‘If all those years ago you had been a gardener, Peter…’ she began, but then she saw that Charles was with him. She had not heard the car come up the drive.
‘What’s up?’ she asked.
‘Mrs DuBerris has hanged herself in Holloway Gaol,’ Peter said.
‘Those idiots let her have bed sheets,’ said Charles. ‘They seemed to think that if a prisoner has confessed he or she will be perfectly happy to be hanged by the powers that be. And I understand you warned them at her arrest, Peter, that you thought she was a risk.’
‘Yes, I did. But I thought she would do it sooner.’
‘So she escapes justice,’ said Charles, clearly still angry.
‘Well, she hasn’t exactly escaped justice,’ said Harriet. ‘Just administered it herself. I suppose it might be easier to be the actor rather than the acted upon.’ She was remembering the fierce pride and rage of Mrs DuBerris.
‘Believe me, Harriet,’ said Charles with sudden ferocity, ‘some things are best done professionally.’
That evening Peter said, ‘I’ve had as much of this as I can bear. Let’s go back to London.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘I thought perhaps tonight,’ he said, looking at her hopefully.
‘As Your Grace pleases,’ she said, causing him to shake a fist at her. He drove even faster at night, making Harriet ride in terror of an unlit cow on the road; but they reached home safely, yet again.
London, however, was no longer a kingdom apart. Peter was still largely occupied with Denver affairs. An enquiry from Black Rod was received, asking him when he intended to take his seat in the Lords. Peter at first said that he would not take up his seat; but when Charles learned of that he pointed out that there was no voice in the Lords with any knowledge of crime except from the judiciary viewpoint. They were talking over dinner, with the Bunters present. Charles spoke warmly of how good it might be to have someone with practical experience of the nature of forensic evidence, of the nature of ordinary police work, to speak when laws were being drafted. ‘A morsel of common sense, Peter,’ he said, ‘and, of course, expressed with wit and elegance.’
Peter sighed. ‘Oh, very well then,’ he said, ‘Gilbert and Sullivan without the music for me, too.’
And Hope offered to take a portrait of him in his robes of state.
By and by Ada DuBerris presented herself. ‘I didn’t make an appointment,’ she said. ‘I thought you might not see me if you knew I was coming.’
‘You had no reason to think that,’ Peter said.
‘Well, you wouldn’t be the only one,’ she said. ‘Most of my friends somehow don’t want to see me right now.’ She was pale, and had lost weight.
‘What can I do for you?’ Peter asked. ‘Other than to suggest to you that fairweather friends are good riddance.’
‘I want to sell this,’ she said, taking a twist of tissue paper out of her handbag, and putting in down on the sofa table. She flicked the tissue paper open to reveal the emerald. ‘And I don’t know how. I’m afraid of being cheated.’
‘That’s a not unjustified fear,’ said Peter. ‘But I can help you. You must go to see Lord Attenbury at once. He is certain to be selling his, and there is a reward available if both stones are offered together.’
‘He won’t see me,’ Ada said.
‘Have you tried?’
‘Yes.’
‘Although you are his second cousin once removed or something,’ said Peter.
‘What a ghastly thought!’ said Ada.
‘I rather agree with you,’ said Peter. ‘That young man takes after his father, I’m afraid. Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, of course. Look, I think you need an intermediary. Someone to negotiate a deal with the Maharaja for both of you. And I know just the person, as it happens. I think you should go to see Freddy Arbuthnot. Tell him I sent you and all that.’
‘Thank you, Lord Peter,’ said Ada. ‘Can I still call you that?’
‘Certainly you can. Or just Peter. Cuts the fuss a bit. And I did, after all, first meet you when you were a tiny little thing in nursery frills.’
‘You’re nothing like as horrible as my mother said you were,’ observed Ada. ‘You’re being very helpful.’
‘Well, do me a favour in return,’ he said. ‘Leave that jewel on the table while I see if Harriet is free. She has heard so much about it, or them, that I’m sure she’d like to see one of them.’
Harriet was indeed free. She looked with great curiosity at the dark stone lying on the table.
‘Pick it up if you want to,’ said Ada.
