Straight (28 page)

I dialed the number immediately and again went through the rigmarole of being handed from voice to voice until I reached someone who had both the language and the information.

Mr. Greville Saxony Franklin, now deceased, had been my brother? They would consult their files and call me back.

I waited without much patience while they went through whatever security checks they considered necessary but finally, after a long hour, they came back on the line.

What was my problem, they wanted to know.

“My problem is that our offices were ransacked and a lot of paperwork is missing. I’ve taken over since Greville’s death, and I’m trying to sort out his affairs. Could you please tell me if it was your firm who bought diamonds for him?”

“Yes,” the voice said matter-of-factly. “We did.”

Wow, I thought. I quietened my breath and tried not to sound eager.

“Could you, er, give me the details?” I asked.

“Certainly. We purchased a sight-box of color H diamonds of average weight three point two carats at the July sight at the CSO in London and we delivered one hundred stones, total weight three hundred and twenty carats, to your brother.”

“He.... er ... paid for them in advance, didn’t he?”

“Certainly. One point five million United States dollars in cash. You don’t need to worry about that.”

“Thank you,” I said, suppressing irony. “Um, when you delivered them, did you send any sort of, er, packing note?”

It seemed he found the plebeian words “packing note” faintly shocking.

“We sent the diamonds by personal messenger,” he said austerely. “Our man took them to your brother at his private residence in London. As is our custom, your brother inspected the merchandise in our messenger’s presence and weighed it, and when he was satisfied he signed a release certificate. He would have the carbon copy of that release. There was no other, uh, packing note.”

“Unfortunately I can’t find the carbon copy.”

“I assure you, sir ...”

“I don’t doubt you,” I said hastily. “It’s just that the tax people have a habit of wanting documentation.”

“Ah.” His hurt feelings subsided. “Yes, of course.”

I thought a bit and asked, “When you delivered the stones to him, were they rough or faceted?”

“Rough, of course. He was going to get them cut and polished over a few months, as he needed them, I believe, but it was more convenient for us and for him to buy them all at once.”

“You don’t happen to know who he was getting to polish them?”

“I understood they were to be cut for one special client who had his own requirements, but no, he didn’t say who would be cutting them.”

I sighed. “Well, thank you anyway.”

“We’ll be happy to send you copies of the paperwork of the transaction, if it would be of any use?”

“Yes, please,” I said. “It would be most helpful.”

“We’ll put them in the post this afternoon.”

I put the receiver down slowly. I might now know where the diamonds had come
from
but was no nearer knowing where they’d gone to. I began to hope that they were safely sitting somewhere with a cutter who would kindly write to tell me they were ready for delivery. Not an impossible dream, really. But if Greville had sent them to a cutter, why was there no record?

Perhaps there had been a record, now stolen. But if the record had been stolen the thief would know the diamonds were with a cutter, and there would be no point in searching Greville’s house. Unprofitable thoughts, chasing their own tails.

I straightened my neck and back and eased a few of the muscles which had developed small aches since the crash.

June came in and said, “You look fair knackered,” and then put her hand to her mouth in horror and said, “I’d never have said that to Mr. Franklin.”

“I’m not him.”

“No, but ... you’re the boss.”

“Then think of someone who could supply a list of cutters and polishers of diamonds, particularly those specializing in unusual requirements, starting with Antwerp. What we want is a sort of Yellow Pages directory. After Antwerp, New York, Tel Aviv and Bombay, isn’t that right? Aren’t those the four main centers?” I’d been reading his books.

“But we don’t deal ...”

“Don’t say it,” I said. “We do. Greville bought some for Prospero Jenks who wants them cut to suit his sculptures or fantasy pieces, or whatever one calls them.”

“Oh.” She looked first blank and then interested. “Yes, all right, I’m sure I can do that. Do you want me to do it now?”

“Yes, please.”

She went as far as the door and looked back with a smile. “You still look fair ...”

