The Attenbury Emeralds

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘But wouldn’t you be avenged on the wrong person? The Attenbury family weren’t the main offenders, surely, however little you liked their cast-off clothes.’

  ‘Oh, they all stick together, those toffs. We could have threatened the ruin of one branch of the family unless the other branch changed their tune.’

  ‘So you swapped the emeralds.’

  ‘That was easy, although that fool Northerby nearly spoiled it. No sooner had I swapped it than he lifted it. Couldn’t wait. Greedy bastard; he was supposed to be in it with me, and then he thought he could take it and cut me out. But it was my jewel he took. At first I thought he had wrecked the plan, but I just sat tight, and by and by your Lord Peter had got it back, and it was in the bank.’

  ‘How was it that William had one of the emeralds to give you?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘An old soldier gave it to him. His father had won it in a raffle, he said. He gave it in exchange for a new coat.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, though. You waited all those years, and you killed people – what was all that about?’

  ‘I wanted to choose my time to strike. The longer I had waited the more I had to lose if anyone saw it was the wrong stone in the Attenburys’ box. That wasn’t likely unless someone saw it who could read Persian. But that kept seeming possible. So I did what I had to do. For William; it was his idea. In his last few nights he was feverish, and he thought we could buy Fennybrook Hall, and eject the Attenburys, and live in it ourselves. And I thought if I waited and watched, I might manage to do that.’

  ‘You did it with the aid of a Mr Tipotenios, I understand. Who was that?’

  ‘An out-of-work actor. He borrowed a theatrical costumier’s suit. Not hard.’

  Harriet was coming to the firm conclusion that the woman she was talking to was mad. And that that would be her best defence.

  ‘You needn’t think you have got me to confess,’ said Mrs DuBerris. ‘Hearsay is not evidence, and this conversation would be your word against mine. I shall deny every word of it. And I haven’t been read my rights.’

  ‘Did you mean to incriminate your daughter? William’s daughter?’

  Mrs DuBerris shook her head.

  ‘But you have done. Someone will have to defend her from the obvious conclusion that she was your accomplice in murder. I am here, since you won’t see my husband, to persuade you, if I can, to hire a lawyer, for Ada’s sake if not for your own.’

  ‘I can’t…’

  ‘You must sell your emerald.’

  Silence.

  Harriet continued, ‘You may have felt justified all those years in keeping your jewel as a means of revenge, and living in poverty as a result; it’s another thing, surely, to hang on to it now, when any confusion is sorted out, and Ada risks a prison sentence for something she knew nothing about. Do you love your daughter, Mrs DuBerris, or is hatred all that you feel for anyone?’

  Mrs DuBerris gestured to the prison officer, looking at them through the grille, and the interview was abruptly at an end.

  ‘Failure,’ said Harriet to Peter when she returned home. She recounted the interview as well as she could remember it.

  ‘And did you sympathise?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I allowed myself a moment’s complacency at the thought that I had never felt homicidal when being chipped at by Helen,’ said Harriet. ‘And then I remembered that I had my husband at my side when being snubbed and insulted. She was alone.’

  ‘I don’t think you needed me to avoid becoming murderous,’ said Peter. ‘And I don’t think a defence of insanity is an easy wicket. A plan devised and pursued for so many years is going to look to a jury more like wickedness than lunacy.’

  ‘Such a ramshackle and improbable plan,’ said Harriet. ‘And I need you for everything. But, Peter, it’s a bitter sort of irony, isn’t it, to realise that that woman has sold her soul, embittered her whole life, and become homicidal to get something that we have simply been landed with, and would so gladly be without!’

  27

  ‘We seem to have averted the ruin of the Attenbury family,’ said Peter. ‘And we have ruins of our own to attend to. I can’t put off going to Denver a day longer.’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Only if you would like to.’

  ‘As it happens I would like to; but I would expect to go with you whether I liked it or not, except in the face of an imperious conflict of duty.’

  ‘The duty is mine…’

  ‘With all your worldly goods you me endowed. Don’t you remember? If Duke’s Denver is yours, it’s mine.’

