The Attenbury Emeralds

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘I believe you are in possession of the Attenbury emerald,’ Peter said.

  ‘I don’t give a damn what you believe,’ she said.

  ‘I can get a search warrant,’ said Peter.

  ‘I don’t deny I have an emerald,’ she said.

  ‘You have the one that rightly belongs to Lord Attenbury.’

  ‘So what?’ she said. ‘Fair exchange is no robbery. Those things are easy to confuse.’

  ‘Unless you read Persian,’ he said, his voice smooth and quiet. He had not sat down. ‘And I see that you do,’ he added, reaching for a book on the shelf in the fireside alcove, and holding out a book in Arabic script.

  ‘It’s not a crime to read a foreign language,’ she said.

  Harriet had posted herself in a corner of the room beside the window. She saw another, much younger woman come down the street carrying a violin case and a string bag of groceries, and stop at the front door to let herself in.

  ‘Fraud is a crime,’ said Peter, ‘and so is murder.’

  The front door opened quietly.

  ‘Murder?’ said Mrs DuBerris. ‘Ha! You’ll have trouble pinning that on me, won’t you? No signature on those deaths – a different method of killing every time!’

  ‘But, Mrs DuBerris, how do you know about the murder methods? How do you even know what murders I refer to? Unless you know everything about them, that is?’

  ‘You’re a fool, Lord Peter,’ she said venomously. ‘I’m not going to call you “Your Grace”, it would choke me. “Your meddling interfering busybody” would suit you better. What do you hope to gain by trapping me? I’ll tell you what you will not gain, and that’s your friend’s emerald. Look, here it is.’ She reached for her bag which was hanging over the arm of her chair. ‘I’m going to throw it in the fire.’ And she held out her hand towards the burning grate. ‘Do you know what will happen to it in a fire?’ she asked. ‘It will be cracked open by the heat. That will fix Edward Attenbury, won’t it? But the stone in the vault will still be mine! I shall be hanged for murder, do you think? Then what do I have to lose? But it warms my heart to think what Attenbury has to lose!’

  Peter said, ‘It is also a crime to be an accessory to murder. Do you care for what your daughter might have to lose? Give me the stone, and I will keep your daughter out of it if I can.’

  Mrs DuBerris had already raised her arm for the gesture that would have cast the stone into the flames. Now she slowly let it fall to her side.

  Ada DuBerris had been standing silently in the room doorway, behind Peter’s back, during the last few exchanges. Now she stepped into the room. ‘What is all this about, Mother?’ she asked. She went to her mother, stood behind her, and put an arm round her. Very gently she took her mother’s hand, bent the fingers back, and released the jewel from her grasp. Then, holding it, she said to Peter, ‘I have always understood this was ours. Inherited from my father. Isn’t that true?’

  ‘The one you have inherited is perfectly safe, Miss DuBerris,’ Peter said. ‘But that is not it.’

  ‘Take it then,’ she said, holding it out to him.

  ‘No, Ada, don’t!’ cried Mrs DuBerris. ‘Hold it over the fire till I can make an escape!’

  ‘Mother,’ said Ada DuBerris, ‘there’s a man at the back gate, and a police car in the street.’ And she handed the emerald to Peter.

  Harriet looked out of the window. ‘There really is a police car in the street, Peter,’ she said.

  ‘I must speak to Bunter on the subject of ignoring instructions,’ said Peter. ‘Harriet, would you go outside and ask the Constable driving that car to come and make an arrest.’

  The Constable conferred with Peter in the hallway. Then he entered the little room, in which they were now all crowded together.

  ‘Ethel DuBerris,’ he intoned, ‘I am arresting you for attempting to defraud one Edward Attenbury; and on suspicion of the murders of…’ – here he looked down at his rapidly scrawled notes – ‘Captain Alan Rannerson, Muriel Pevenor, and others. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say…’

  ‘Say?’ exclaimed Mrs DuBerris. ‘Do you expect me to cave in and incriminate myself like a character in one of that woman’s stupid mystery stories? I’m not saying a damn thing.’

