After the Armistice Ball

Chapter Three

No further progress was possible that first evening. Silas shouted down the table to Alec Osborne to clear up some argument about fishing tackle, and at that the men were lost and the ladies retreated into a huffy but dignified silence which carried us through until we could retreat bodily to the drawing room, the coffee cups and the desultory house party chat which always makes one long for bedtime.

Hugh was up and off at early light the next day, slipping out in his stockinged feet in a way I thought most considerate until I realized that he was headed for his rubber waders in the boot room. I opened my eyes once he was gone and lay with my hands laced behind my head. I was thinking over the evening before and trying to plan a useful day, when the door opened and Daisy came in still in her nightie and the bathing cap she always wears in bed in the hope that it will keep her hair set while she sleeps.

‘Wretched thing,’ she said, plumping down at my dressing table and peeling it off. Her hair underneath was almost grotesque in its dishevelment. ‘As ever,’ she said, sighing, ‘hair by Picasso.’ Then she rumpled it into its naturally mop-like state with both hands and got into bed beside me. I looked straight ahead of me and spoke with no emotion. And it is just as well I did, for here is what happened.

‘Well, I drew out Mrs, as you witnessed,’ I began. ‘She is adamant that the theft took place at the ball and she fully expected, therefore, that Silas would pay out on her claim, even though as she put it there is an irregularity in the paperwork. She seems dreadfully shocked that it’s not simply happening that way.’

Daisy stared at me.

‘An irregularity in the paperwork?’ she said. I raised my eyebrows non-committally and waited for more. ‘Is that how she described it to you, Dan? An irregularity in the paperwork? She must be insane. If anyone were to find out that Silas had done such a thing he would be finished.’ I hoped that my mask continued to function but I feared my face was hardening as I heard this. Daisy’s idea of ‘finished’ was evidently very different from mine.

‘Yes, I suppose his financial chums would look down their noses rather,’ I said, trying to sound as light as I could.

‘Well, that too,’ said Daisy. ‘But from his prison cell, I rather think that would be the least of his worries.’

‘Prison? Surely not?’

‘Of course prison. Fraud, false accounts, embezzlement. Why do you think Gerard Bevan is on the run?’

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Don’t you ever read the papers, Dandy? She must be mad to think that this could happen hush-hush and no questions asked. She must -’ Daisy sat straight up and glared over her shoulder at the corner of the room, towards, I guessed, the part of the house where Lena’s bedroom lay. ‘She must have some kind of proof.’

Daisy did not seem to notice, so lost was she in the tangle of her own thoughts, that I was silent. I knew no more than that the clear view I thought I had got of the thing had clouded over once more.

‘What I don’t see, though,’ she said, ‘is why on earth they weren’t insured for real. That makes no sense at all.’

‘They weren’t insured,’ I echoed.

‘Which makes no sense at all,’ said Daisy again.

‘They weren’t insured by Silas,’ I said, slowly and carefully, mostly to myself. ‘But she hoped he might fake an insurance arrangement and cover their loss, risking ruin and jail, rather than let whatever it is come out.’ Fortunately my thinking out loud was taken by Daisy to be a helpful summary and she simply nodded. ‘I agree then,’ I said. ‘She must have proof.’ Something was nagging at me, but I was so confused already I knew I should have to think long and hard before illumination came.

‘Yes,’ said Daisy. ‘Nothing else would explain how she could even dream that Silas would…’ I tried again to catch at the nagging thought, the way one does, looking mentally off to the side and pretending one isn’t. It did not work.

‘This is going to do for us, Dan,’ said Daisy, morosely. ‘Oh, I don’t mean there’s anything in it, of course. We shan’t have to pay it. But just a hint, just a whisper. You’ve no idea what they’re like, these bankers. Not to mention the actuaries.’ She shuddered again, just as she had when she had said the word to me over the telephone. I began to wonder with dread what an actuary was, exactly.

‘I think even Lena realizes that,’ I said. ‘And in a way that makes it worse.’ Daisy frowned at me, waiting. ‘She said last night, very clearly, that I should ask you for a little something and then a regular arrangement.’ Daisy’s mouth dropped open.

‘But that’s…’ she began, and then blinked and shook her head. ‘How did you do it, Dan? What on earth did you say to get her to simply pour it all out like that? You are a marvel.’ I hoped Daisy would take my sudden flush and inarticulate gulping as modesty. She smacked her hands down on the bedclothes making me jump.

