Straight (32 page)

“Surprising if they weren’t.”

“They’re coming back to England, though, to see Datepalm run in the Hennessy. How’s your ankle?”

“Good as new by then.”

“Bye, then.” I could hear his smile. “Take care.”

He disconnected and left me thinking that there still were good things in the world, like the Ostermeyers’ faith and riding Datepalm in the Hennessy, and I stood up and put my left foot flat on the floor for a progress report.

It wasn’t so bad if I didn’t lean any weight on it, but there were still jabbingly painful protests against attempts to walk. Oh well, I thought, sitting down again, give it another day or two. It hadn’t exactly had a therapeutic week and was no doubt doing its best against odds. On Thursday, I thought, I would get rid of the crutches. By Friday, definitely. Any day after that I’d be running. Ever optimistic. It was the belief that cured.

The overworked telephone rang again, and I answered it with “Saxony Franklin?” as routine.

“Derek?”

“Yes,” I said.

Clarissa’s unmistakable voice said, “I’m in London. Could we meet?”

I hadn’t expected her so soon, I thought. I said, “Yes, of course. Where?”

“I thought ... perhaps ... Luigi’s. Do you know Luigi’s bar and restaurant?”

“I don’t,” I said slowly, “but I can find it.”

“It’s in Swallow Street near Piccadilly Circus. Would you mind coming at seven, for a drink?”

“And dinner?”

“Well ...”

“And dinner,” I said.

I heard her sigh, “Yes. All right,” as she disconnected, and I was left with a vivid understanding both of her compulsion to put me where she had been going to meet Greville and of her awareness that perhaps she ought not to.

I could have said no, I thought. I could have, but hadn’t. A little introspection revealed ambiguities in my response to her also, like did I want to give comfort, or to take it.

By three-thirty I’d finished the paperwork and filled an order for pearls and another for turquoise and relocked the vault and got Annette to smile again, even if faintly. At four, Brad pulled up outside Prospero Jenks’s shop in Knightsbridge and I put the telephone ready to let him know when to collect me.

Prospero Jenks was where I’d found him before, sitting in shirtsleeves at his workbench. The discreet dark-suited man, serving customers in the shop, nodded me through.

“He’s expecting you, Mr. Franklin.”

Pross stood up with a smile on his young-old Peter Pan face and held out his hand, but let it fall again as I waggled a crutch handle at him instead.

“Glad to see you,” he said, offering a chair, waiting while I sat. “Have you brought my diamonds?” He sat down again on his own stool.

“No. Afraid not.”

He was disappointed. “I thought that was what you were coming for.”

“No, not really.”

I looked at his long, efficient workroom with its little drawers full of unset stones and thought of the marvels he produced. The big notice on the wall still read NEVER TURN YOUR BACK TO CUSTOMERS. ALWAYS WATCH THEIR HANDS.

I said, “Greville sent twenty-four rough stones to Antwerp to be cut for you.”

“That’s right.”

“Five of them were cubic zirconia.”

“No, no.”

“Did you,” I asked neutrally, “swap them over?”

The half-smile died out of his face, which grew stiff and expressionless. The bright blue eyes stared at me and the lines deepened across his forehead.

“That’s rubbish,” he said. “I’d never do anything stupid like that.”

I didn’t say anything immediately and it seemed to give him force.

“You can’t come in here making wild accusations. Go on, get out, you’d better leave.” He half-rose to his feet.

I said, not moving, “When the cutters told Greville five of the stones were cubic zirconia, he was devastated. Very upset.”

I reached into my shirt pocket and drew out the print-out from the Wizard.

“Do you want to see?” I asked. “Read there.”

After a hesitation he took the paper, sat back on the stool and read the entry:

“Greville used to write his thoughts in a notebook,” I said. “In there, it says ‘Infinite sadness is not to trust an old friend.’ ”

“So what?”

“Since Greville died,” I said, “someone has been trying to find his diamonds, to steal them from me. That someone had to be someone who knew they were there to be found. Greville kept the fact that he’d bought them very quiet for security reasons. He didn’t tell even his staff. But of course you yourself knew, as it was for you he bought them.”

