Wiles of a Stranger (17 page)

I looked around the meadow for Lucien. He was dismounting to try for tadpoles in the stream. “I have to go immediately,” Morrison said. “See you at eleven at our trysting place, as usual? The highlight of my day.”

“All right.”

“If for any reason I can’t make it, don’t worry. I’ll be in touch somehow.” He released my hands to take up the reins, then kissed his finger and leaned down to place it on my lips. “Till I get around to removing the whiskers, we must use a go-between. Very unsatisfactory,” he added, with a long look at my lips. I felt the same way.

I called Lucien. Morrison waved to us both and galloped off towards the village.

“I expect he is going to get the money to buy my diamond,” Lucien said, looking after him. “I will give you a present when I get it, Miss Stacey.”

“You will do nothing of the sort, sir. It is not the thing to be buying presents for ladies you hardly know.”

“I know you well. I like you too. I will give you a new book to read me.”

“Ah well, if that is the sort of valuable gift you have in mind, I accept.”

“You can keep it after we are done with it,” he  offered handsomely.

“Lovely.”

“And if it is good, I can borrow it back when I want to look at the pictures again,” he added, rather regretting his generosity already. He remounted his pony, and we went home.

Wiggins was in the kitchen when we entered by the back door. I could hardly hide my feelings for the miserable wretch, and to make it worse, he chose that day to flirt with me, while Tess looked on, with laughter in her eyes.

“Your playing hard to get is paying off,” she told me, after he returned abovestairs. “Why you’ll be making the madam jealous, the way he’s throwing his hanky at you. What did he mean about spending your shilling?” she asked.

“Madam gave me a shilling for delivering a note for her,” I replied, noticing that Wiggins was very well aware of my trip.

“She’s generous! She never gives me that much. Where did you have to go?”

“To the milliner. Has Mrs. Cantor been here for long?”

“Who’s Mrs. Cantor?” she asked. “I never heard of her.”

“The milliner in the village—the one at the edge of town.”

“Everybody goes to Mrs. Blossom. She makes the best bonnets hereabouts. Madam gets all hers there. Has she found someone new to patronize?”

“It looks that way,” I replied, but I knew the patronizing had nothing to do with bonnets.

Chapter Thirteen

I am not superstitious, but it is curious all the same that Chapter Thirteen should contain such a piece of bad luck. After we returned from our walk, Mr. Beaudel asked us to step into his office.

“Has the lad been telling you we have a possible purchaser coming to look at the Jaipur diamond?” he asked me. He had changed into a new jacket and clean shirt for the grand occasion.

“He mentioned it to me,” I replied.

“Major Morrison is the chap who wants it. The fellow who bought the Italian necklace, you know. I don’t know what is best to be done, but it would be a wonderful relief, not to have the worry of such a valuable thing in the house, just waiting to be stolen, and the bank vaults not a whole lot safer either. I wonder that a fellow like Morrison, with so much of the ready in his pocket, ever bothered his head with soldiering, but I could not like to quiz him about it. Sacheverel’s word must be good enough for me that he has the money, and came by it honestly. We’ll let him worry about keeping the gem safe, if he gives us a firm offer, that is to say.”

I wondered if he had been so concerned for its safety before his marriage. Next Beaudel turned his attention to his nephew.

“You will want to be there for the transaction. It is your property, Lucien; you must be there. And if you don’t want to sell, just say so. I am only your guardian. You will want to put a clean suit on him, Miss Stacey. A fellow doesn’t do such big business as this every day of his life. You bring him down. You might be curious to see the fabulous jewel yourself, before it leaves the house.”

“I would love to see it,” I admitted, a trifle too eagerly, but he did not notice my enthusiasm. He was smiling at Lucien. He seemed such a nice, kindly old man, I was sorry to have to expose him.

“I will come down to say good-bye to it,” Lucien declared, then took my hand to pull me upstairs for the toilette.

“Why didn’t Major Morrison come home with us?” he asked, a logical question, requiring a logical answer.

“He had to go into town to pick up the expert who is going to look at the gem with him. Mills is his name.”

“The first man who came to be an expert stole some diamonds. Aunt Stella told me so.”

“Did she? When was that, Lucien?”