‘Five hundred pounds,’ she said, cutting into my fizz of shame. ‘Five hundred pounds if you can get to the bottom of it, darling. And, um, a daily retainer. Expenses too, of course.’

‘A daily retainer?’ I echoed. ‘Expenses? Daisy, have you done this before?’

‘I went to an agency last week and sounded them out,’ Daisy said. ‘But I funked it. They would have been hopeless, lumbering around in serge, you know, like having a rhinoceros come to tea and expecting no one to notice.’ She looked piercingly at me. ‘Can you, Dan? Can you spare the time?’ I tried hard not laugh. ‘And more to the point, can you bear to cosy up to Lena enough to find out what she’s up to? Can you do it?’

‘Leave it with me,’ I said, managing not to blush who knows how at my temerity. After all, less than two minutes before I had almost let it slip that I hadn’t a clue. ‘I accept your terms. Now just leave it to me.’

To my great surprise, Daisy fell for it. She sighed with contentment and snuggled down under the blankets with a slow, luxuriating wriggle like a warm dog, then emerged again and, saying she was going to write me a cheque that minute, she dashed off.

My breakfast tray appeared, although it was as hard to concentrate on eggs and toast as it was to force my thoughts to the question of the theft, the fraud or any of it. All I could think of was five hundred pounds, five hundred pounds; the first money of my own I should have had since the last coin had been pressed into my hand by a kindly uncle, and the first money I should have earned in my entire life. Daisy had tossed it casually towards me as though not only was the sum negligible but also the fact of her having it, to do as she pleased with it, was nothing out of the usual way.

Giving up on breakfast at last, I began to dress. Tweed, of course, but I always make sure to have some rather pretty tweed, such is the amount of time one spends in it when one is married to a Scotsman. Today’s were a heathery colour flecked with amethyst, which looked quite acceptable with those purple-fawn stockings in the shade I think of as ‘alcoholic nose’. I have countless other tweed garments, all heathery at heart, but flecked with any number of greens, blues, pinks, yellows even. On one point I am immovable, though: country life is bad enough without wearing brown.

By half-past ten, recovered from my excitement, heathery and flecked, I sat down beside Lena Duffy in the hall. She was installed at the comfortable end of a chaise from where she could keep an eye on Cara and Alec, who were sitting in another corner of the room. (Alec, as an engaged person, was clearly exempt from the day’s sport.) Lena did not exactly welcome me, issuing no more than a curt nod, but she did not actually scowl, so I guessed that matters between us were as we had left them, frosty – no overnight thaw – but at the sorbet rather than the iceberg end of the scale. Besides, although she was reading Vanity Fair she very selfishly had the Tatler, Bystander and Graphic on her lap too, saving them for later. This left only the dreary old Spectator for my amusement and so I swallowed my qualms at disturbing her.

‘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.

‘Well, it wouldn’t,’ I agreed. ‘I shall certainly speak to Daisy about all of this.’

‘And Silas too,’ she said. I was beginning to put her down as one of those ladies who, even when past the age to flirt, cannot rid themselves of the idea that the husband is the head of the household and the valve – do I mean valve? – through which all must flow. I am the other kind; I know very well that husbands have all the money and all the say, really, but somehow I never remember to behave as if it were so. (The very strange thing is that if one lives one’s life with this point of view, as though husbands barely exist, they do seem to fade.)

‘And Silas too,’ I assured her.

‘He needs to be brought to an understanding that although what is lost can never be got back again, and although it may have taken some time to come to light, life does go on and reparation must be made.’ She spoke in a noble tone as though delivering hot tips from an oracle, so I gave the kind of slow nod I thought oracles’ tips demanded.

There was no chance to talk to Daisy at luncheon (the usual half-hearted luncheon dished up to ladies when their husbands are enjoying lavish picnics somewhere else) but afterwards she and I loitered long enough to let the Duffys settle themselves in the hall again and the bankers’ wives begin an inept game of summer ice in the pavilion while they waited for the croquet lawn to be set, then we lit our cigarettes and strolled down the drive. McSween was up a ladder about a quarter of a mile away towards the gate, lopping industriously at the fresh growth in one of the trees in the avenue, a boy down below catching the clippings, and although they made a plausible object for our walk should anyone wonder why Daisy was neglecting her guests, I certainly wanted to have the conversation done with before we reached them, so in I plunged.

