I squeezed his arm, drawing myself closer to him. Together we looked to the east, towards Avalon, then north across the Quantock Forest to Longstone and Beacon Hills. Heather and gorse lay on the crowns of the highest hills, while on the slopes below, there were oaks and beeches.
Neither of us spoke, for to do so would interfere with the moment. To the west, the Quantocks rose to their highest, while beyond them lay the Brendon Hills of Exmoor. To the south lay Aisholt Common, Cothelstone Hill, the Vale of Taunton Deane and the Blackdown Hills beyond.
‘It’s a land of poets and kings, Lily. Of writers, too.’
‘Father was very ill, wasn’t he?’
‘No more, no less than when he first came home from the Great War, and your mother saw the difference it had wrought in him. Time and the peace of our countryside did a lot for him. It was good for him to come back here.’
For the sake of us girls, our family had spent the war years here. My father had wanted to become a writer, but had ended up being a schoolmaster and then going off to that war. Trapped, that’s what he’d been. Trapped by the need for money a growing family presented, trapped by the love he had borne the woman of his dreams, the girl he’d met as a student while travelling in France.
‘Come now, let’s have that coffee. There are some things that we must discuss.’
He had put the kettle on the hob. Coffee wasn’t his usual. First thing he liked a good cup of tea, but ever since I’d been coming to the hill of a morning, Arthur had thought the change would do him good, and I had made it for him. The book-lined study of dark oak contained not only a fireplace, ample desk, and leather-bound chairs, but also a big bay window whose leaded glass overlooked the garden.
There was a bench before that window, its plush wine-red morocco just as worn as when I first remembered it. Leaning against the backrest, I stretched out my legs and cradled the cup and saucer in my lap.
Arthur indicated the garden with its wealth of hidden paths and rose arbours. Of a spring or summer, there would be banks and banks of colour in wild profusion with phlox, lavender, nicotiana, and so many others piled against sky-blue asters, white daisies, and goldenrod.
The apple trees, the Damson plums. ‘God is out there, Lily. Do you know, I’ve a confession to make. I’m afraid I’ve made a very poor clergyman. I feel Him most when working in my garden. Some Sundays, I can hardly wait to get out of that pulpit.’
‘It’s always so lovely, even at this time of year. Nini and I still speak of it.’ He would tell me now, in his own good time. I knew he was hunting for words.
‘This young man of yours. I like the cut of him, but Aisholt’s a little place. People talk-my good godfathers don’t I know it. He’s not involved in the war-that’s a strike against him, even if he is an American and they’re not in it yet. The point is, my dear, if Jules were to …’
‘He’ll never give me a divorce. The Church wouldn’t allow it. In any case, he must know by now that I’ve run off. This will hurt his precious vanity. I love Tommy, Arthur. Heart, soul, and mind-every particle of me. I’ve never felt this way before.’
‘But you hardly know him?’
Again, I heard myself saying, ‘It doesn’t matter. Not with us.’
‘What’s he do for starters?’
‘He’s in insurance.’
‘Fairfax, Gordon, and Scharpe, the underwriters. Number 83-A Lime Street. Back to back with Lloyd’s and very thick with them, I should think. Rates within rates. The point is, what’s it all mean?’
I heard my cup rattle against its saucer. ‘Has something come up that I don’t know?’
Arthur didn’t avoid it. ‘You have your doubts. I knew you had. This “treasure,” Lily.’
‘What “treasure”? Please, what is this? Has Jean-Guy …’
‘My dear, your young man has a secret compartment in the boot of that motor of his. Ideally suited to smuggling, I should think. Apparently, he took this “treasure” when you left your husband’s house.’
‘Arthur, that’s simply not true.’
‘I take it then that you’ve no knowledge of his having done. Perhaps he did it to help you financially? I gather there’s some jewellery, a tiara … Jean-Guy called it a crown.’
‘It’s paste, Arthur. A fake, for heaven’s sake!’
He set his cup and saucer aside. ‘Have a look around. I’m sure you’ll find it then. But wait. Half a minute now. This firm of his doesn’t just underwrite insurance policies. They underwrite the underwriters.’
‘We are the select, la crème de la crème, Madame de St-Germain. A pool of very wealthy, influential families are behind us. Need I say more, hmm? We cover colleagues who have taken positions on objects of great value and when we get burned, we employ men like Tom Carrington to apply the salve. He’s in East Anglia at the moment, commiserating with the Count Alexis Nikolai Ivanovich Lutoslawski.’
‘A Polish count?’
‘That is correct. A refugee.’
‘Who’s been robbed?’
The man behind the antique desk nodded. ‘Robberies like this seldom get into the press. One doesn’t want the world to know, hmm? They were very good, very select. German or Russian agents must have tipped them off. Paintings, Old Masters, tapestries, a quantity of Russian silver, small pieces of sculpture-very early things those. A matched pair of duelling pistols …’
‘A tiara.’
‘Yes, a fake unfortunately, as you’ve admitted to our Tom. The questions we must ask ourselves, my dear woman, are how on earth did your husband come by it, and where, please, is the real one?’
I sat there in that office, cold tea before me in a fine china cup. The muted sounds of London’s traffic filtered through the oak-panelled walls and the leaded windows across which great x’s of tape had been pasted.
Charles Edward Gordon was the son of one of the original founders. He had a high, domed forehead, a thin tonsure of brown hair, the stooped shoulders of a big, tall man whose frame had long ago resigned itself to overwork, overweight, and the years.
The face was fleshy, the jowls drooping like those of an old bulldog.
The eyes … I can still remember how he looked at me with suspicion, curiosity-amusement, too, because he obviously must have known something about Tommy and me-and what else? A sense of wanting to go deeper, a gamble, too, perhaps? Ah, it was hard to define.
He reached for his pipe and began to pack it, the motions a ritual he had no need to concern himself with. ‘At least one hundred thousand pounds, Madame de St-Germain, probably a good deal more. The tiara of the Empress Eugénie, sold at auction with the rest of her jewels after the flight to England in September 1870 and the collapse of the Second Empire.’
‘France would love to have the real one back, I suppose.’
‘The Royalists at any rate,’ he said, as if sucking it from his pipe. ‘Your husband, madame, is he a member of the Action française?’
Those were not quite Royalists but close enough. ‘Jules? Ah, no. Jules wouldn’t wish for the end of the Third Republic and a return to the days of the royalty.’
Or would he have? The Action française were notoriously Fascist and very far to the right, the Vuittons too, no doubt. But Nini … Nini was to the left of centre and would have warned me. She wouldn’t have put up with him for a moment.
Intently, Gordon watched me, but all I saw of him behind that cloud of tobacco smoke was the smile he momentarily gave as he asked, ‘Think about it, will you? Let Carrington know. Our Tom’s a good chap, very thorough. Been with us for … now let me see.’ He fished about for a notebook he’d no need of. ‘Five years. Has it really been five? Seems like forever. War heating up in France, is it?’