Harriet picked it up very gingerly, and held it to the light. The intaglio carving gave it a differential density, the thinner parts gleaming with river-green translucence. She could even see the faintest shadow of fragments of the inscription on the back showing through. She was struck with a sudden wave of emotion; of longing to possess this stone, to stare at it and lose herself in its depths, as though the heartbroken yearning of the Persian poet whose words it carried had been twisted into desire for the stone itself.
She put it down abruptly. ‘I should sell it as soon as you can,’ she said to Ada.
‘I don’t exactly want the money,’ Ada said. ‘Or at least I don’t want much of it myself. I want to make a fund to give bursaries to train musicians. Poor young people who can’t afford the teaching they need. And I don’t know how to do that, either,’ she added.
‘I can’t help you with a trust fund,’ Peter said, ‘but I know a man who can. I’ll post you off in the right direction as soon as you’ve got the money.’
‘So what did you think of it?’ Peter asked Harriet when Ada had left them.
‘What a perilous thing, Peter!’ she said. ‘I found an intense admiration for the man who long ago dispossessed himself of it to feed the poor.’
‘It got to you, too?’ he said. ‘I thought you might have been immune to it.’
She shivered slightly. ‘I am gladder than I can tell you that it isn’t ours,’ she said.
A week later Freddy Arbuthnot showed up, dropping by at the cocktail hour, and accepting gin and It.
‘I’ve come to talk to you about the reward that Maharaja fellow is offering,’ Freddy said. ‘He’s putting up a handsome price for both the jewels, and an even more handsome reward of some kind, and he thinks the reward is due to you.’
‘The emeralds aren’t mine,’ said Peter. ‘Nothing to do with me. The reward was for anyone offering them both together, wasn’t it? The two owners should share it.’
‘Point of view, certainly,’ said Freddy. ‘Just thought you might be glad of a few thousand at the moment.’
‘What makes you think that, Freddy?’ Peter asked.
‘Oh, it’s got about that you are selling some shares; that’s all.’
‘Buy some, sell some.’
‘Oh, come on, Wimsey, I can work out the position you are in, and so can a lot of people.’
‘The emeralds are not mine,’ Peter repeated. ‘Harriet said just the other day that she was glad of that. I rather agree with her.’
‘You’re a silly fellow, Wimsey,’ said Freddy. ‘And I’m dashed fond of you. All right, have it your own way; I’ll see the Maharaja off. Just let me know if I can help, won’t you?’
Bunter appeared with the breakfast tray the following morning, bringing with him not The Times, but Country Life.
‘I thought you would like to see this, Your Grace,’ he said. He handed Peter the magazine open at a full-page announcement of the sale of Fennybrook Hall.
Ancestral home of the Attenbury family, never before on the market…main house by Sir John Soane…extensive park-land, stables, home farm, offered for sale furnished or unfurnished…
‘Well, well,’ said Peter. ‘Take this to show to Harriet at once, Bunter. I expect a visit from Lord Attenbury before the day is out, and we should be prepared.’
It was actually the following day that Lord Attenbury appeared, having the grace to be r
ather embarrassed, and full of exculpation and explanation.
‘You see,’ he offered, ‘it seemed for such a long time that we couldn’t possibly keep the house, that we should simply have to sell it, and we rather got used to the idea. Well, my mother and my aunts did, that is…I myself, of course…well, as I was saying, then when the emerald business was all sorted out – eternally grateful, of course – it occurred to us that now we had the money we didn’t necessarily want to blow it all on keeping the family pile. White elephant, really. The women thought it would be fun to have a little place on the Riviera for the winter, and to go to New York now and then; they let me off the hook, you see. And in the modern world we don’t have to live like fuddy-duddy old landowners. Nobody respects that any more, after all. You should do the same, Peter. It’s quite liberating really.’
‘Thank you for your advice, Attenbury,’ said Peter. ‘I shall not take it.’
At Denver again. The house now habitable, beginning to show its lopsided charm. Even the new formal garden taking shape. Harriet in gum-boots with planting lists in her hands.
Peter came towards her, emerging through one of the new garden windows with a telegram in his hands. ‘My mother is coming home at last,’ he told her. ‘Arriving in five days.’
