“My dear girl.” His voice had a slight accent. “It is an honor to meet the daughter of Mr. Fowler. You are as lovely as your father said, very like your mother. I cut the diamonds for her wedding ring, you know.”
“I didn’t.” The ring had been buried with Georgina Fowler. She had never seen it.
Mr. De Sola sighed. “So much time has passed. I did not see him often after they left London-before you were born, Miss Fowler. But he sent many stones to me. Your father had an eye for beauty.”
“Yes, he did.” Her voice quavered. It was odd to hear her parents spoken of in a place where they had once been, perhaps standing where she was right now.
“I grieved to hear of his untimely death so far from home. But here you are-” He stopped when he saw an inadvertent tear trickle down her cheek. Susannah dashed it away.
“My apologies. Perhaps I should not have mentioned such sad things. But so many memories came back to me when I received your letter in yesterday’s post-your father was a very interesting man. A rough diamond himself.” He patted her shoulder. “My little joke.”
Susannah composed herself. Though she had never been here, meeting someone who had known her father stirred emotions that she had kept firmly in check.
“Thank you, Mr. De Sola.” She looked about her. The office was as her father had described it. Solid, plain chairs were set around a desk in the center of the room, which held grooved trays covered in black velvet. A jeweler’s loupe rested on one, along with a pair of thin, long-fingered tongs with padded tips.
“What do you have to show me, my dear? I know you are here on business and we will close soon. It is Friday-our Shabbat. I must be home before sundown.”
“I have some stones. I-I am not sure where they come from.” She blinked a bit. The gaslight fixture that hung from the ceiling cast a circle of brilliant white on the desk, leaving the rest of the room in semidarkness.
“Please, sit down,” Mr. De Sola said.
Susannah settled herself in one of the chairs, coming as close to the desk as she could without getting in the light. She took out two bulging envelopes of light paper that she had folded around the rubies and sapphires, and opened them, pouring the stones into a mingled heap.
“Some stones? I would say there are more than a hundred.” He smiled again. The old man put the loupe to his eye and picked up a stone with the slender tongs, separating the rubies from the sapphires, and examining them one by one.
She had seen her father do the same thing many times and knew the process would take awhile. Mr. De Sola said nothing. He set aside the largest stones for a more careful look and arranged the rest in two neat rows of red and blue.
Then he studied the largest, five in all, for several more minutes, holding them carefully in the tongs and turning them this way and that under the light.
“Very interesting,” he said at last. “I have seen these before. I think I cut these two rubies. The flaws and inclusions are where they were on the shank of the stone-where their setting would conceal them.”
“Oh.” Susannah gave him a surprised look. She had not expected him to recognize the stones. But he was well known for his uncanny ability to do so. There simply were not that many large, fine gems in the world.
Mr. De Sola took the loupe from his eye and set down the tongs. “All of them are of the highest quality. The rubies are from Burma-as you can see, they are the color of pigeon’s blood, the most valuable. The sapphires are certainly from Kashmir. That cornflower blue is unmistakable.”
He regarded her with a serious air, his white eyebrows lifted high over his dark eyes. “All of them have minute scratches, Miss Fowler. As if they were pried from their settings and not with care.”
“Ah-I know nothing about their provenance.” Her mind whirled. Carlyle Jameson a thief? It seemed impossible. She reminded herself that she had no proof whatsoever that the stones belonged to him. She had found them in her corset. That was all.
He gave an eloquent shrug. “Perhaps someone didn’t want you to know. I think they are stolen.”
Susannah turned pale. Meaning that if she were caught with them, a case could be made that she was a thief.
“Would you like a glass of tea?” Mr. De Sola asked solicitously.
“Y-yes,” she stammered. Her father’s old friend would not think that of course. But she needed something to calm her.
He called into an interior room, and in a few minutes, a young woman in a loosely cut dark dress came in with two glasses of hot tea. The glass was held by an openwork cup of silver that fitted it perfectly, with a silver handle.
“My daughter-in-law, Rebecca. This is Miss Susannah Fowler.”
The other woman greeted her in a low, pleasant voice and handed them their glasses, going back for a bowl of rocklike lump sugar. Mr. De Sola took a lump and held it in his teeth, sipping the tea through it. He looked thoughtfully at the rubies and sapphires, and occasionally at her.
Susannah sipped her tea the way it was, not taking sugar. It was hot and strong-exactly what she needed. She had no idea what to do next.
So the jewels were stolen. Her father said that it often happened. Precious stones cast a spell upon the most reasonable of men. People would steal, even kill to get jewels they could not buy, and unusual ones had an unholy power far beyond their size.
She remembered the rare star sapphire her father had once shown her when she was very young, its six-pointed star shimmering within the blue depths of the stone. Then he had brought out a star ruby, rarer still, and let her hold the magnificent gems in her palms, cool and round.
“None of the stones in the maharajah’s treasure chests compare to these, Susannah,” he had said. “But they are only pretty little rocks.”
To him they were worth nothing more than what people were willing to pay for them. But she had been completely dazzled by the sapphire and ruby in her hands. A little of that magic had emanated from the stones she had found in such quantity and heaped in her lap.
Susannah and Mr. De Sola finished their tea, and he helped her refold the stones in their paper envelopes.
“Would you venture a guess as to-as to what they might be worth?” she said. “I shall have to return them to their rightful owner.”
The old man thought for a moment and named a sum in the thousands of pounds. “Maybe more,” he added quickly.
“I see.” She slipped the envelopes back into her purse and tucked it inside the light fitted jacket that matched her dress.
“Miss Fowler.” He seemed to be studying her carefully. “Sometimes stolen gems cannot be returned.”
“Why is that?”
He shrugged again, pushing away the tools of his trade. Then he clasped his hands together and set them on the table. “Sometimes no one knows where they came from. I last saw those two rubies fifteen years ago. They came in uncut; they went out to Argentina.”
“A country I have never visited.”
Mr. De Sola nodded sagely. “And somehow they got to you. An innocent young lady who lives in London. I will say no more.”
Susannah got up. “Thank you very much for your time and expertise, Mr. De Sola. What do I owe you for the consultation?”
“Only a promise.”
“Certainly.”
“Be careful, my dear. And keep those stones in a very safe place.”
She nodded. Mr. De Sola rose a bit stiffly and rang a bellpull for his clerk. It seemed an eternity until the man arrived but she was outside soon enough, her veil drawn over her bonnet once more. She looked up and down the lane, and glimpsed the same shadow, where it had been. Susannah fought the impulse to touch a protective hand to the pocket in her jacket where she had put the gems, and walked away as quickly as she could.