  Suddenly there were policemen everywhere. A detective inspector stood in the doorway and said, ‘What is going on here?’

  ‘This Constable has just made an arrest,’ said Peter.

  The scene blurred for Harriet. Across the press of people in the room she was looking at Ada DuBerris, standing in the corner behind her mother, white as a sheet, her hand over her mouth. Across the room she met Harriet’s eyes with an expression of pure horror. Then they were taking Mrs DuBerris away in handcuffs.

  Ada said, ‘Mother, tell me you didn’t kill anyone!’

  But she was given no answer.

  The police Constable asked who Peter was, and then thanked him for allowing him to make the arrest. ‘It will go in my records, sir,’ he said. ‘Most people would have called for a more senior officer.’

  ‘You did it perfectly well,’ said Peter. And from the timbre of his voice Harriet knew at once that the Attenbury affair had entered that always-to-be-expected aftermath that meant sleepless nights, and sudden departures abroad and a time of edginess and unhappiness. One thing Peter could never do was enjoy his triumphs. To the Detective Inspector who had appeared, Peter said, ‘Keep a close eye on your prisoner, Inspector.’

  ‘Do you expect self-harm?’ said the Inspector.

  ‘She has lost what she has been living and planning for these thirty years,’ said Peter. ‘Just watch her.’

  ‘Point taken,’ the man said. The bevy of policemen were leaving.

  Harriet said across the room to Ada, ‘Are you all right?’

  It was a silly question. Ada was shaking like a person with a fever. Harriet went through to a little kitchen in a lean-to at the back of the house, to make tea. She found sugar and added it lavishly. Then she brought the cup through to the front room and offered it to Ada, who shook her head. ‘I think you should,’ said Harriet softly. ‘Do you have a friend who could come and keep you company for the next few hours?’

  Ada looked at her dumbly. Then: ‘I’ll ask Ottalie,’ she said.

  26

  It was ten in the evening. Peter had been glum and restless ever since they left Mortlake; now he was fiddling with the arrangement of some books in the library.

  ‘Are we going abroad?’ Harriet asked him.

  ‘Would you like that?’ he said.

  ‘Only if you would.’

  ‘Where would you like to go?’

  ‘I have never been to Greece.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Might be rough comfort. It’s only a year or two since they were fighting a civil war.’

  ‘Wouldn’t some heroic travel be good for us?’

  He smiled at her. ‘For me, you mean? To take my mind off other things?’

  At that moment they heard the doorbell ringing in the hall below. They stood and listened – had Bunter gone across the garden to his own mews house? They heard the back door open and shut as Bunter returned to duty – the doorbell rang in his hall as soon as it rang in theirs. There was the murmur of voices, and then Bunter appeared.

  ‘Lady Ottalie Attenbury and Miss DuBerris, Your Grace. Will you see them? They appear, my lord, to be in a distressed state. So much so that I did not ask if it would wait until the morning…’

  ‘Yes, Bunter, we will see them,’ said Peter.

  ‘Will you bring tea, Bunter, please, and something simple to eat – biscuits, bread and butter and jam – whatever you can find at this hour,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Do you expect them to be hungry?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Distressed people often forget to eat,’ said Harriet.

  It was Ada DuBerris who appeared first in the room; she was being propelled from behind by Ottalie. Ada was weeping, swollen-eyed, hardly able to see where she was
going. Ottalie had that bright-eyed, flushed, alert appearance that excitement, good or bad, confers. ‘Peter! Please – you must help us!’ she said.

  ‘I will help you if I honourably can,’ said Peter.

  Harriet was surprised by the chill in his tone. ‘Please sit down, both of you,’ she said. ‘Bunter is bringing tea.’

  ‘Oh, tea!’ said Ottalie dismissively.

  Ada said, very quietly, ‘Please, Lord Peter, tell me what my mother is supposed to have done…’

  Peter in sombre tones launched into the tale of the substitute emerald.

  Ada said, ‘I didn’t know she had done that. But…no harm has been done, has it? We can just swap the things back. What sort of punishment will she get for that?’