‘Silas must be brought to an understanding – this is a direct quote, darling – that although what is lost is gone for ever, life goes on and no matter how much water has passed under the bridge – how did it go? – no matter how many tides have ebbed and waned, he must still, um, cough up in the end.’

‘Hmm. Ebbing and waning are the same thing, aren’t they?’ Daisy said. ‘So does she have any proof?’ I drew a large happy sigh; I was looking forward to this bit.

‘She thinks she does, but you’ve never heard such a taradiddle in your life, Daisy, I can assure you. Ahem! She was proceeding to take her rest on the night in question,’ I spoke in my best PC Plod, ‘when she was awakened by the sound of an intruder,’ but at this I lost control of my cockney vowels and had to give up.

‘This is serious, Dan, please!’ said Daisy.

‘Yes, very well,’ I said. ‘Only wait until you hear it. It’s hard to remember it’s supposed to be serious. She heard an intruder, thought it was the maid, glanced at her watch and saw that it was five o’clock.’ I waited, but Daisy said nothing. ‘Glanced at her watch at five o’clock in the morning in November with no lights on, darling? I think not. Anyway she got up and put on the light. She heard a thief running along the corridor, saw that her jewel cases had been tampered with, didn’t tell anyone, didn’t raise the alarm, didn’t mention it to her husband and didn’t get the jewels looked at until months had passed. Twaddle!’

‘What did she mean, “tampered with”? Did she mean they were open?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Just scraped and bent out of shape. As though someone had been at them with a knife. It was this scraping that woke her up, she said. As to why the cases were in her room instead of back in the safe? Her maid was ill, if you please, and she didn’t trust anyone else. This must be some maid, if she’s so much more to be trusted than any number of burly footmen. How do you always manage to get such burly footmen, Daisy, anyway?’ Daisy did not answer and we walked on for a while, heads bent, until she stopped and ground the end of her cigarette under her heel.

‘That’s rather awkward,’ she said. ‘The bit about the knife, I mean. Silas and I have been over and over that night as you can imagine, trying to think of anything out of the ordinary, and there is the thing about the knife.’ She lit another cigarette and talked with her head down. ‘A day or so after the ball, one of the tweenies produced an oyster knife and tried to give it to a footman to give back to the butler. Of course, all of the upper servants immediately decided this poor thing had stolen it and then lost her nerve, but she maintained and continued to maintain under all the glowering of butler and cook combined – and they should have had us begging for mercy, Dan, I can tell you – she would not budge from the story that she found the knife down the back of the dressing table in a bedroom while she was dusting. Lena’s bedroom, before you ask.’

‘Oh Daisy, really!’ I said, almost cross. ‘What is wrong with everyone? We had oysters that night, didn’t we? Very delicious they were too, even though treacherous Hugh dared to blame them for the state of his head the next morning – such ingratitude – so Lena could easily have put one in her bag and dropped it herself. She probably did over her locks with it too. All to add a little verisimilitude to her story.’

‘Do you think?’

‘Of course! What do you think? A thief comes to steal jewels that no one has any reason to believe won’t be in the safe, comes without a knife, breaks into the butler’s pantry to get one, scrapes away at the locks right by the bed of the slumbering owner instead of just stealing the cases… I can hardly be bothered to finish it, it’s so feeble. I say, I don’t suppose anyone will remember whether she really did keep her jewels in her room that night? Or whether her maid really was ill?’

‘I can check,’ said Daisy, ‘but surely she wouldn’t just make all that up?’

‘That is just my point,’ I said. ‘The whole tale is so silly and so half-hearted one can scarcely believe she thinks it will work. And actually – Hah!’

‘What?’ said Daisy, stamping out another cigarette and looking at me excitedly.

‘Oh, the cheek of the woman. There’s something else. She as much as told me last night that, even if the proof of the so-called theft wasn’t all it should be, she knew something else that Silas would much rather she didn’t. So you see, it’s nothing to do with the silly jewels being stolen here, and she knows it and doesn’t care if we guess as much. It’s not reparation or compensation or anything decent at all. It’s blackmail, pure and simple.’

‘Well, how completely bloody horrid of her,’ said Daisy, comical in her indignation. ‘After all we’ve done for them!’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, all right, putting up with them mostly. But remember how we took Cara off their hands that winter to let Mrs and the Ice Princess go gallivanting? Wheeled her about for months.’ What I love about Daisy is her lack of guile.

