The Attenbury Emeralds

For Judith Vidal-Hall,
With gratitude for many years of friendship

The Characters

(in order of appearance)

Lord Peter Wimsey

Harriet, Lady Peter Wimsey, née Harriet Vane: his wife Arthur Abcock, Earl of Attenbury: a recently deceased peer

Mervyn Bunter: Lord Peter’s manservant

Honoria, Dowager Duchess of Denver: Lord Peter’s mother

Lady Charlotte Abcock: daughter of Lord Attenbury

Gerald, Duke of Denver: Lord Peter’s brother

Helen, Duchess of Denver: the Duke’s wife

Roland, Lord Abcock: eldest son of the Earl of Attenbury

Bredon Wimsey: Lord Peter Wimsey’s eldest son

Peter Bunter: son of Mervyn Bunter

Hope Bunter: wife of Mervyn Bunter

Paul Wimsey: middle son of Lord Peter Wimsey

Roger Wimsey: youngest son of Lord Peter Wimsey

Claire, Lady Attenbury: wife of the Earl of Attenbury

Lady Diana Abcock: her middle daughter Lady Ottalie Abcock: her youngest daughter

Captain Ansel: an army friend of Lord Abcock, guest at Fennybrook Hall

Mrs Ansel: his wife

Mrs Sylvester-Quicke: guest at Fennybrook Hall

Miss Amaranth Sylvester-Quicke: her daughter

Reginald Northerby: Lady Charlotte’s fiancé

Freddy Arbuthnot: guest at Fennybrook Hall

Sir Algernon Pender: guest at Fennybrook Hall

Lady Pender: his wife

Mrs Ethel DuBerris: a widow, guest at Fennybrook Hall

Ada DuBerris: her daughter

Inspector Sugg: a policeman from Scotland Yard

Nandine Osmanthus: an emissary from the Maharaja of Sinorabad

Mr Whitehead: an employee of Cavenor’s Bank William DuBerris: deceased nephew of Lady Attenbury and husband of Mrs DuBerris

Jeannette: Lady Charlotte’s maid

Sarah: Lady Attenbury’s maid

Sergeant Charles Parker: a policeman from Scotland Yard

Harris: Lord Attenbury’s butler

Salcombe Hardy: a journalist

Constable Johnson: a policeman

Mr Handley: a pawnbroker

Mr Handley’s son: who unexpectedly inherits his father’s business

The Marquess of Writtle: husband of Lady Diana Abcock

The Lord Chancellor

Sir Impey Biggs: a distinguished barrister

Mrs Prout: a cleaner at the House of Lords

Edward Abcock, Lord Attenbury: grandson and heir of Arthur, Lord Attenbury; son of Lord Abcock

Mr Snader: a director of Cavenor’s Bank

Mr Tipotenios: a mysterious stranger

Mr Orson: an employee of Cavenor’s Bank

Miss Pevenor: a historian of jewellery

Lady Sylvia Abcock: widow of Roland, Lord Abcock

Frank Morney: husband of Lady Charlotte Abcock

Captain Rannerson: owner of the horse Red Fort

Lady Mary Parker: wife of Commander Charles Parker of Scotland Yard and sister of Lord Peter Wimsey

Verity Abcock: daughter of Lord Abcock and Lady Sylvia Abcock

Lily: an ayah

Joyce and Susie: workers at the Coventry Street mortuary in 1941

Mrs Trapps: cook in the London House

Rita Patel: volunteer at the mortuary

Mrs Smith: a visitor to the mortuary

Miss Smith: her daughter

The Maharaja of Sinorabad

Franklin: maid to the Dowager Duchess of Denver

Thomas: butler at Duke’s Denver

Dr Fakenham: physician to Duke’s Denver

Cornelia Vanderhuysen: American friend of the Dowager Duchess

Jim Jackson: gardener at Duke’s Denver

Bob: another gardener

James Vaud: a London detective inspector

Mr Van der Helm: a retired insurance valuer

Mr Bird: a retired insurance company owner

Mrs Farley: housekeeper at Duke’s Denver

1

‘Peter?’ said Lady Peter Wimsey to her lord. ‘What were the Attenbury emeralds?’

Lord Peter Wimsey lowered
The Times
, and contemplated his wife across the breakfast table.

‘Socking great jewels,’ he said. ‘Enormous hereditary baubles of incommensurable value. Not to everyone’s liking. Why do you ask?’

‘Your name is mentioned in connection with them, in this piece I’m reading about Lord Attenbury.’

‘Old chap died last week. That was my first case.’

‘I didn’t know you read obituaries, Peter. You must be getting old.’

‘Not at all. I am merely lining us up for the best that is yet to be. But in fact it is our Bunter who actually peruses the newsprint for the dear departed. He brings me the pages on anyone he thinks I should know about. Not knowing who is dead leaves one mortally out of touch.’

‘You are sixty, Peter. What is so terrible about that? By the way, I thought your first case was the Attenbury
diamonds
.’

‘The emeralds came before the diamonds. Attenbury had a positive treasury of nice jewels. The emeralds were very fine – Mughal or something. When they went missing there was uproar.’

‘When was this?’

‘Before the flood: 1921.’

‘Talking of floods, it’s pouring outside,’ said Harriet, looking at the rainwashed panes of the breakfast-room windows. ‘I shan’t be walking to the London Library unless it leaves off. Tell me about these socking great baubles.’

‘Haven’t I told you about them already, in all the long years of talk we have had together?’

‘I don’t believe so. Have you time to tell me now?’

‘I talk far too much already. You shouldn’t encourage me, Harriet.’

‘Shouldn’t I? I thought encouragement was part of the help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other.’