  ‘I’m afraid that isn’t the worst of it, Miss DuBerris,’ said Peter, and he proceeded to tell her about the deaths.

  As he spoke a desperate calm descended on Ada. ‘Why should anyone think all that had anything to do with my mother?’ she asked.

  ‘It has to be someone who over many years knew when the Attenbury family took their emerald out of the bank,’ said Peter. ‘You and your mother fit that bill. It’s hard to think who else does.’

  ‘Me?’ said Ada. And then, ‘She was furious with me when I borrowed our emerald to go to the Café de Paris in fancy dress. I’ve never known her so furious. But, but as God’s my witness, I didn’t know why she was so interested in gossip about the Attenburys, I really didn’t…Oh, God, are you saying I helped her commit murder?’

  ‘I think you did,’ said Peter, ‘although I have no idea whether you knew what you were doing. No; don’t answer that. You urgently need a lawyer, and your mother needs one even more urgently. The less you say to anyone in the meantime the better.’

  Ada ignored him. ‘She was angry enough for that,’ she said, ‘but I wouldn’t have thought she could be brutal enough.’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Peter, ‘you should say nothing till you have spoken to a lawyer.’

  ‘We couldn’t possibly afford a lawyer,’ she said.

  ‘You could sell your emerald.’

  ‘She wouldn’t agree. She would die first…’

  A horrified silence hung in the room at that remark.

  Ada uttered a choking sob. ‘Will you talk to her, Lord Peter? Will you persuade her she needs a lawyer? I’m sure she won’t listen to me, she never does.’

  Harriet thought that Ada’s mother had listened to her all too well, but she left the thought unuttered.

  ‘Yes; I will talk to her,’ said Peter. ‘No – don’t thank me. Go home and get some sleep if you can.’

  ‘You’ll spend the night in my place, Ada,’ said Ottalie. And then, already standing up to go, she said, ‘What was your mother so angry about, Ada? We always tried to be so kind to her, to both of you.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Ada bleakly. ‘Your kindness made her angry. And you know what, Ottalie? I don’t entirely blame her for that.’

  When the two women had left Harriet surprised herself by taking a sandwich from the plate as Bunter bore it away. Peter had left the room, and she could hear his voice on the phone.

  ‘Lawyer all fixed up?’ she asked him when he returned.

  ‘Not till the morning. But I’ve got a couple of names from Impey Biggs of rising talents who might take it on. Unless she confesses it will be very hard to pin the murders on her. But it’ll be hard to clear her of fraud. Some bright young fellow will be glad to try.’

  ‘And is it up to you to find him?’

  Peter looked shamefaced. ‘Everyone in jeopardy deserves a decent defence,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think I could argue with you about that?’ she replied.

  ‘It’s so hard on you when I throw a wobbly like this,’ he said, turning away from her.

  She said to the back of his head, ‘It’s when I love you best, Peter.’

  Peter went out early the next morning, leaving Harriet to her novel. Few people appreciate that authors have deadlines; that they owe a completed book somewhere in the expected window for it in a publishing schedule. The image of the writer staring into space waiting for inspiration, which when it comes will not entail labour, but merely writing something down, as if taking dictation, is wide, wide of the mark. Harriet’s publisher was expecting something from her in time for the autumn list; indeed he had already announced it under a provisional title in his catalogue. But not surprisingly, she found it difficult to concentrate. At an average of one thousand words to four pages of typescript, she was some twenty thousand words short of the gratifying moment when she could begin to unwind the tightly coiled turns of the plot and let the reader see an outline of the denouement. Clever readers, of course, would already have seen through the entire thing, and for them the ending would lack surprise. But Harriet knew from experience that the pleasures of having guessed it all, with the concomitant pleasure of feeling clever, would make up for that as long as matters were not humiliatingly easy to guess. This present work had been interrupted – no, positively invaded by life; and she would have much ado to get it back on course. The invasions and interruptions promptly arrived in battalions to sit in the front of her head, and divert her attention.

  She fought for the direction of her thoughts, and had so far succeeded that when Peter came in at about midday she was lost to the real world, and so reluctant to surface that she did not emerge from her study until an hour after the usual time for lunch. The two places set on the little breakfast table were both untouched. Peter was sitting at the window, with a copy of The Times in his hand.