  ‘I’m not quite getting the hang of this, am I?’ he said wryly.

  ‘You are severely disorientated. You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘That’s what I am afraid of,’ he said. ‘Keep me grounded, Harriet.’

  ‘Well, Your Grace, if a blackened ruin in Norfolk is not heavy enough to ground you, I probably can’t manage it. When are we leaving?’

  ‘If we went with the hour we could be there by lunchtime.’

  ‘Driving?’

  ‘Of course, driving. The trains take much longer, and one needs to be met at the station.’

  Harriet resigned herself.

  ‘Does Bunter come too?’ she asked.

  ‘Bunter has gone ahead,’ he said.

  The man who came out to meet them from the lodge, and to open the wrought-iron gates for them was Dick Jenkins, old Bill Jenkins’s younger son. Harriet remembered her first arrival here, newly married, out of her depth, being gravely greeted by Bill Jenkins, and that Peter had asked after his sons. Bill was dead now – how many generations of Jenkins had served the Duke? And how few could so continue? Grief and sadness ahead…

  As if the cosmos shared their dejection, a light drizzle began as they drove towards the house. Bunter came out to meet them holding an umbrella at the ready as they pulled up at the front door.

  ‘I have taken the liberty of booking a room for you and her ladyship at the Denver Arms,’ he said.

  ‘Is that necessary, Bunter?’ said Peter. ‘Isn’t the east wing undamaged?’

  ‘There is no water supply, my lord. The fire melted the lead pipework. And perhaps, when you look round…’

  ‘Lay on Macduff,’ said Peter, with unnecessary accuracy.

  The intact part of the house was structurally sound enough; anything wrong with it was wrong before the fire. But it was all looking sad and dirty. The smoke had penetrated nearly every room, and left a greasy film of soot on everything. And it smelled of smuts. As they walked round it became more and more depressing. The housekeeper, Mrs Farley, and Gerald’s butler Thomas joined them.

  ‘We are at a loss, Your Grace, as to how to clean many of these rooms,’ said Thomas. ‘I have cleaned the silver; and Mrs Farley has washed all the ceramics.’

  ‘I ceased to wash the curtains,’ Mrs Farley offered, ‘when the first pair we dealt with simply disintegrated.’

  ‘You washed things?’ Peter asked. ‘With no water?’

  ‘There is a water supply in the stable blocks, Your Grace,’ she answered.

  ‘Thank you for trying,’ Peter said. ‘But we shall need expert help to deal with this. We shall have to recruit some professional restorers.’

  ‘We didn’t know what to do, my lord,’ said Mrs Farley and promptly burst into tears. ‘All these lovely things, that we’ve looked after since I first came here when I was thirteen, as a kitchen maid…’

  Thomas said stiffly, ‘Control yourself, Farley!’

  Harriet intervened. The woman’s whole life’s work, she thought. She very briefly and lightly put an arm round Mrs Farley’s shoulder and said, ‘We shall make this live-able and bright again; it will be comfortable and clean, and not everything will prove to have been spoiled. You shall see; and you shall help us.’

  ‘Leave it all untouched for the moment,’ Peter said. ‘The insurance assessor is coming tomorrow, and when we have talked to him we shall have a pl
an.’

  ‘Of course, we need a plan of our own,’ he added, as they walked away towards the stable block, with Bunter following a step behind them.

  They ran to ground in the tack-room, where there was a table and chairs, and sat down to confer.

  ‘I shall be in the adjacent room when you need me, Your Grace,’ said Bunter.

  Harriet said, ‘Bunter, won’t you stay and help us? Anything we decide will involve you as much as anyone.’

  Bunter looked at Peter, who leaned over and drew out a third chair.

  ‘Gerald had seen to it that it was all heavily insured,’ Peter said. ‘We could have it put back as it was. Perhaps we should do that. But as to being able to run it as it was…’

  ‘If we put it back as it was it will be mostly fake,’ said Harriet. ‘Whereas every stone and beam that remains is genuine.’

  ‘Your most excellent opinion is?’

  ‘That we should keep what we have, and demolish what we have lost. Clear up the mess, and plant a garden in the outline of the burned-out walls.’