‘As I remember it, darling, you spent most of that winter gallivanting yourself. Didn’t you swan off to New York for weeks on end and leave poor Cara here with Nanny?’

‘It was just after the war, Dan, and I hadn’t seen Mummy for five years – hardly gallivanting. And I brought you back some lovely things, didn’t I? Anyway, Silas was here. He taught Cara to shoot.’

‘And Mrs Duffy has never forgiven you for that,’ I reminded her. ‘She was still scowling when Cara took a gun last Boxing Day, do you remember?’

‘You don’t think…’ said Daisy. ‘That couldn’t be why she’s got a down on us, could it? Something as silly as that?’

‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘Even Lena wouldn’t threaten you with ruin because one of her daughters has learned an unladylike sport. She isn’t as mad as all that. Unless you get her on to the diamonds, that is – you want to hear her on them! Gives me the creeps. But otherwise, no. Leave the detecting to me.’

‘Darling Dan,’ said Daisy, giving me a squeeze. ‘I must go now and deliver croquet lessons for beginners until tea.’

‘I’m going to walk around down here a bit more, out of harm’s way, and plan my next move,’ I said. ‘Also there’s something tickling at me that I can’t put my finger on.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Daisy. ‘I’ll say it again, Dandy. You’re a marvel. You only spoke to her for half a minute and the whole thing’s out in the open.’ She beamed at me, while I tried to look modest, then she swept off towards the lawn leaving me to carry on down the drive towards McSween on his ladder.

‘I’ll lift they dog-ends for you on my road back,’ he called out by way of a greeting, glaring up the drive towards where Daisy and I had stubbed out our cigarettes on his precious gravel. I murmured a stream of thanks and apologies – he really is the most fearful bully – and walked on past him.

Leaving the drive just before it crossed the bridge I followed the edge of the river towards the start of the woods. The men were fishing miles away to the other side of the park out on the open bank and I felt sure that I should find solitude enough here for whatever it was to percolate to the top of my mind and turn itself into a thought.

First, though, to sort through what had happened. Mrs Duffy had used me as a go-between, relying no doubt on my celebrated callowness – hah! If she only knew – to be sure that I should pass the message straight to Daisy, as indeed I had. She might not appreciate the full enormity of what she was asking. Brought up to be unworldly as girls were in her time, and I supposed in mine, she might not see that what she called the correction of an irregularity was in fact an act of criminal fraud. On the other hand she might know exactly what was at stake for Silas but be sure that she had the means to ruin him anyway and so he had nothing to lose.

There it was again. It was not the sick feeling I had had right at the start; that was still with me, lumpen and disquieting somewhere deep inside, although it had receded a little over the day. Action seemed to dispel it, funnily enough, which was odd if it was a premonition of doom. Unless, of course, it was a premonition of some doom that my actions might avert. That made sense but was such a terrifying thought, that I refused to entertain it. Besides – I shook myself – that was not it. There was something else, something entirely different, like a hair across one’s face that one can neither locate nor ignore. It was not only Lena’s veiled hints about some hold over Silas; I was sure it was something to do with the diamonds. I tried to empty my mind of all conscious thought to see if it would reveal itself. Nothing happened. Then I wondered if perhaps I should chant or try to balance on one leg, having a vague idea got from honeymooning in Morocco that there were ways to strike a channel through to one’s other plane or something and let it all out like a… the only image that sprang to mind was a farrier draining an infection with a nail driven through the rotted hoof. This thought made me laugh out loud and I saw something ahead of me move at the sudden sound. Alec Osborne and Cara Duffy were standing close together just where the trees began.

My first thought was to be glad that I was not wobbling on one leg and chanting, my second that had it been Hugh and I when we were engaged (had we ever stood together in the long grass at the edge of a wood?) we should have sprung apart and blushed. Times were changed; for the better I supposed. I shifted from foot to foot, deliberating whether to go on or veer away discreetly, but they both turned towards me and stood waiting for me to approach, all calm welcome, and so I walked up to them beginning my apologies. If anything, though, Alec Osborne looked relieved to see me.

‘Very timely, actually,’ he said in protestation as I wittered and took half-steps backwards. ‘There is so much to be discussed before a wedding, and so little of it that I can discuss convincingly. I shall hand you over, Cara, and melt away.’ I looked studiously towards the far bank in case he wanted to kiss her, but he shoved his hands into his pockets and strode off whistling, leaving the two of us looking after him, I rather more struck than Cara by his offhandedness, as far as I could tell from her face. We turned towards the start of the river path and fell into step.

