A Rather Charming Invitation

by C. A. Belmond

  “No foolin’,” I retorted. “I know exactly where he was at midnight. Let’s get out of here before he figures out that I know what I know.”

  Jeremy shot me a quick look of comprehension, and shepherded us down a side corridor.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s mingle through that crowd.”

  We slipped past a throng of people who’d collected in the big front hall, and were now all kissing one another as if it were New Year’s Eve. We weren’t the only ones leaving; already, the valets were bringing the fancy cars around to the front, and people were piling into them, gaily going off to the next fun-seeking hot spot.

  Now that this ball was winding down, I noticed that the estate was like an armed camp, with ominous- looking bodyguards, security men, and even toothy guard dogs accompanying them. A not too subtle signal that all good guests mustn’t even think of skulking around, or staying overnight uninvited. The P.R. man was walking about with his walkie-talkie, and some other thuggy-looking guys doing the same. I wondered if they were looking for Drake’s mistress . . . or me.

  As soon as I saw our car being brought round, and the valets opening the doors for us, I scuttled gratefully into the passenger seat, and breathed a sigh of relief when we headed out to the main road.

  “So how’d the game go?” I asked Jeremy immediately. “Did you lose your shirt?”

  “Not quite,” Jeremy admitted. “But being a loser was a better disguise than winning and drawing attention to myself. I was concentrating more on acting like Giles, while taking Drake’s measure. We played poker, until it came down to a big pot with only two players. One of them was Drake, and they switched to piquet for the final round, just as Rollo said. I learned a lot—and not just about the game.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, fascinated.

  “Drake’s a proposition-better,” Jeremy replied. “I’ve met guys like him before.”

  “A compulsive gambler?” I said.

  “No, it’s different from regular gamblers. Guys like Drake don’t do it for the money. They can afford to lose big sums. They just bet all the time, on everything and anything. I’ve had lunch with clients like that, and they bet on which waiter will get to the kitchen first; or how many cherries the bartender has in his jar behind the counter. Drake’s like that. Once he gets going, he pushes it as far as he can. Plus, the guy is fiercely competitive anyway. He tries to act the good sport, but he loses his cool if the cards are against him. Still, he won pretty big tonight. He went out strutting like a rooster.”

  “You got that right,” I said involuntarily, under my breath.

  Jeremy gave me a suspicious look. “What do you mean?”

  So, I told him the whole story. Yes, the whole one, although, initially, I wasn’t sure how much detail to go into, what with Honorine in the back seat listening, wide-eyed, to every word. I told them about the computer and the coin collection. When I reached the part where Drake caught me in the room and mistook me for his mistress, I paused, but Jeremy said sharply, “What did he do to you?”

  “Just kissed me,” I assured him. “But believe me, that was bad enough.”

  “That bastard,” Jeremy said darkly, and for a moment he looked as if he was ready to turn the car around, stomp into the chalet and slug the guy.

  “He never knew it was me,” I said helpfully, explaining how I got away.

  We had reached the main gate, waiting for our turn to be waved through by men with lighted sticks. Jeremy stared straight ahead at the dark road through his windshield. Then he glanced at me accusingly and said, “Do you have any idea what kind of real trouble you could have gotten into?”

  “Gosh, no, it never occurred to me,” I replied dryly. Honorine giggled. Jeremy drove on.

  When we got back the hotel, Honorine trotted off to her room, looking as if she was going to fall asleep as soon as she crawled into bed. So Jeremy and I continued to discuss the case in our room.

  “If you ask me,” I said, “Parker Drake, a.k.a. Mr. Genius Businessman, All-Round Adventurer and Charming Philanthropist, is also our Tapestry Thief!”

  “Hang on,” Jeremy cautioned. “Just because he seems interested in that ‘J.L.’ crest, does not prove that he’s actually got the tapestry. At least, not in a court of law.”

  I snorted. “Obviously, we don’t need a court to tell us he’s got it,” I said.