  Peter stared at her, thinking about it.

  She went on, ‘We would have a curious, beautiful house with ten bedrooms and an attic range. A library, a drawing-room, a hall, a truncated gallery, but a gallery all the same: a good-sized house, Peter, and plenty for a family our size. Less ruinous to run.’

  ‘Where does my mother live?’ he said.

  ‘There is easily room for an apartment for her and Franklin in the remaining house.’

  Peter gave her a quizzical look. ‘While Helen lives in greater splendour in the Dower House?’ he said.

  ‘Helen will enjoy that,’ said Harriet emphatically.

  ‘May I ask what you think, Bunter?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Her ladyship’s plan seems sound to me, my lord. Practical. If we need more space in the future, it would be possible to convert this stable block.’

  ‘So it would,’ said Peter. ‘Item one, decided, then. Item two: death duty. I think we can pay it if we sell off most of the land.’

  ‘Does that mean turning off an ancient tenantry?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Yes. Some of them will buy their holding from us. But of course, the future income from the land will be lost.’

  ‘What about the servants?’ Harriet asked. ‘Do we have to send them packing?’

  ‘The war has done a lot of the work for us,’ said Peter. ‘Most of the staff joined up, leaving just the older ones running the show. Only two of those who went have returned, both of them gardeners. We shall have to pension off most of them.’

  ‘That won’t be any fun,’ she said.

  ‘It will be like eating toads,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘If I may suggest, Your Grace,’ said Bunter.

  ‘Suggest by all means,’ Peter said.

  ‘Since I accompany you on your migrations you can dispense with Thomas. And I understand he would like to retire from serving the family to help his brother run a pub in King’s Lynn. But I think you should retain Mrs Farley, who seems an efficient sort of person.’

  Peter said, ‘Fine. Fiat. Have you been interviewing the whole establishment, Bunter?’

  ‘I have, my lord. Here is a list, together with a note of what the people on it would like to have happen. They are quite realistic, Your Grace. They have little plans of their own.’

  ‘Whatever would we do without you, Bunter,’ Peter said.

  ‘There is a task which I cannot assist you with, Your Grace,’ said Bunter. ‘And that is to sort the pictures into those that you would wish to hang in the remaining house, and those that will have to be sent for sale. All of them will be familiar to your lordship from childhood; I cannot surmise which will be of sentimental value to you.’

  ‘Harriet shall help me choose,’ said Peter. ‘She will be living with the relicts.’

  When they returned to the house a message was handed to them by Thomas. A message from Charles. Peter went into the tack-room to the telephone and Harriet lingered in the pale afternoon sun, and stared at the house, seeing it marred, and imagining it mended.

  Peter came briskly out to her, almost running. ‘Mrs DuBerris has made a clean breast of it,’ he said.

  ‘Good lord!’ said Harriet. ‘She seemed determined that she wouldn’t do that, when she was talking to me. To what has she confessed?’

  ‘The whole charge sheet except for Mr Handley. Denies all knowledge of that.’

  ‘Well, accidents do, after all, happen,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Yes. Maybe. Anyway she has admitted killing Rannerson and Patel and Pevenor. And malicious hanky-panky with the jewel. Case closed.’

  ‘Will she hang?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Maybe not. It’s getting controversial to hang people. Her lawyer will try his best. I think they won’t charge her with Patel.’

  ‘Peter, why not? I liked the sound of that woman. A really useful life was taken there.’

  ‘Tactics, Harriet. The woman fell down through a broken manhole cover, in the blackout, late at night. No witnesses. Sort of thing that happened every night in the Blitz. The only evidence that she might have been pushed is our old friend coincidence and that confession. Any defence lawyer worth his salt can demolish a confession. We think it’s an odd coincidence, but as you just said about Mr Handley, coincidences do happen, let Aristotle say what he will. A defence lawyer will make a huge meal of it: groundless charge, cock-and-bull story about an exotic jewel, pure coincidence, charge brought against his client out of malice…Nobody suspected foul play at the time, no police file was opened, no postmortem considered necessary…I could write the brief myself. You could do it even better.’