“Just before you came here.”

“When did she tell you, I mean? When were you speaking to her alone?”

“Last night after supper. She came upstairs to put on a new gown, and I asked her why, when Uncle Charles was away. She was putting it on to please Wiggins, but she didn’t say so. She said it was for me, and let me choose it.”

“What one did you choose?” I asked, concealing my smile at his knowing mind.

“I chose the blue. Wiggins likes it best. I heard him tell her once she looked like a cloud in it, floating across the lawn.”

“He is very romantic.”

“Why don’t you like him then?”

“He’s all right, just not my type.”

“That’s what I thought. I told Major Morrison you didn’t like Wiggins, when he asked me if you ever had private talks with him, like Aunt Stella does. He meant making love.”

“He asked you that?” I demanded.

“A long time ago, the day you made us take you to the village. I think he didn’t like you so much then, but he does now. He didn’t ask me about your beau today. I’m glad, because I still have failed in my mission,” he reminded me, hinting for an answer.

“You can tell Major Morrison I do have a beau, back home in Norfolk. A very steady beau, whom I shall be marrying as soon as I get back.”

“You are not leaving so soon!” he exclaimed, causing me to realize I had blundered, in my vexation with the talkative, nosy major.

“Of course not. When I leave, is all I meant,” I explained, but it was a cruel trick to play an innocent child. He just became fond of one governess after another, and she left. This reminded me of Miss Little, whose vanishing was still unexplained.

“Can I wear my Sunday jacket with the velvet lapels?” he asked, going to the clothespress.

“Why not?” I humored him in this conceit. He looked every inch the little gentleman when his hair was brushed into place. Uncertain what degree of elegance was expected of me, I did no more than brush my hair and put on a gold chain with a small pearl suspended from it. All attention would be on the rose diamond.

We waited until five past four, to see if we were sent for, but as we were not, I took Lucien down to his uncle’s office. Major Morrison was just being shown in, with Mr. Mills, a cadaverous, pale man of sixty-odd years in his wake. Not so much as a blink betrayed our former acquaintance, when Beaudel made his introductions. Morrison too treated me like a mere acquaintance, making me aware what a good actor he was.

As Mr. Beaudel drew a leather pouch out of his desk, I risked casting one frightened eye on Morrison. He raised his brows silently and smiled, enjoying the charade. Soon everything else was forgotten. The rose Jaipur sat in the palm of Beaudel’s hand, a magnificent rose diamond pear, as large as a small chestnut. At four o’clock, the light was not as bright as it could be, but the gem caught the weak sunlight and shot it back in a million prisms. Its clarity was so great, and its cut so exact, it was the most exquisite jewel I had ever seen. Low gasps were emitted on all sides. I felt a stab of regret that my father could not be present. Even a jewel merchant had few opportunities to view such a spectacular stone as this.

Beaudel took it up between his thumb and forefinger.

“They tell me the thing is twenty-five carats. It strikes me it is too large to be worn in any other way than hanging as a pendant. I expect that is how you will have it set, Major, if you buy?” As he spoke, he offered it to the major. He took it to the window, turning it this way and that.

“Yes, that was my plan,” he said, frowning and looking at it.

“Is there something the matter?” Beaudel asked.

It was at that moment that I noticed Mrs. Beaudel was not present, which was odd, as she had been on the other occasions.

“You take a look at it, Mills,” Morrison said, handing it to him.

Mr. Mills took it, hefted it in his palm, then held it to the window. “Can’t be sure. She feels right,” he said, pulling his loupe from his pocket, to be stuck into his eye. There with the sunlight falling on the diamond, he examined it carefully for perhaps a minute, which seemed endless. “The best-cut piece of glass I have ever seen. Definitely paste though,” he said, handing it back to Beaudel.

The man turned ashen. He made a strange sound in his throat, and clutched at his heart. I was sure he was going to fall down dead of a heart attack on the very spot. We all stared at him until some trace of color returned to his cheeks.

“That’s what I thought,” Morrison said blandly, lifting the thing from Mills’ fingers.