  I was thinking of all the strange, inexplicable things that had happened to us lately. At the time, they’d seemed like isolated events. But now I reminded Jeremy about the night we’d gone to Margery’s cocktail party. New connections occurred to me, as I spoke.

  “Remember when we were parking outside your grand-mum’s house?” I said. “You were annoyed because some guy was tailgating us. I wonder if we were being watched much earlier than we realized. Because, next thing you know, out of the blue, you got a phone call from Parker’s P.R. guy, right there at the cocktail party.”

  I was retracing that whole evening now. “That was also the same night that Honorine chased a guy off our doorstep, right? We just thought it was another kook. But what if it was all connected to this?”

  Jeremy gave this due consideration. “Even if what you say is true—that Drake was behind this from the get-go—what made him think we had any information about the tapestry in the first place?”

  I was momentarily stumped. But Jeremy was gesturing as he spoke, and a gleam of gold caught my eye. “Oh, no!” I cried, aghast. “Is it possible that this whole thing got kicked into gear just because I went to the jeweler to have that signet ring made for you? I showed him the ‘J.L.’ insignia. And, the jeweler asked me about the source material. I said it came from a family heirloom!” I wailed in regret.

  “Steady on,” Jeremy counseled, reviewing this calmly. “True, there are plenty of unscrupulous dealers who, under cover of a legitimate business, scour the world for treasures that they know their illustrious clients would buy, no matter how it was obtained,” he admitted. “I can certainly believe that Drake is one of those passionate collectors who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. If the jeweler is connected to Drake, and he alerted Drake when he saw the design—” He broke off, pondering this. “That would make our jeweler the missing link. No pun intended,” he said, trying to lighten my gloom.

  Then he continued more soberly, “But maybe it’s you they’re interested in. Miss Penny Nichols comes into the store with sketches of a rare antique design. They have your address, so they send a guy to our doorstep to snoop around. He sees our sign out in front, and learns that you work at a firm called Nichols & Laidley. Perhaps he even intended to break in, if Honorine hadn’t startled him. Anyway, he reports back to Drake; and further investigation confirms that you’re the well- known American heiress, famous for tracking down lost treasures.”

  This made me feel even worse. I don’t quite see myself as others do these days—an heiress born under a lucky star. Frankly, I still feel like the same little unknown person I used to be, toddling around with her research and her bright ideas. But perhaps harboring an old image of myself was dangerous, or at least, careless. Now my French relatives were paying the price, with the loss of a beautiful tapestry.

  Almost unwillingly, I found myself making sense of more odd occurrences. “This may explain Honorine’s nose,” I said glumly, telling him the story of the perfumed lady who came to our office.

  “Maybe, when the guy on the doorstep failed to get in, Drake sent his wife to snoop around. It sounds as if they do have a connection to the jeweler, so she makes the delivery for him, just to get inside.”

  Jeremy weighed this possibility. “Hmm. And what does Tina Drake find? A ton of photos of a tapestry. If Penny Nichols is scrutinizing it so closely, it must be something worth having.”

  “And, you know what? Some of my photos of the tapestry disappeared from my office right after Miss Perfume showed up,” I added. “Can that be mere coincidence? I think not!”

  So, it was down to me again.
One little innocent move on my part had apparently set off a whole landslide. Now I was utterly convinced that I had to recover that tapestry.

  “Look,” I said. “We’ve obviously just scratched the surface of this tapestry story. This guy Lunaire—Armand’s patron. We’ve got to find out what he’s all about.”

  The next morning, Monsieur Felix contacted Jeremy to report that nothing had come from following our decoy, Amelia—nothing except sore feet for the poor guy, who found the English homemaker’s schedule exhausting, just as Jeremy had predicted. Monsieur Felix had not seen anyone following her, so he took Le Bug away from Amelia, and deposited it through our mail slot in London. He suggested we leave it there, since he believed Le Bug was mort.

  “Sounds like he’s hit a dead end,” Jeremy told me. “But he’ll keep trying. He’s going back to France, where he’ll keep an eye on the usual smugglers, criminals and shady characters on the Riviera. I told him about the coins you saw on Drake’s computer, but he’s never heard of them.”