‘Does help and comfort extend to collusion in each other’s vices?’

‘You needn’t tell me if you don’t want to,’ said Harriet to this, regarding it as a deliberate red herring.

‘Oh, naturally I want to. Rather fun, recounting one’s triumphs to an admiring audience. It’s a very long story, but I shall fortify myself with the thought that you asked for it.’

‘I did. But I didn’t contract to be admiring. That depends on the tale.’

‘I have been warned. It’s undoubtedly a problem with being married to a detective story writer that one runs the gauntlet of literary criticism when giving an account of oneself. And the most germane question is: is Bunter busy? Because I think explaining all this to you might entail considerable assistance from him.’

‘When is Bunter not busy? This morning he intends, I believe, to devote himself to dusting books.’

Lord Peter folded his copy of
The Times
, and laid it on the table. ‘A man may dust books while listening, or while talking. We shall join him in the library.’

‘Bunter, where do I start on all this?’ Peter asked, once the project was explained, he and Harriet were settled in deep armchairs either side of the fire, and Bunter was on the library steps, at a remove both horizontally and vertically, but within comfortable earshot.

‘You might need to explain, my lord, that the occasion in question was your first foray into polite society after the war.’

‘Oh, quite, Bunter. Not fair at all to expect you to describe my pitiful state to Harriet. Well, Harriet, you see…’

To Harriet’s amazement, Peter’s voice shifted register, and a sombre expression clouded his face.

‘Peter, if this distresses you, don’t. Skip the hard bit.’

Peter recovered himself and continued. ‘You know, of course, that I had a sort of nervous collapse after the war. I went home to Bredon Hall, and cowered in my bedroom and wouldn’t come out. Mother was distraught. Then Bunter showed up, and got me out of it. He drew the curtains, and carried in breakfast, and found the flat in Piccadilly, and got me down there to set me up as a man about town. Everything tickety-boo. I’m sure Mother will have told you all that long since, even if I haven’t. Only as you know all too well, it wasn’t entirely over. I have had relapses. Back then I couldn’t relapse exactly, because I hadn’t really recovered. I felt like a lot of broken glass in a parcel. Must’ve been hellish for Bunter.’

‘I seem to remember your mother telling me some story about Bunter overcome with emotion because you had sent away the damned eggs and demanded sausages. Rather incredible, really, but I always believe a dowager duchess.’

‘Expound, Bunter,’ said Peter.

‘The difficulty about breakfasts, my lady, was that it entailed giving orders. And his lordship in a nervous state associated giving orders with the immediate death of those who obeyed them. The real responsibility for the orders belonged to the generals who made the battle plans, and in the ranks we all knew that very well. But just the same it fell to the young men who were our immediate captains to give us the orders to our faces. And it was they who saw the consequences in blood and guts. All too often they shared the fate of their men. We didn’t blame them. But his lordship was among those who blamed themselves.’

‘That really must have made him difficult to work for,’ said Harriet.

‘It was a challenge, certainly, my lady,’ admitted Bunter, blowing gently on the top of the book in his hand to dislodge a miniature cloud of dust.

‘But by the time I knew him he had got over it,’ continued Harriet. ‘I don’t remember seeing him having any difficulty in giving you orders in recent years.’

Bunter replaced the book in the run, turned round and sat down atop the library steps. ‘But back in 1921 his lordship was very shaky, my lady. We had established a gentle routine for life in town – morning rides in Rotten Row, a few concerts, haunting the book auctions, that sort of thing. And at any moment when boredom or anxiety threatened we went suddenly abroad. Travel is very soothing to a nervous temperament. But his lordship had not resumed the sort of life in society that a man of his rank was expected to lead. He couldn’t stand even the rumble of the trains on the Underground Railway, because it evoked the sound of artillery, so we felt it would be better not to attend any shooting parties. I had been hoping for some time that a suitable house-party would occur, at which we could, so to speak, try the temperature of the water.’

‘What an extraordinary metaphor, Bunter!’ said Lord Peter. ‘The temperature of the water at a house-party is always lukewarm, by the time it has been carried upstairs by a hard-pressed servant and left outside the bedroom door in an enamel jug.’

‘Begging your pardon, my lord, but I always saw to your hot water myself, and I do not recall any complaints about it at the time.’

‘Heavens, Bunter, indeed not! I must be remembering occasions before you entered my service. That vanished world my brother and all seniors talk so fondly about. When wealth and empire were in unchallenged glory, and to save which my generation were sent to die wholesale in the mud of Flanders. I wasn’t the only one,’ he added, ‘to find the peace hard to get used to.’

‘That’s an odd way of putting it, Peter,’ said Harriet, contemplating her husband with a thoughtful expression. ‘I can see that horrible flashbacks to the trenches might have undermined you. Might have haunted you. But the peace itself?’

‘The peace meant coming home,’ Peter said, ‘finding oneself mixing with those who had stayed at home all along. Listening to old gentlemen at the club, who had waved the flag as eagerly as anyone when their own prosperity was in danger, complaining once the danger was past about ex-servicemen who according to them thought far too much of themselves and what they had done. Reading in the press about unemployment and poverty facing returning soldiers, and employers grumbling about being asked to have a mere 5 per cent of their workforce recruited from ex-servicemen.’

Harriet said, ‘I remember a visit to London when there was a man on crutches selling matches in the street. My mother gave me a penny, and said, “Run across and give this to the soldier, Harry, but don’t take his matches.” I shook my head when he offered me the matches, and he smiled. My mother said when I went back to her side, “They’re not allowed to beg, but they are allowed to sell things.” I remember that very clearly, but I’m afraid most of it passed me by.’