  ‘You mean, they couldn’t make it stick?’

  ‘I don’t see that they could, no. And they will then be thinking about the effect on a jury of bringing a charge that won’t stick alongside others that should. The motive for the other murders is also associated with that jewel. Weakens the whole case.’

  ‘But she has confessed.’

  ‘She could, and indeed should, change her plea.’

  ‘Why should she change it, if it is true?’

  ‘It’s always better to have the evidence spelled out in court, especially if someone is to hang on the basis of it. Bono publico, and all that.’

  ‘So what do you think will happen?’

  ‘Touch and go. A jury won’t like the sound of those jewels and inscriptions that nobody can read. If she withdraws her confession it might be that none of it could be made to stick.’

  ‘I can’t read her mind,’ said Harriet. ‘She is very disturbed. Mad, I think. So we may never know whether poor Rita Patel was pushed, or just coincidentally fell?’

  ‘It’s the nature of coincidence, isn’t it?’ said Peter. ‘It doesn’t amount to certainty. And it won’t make any difference to DuBerris. One hangs just as decisively for a single death as for three.’

  Harriet wondered how severe Peter’s solved-case depression would be this time. But this time he had other matters on his mind.

  A discussion with the insurers, for example. At first the assessor declared that although his firm would have to pay every penny entailed in the total reconstruction of Bredon Hall as it was the night before the fire, they would not pay a penny towards any lesser plan.

  ‘He thinks we are deliberately planning to do very little, and pocket the difference in cash,’ Peter reported to Harriet.

  ‘Well, aren’t we?’ she asked him.

  ‘Another way of looking at it would be to say that what we propose will save the insurers money; and then discuss the division of the spoils. The fellow today acknowledges that a full restoration would risk bankrupting his firm, but nevertheless is adamant that whatever we do we shall not pocket a penny piece above what we spend on repairs. I sent him off declaring that in that case we would demand a restoration of the whole lot. He has gone back to London to think about it. My brother must be turning in his grave.’

  ‘So perhaps no cash?’
said Harriet. She felt on uncertain ground, never having discussed his family finances in this way before, only their own resources. ‘How badly do we need cash?’

  ‘We have to find the death duty,’ Peter said.

  ‘And we can’t find it?’

  ‘I am about ten thousand short,’ Peter said. ‘After I have thrown most of our personal wealth at it, as well as selling a lot of land.’

  ‘We should sell Talboys,’ Harriet said.

  Peter looked at her hard. ‘I promised you once no one other than us would ever set foot in it as the owner as long as I lived,’ he said. ‘Had you forgotten?’

  ‘I was only thinking that it would be hard to live in three houses,’ she said. ‘There aren’t enough days in the year.’

  ‘Are you actually asking me to break a promise to you?’ he said ruefully.

  ‘Well, no…’

  ‘We could let it if we haven’t time to live in it, and save my battered honour in that way.’

  ‘What could we get for it?’ she asked. ‘How many gardeners’ wages here would the rent cover?’

  ‘You never fail to amaze me, Harriet,’ he said. ‘Age has not withered you nor custom staled your infinite variety.’

  ‘Idiot!’ she protested. ‘I get your drift. Be aware there will no asps at the breast for me; you’re stuck with me.’

  ‘I thought that was the other way round,’ he said.

  Peter and Harriet stayed at Denver for nearly a month. Helen assigned them a room in the Dower House, so they were not at the Denver Arms for very long. There seemed to be an endless list of chores, decisions, negotiations. The insurers had agreed their plans, but the Ministry of Works was taking an interest in what would become of a half-burned-down important house; an architect was needed to plan the alterations required, an engineer to assure them of the stability of the walls that had been licked by fire. Harriet had taken a fancy to opening up the stone arches that had once supported the upper storey of the stone house. She thought they would look splendid filled with large windows, giving on to the new garden. And the new garden was what she was putting her mind to, leaving the more immediate problems to Peter. It was in a garden book that she found a shrub called Osmanthus Nandina. Smiling, she carried the book through to Peter, who had set up an office in the stable block.