  “Swell,” I said. “Well, let him watch the ports and the crooks. Meanwhile, we need to trawl the old French law records of the trials of Lunaire and Armand. But my French isn’t good enough for that.”

  “Neither is mine,” Jeremy admitted. “We could have a colleague do it, but it will cost a lot.”

  “No, let’s put Honorine on this!” I said, feeling suddenly inspired.

  Jeremy agreed, so I went to Honorine’s room to give her the new assignment. Her door was open, to allow the maid in. Honorine was out on the balcony, talking into her cell phone in a low voice, so she didn’t see me come in, while she was gazing out at the view.

  Lake Geneva was spectacular this morning, all blue sky and towering mountains and shimmering water. Little steamer ferries were plying their way across the lake, carrying visitors from one pretty town to another, where they would no doubt stop and sample the local cheeses and flinty white wines.

  As I approached Honorine, something about her secretive tone made me pause, just in time to hear her say, “Oh, you know, lawyers aren’t so bad, they can be quite useful. In fact, I have heard that some of them make excellent lovers!”

  The next words she uttered really made me stop cold. “As a matter of a fact,” she said in a wicked tone, as if confiding in a girlfriend, “I especially like English lawyers. Yes, one in particular. One I work with. That’s right.” Here she laughed lightly, with satisfaction and confidence. “Oh, he’s very handsome, and he says he’s ‘wild about me’. Yes, it’s true, he may already be spoken for, but what does that matter to a woman in love? I can surely beat out the competition, I’m younger than her, and anyway he says he’s never met anyone as sexy as me.”

  I just froze right there on the spot. Not possible. Was it? Naw. But. “So, I will defeat my rival, and then I definitely see London in my future,” Honorine was concluding. She hung up, and came bouncing away from the balcony, into her room, and straight toward me. I wasn’t happy to see the surprised, stricken look on her face as soon as she caught sight of me.

  “Oh!” she cried in dismay. “You are here!”

  “Honorine,” I said, ready to scratch her eyes out if necessary, “I’m sorry but I couldn’t help overhearing. Who were you talking about?” I stared at her resolutely, just willing her to try to lie to me.

  She stuck out her chin defiantly, then smiled in triumph. I think my heart skipped a beat. Then she admitted, “If you must know, I am in love. And nothing you say will make any difference. But Jeremy doesn’t know for sure how I feel, although I think he suspects. Has he told you anything?”

  I just stared at those big brown eyes that were looking so defiantly back at me. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. “Jeremy?” I croaked in a dry, cracked voice. Honorine flushed bright red, and then began to stammer, in French, as if she were under such stress that her grasp of English had temporarily deserted her. “What about Jeremy?” I repeated.

  “I would not want to be forced to choose between my job and the man I love, but I will if I must!” she finally managed to say. We stood there, staring at each other. Then she said pleadingly, “Surely you do not wish to cause trouble for Rupert.”

  “Rupert?” I repeated rather stupidly. “Rupert?” Then the light dawned. “Ohhh . . . Rupert. You’re in love with Rupert?”

  “For heaven’s sake, you don’t need to tell the whole hotel!” Honorine cried in dismay. “What if Jeremy should hear you? Please, don’t make so much of it—and absolutely do not tell my parents!”

  I couldn’t help it. I started to snicker uncontrollably. Mainly from relief, and recognition of the absurdity of my response. At her indignant expression, I smothered my laughter as quickly as I could. But I was so relieved, I could practically sing with it.

  “Okay, my lips are sealed,” I gasped. Then I calmed down. “Honorine,” I said briskly, “meanwhile, how would you like to do some investigating? It may help us find the tapestry.” She brightened, eager to contribute to solving this case.

  I explained, “We need you to do some research in France. See if you can find out anything in the historical archives about Jean Lunaire.”

