed to a temporary sticker on the windshield which stated that the car had already been run the prerequisite distance. Chesser, unable to think of another excuse, could only make sure their safety belts were fastened and pray nothing was coming around the blind curves.

  CHAPTER 8

  EVERYTHING WAS coming together nicely. Chesser could pick up the diamond in Antwerp, then go on to London and The System for his next sight. They had notified him by cable that his next appointment at 11 Harrowhouse Street was scheduled for Monday, June first, promptly at ten A.M. Underline promptly. While in London, Chesser planned, as promised, to let Watts have a look at the diamond before delivering it to Massey.

  Maren’s first suggestion was that they use the Fokker-28. The private jet belonging to the estate had been in repair but now it was ready to go. The pilots were always on stand-by. But her second thought, and the one that stuck, was to drive her new Ferrari 365 GTB. That would be more personal, she said, more leisurely. Chesser didn’t agree but he consented when Maren assured him that she’d let him do some of the driving.

  The decision to drive meant a change of plans. Instead of Antwerp-London-Massey, it was now much more convenient to make it Antwerp-Massey-London. That excluded Watts, but Chesser rationalized that perhaps Watts had expressed interest in seeing the diamond only out of politeness. Anyway, he’d explain to Watts when he was at The System.

  The only problem was having to call Massey. Chesser had thought he wouldn’t call until he’d seen the diamond and was absolutely sure it was right. Massey didn’t expect delivery for at least another two weeks, but Chesser was anxious to get the deal over and done with. Out of courtesy, he had to let Massey know when to expect him.

  He called.

  Massey sounded pleased to hear from him. “You’ve seen the diamond?”

  “Of course,” lied Chesser.

  “How is it?”

  “Fine,” said Chesser, borrowing from Wildenstein.

  “How big?”

  “Over a hundred carats.” Chesser hoped it was.

  “Then you’ll be here the day after tomorrow?”

  “Yes. We’re driving.”

  “By we I assume you’re bringing your Maren along?”

  “She’ll be with me.”

  “Good. It’s only an hour or so from Lydd to here. Have you ever driven southern England?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a nice drive.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “See you Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday.”

  That’s one hell of a great client, thought Chesser, as he dropped the phone receiver back into place.

  From Chantilly to Antwerp is only about two hundred miles. However, until recently it was a long day’s drive, an obstacle course of small towns. Maddening. But now the Auto Route du Nord is completed all the way to Lille, and from there on it’s good Belgian highway. Another convenience is the speed limit. There is none. Only the rule that slower vehicles must remain in the right lane, leaving the left clear for those with the power.

  So, once Maren got the Ferrari into high, she just stomped the accelerator to the floor and blasted everything out of the way with her horn. At first she enjoyed it but then she got bored and wished there were some corners to amuse her. When Chesser glanced over and saw the speed indicator at two hundred kilometers per hour, he had to fight against his impulse to tell her to go slower. After a while he became accustomed to the motion, and when a stubborn Peugeot blocked the way, slowing them to a mere one fifty kph’s, Chesser felt they were crawling along.

  They roared into Antwerp by early afternoon. On Kasteelpleinstraat they stopped long enough for Chesser to leave off his previous packet at his usual brokers. No haggling. He didn’t even wait for payment, merely instructed the broker to credit his account. It didn’t amount to much anyway, and Chesser was a bit self-conscious about that. From there they went on to Hoplandstraat and Wildenstein’s shop. Maren again preferred to wait in the car.

  While Wildenstein got the diamond from his safe, Chesser tried to read the old cutter’s expression. It said nothing. Wildenstein might as well have been going into the cupboard for a piece of candy. He brought the stone to the Diamondlite and offered Chesser the use of his loupe. An encouraging personal gesture, thought Chesser, who was surprised that his own hand wasn’t trembling as he held the stone.

  Chesser sighted through the loupe and the diamond hit him with its blaze. He’d never seen such brilliance. Even the slightes
t movement caused the stone to shoot out dazzling flares of rainbow hues. Actually, the stone itself had no color. It was clear as water, as only the very best diamonds are. It was oval shaped, and Chesser saw the table and facets of its crown were in perfect relation to its total depth. Its pavilion, the lower part of the stone, was also perfect. He turned the stone slowly and appraised its most extreme outer edges. If there was a cutting error, that was where it would be most evident—on the girdle. He saw that the edges there were smooth and symmetrical, as they should be. Wildenstein had truly lived up to his reputation.

  “A beautiful make,” complimented Chesser, referring in the jargon of the industry to the diamond’s correct proportions, its finish and polish and the symmetry of its facets.

  “One hundred and seven point forty carats,” said Wildenstein.

  Chesser continued sighting into the stone, hoping he wouldn’t see any spoiling inclusions. He didn’t. “It looks flawless,” he said.

  “It is,” said Wildenstein, matter-of-fact.

  Chesser straightened, relaxed the muscles around his eye and dropped the loupe into his right hand. Over a hundred carats flawless, his mind shouted. He felt like doing a tap dance. He felt like hugging Wildenstein. He felt like kissing that beautiful bearded old man. He restrained himself, and told him, “Congratulations.”