He said again, “So what?”

“If you remember,” I said, still conversationally, “someone broke into Greville’s office after he died and stole things like an address book and an appointments diary. I began to think the thief had also stolen any other papers which might point to where the diamonds were, like letters or invoices. But I know now there weren’t any such papers to be found there, because Greville was full of distrust. His distrust dated from the day the Antwerp cutters told him five of his stones were cubic zirconia, which was about three weeks before he died.”

Pross, Greville’s friend, said nothing.

“Greville bought the diamonds,” I went on, “from a sightholder based in Antwerp who sent them by messenger to his London house. There he measured them and weighed them and signed for them. Then it would be reasonable to suppose that he showed them to you, his customer. Or showed you twenty-five of them, perhaps. Then he sent that twenty-five back to Antwerp by the Euro-Securo couriers. Five diamonds had mysteriously become cubic zirconia, and yes, it was an entirely stupid thing to do, because the substitution was bound to be discovered almost at once, and you knew it would be. Had to be. I’d think you reckoned Greville would never believe it of you, but would swear the five stones had to have been swapped by someone in the couriers or the cutters in Antwerp, and he would collect the insurance in due course, and that would be that. You would be five diamonds to the good, and he would have lost nothing.”

“You can’t prove it,” he said flatly.

“No, I can’t prove it. But Greville was full of sorrow and distrust, and why should he be if he thought his stones had been taken by strangers?”

I looked with some of Greville’s own sadness at Prospero Jenks. A likable, entertaining genius whose feelings for my brother had been strong and long-lasting, whose regret at his death had been real.

“I’d think,” I said, “that after your long friendship, after all the treasures he’d brought you, after the pink and green tourmaline, after your tremendous success, that he could hardly bear your treachery.”

“Stop it,” he said sharply. “It’s bad enough ...”

He shut his mouth tight and shook his head, and seemed to sag internally.

“He forgave me,” he said.

He must have thought I didn’t believe him.

He said wretchedly, “I wished I hadn’t done it almost from the beginning, if you want to know. It was just an impulse. He left the diamonds here while he went off to do a bit of shopping, and I happened to have some rough CZ the right size in those drawers, as I often do, waiting for when I want special cutting, and I just ... exchanged them. Like you said. I didn’t think he’d lose by it.”

“He knew, though,” I said. “He knew you, and he knew a lot about thieves, being a magistrate. Another of the things he wrote was ‘If laws are inconvenient, ignore them, they don’t apply to you.’ ”

“Stop it. Stop it. He forgave me.”

“When?”

“In Ipswich. I went to meet him there.”

I lifted my head. “Ipswich. Orwell Hotel, P. three-thirty P.M.,” I said.

“What? Yes.” He seemed unsurprised that I should know. He seemed to be looking inward to an unendurable landscape.

“I saw him die,” he said.

“I
saw the scaffolding fall on him,” he said.

He’d stunned me to silence.

“We talked in the hotel. In the lounge there. It was almost empty ... then we walked down the street to where I’d left my car. We said goodbye. He crossed the road and walked on, and I watched him. I wanted him to look back and wave ... but he didn’t.”

Forgiveness was one thing, I thought, but friendship had gone. What did he expect? Absolution and comfort? Perhaps Greville in time would have given those too, but I couldn’t.

Prospero Jenks with painful memory said, “Grev never knew what happened ... There wasn’t any warning. Just a clanging noise and metal falling and men with it. Crashing down fast. It buried him. I couldn’t see him. I ran across the road to pull him out and there were bodies ... and he ... he ... I thought he was dead already. His head was bleeding ... there was a metal bar in his stomach and another had ripped into his leg ... it was ... I can’t ... I try to forget but I see it all the time.”

I waited and in a while he went on.

“I didn’t move him. Couldn’t. There was so much blood ... and a man lying over his legs ... and another man groaning. People came running ... then the police ... it was just chaos ...”