“Mm. Go and get on with it.”

I watched her back view disappear. Gray skirt, white shirt. Blond hair held back with combs behind the ears. Long legs. Flat shoes. Exit June.

The day wore on. I assembled three orders in the vault by myself and got Annette to check they were all right, which it seemed they were. I made a slow tour of the whole place, calling in to see Alfie pack his parcels, watching Lily with her squashed governess air move endlessly from drawer to little drawer collecting orders, seeing Jason manhandle heavy boxes of newly arrived stock, stopping for a moment beside strong-looking Tina, whom I knew least, as she checked the new intake against the packing list and sorted it into trays.

None of them paid me great attention. I was already wallpaper. Alfie made no more innuendos about Dozen Roses, and Jason, though giving me a dark sideways look, again kept his cracks to himself. Lily said, “Yes, Derek,” meekly, Annette looked anxious, June was busy. I returned to Greville’s office and made another effort with the letters.

By four o’clock, in between her normal work with the stock movements on the computer, June had received answers to her “feelers,” as she described them, in the shape of a long list of Antwerp cutters and a shorter one so far for New York. Tel Aviv was “coming” but had language difficulties and she had nothing for Bombay, though she didn’t think Mr. Franklin would have sent anything to Bombay because with Antwerp so close there was no point. She put the lists down and departed.

At the rate all the cautious diamond-dealers worked, I thought, picking up the roll call, it would take a week just to get yes or no answers from the Antwerp list. Maybe it would be worth trying. I was down to straws. One of the letters was from the bank, reminding me that interest on the loan was now due.

June’s tiny alarm clock suddenly began bleeping. All the other mute gadgets on top of the desk remained unmoved. June returned through my doorway at high speed and paid them vivid attention.

“Five minutes to go,” I said calmingly. “Is every single gadget in sight?”

She checked all the drawers swiftly and peered into filing cabinets, leaving everything wide open, as I asked.

“Can’t find any more,” she said. “Why does it matter?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I try everything.”

She stared. I smiled lopsidedly.

“Greville left me a puzzle too,” I said. “I try to solve it, though I don’t know where to look.”

“Oh.” It made a sort of sense to her, even without more explanation. “Like my raise?”

I nodded. “Something like that.” But not so positive, I thought. Not so certain. He had at least assured her that the solution was there to find.

The minutes ticked away and at four-twenty by June’s clock the little alarm duly sounded. Very distant, not at all loud. Insistent. June looked rather wildly at the assembled gadgets and put her ear down to them.

“I will think of you every day at four-twenty.”

Clarissa had written it on her card at the funeral. Greville had apparently done it every day in the office. It had been their own private language, a long way from diamonds. I acknowledged with regret that I would learn nothing from whatever he’d used to jog his awareness of loving and being loved.

The muffled alarm stopped. June raised her head, frowning.

“It wasn’t any of these,” she said.

“No. It was still inside the desk.”

“But it can’t have been.” She was mystified. “I’ve taken everything out.”

“There must be another drawer.”

She shook her head, but it was the only reasonable explanation.

“Ask Annette,” I suggested.

Annette, consulted, said with a worried frown that she knew nothing at all about another drawer. The three of us looked at the uninformative three-inch-deep slab of black grainy wood that formed the enormous top surface. There was no way it could be a drawer, but there wasn’t any other possibility.

I thought back to the green stone box. To the keyhole that wasn’t a keyhole, to the sliding base.

To the astonishment of Annette and June I lowered myself to the floor and looked upward at the desk from under the kneehole part. The wood from there looked just as solid, but in the center, three inches in from the front, there was what looked like a sliding switch. With satisfaction I regained the black leather chair and felt under the desk top for the switch. It moved away from one under pressure, I found. I pressed it, and absolutely nothing happened.