‘Hurrah,’ said Harriet. ‘And her part of the house is all ready for her, Peter. I saw to that.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Harriet, I…’
‘What, Peter?’ she asked, when he paused.
‘I wish I had found a way of not dragging you into all this. You didn’t bargain for this.’
‘For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, Peter? I think I did. Considering that you told me quite recently that there’s no such thing as a forgetful sleuth, you seem a remarkably forgetful husband.’
‘You found it hard enough to stomach my position as it was,’ he said sadly. ‘And when you married me my nephew was alive, and I was safe from the succession.’
‘It was the glamour and privilege I bucked away from,’ she said. ‘If I had realised all the burdens and responsibilities that went with them I would have accepted you much sooner. And, Peter, since I am now the Duchess of Denver whether we would or no, I intend to be a good Duchess.’
‘Don’t you want to be Harriet Vane?’ he asked her.
‘Yes; but I am large. I contain multitudes.’
‘Have you reckoned a thousand acres much?’ he asked. ‘If every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you…’
‘You see?’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I shall still be Harriet Vane, and you shall be the only duke in England who can play ping-pong with quotations.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I can still do that! Do you think I can still detect?’
‘I’m sure you can, if the need arises,’ she said. ‘I haven’t noticed dukedom softening your brain.’
‘There is something intrinsically absurd,’ he said sadly, ‘about a ducal detective.’
‘You have been too much in Helen’s company,’ said Harriet. ‘If I can be a duchess, and Harriet-Vane-the-writer, then you can be the Duke of Denver, and Lord-Peter-the-detective.’
‘Can I still be Peter, naked and unadorned, and your friend and lover?’ he said.
‘Well, evidently,’ she said. They caught each other’s eyes, and stood smiling for a moment. Then they walked on a little. ‘Peter?’ she said, sliding her arm through his, and walking him along the newly laid gravel path. ‘There is a consolation in all this, you know.’
‘I’d like to know what it is,’ he said.
‘I’ve been so happy with you, all these years,’ she said, ‘but in a way what I was afraid of did happen. Except while the war was on everything I was doing was voluntary. I didn’t have to write unless I wanted to; I didn’t even have to look after my own children unless I wanted to. Or lift a hand to any domestic task. There were no constraints about anything at all. And now I once again have things to do that are needful, and are my duty. Don’t try to protect me from it, let’s just get on with it. Let’s do our best. Content, Your Grace?’
‘I shall be if you are,’ he said.
From Honoria, Dowager Duchess of Denver, to Cornelia Vanderhuysen, in New York.
Bredon Hall, 21 April, 1952
My dear Cornelia,
Please forgive me for taking so long to write to you upon my return, after all your hospitality to me over so many weeks. This is the sort of letter that used to be called a bread and butter letter, but in your case it should be a caviar and champagne letter, so generous you were to me. I know you were worried about me on the voyage home, and in a way you were right – we had terrible weather the moment we left the Hudson, and Franklin was so sea-sick that she could not do anything for me and I had to rely on the cabin staff. They were perfectly kind and efficient, and you know, dear Cornelia, I had to come home some time. Well! You’ll never imagine what I found when I got there! As you know I was expecting a cold welcome from Helen, and a lodging of some kind in the Dower House, but I found instead that I am to have a very nice set of rooms in the Hall itself, all ready for me with fires burning, and many of my own pretty things already installed. So odd, really, Cornelia, to think of Harriet getting things ready for me, when I remember so well all the fun I had on Peter’s marriage getting the Audley Square house ready for her. I have to say that although there is still a lot to do, the poor old lopsided house is really quite charming, and when Harriet asked me if I thought they had done the right thing in not rebuilding the whole stately pile, I said yes very sincerely. Just the same, I shall have to remember where the house now stops, and not go sleep-walking into the garden…
I’m sure you will be wanting me to tell you about more important things, and not go running on about bedrooms and sitting-rooms and such like, although really, dear, such things do matter more than we like to admit. As you know I have been very anxious about Peter being squashed flat by his dukedom, and losing that devil-may-care exuberance that made us all love him so dearly. I thought he might turn into another version of Gerald, although I could not imagine Harriet playing Helen; Bunter was the only one of the three that I thought would be like a duck in the water…Or should that be on the water? They do tend to float on the top, don’t they? But you know, dear, I had been underestimating my son. He always was a chimera – or do I mean a chameleon? Always playing about with disguises. All that man-about-town he used to go in for, it was always a mask for the real man; I did know that. And now the dukedom is a cover story, and he’s playing it really rather well, though with a much lighter touch than Gerald, of course. And the real Peter is still there, and even managing moments of the old panache. It’s Harriet that is the big surprise; she seems so competent and rather in her element as if she was as much in charge as when she is writing a novel. When I asked her how she was managing she said, ‘I’m just making it up as I go along, and when in doubt I ask Bunter.’
