Miss Silver had begun a new piece of knitting. It was to be a cardigan for her niece Ethel Burkett for Christmas. She had started upon the back. Three inches of ribbing and two inches of the pattern appeared upon the needles. The wool was very soft and the colour a deep smoky violet. Ethel had put on a little lately and the shade would be becoming both to face and figure. She had lately bought herself a grey skirt with a purple line in it. Miss Silver had obtained a pattern of the stuff and intended to knit a twin set to go with it. She said now in a thoughtful voice,
‘The Reverend Thomas Jenkinson mentions jewellery as well as the gold plate – jewellery which had belonged to Mr Warren’s late wife. The term might cover a good deal, or very little. There would almost certainly be some valuable rings. There might even be a diamond necklace.’
Frank laughed.
‘And there might be no more than a twopenny-halfpenny brooch or two!’
She was knitting placidly.
‘I think it improbable that a couple of brooches would be dignified by the name of jewellery. I also think it probable that Mr Worple, and through him Mr Blount, possessed rather more information than we do. Mr Worple’s step-father, the elder Mr Martin, remembered his grandmother talking about the Riots. You will recall that she was the young woman who married into Yorkshire but returned to Grove Hill as a widow. She is quoted as having been present when Mr Warren died, and as being able to corroborate what took place during his last moments. She told Mr Jenkinson things which he did not consider it prudent to set down in print lest they should “excite the cupidity of unprincipled persons”. What she said to her Vicar she may very well have repeated to her grandson. We may not know exactly what it was, but I think we may fairly deduce that either by word of mouth or in writing it ultimately reached Mr Worple and was passed by him to Mr Blount. If anything should be found in or under the gazebo, can you tell me just what the legal position would be?’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘Is there really anything you don’t know? It’s not in my line, but I have an idea that it would rank as treasure trove. If a man conceals something in the ground or otherwise with the intention of recovering it at a more favourable moment, I believe his heirs can claim it even after a considerable lapse of time, but if he doesn’t dig it up himself and there are no heirs, it is treasure trove and in theory it belongs to the Crown. As a matter of modern practice, if the find is of any archaeological or historical value it is passed on to the appropriate museum. You may remember that is what happened to the find of Roman silver at Traprain in Scotland, which is now in the Edinburgh museum. But whereas there used to be only nominal compensation for the finder, which resulted in a great many valuable and interesting things being melted down for the bare value of the metal, it is now the practice to hand out what is considered to be the real value.’
Miss Silver inclined her head.
‘That agrees with my own impression.’
He said,
‘Two minds with but a single thought!’ and then went on hurriedly, ‘As regards Worple, from what I have heard about him I should think he will be prepared to cut his coat according to his cloth. In other words, I should say that he would come clean. From our point of view there really isn’t anything against him. There is nothing criminal in wanting to buy a house, even if you think there is something valuable buried in the garden. I don’t imagine for a moment that he would have mixed himself up in a murder. Shady financial transactions are his line, not physical violence, and he has generally managed to keep on the safe side of the law. They may want him as a witness, in which case I’ve no doubt he will be willing to oblige.’
Miss Silver dismissed Mr Worple in the fewest possible words.
‘A meretricious person.’
FORTY-FOUR
ON MONDAY MORNING a carpenter took up the floorboards of the gazebo – good solid oaken boards which had endured through successive, generations since they had been laid there somewhere about the year 1750 at the orders of the wealthy brewer, Mr Henry Warren. He could not at that time have foreseen a day some thirty years distant when, having been warned by a sure hand of violence planned against the Catholics, he would secretly and under cover of night be lifting the end board against the wall where the heavy oak bench was designed to stand, with the purpose of concealing beneath it a service of gold plate which he did not yet possess and the jewels and trinkets of his wife not yet deceased. Yet without such premonition, the octagonal shape of the gazebo and the space beneath its floor lent themselves to such a purpose. The last board against the wall was a short one. On that night of terror Martin Hickley had taken up that last short board under his direction. They had carried down the plate together and wadded it with its own baize covers. The plates and dishes were pushed as far under the boards as they would go. The two great salt cellars took some stowing away, but in the end all was disposed of and a hollow made to take the jewel-case. When the board was nailed down again and a little dust scattered over it there was nothing to show that it had ever been taken up.
The ephemeral violence of the Riots flared itself out and left a ruined house and two dead men behind it. Martin Hickley died when the roof of the hall fell in as he was carrying one of his master’s pictures to safety, Henry Warren being struck down at the same time by a fall of masonry in the portico before the front door, and surviving for no more than an hour or two. An old story and three parts forgotten, but reaching across the nineteenth century and into the twentieth to affect the lives of half a dozen people, and to bring two of them to their deaths.
There were some such thoughts in Miss Silver’s mind as she watched the workman at his task. Frank Abbott, passing near her, took a moment to stand beside her and look down with a quizzical gleam in his eye. He said in a voice pitched for her ear alone,
‘I feel that this demands a quotation. Don’t tell me that Tennyson is mute.’
A slight cough reproved the impertinence. She said sedately,
‘I can give you a most apposite one, but you will have heard it before.’
‘What is it?’
She said, ‘The lust of gain in the spirit of Cain.’ And with that the board came creaking up and he left her and went forward.
Nicholas and Althea were watching too. They stood together, her hand just slipped inside his arm. It was a bright morning. The carpenter’s voice said,
‘There’s something there, and pretty heavy too.’
Inspector Sharp said, ‘Better take up a couple more of those boards.’
In the end Henry Warren’s gold plate came up out of the dark place where he had thrust it in 1780. Its appearance would certainly have shocked him very much. The green baize in which it was wrapped had rotted away to a murky slime. Gold being gold, it would return to its primitive lustre, but for the moment it certainly did not look as if it could be worth a man’s honesty or a woman’s life. Mrs Warren’s jewel-case had practically ceased to exist. Wood and leather had cracked and disintegrated. Drought had reduced it to powder, and periods of rain to slush, but somewhere in the resulting mess was the jewellery which it had contained. A little man of the name of Benchley who had been brought in as an expert pronounced the plate to be gold – a full service for twenty people. He refused to commit himself as to its value.