He stopped again, and I said, “When the police came, why didn’t you stay with Greville and help him? Why didn’t you identify him to them, even?”

His genuine sorrow was flooded with a shaft of alarm. The dismay was momentary, and he shrugged it off.

“You know how it is.” He gave me a little-boy shamefaced look, much the same as when he’d admitted to changing the stones. “Don’t get involved. I didn’t want to be dragged in ... I thought he was dead.”

Somewhere along the line, I thought, he was lying to me. Not about seeing the accident: his description of Greville’s injuries had been piercingly accurate.

“Did you simply ... drive off?” I asked bleakly.

“No, I couldn’t. Not for ages. The police cordoned off the street and took endless statements. Something about criminal responsibility and insurance claims. But I couldn’t help them. I didn’t see why the scaffolding fell. I felt sick because of the blood. I sat in my car till they let us drive out. They’d taken Grev off in an ambulance before that ... and the bar was still sticking out of his stomach...”

The memory was powerfully reviving his nausea.

“You knew by then that he was still alive,” I said.

He was shocked. “How? How could I have known?”

“They hadn’t covered his face.”

“He was dying. Anyone could see. His head was dented ... and bleeding ...”

Dead men don’t bleed, I thought, but didn’t say it. Prospero Jenks already looked about to throw up, and I wondered how many times he actually had, in the past eleven days.

Instead, I said, “What did you talk about in the Orwell Hotel?”

He blinked. “You know what.”

“He accused you of changing the stones.”

“Yes.” He swallowed. “Well, I apologized. Said I was sorry. Which I was. He could see that. He said why did I do it when I was bound to be found out, but when I did it, it was an impulse, and I didn’t think I’d be found out, like I told you.”

“What did he say?”

“He shook his head as if I were a baby. He was sad more than angry. I said I would give his diamonds back, of course, and I begged him to forgive me.”

“Which he did?”

“Yes, I told you. I asked if we could go on trading together. I mean, no one was as good as Grev at finding marvelous stones, and he always loved the things I made. It was good for both of us. I wanted to go back to that.”

Going back was one of life’s impossibilities, I thought. Nothing was ever the same.

“Did Greville agree?” I asked.

“Yes. He said he had the diamonds with him but he had arrangements to make. He didn’t say what. He said he would come here to the shop at the beginning of the week and I would give him his five stones and pay for the teardrops and stars. He wanted cash for them, and he was giving me a day or two to find the money.”

“He didn’t usually want cash for things, did he? You sent a check for the spinel and rock crystal.”

“Yes, well ...” Again the quick look of shame. “He said cash in future, as he couldn’t trust time. But you didn’t know that.”

Greville certainly hadn’t trusted me, and it sounded as if he’d said he had the diamonds with him when he knew they were at that moment on a boat crossing the North Sea. Had he said that, I wondered? Perhaps Prospero Jenks had misheard or misunderstood, but he’d definitely believed Greville had had the diamonds with him.

“If I give you those diamonds now, then that will be the end of it?” he said. “I mean, as Grev had forgiven me, you won’t go back on that and make a fuss, will you? Not the police ... Grev wouldn’t have wanted that, you know he wouldn’t.”

I didn’t answer. Greville would have to have balanced his betrayed old friendship against his respect for the law, and I supposed he wouldn’t have had Prospero prosecuted, not for a first offense, admitted and regretted.

Prospero Jenks gave my silence a hopeful look, rose from his stool and crossed to the ranks of little drawers. He pulled one open, took out several apparently unimportant packets and felt deep inside with a searching hand. He brought out a twist of white gauze fastened with a band of sticky tape and held it out to me.

“Five diamonds,” he said. “Yours.”

I took the unimpressive little parcel, which most resembled the muslin bag of herbs cooks put in stews, and weighed it in my hand. I certainly couldn’t myself tell CZ from C and he could see the doubt in my face.

“Have them appraised,” he said with unjustified bitterness, and I said we would weigh them right there and then and he would write out the weight and sign it.

“Grev didn’t ...”