McSween takes no interest in the woodland at Croys, woods being too close to ‘Nature’ to yield easily to his ministrations, and the result is charming, not least at the time of year when the last of the primroses meet the first of the bluebells and the canopy above them is unfurled but still fresh and pale. Cara, picking her way along the path ahead of me in the cool green light, would have looked like some little creature from a fairy tale, but for the fact that her rather clinging afternoon frock was covered with large, angular roses in black and pink. She sighed audibly, and again I wondered at how subdued she seemed. Such a doleful little sigh; not at all the chirruping and giggling one thought of as her wont. But then I probably had fixed in my head the Cara of years ago, a schoolgirl and then a debutante, and when I cast my mind back over our more recent meetings, it was clear that she had been on her way to this sombre state for quite some time. It is often the way, I have found, that one fixes one’s view of a person based on the time in their life when one met first them and then subsequent laziness prevents one from ever updating it. This is why, I suppose, old men who have known some old lady since she was a girl still cluster around and smooth their moustaches for no reason apparent to youngsters.

‘Do men always assume if a girl wants to talk about something, it must be something silly?’ Cara asked me presently.

‘I’m rather afraid so,’ I said. ‘But just before your wedding is no time to think of it. You must waft along on a cloud of blossom until after your honeymoon, and then you can begin on truths.’ She laughed at this. ‘And Alec is right,’ I went on. ‘Your mother and your sister are the ones for flowers and dresses and whatnot.’ She bent her head a little lower at this, studying the soft bark and old leaves under her feet. I felt an unexpected and quite fierce protectiveness towards her, but I also saw a handy opening.

‘Let’s us have a good long twitter about it,’ I said. ‘I expect your poor mother must be distracted by all this trouble about the jewels. But I should love to hear about your wedding. Where are you going afterwards? Where are you to settle?’

‘I can’t stop thinking about the jewels either,’ said Cara. ‘Everyone is being so peculiar. Mummy, of course, is bereft. Clemence is as Clemence-like as ever, although I shouldn’t say it about my own sister, I suppose. And Daddy just doesn’t say anything at all. How I wish it hadn’t come out until after I was married.’

‘How did it? Come out, I mean?’ I knew how it had come out, of course. Hugh had told me, but I needed to start her talking.

‘Haven’t you heard? Gosh, I thought everyone knew absolutely everything. I can hear whispering behind my back everywhere I go. It makes it almost a relief to be here with those dreadful little women for a few days, and I expect by the time Monday comes they will be buzzing with it too.’

I said nothing. I was quivering for more, but if I prodded her too sharply she might retreat with distaste. My recent experience with Daisy had shown me, however, that if one keeps perfectly quiet (even if one is only keeping quiet because one is utterly lost and therefore incapable of sensible speech) someone else will say something. It worked again.

‘I took them out of the bank to have them valued, and the poor jeweller’s apprentice who was inspecting them, as a special treat and with his boss breathing down his neck, took one look through his little monocle and almost died of fright.’

‘He must have, poor lamb,’ I said. And then I ventured, ‘Do you have to have them valued every so often then? I’m just being nosy because I have nothing so sumptuous of my own. Hugh’s insurers don’t force us to submit my little baubles for regular inspection.’ She seemed to find nothing strange in this. Another important lesson: say nothing at all, or say much too much – it’s the unadorned question that raises the hackles.

‘No, it wasn’t an insurance valuation, as it happens,’ said Cara, with a small suggestion of laughter in her voice. ‘I’ve no idea how often those have to be done. But I bet my eyes they just stamp the form and sign it and never look at the things. Nobody ever does. I bet more than half the “jewels” you see are fakes, no matter how closely guarded and heavily insured they are.’ She was even nearer laughter now, but a weary kind of laughter which suggested to me that she was ready to tell all to anyone just for sheer relief.

‘The last time they were all out together was here, you know. Since then they’ve been out of the bank once to have pastes made and twice to be cleaned. All at different times, too, because our usual jeweller doesn’t care to have the whole lot in his safe at once. Do you see what I’m saying?’

‘Yes, but there’s something bothering me about that -’ I began, then I really did see what she was saying.

‘He cleaned them all,’ said Cara, burbling with a laughter that almost did away with the weariness in her voice, ‘solemnly refusing to acknowledge that they were worthless. And then he made pastes of pastes, again solemnly going along with it. Such excruciating discretion. And after the whole thing came out, it was clear that he does it all the time. It’s killing.’

