‘They seem very contented,’ I said, nodding towards the corner. This was harmless enough I thought, but Mrs Duffy’s mouth puckered for a second and she did not answer. Either she disliked me, ladies, people in general, or I had already managed to say something displeasing. I wondered if, despite appearances, there was something unsatisfactory about Alec Osborne. If I could soften her up with enough sympathetic clucking on this point we might switch topics with the greatest of ease. ‘A thoroughly satisfactory young man,’ I continued. ‘Well done, Cara, for bringing him to all of our notice, I say. Where was he hiding until now?’
‘Dorset,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘He’s a distant connection of my husband’s.’
So that could not be the problem. Was it the Dorset angle that was troubling her?
‘And will they settle there?’ I asked. ‘Rather a wrench for you.’
‘They will be living here,’ she said. I imagined that by here, she meant Perthshire, or Scotland, at any rate not Dorset.
I gulped, and wished that Daisy would bring the Mrs Bankers into the hall and save me. Of course I knew there was no hope of that; Daisy would be keeping them scrupulously out of the way to give me a clear run and the only other person who might well appear would be Clemence – it was odd for her to be parted from her mother for even ten minutes – and that would be no help.
We watched in silence. Alec and Cara were sitting together at a table bent over some illustrated brochure or other. I supposed they might be choosing honeymoon excursions but they were making rather a solemn affair out of it if so, Cara seeming just as unlike her usual buoyant self as she had the evening before. She was turning pages idly and as she did so her engagement ring winked in the sunlight pouring through the window, making a little burst of reflected light dance over the staircase opposite.
‘I used to do just that with my own rings when the boys were tiny and I went to tuck them in,’ I said. ‘“Make Tinkerbell, Mummy,” they would say. Did you play those games with your two?’ Silence. Realization spread through me like an inkblot. ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘I am sorry. Oh, I could just kick myself sometimes, really. Going on about jewels.’
She heaved an almighty sigh, slightly ragged at its peak, and began to speak.
‘You can’t possibly imagine, my dear. My diamonds – our diamonds, I should say. Poor Clemence.’ There it was again. Poor Clemence – they must have been meant for her. ‘They were quite simply the most beautiful, the most heartbreakingly beautiful… I can’t bear to think about it.’ She was almost plausible; that is to say I quite believed that she loved the diamonds this much, but still there was something unmistakably manufactured going on.
‘One hears people – and not just poets – in such raptures about mountains and oceans and flowers, and I always think, “Ah, there’s someone who has never seen my diamonds or they wouldn’t be going on so about a daffodil or a newborn baby”’
‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘A newborn baby perhaps has to be one’s own newborn baby before one can rapture properly.’ I was half-teasing, looking at Cara as I spoke, expecting some guilty blustering to break out.
‘When I think that I shall never see them again, it’s more than I can stand,’ said Lena. She could not have been listening to me, for no woman could maunder on so about stones after a direct appeal to her to show some motherly sentiment. What is more, while this wailing over her lost diamonds was less irritating than any wailing over her soon-to-be-lost baby would have been, it was nevertheless quite bogus since the hoped-for arrangement with Silas was all to do with hard cash and not at all to do with outdoing the wonder of the Alps and Atlantic. Anyway, it was getting us nowhere. I took a deep breath and began.
‘Lena -’
‘I far prefer Eleanor,’ she said. So much for our bosom friendship, then.
‘I beg your pardon. Eleanor, I spoke to Daisy as we agreed, and I think – no, I’m sure – that I managed to give the impression simply of gossiping and of being entirely on her side.’
‘Thank you, my dear,’ she said. ‘And are they disposed to be reasonable?’
‘Not without some evidence, I fear. I really do think they don’t see how it can have happened.’
‘Is this Daisy we’re speaking about or Silas?’ I considered how to answer. I was not sure what Silas knew about what was going on here. All I had was Daisy’s remark from our telephone call that he was so unnerved as to be ready to give in. But whether this was pre-flotation jitters or meant that he knew something we did not…?
‘Both,’ I said at last. ‘Both are tremendously sympathetic, of course, and sorry. But both are quite adamant that nothing can have happened at the ball. You will need to produce some proof.’
‘Proof?’ asked Lena sharply.
‘Yes, so can you – fearful cheek, I know – but can you tell me what makes you so sure?’
‘Of course,’ said Lena. ‘First of all, that was the last time the jewels were all out of the bank together.’ She produced this with an air of triumph, just as Hugh had, but it still bothered me.
‘If that’s all -’ I began, but she interrupted.
‘No, there’s much more.’ She settled almost visibly into her story. ‘I was awakened in the night, by someone scuffling around in my room. I thought it was the maid lighting the fire, you know, but when I glanced at my watch I saw it was only just five o’clock and so I leapt out of bed and put the light on. The door banged shut and whoever it was was gone. Of course, my first thought was for my jewel cases, and imagine my horror when I looked at them and saw the locks all scratched and buckled as though someone had been trying to prise them open with a blade. My dear! I opened them up and everything was still there. Or so I thought, and if only I hadn’t been so ready to believe it! But the paste copies were so convincing. Well, then I just went back to bed and tried to think no more about it.’ She sat back and looked almost as though she were merely relieved to have got it all off her chest, except that I could tell she was watching me very intently.
‘I see,’ I said, buying some time while I tried to settle on the most diplomatic way I could of asking the questions I needed to ask. It was all I could do not to shout ‘Nonsense!’ and count the lies off on my fingers, for it was the least convincing tale I had ever heard. I began to wonder at her nerve – to think she could get money out of Silas with this rot.
‘Did you not worry,’ I said at last, ‘that the thief might go to another room and have better luck there?’
‘Oh, don’t think me selfish,’ said Lena. ‘I knew the others would have put their jewels back in the safe after the end of the party. I didn’t imagine anyone else would have anything lying around worth stealing.’
‘And why did you not do the same with yours?’ I asked, hoping I did not sound as peremptory as I felt.
‘My maid was ill,’ said Lena, ‘and I did not want to entrust them to someone I didn’t know.’
‘But didn’t you wonder there and then – when you saw the state of the locks, I mean – about pastes?’ She was beginning to draw herself up again and I saw that we were heading back to sorbet and beyond. This should have to be my last question.
‘Such a thing never crossed my mind,’ she said, through pursed lips.