  ‘Goodness!’ said Harriet. ‘You needn’t have waited for me. You must be starving, Peter.’

  But the moment he looked up and their eyes met she said, ‘What’s wrong? Was she horrible to talk to?’

  ‘The lady won’t see me,’ he said.

  ‘Can she refuse?’

  ‘Oh, yes. One of the few liberties remaining to an incarcerated prisoner is the right to accept or refuse a visitor.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Harriet.

  ‘You didn’t know? And there was I all those years ago taking comfort from the thought that you could have, and did not, refuse to see me. Such slender strands of hope were all I had.’

  ‘We’ve made up to each other for all that long ago,’ said Harriet crisply. ‘What’s wrong this morning?’

  ‘She refuses to see me, but says that she would see you,’ he said.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Harriet, you absolutely don’t have to do it. She has no right, no claim in the matter at all. It isn’t in the least like that visit you made to Harwell; you had something personal to tell him – with this woman you have no connection at all.’

  ‘Hush, Peter,’ said Harriet softly. ‘You know that I will do it. Define for me exactly what the mission is.’

  ‘To talk her into saving her daughter’s skin, and just possibly her own, by hiring a good lawyer.’

  ‘A lawyer that you are paying for?’

  ‘No. The sort of lawyer she needs would cost the wages of three gardeners at Denver for several years. I will help her find the right man; but why should we pay for it when she has a huge sum of money at her own disposal if she will only see sense and sell her emerald?’

  Harriet observed, but did not comment on, the minting of a new currency: value determined by what it would pay for at Denver.

  Mrs DuBerris sat at one end of a scrubbed deal table, and Harriet at the other. She was, to her own surprise, rather distressed at her surroundings. Or perhaps her discomfort arose from her dislike of the other woman…

  ‘There is a good deal about your situation that I do not understand,’ she began.

  ‘That’s a bad start,’ said Mrs DuBerris calmly. ‘I cannot think of anyone better placed to understand me. You too have married above yourself – streets above yourself. How would you feel if you had been despised and rejected by your husband’s family? If you had been made to feel that he could have married yo
u only as a result of some trick, some exploitation of his illness? If nothing had been done to assist his child; if you had been left to struggle in poverty for years? If his family had even got at the College of Arms to deny you the title that should have belonged to his wife?’

  Harriet considered that. ‘I shouldn’t have approved their conduct,’ she said, ‘but I could have got along with my own life, I think. I should have despised them in return.’

  ‘That’s it. I knew you would comprehend me.’

  ‘Remember that I came on the scene long after all this, and have only heard tell of what happened. But don’t I understand that the Attenburys – Lady Attenbury particularly – were kind to you?’

  Mrs DuBerris was suddenly suffused by rage. Fists clenched, eyes flashing, she practically spat the word. ‘Kind? Oh, yes, they were kind! If you call occasional invitations and gifts of cast-off clothes kindness. Everything they gave us I gave away again at once! It was intolerable, you understand, intolerable. Lady Attenbury should have compelled her brother to accept me, not merely wrung her hands at him and given me cups of tea. We needed money and a place in society, not hand-me-downs. And that was William’s right. It was his daughter’s right.’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ said Harriet.

  ‘He was entitled to marry whom he chose!’ Mrs DuBerris continued. ‘And what was wrong with me? There’s many a vulgar chorus girl married into the aristocracy and prancing around playing the grand lady. They never asked, they never knew where I came from, they just assumed I was dirt because I was nursing common soldiers. How we hated them!’

  ‘But you had that emerald,’ said Harriet.

  ‘It was William’s plan. When he was dying. We were living in a squalid lodging house in Dover; I couldn’t safely get him any further, and his family wouldn’t come; wouldn’t help. We got cold letters. When the one came that told him he was disinherited we made a plan. Swap the emerald, and wait for the right moment for revenge. William knew the Attenburys well. He thought they lived beyond their means. He thought the time would come when they needed to sell their baubles. And then our day would come!’