I could see the funny side of this, of course, and we smiled ruefully for a moment before I spoke again.

‘I wonder what happened to them,’ I said, carefully, probing. Again Cara spoke as though letting out the words was a relief of some unbearable pressure.

‘Well, it must have been someone who had time in advance to have copies made for the substitution,’ she said. ‘Someone who had seen them before. You see? Someone we know.’ Much as I loathed to admit it, she was making perfect sense.

‘And I suppose,’ I said slowly, ‘I suppose it’s a mere fluke that you found out at all. That you decided to have them valued, and took them to a different jeweller, that a callow apprentice got his hands on them and blew the whistle.’

‘Well, not quite,’ said Cara.

I thought furiously, kicking into the path with the toe of my boot, but I could make no headway with this. Cara was chewing her lip and looking at me out of the corner of her eye. Suddenly she seemed to make up her mind and spoke again.

‘I was having them valued to sell,’ she said quietly. ‘I rather think that’s what brought the jeweller to his senses. And I’ve simply got to talk to someone about it before I burst.’

I was nodding, trying not to look too eager.

‘But you must promise not to tell anyone,’ Cara went on. ‘Oh Lord, listen to me! I’ve always hated that, haven’t you? I promise not to tell anyone, and then tell you not to tell anyone, and you’ll extract the same promise from whoever you tell…’ She sounded almost hysterical.

Just then we were forced to abandon the conversation to negotiate a birch sapling which had fallen most inconveniently across the path. It was slim enough for us to step over, but we had to concentrate on keeping our skirts clear of the up-thrusting branches and so I had a little time to think. My questions, none of which I could possibly have asked her out loud, were: first, why in heaven’s name with marriage to Alec Osborne weeks away was she planning to sell the diamonds she was surely to wear at her wedding; second, what could she possibly need the money for; third and most important, why on earth had she told her mother about it? Had it been me, I should have bribed the jeweller with everything I owned, and then simply slipped the things back into the bank and kept my head down.

Over the tree at last, we patted ourselves down and regarded one another.

‘You poor dear,’ I said at last. And I meant it. Mrs Duffy was not someone I should care to cross, unconnected and unbeholden as I was. I could hardly imagine Cara revealing to her mother not only that she had been planning to offload the famous collection for cash – and how did she manage to get them out of the bank, anyway? – but that the family treasure was Woolworth’s best.

Cara was shaking her head and spoke in a very calm voice.

‘Please forget I said anything at all. It’s just that I’m so very confused and I don’t know who to turn to -’ She broke off, shook her head again, then repeated even more firmly: ‘Please just forget I spoke. It’s probably nothing.’

We were just emerging from the wood then, and we could see across a stretch of parkland the coloured frocks of the ladies on the croquet lawn, and a short procession of dark-suited footmen carrying tea trays across to a ring of chairs where Alec Osborne and Daisy were seated, with Silas in turned-down waders looking like Dick Whittington standing between them. My heart sank. Tea outside in summer one must learn to put up with, but this early in the spring one ought really to be able to count on a crackling fire and an armchair; Daisy has gone terribly hearty and Scotch in some ways over the years. Still, I could see a footman on his way with a pile of rugs and at least the tea would be hot. Cara, beside me, laughed suddenly.

‘Silly old me with my wedding nerves,’ she said, unconvincingly.

‘More than likely,’ I said, unconvinced.

‘Although to be honest I don’t care how awful the wedding is, as long as it actually happens and isn’t called off.’ She had lost me again. Why should the wedding be called off? Were the diamonds her dowry and Alec unlikely to take her without them? But then why should she sell them? To get rid of him? If so, it had not worked, for he didn’t look like jilting her. What was going on? I forced myself to pay attention to what she was saying.

‘I don’t say that I shall lock myself in a tower and pine to death if it all falls through, but I am very keen to be good and married, and no going back.’

I looked at the distant figure of Alec Osborne, lying back in his lawn chair, laughing at something Daisy was saying, and wondered at Cara’s easy admission of her indifference. I could quite see that she would want to be off despite it, though, since things must be unbearably frosty between her and her parents. They ought to have been grateful really; she might so easily not have told them. At the very least it had been brave of her to come clean.

‘You mustn’t berate yourself, Cara dear,’ I said, wondering if I was yet old enough to pull off this kind of wise condescension, and fearing that I was. ‘You are a good girl, you know, to tell your mother. You mustn’t fret about it. And whatever spot you have got yourself in, everything will be different after you are married.’