Helen is very grumpy and cross about it all. I rather think she was looking forward to Harriet making a mess of things, either so that she could take over and run everything herself, or so that she could snipe from the sidelines. I am very relieved that I am not under the same roof as her, although I think she will spend a lot of her time in London. Even Peter’s fortune won’t do everything as it used to be done, and a lot of his property in London was flattened in the Blitz. Things certainly will have to be scrimped a lot according to the past. I shan’t mind that, and neither will Harriet.
So all’s well here, Cornelia, and you needn’t worry about me one bit. In fact you had better plan to come and visit and see it all for yourself. I should like that very much.
Always your affectionate friend,
Honoria
PS: You’ll never guess what has just happened, not if I gave you a hundred tries!
That Maharaja person who bought the emeralds – remember we were looking at a report of it together in the New York Times – has decided to give Peter a present. A sundial, he said, and Harriet
, I understand, thought it would look good in the middle of her new garden. But yesterday, it came in three lorries! You would call them trucks, dear. And a team of Indian masons to put it together, following the lorries up the drive in a coach. And two Indian astrologers, and the Astronomer Royal no less, our very own Harold Spencer Jones, to get the thing properly lined up. Harriet fled into the kitchen, and she and Mrs Farley managed a sandwich lunch, while Bunter produced some rather nice white wine, so the house held its head up in a manner of speaking. Luckily the Indian masons were provided with their own lunch, because some of our sandwiches were roast beef. They have been building the thing for two days now, and it’s very strange. It’s all pink and white marble, and it has a crescent moon shape, lying on its side, and a little flight of steps rising in the middle, which casts a shadow left or right as the sun goes by. It’s a sort of prefab, with all the stones numbered and ready to put together.
The experts were all saying it wouldn’t be very accurate because it’s too small – my dear it’s twelve feet high! But the Maharaja said the one it is a copy of is one hundred and twenty feet high! His will tell the time by the second, ours will only do it to the right six seconds. But then, dear, whoever really tells the time by a sundial? Peter said something about making a botch of something done much better by a watch, but he said it just to me when the Maharaja was out of earshot.
As I write the workmen are putting a little cupola on the top of the steps to crown the whole thing, and I do think when we have great-grandchildren they will love running up and down those steps, though I am probably far too old to be around to see that.
PPS: By yesterday evening I still hadn’t posted this letter – so sorry, Cornelia, you will think me bad-mannered – the Maharaja and the Astronomer R had all gone home, and just the masons and the astrologers were left. Mrs Farley has been feeding people like a one-woman British Restaurant; nicer food, of course, but the same feeling of emergency numbers, so I’m sure she’s glad to see the back of everybody. Anyway, after dinner Bunter came in with the coffee and told us that everybody had now gone – the masons’ bus had taken them off while we were eating, and it was a lovely moonlit evening, so we all went out into the garden to have a look. Harriet said, ‘Oh, Peter, it works as a moon-dial as well!’ and she went forward to look closely, and she saw that there was some funny writing on the white marble curve where the ruler marks are for reading the time. Peter came to look, and he said, ‘I think I can guess what that is,’ and then they were kissing like newlyweds, so I scrambled away to the other side of the thing, and watched the moon by myself for a minute or two before we all went in to bed.
The Attenbury Emeralds Page 27