Something had to have happened, I reasoned. The switch wasn’t there for nothing. Nothing about Greville was for nothing. I pressed it back hard again and tried to raise, slide or otherwise move anything else I could reach. Nothing happened. I banged my fist with frustration down on the desk top, and a section of the front edge of the solid-looking slab fell off in my lap.

Annette and June gasped. The piece that had come off was like a strip of veneer furnished with metal clips for fastening it in place. Behind it was more wood, but this time with a keyhole in it. Watched breathlessly by Annette and June, I brought out Greville’s bunch of keys and tried those that looked the right size: and one of them turned obligingly with hardly a click. I pulled the key, still in the hole, toward me, and like silk a wide shallow drawer slid out.

We all looked at the contents. Passport. Little flat black gadgets, four or five of them.

No diamonds.

June was delighted. “That’s the Wizard,” she said.

“W
hich is the Wizard?” I asked.

“That one.”

She pointed at a black rectangle a good deal smaller than a paperback, and when I picked it up and turned it over, sure enough, it had “Wizard” written on it in gold. I handed it to June who opened it like a book, laying it flat on the desk. The right-hand panel was covered with buttons and looked like an ultraversatile calculator. The left-hand side had a small screen at the top and a touch panel at the bottom with headings like “expense record,” “time accounting,” “reports” and “reference.”

“It does everything,” June said. “It’s a diary, a phone directory, a memo pad, an appointments calendar, an accounts keeper ...”

“And does it have an alarm set to four-twenty?”

She switched the thing on, pressed three keys and showed me the screen. “Daily alarm,” it announced. “4:20 P.M., set.”

“Fair enough.”

For Annette the excitement seemed to be over. There were things she needed to see to, she said, and went away. June suggested she should tidy away all the gadgets and close all the drawers, and while she did that I investigated further the contents of the one drawer we left open.

I frowned a bit over the passport. I’d assumed that in going to Harwich, Greville had meant to catch the ferry. The
Koningin Beatrix
sailed every night ...

If one looked at it the other way round, the
Koningin
Beatrix must sail from Holland to Harwich every day. If he hadn’t taken the passport with him, perhaps he’d been going to meet the
Koningin Beatrix
, not leave on her.

Meet
who
?

I looked at his photograph, which like all passport photographs wasn’t very good but good enough to bring him vividly into the office; his office, where I sat in his chair.

June looked over my shoulder and said, “Oh,” in a small voice. “I do miss him, you know.”

“Yes.”

I put the passport with regret back into the drawer and took out a flat square object hardly larger than the Wizard that had a narrow curl of paper coming out of it.

“That’s the printer,” June said.

“A printer? So small?”

“It’ll print everything stored in the Wizard.”

She plugged the printer’s short cord into a slot in the side of the Wizard and dexterously pressed a few keys. With a whir the tiny machine went into action and began printing out a strip of half the telephone directory, or so it seemed.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” June said, pressing another button to stop it. “When he was away on trips, Mr. Franklin would enter all his expenses on here and we would print them out when he got home, or sometimes transfer them from the Wizard to our main computer through an interface ... oh, dear.” She smothered the uprush of emotion and with an attempt at controlling her voice said, “He would note down in there a lot of things he wanted to remember when he got home. Things like who had offered him unusual stones. Then he’d tell Prospero Jenks, and quite often I’d be writing to the addresses to have the stones sent.”

I looked at the small electronic marvel. So much information quiescent in its circuits.

“Is there an instruction manual?” I asked.

“Of course. All the instruction manuals for everything are in this drawer.” She opened one on the outer righthand stack. “So are the warranty cards, and everything.” She sorted through a rank of booklets. “Here you are. One for the Wizard, one for the printer, one for the expenses organizer.”

“I’ll borrow them,” I said.

“They’re yours now,” she replied blankly. “Aren’t they?”

“I can’t get used to it any more than you can.”

I laid the manuals on top of the desk next to the Wizard and the printer and took a third black object out of the secret drawer.