  I wrote down the name for her, and the relevant time period. “He’s the wealthy patron of the tapestry-maker. Lunaire got arrested for trying to poison the king, and that’s how Armand got into trouble. I’d like to know why Armand put his patron’s initials and crest on a tapestry that was made for his own daughter, not for Lunaire. So, dig into the old French law libraries for records which may not be on computers.”

  We were heading downstairs now, with Honorine pulling her suitcase-on-wheels behind her. “Even if I did find such records, what good would it do, it’s so old?” Honorine said doubtfully.

  “Hey kid,” I said firmly, with no time to mince words, “I’ve got a nose for this sort of thing. And my nose is telling me that we’ve got to go back in time and find out what happened. Not just Lunaire’s trial, but you should also look into Armand’s arrest. Remember, this is your family we’re talking about. You never know what you might turn up, so do it carefully, and, um, please don’t discuss what you find with your folks until you’ve spoken to me. All of this is top secret. Got it?”

  Honorine, looking excited now, said, “I’ll get right on it.”

  We had reached the hotel lobby. “Good,” I said positively. “Do you have a credit card? Great, keep all your receipts, and make a record of where you go. Names, dates, addresses, notes.”

  “It will be done!” Honorine said respectfully. Jeremy was pacing around the lobby, waiting for us. Honorine went ahead to see that the bellhop put our bags into the trunk of the car.

  Jeremy murmured to me, “Did I just hear you put Honorine on an expense account?”

  “She can’t pay for her expenses on the little salary she gets from us!” I exclaimed. “She’ll be prudent, don’t worry. And I want her to be businesslike, when she’s on a case.”

  “Fine,” Jeremy said. “Let’s get out of here, and find out what Drake thinks we know.”

  Part Eight

  Chapter Thirty-one

  We didn’t even bother to unpack when we arrived in London. The townhouse looked unmolested in our absence, since Monsieur Felix had been keeping an eye on it for us. We just deposited our luggage in the hallway; then we headed right back out the door, and made a raid on the jewelry store. The guy was in his shop, as usual, and he actually looked happy to see us when we entered.

  “Either he’s very good at faking it,” Jeremy muttered, “or he’s totally innocent and we’re off our rockers.”

  Undaunted, I said to the man quite bluntly, “When I first brought you the designs for the crest I wanted to make, why did you ask me about the source material?”

  “Why, to make certain it was done right,” he said, surprised at my tone.

  “Did you show it to anybody else?” Jeremy asked.

  “Only the engravers,” he said, but then a look of comprehension crossed his face.
“Don’t worry, they never make copies of designs that a customer has specially commissioned. You won’t see that ring on anyone else.”

  “Oh, what a relief,” I said, as if he’d guessed correctly. “But, just so I know, are you absolutely sure that nobody else saw it?”

  “Certainly,” the jeweler said, frowning.

  “Don’t you have any employees?” Jeremy asked.

  “No. It’s just me and my wife, who does the book- keeping,” he said, nodding toward a framed photo on his desk behind the counter, along with another photo of two small kids and their dog. The wife was a plump, pleasant-faced woman who bore absolutely no resemblance to Drake’s wife.

  “But, we had a visit from a woman who said she worked for you, and she delivered the groom’s gift,” I said.

  “A woman?” the man asked, puzzled. “I thought the engraver dropped it off to you. He said he would. I was in a hurry for a dental appointment that day, and when he came by to show it to me, he offered to take it to you himself. He and his brother have done this for me before, without any trouble.”

  The jeweler repeated what he’d told me on my previous visit, which was that the engraver and his brother worked together in the coin shop around the corner. But now, of course, the notion of rare coins rang a loud bell.

  “What can you tell us about those two men?” Jeremy asked.

  The jeweler shrugged. “They’ve been around for years, and I’ve always found them honest and dependable,” he said. “I really think you can trust them not to reuse your design, but if it makes you feel better, you can tell them yourself.” He wrote down their phone number and address on the back of one of his own cards.

  “Think he’s telling the truth?” I asked Jeremy, once we were out on the street.

  “Probably,” he said, “but just in case, we’d better hurry over there before he tips them off.”