‘What?’ said Cara, turning towards me and blinking, clearly having drifted off and making me wonder if maybe her feelings for Alec were less impeccably modern than she had implied. ‘Oh yes, I’m a good little girl,’ she said. ‘I always have been, you know. I do exactly as I’m told every time and it brings me nothing but joy.’ I grimaced, pained to hear such world-weariness in one so young.

Mrs Duffy and Clemence came out as we arrived at the tea table and in the fuss of arranging chairs, cushions and parasols, a few whispered words were exchanged.

‘What have you been asking Cara?’ Lena demanded. ‘Much better for you to come to me.’

I was startled. Was it quite settled in her mind then that I had undertaken to do her bidding? I supposed it was.

‘Why, nothing,’ I said, my startled look backing my words nicely. ‘We were chatting about dresses and flowers, actually. But I do need to speak to you, certainly. Certainly I do.’

‘Come when we are home again,’ she hissed. ‘Come for luncheon next week.’

A few more of the men began to drift back from the river as tea got under way, and there was much protestation from the ladies, who affected to be outraged by the mud and fish scales clinging to their husbands’ clothes and shrieked at the trout tails peeping from basket lids. Daisy, as I might have predicted, was stony-faced; she has always loathed the sight of women flirting in public with their own husbands. Alec and Cara were no help, chatting quietly to each other and ignoring everyone else; Mrs Duffy and Clemence were as thick as ever, sitting close together with identical expressions of pursed disapproval on their mouths, and I’m ashamed to admit I was very poor value too, for I sat utterly silent, brooding.

What was the hold Lena believed she had over the Esslemonts, for it could not be the lame tale she had concocted about the theft? Why on earth did Cara want to sell the jewels? And how could she? Were they not her father’s? And were not all the signs that they were intended for her sister in the end? I was heartily sick of the things already and the trouble they caused. Was there any chance that they would simply turn up again? If not, how would one set about trying to track them down? In the favourite parlour game of my childhood – what was it called? – there was a set of enamel tiles to be passed around, what, who, why, where, when and how, and it did make things a great deal easier to -

Suddenly there it was. When. The little wisp I had been swiping at was in my grasp at last. It was simply this: if the pastes were good enough to fool everyone but an expert and if what Cara had said about the jeweller’s discretion were true, then how could her mother possibly know that the jewels had not already been stolen, by the time of the Armistice Anniversary Ball? Had Mrs Duffy had a valuation done on them just then? One that she trusted? If not, it seemed to me, the switch might have been made at any time at all. It might have been years ago. I wondered if this simple point had occurred to no one but me. What a coup if it had not.

I must pump the Duffys for more details. I might even hint at a softening of Silas’s resolve to worm my way deeper into Lena’s favour. So long as nobody signed anything, surely it was worth a sprat to catch a mackerel; ladies could not, I was sure, be accused of entering into gentlemen’s agreements. I should have to conduct the entire thing with my fingers crossed behind my back, of course. In fact, should I perhaps check with Daisy first that she approved of my spinning a line to reel them in on? No, I would fix my bait and land this all by myself.

‘Are you all right, Dandy?’ asked Alec Osborne. I had been staring in his direction, not looking at him exactly, but he and Cara had fallen silent and were both watching me.

‘You look as though you’d seen Banquo’s ghost,’ said Cara, and Alec shouted with laughter.

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Lady Macbeth. What dread deed are you plotting?’ I gaped, which of course only made it seem worse, and Daisy had to hurry to my aid.

‘Or are you trying to remember if you’ve left the bath taps running?’ she said, raising a good laugh from the banking ladies.

‘I was just concentrating hard on something,’ I said, then to make sure I had thrown them off I added, ‘Fishing, actually. Bait, cast, catch. There’s a great deal more to it than at first it seems.’

Clever, clever Dandy. Making my little plans and dropping my little hints. At that point, you see, I still thought it was a game. And my intuitions? I had never had any before, and so had never learned to respect them as others do. I ignored the distant, sickening drumbeat and, full of pride at how I had winkled out my little pile of facts, for the first time in my life I tried to play a cunning hand. If only I hadn’t, if only I had bumbled and blurted as usual, I could have prevented it all. And so although I know they are right when they tell me that evil and madness cannot be contained, I blame myself and I always will.