“Strass, certainly,” Mills spoke on, in the voice of authority. Just so had I heard my father speak to his clients, as though lecturing them. “A fine piece of work. I wouldn’t be surprised if old Josef Strass himself hadn’t manufactured this piece. He has an ingenious system—a melt of quartz, with lead oxide and some potassium carbonate. What was used to achieve this wonderful rose hue, I wonder? Some oxide of copper, I expect. What do you think, Major?”

“Some mixture of copper and iron, perhaps,” Morrison said, discussing it as objectively as though fifty thousand pounds had not just flown out the window.

“
I
still like it. I shall keep it, if you don’t want it,” Lucien told them, and was allowed, as the thing was only glass, to hold it in his own hands and peer at the light through it. After his examination, he handed it to me. I had been figuring how I might get my hands on the fabulous rock, for whatever else it was, it was still very beautiful and interesting. It was hard to credit it was not a diamond. Hefting it, looking at it with the naked eye, did not convince me it was not a diamond either. The weight felt right.

“Are you sure, Mr. Mills?” I asked.

“Positive, Miss Stacey,” he replied, using my assumed name as though he had never known me by any other. I looked at the loupe he held, wishing I might see the gem through it, to determine he spoke the truth, but I could not very well ask for it, when I was posing as an ignorant governess.

Mr. Beaudel stood stricken dumb with shock throughout it all. Whoever had switched the stone, I was morally certain he was not the culprit. It was impossible not to feel sorry for him. “I don’t understand. I don’t see how it could have happened,” he gasped at last.

“When is the last time you were certain of the gem’s authenticity? When was it last examined, I mean?” Mills enquired politely.

“It hasn’t been looked at by an expert for three years—three years ago in London it was studied by a potential buyer, but we didn’t care for the price he offered. If only we had taken forty thousand! It hasn’t left the house since that time. I have kept it under lock and key. It can’t be a fake. Look again,” he pleaded.

Both Mills and Morrison were happy to oblige him, and to confirm their mutual conviction that it was Strass glass.

“A very fine piece of work,” Mills kept insisting, as though that were any consolation, when he went on to confirm it was undoubtedly glass, and not diamond.

It was Morrison who diverted the talk to wonder whether the switch could not have taken place in London three years ago.

“Impossible. It was never out of my hands. I slept with it in my fingers, and a pistol under my pillow,” Beaudel assured him. He had sunk on to a chair, his head in his hands, actually moaning. I looked from him to the two men. There was no mercy in their faces. They were perfectly satisfied to have shattered his life. And then I happened to think again of Stella. Now I knew why she was not here, intruding her presence. She had done it, switched stones, any time over the months she had been here, with easy access to it hidden away in that toy safe I could have opened myself with a screw driver.

“Of course if you are not satisfied, you can have someone else look at it for you,” Mills said offhandedly.

“Yes! Yes, that will be best,” Beaudel said, lifting his head to stare at us, distracted with grief and worry, but with now a tiny light of hope.

“I understand Dutch van Deusen is right here, in town,” Morrison mentioned.

“Excellent! You couldn’t do better,” Mills seconded him.

“No!” I exclaimed. It was pure, undiluted instinct. A moment earlier I had wished my father could be here, but I didn’t want him involved now. He had been duped once in this house. To be put in a position where he might conceivably be held accountable for this monstrous crime was infinitely worse.

Everyone looked at me, startled at my vehemence, when by rights I should not have spoken at all. “He—he is the man who—who stole your stones the other time,” I said to Beaudel.

“I wouldn’t let the man darken my door,” Beaudel said flatly.

“Rubbish. Dutch van Deusen no more took your diamonds than I did,” Mills stated. “He is as honest as the day is long. There is something very havey-cavey going on here, Mr. Beaudel. I don’t know what it is, but I would suggest you look into your—staff very closely.”

The word
staff
was hesitated over enough to give the idea it was not his first choice of word, or his true meaning. Or so it seemed to me.

“He does know gems, whatever else might be said of the man,” Morrison tossed in.

“Knows more about them than I do myself, and I wouldn’t say that of more than two or three men in the kingdom,” Mills added.

Beaudel looked bewildered, but in the end, I believe he hoped van Deusen might prove the others wrong. “We’ll have him come,” he decided. “I won’t let the diamond go to him, but he can come here, providing the constable is with him, and stays with him while he makes his examination.”