The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

GIRL’S BEST FRIEND by Judith Cutler

When a guy presents you with an engagement ring, a socking great oval ruby surrounded by diamonds, it might seem a tad ungrateful to subject it to scrutiny with a jeweller’s eyepiece.

Griff, my adoptive grand-father, business partner, and antique-dealer extraordinaire, wouldn’t ever soil his lips with expressions like looking a gift-horse in the mouth. But he did ask, as he prepared supper that evening, “Surely that breaches all rules of etiquette, my darling Lina?”

I slipped the ornate jewel back onto my ring finger, which I wiggled so that it picked up the candlelight. Griff always made meals an occasion, even worrying about the niceties of what cutlery to use when serving Thai stir-fry in an Elizabethan cottage at the heart of a Kentish village. “I think I was a bit bowled over,” I conceded slowly. “All that bended-knee stuff and the promise of a round-the-world cruise for our honeymoon. For me, Lina Townend!”

“And there I thought chivalry had died out in your generation,” he said.

“Apparently not,” I said coolly. But how could I snub my dearest friend? “Griff, what was I doing? This is Piers Hamlyn, for goodness’ sake!”

“Piers Hamlyn, who, despite his predilection for cords and bodywarmers, is a most dashing piece of manhood,” Griff burbled. “Those shoulders! That neat bum!”

“Those cornflower-blue eyes, perfect complexion, and honey-coloured hair,” I added.

“And second cousin once removed of your own father, Lord Elham,” Griff reflected, with distinctly less enthusiasm.

“Which doesn’t say much for him, does it?” I asked quietly.

“Just because Lord Elham-how strange that neither of us ever refers to him as anything more intimate-is not the purest diamond in the tiara doesn’t mean his cousin is flawed. Though I must admit,” he continued, allowing a tiny quaver to creep into his voice, and sinking into his frail-old-man mode, “it has been what we used to call a whirlwind romance.”

It had. And considering that women of my generation tended not to demand courtship and rings and weddings before-as Griff gracelessly put it-hopping into bed, it was a very romantic romance. Flowers; candlelit dinners; the question popped within two weeks of our first meeting at a big and classy antiques fair at a vast country pile-it belonged to another of his cousins-and no attempt to go beyond a not terribly passionate snog.

What on earth had I been doing? The ring said, in a very snide voice, “Doing pretty well for yourself, considering.”

I whipped it off and peered closely at it again.

“Oh, Griff, why didn’t I tell Piers to ask you for my hand? You could have asked him about his prospects and how he meant to maintain me!” Which would have given me time to think.

“I take it you wouldn’t want me to go so far as to reject him as a suitor?”

“Yes. No. I wish I knew.” I gave the ring another squint. What was wrong with me? Or rather, what was wrong with it? What had got all my divvy’s antennae a-twitch?

Its provenance, for one thing. Every dealer likes to know where an item’s been before it comes to him. You might think it’s enough to know the maker, but forging manufacturer’s marks is easy-peasy to a master, as is copying a painter’s signature on a faked masterpiece. So you want to know who bought it and from whom, all through its life. In the case of a picture, the number of times it’s been exhibited and where. As for a ring like this, it’s tricky and hardly worth bothering, so long as you can see the hallmark on the band, in this case one declaring it was made in Birmingham, that City of a Thousand Trades, way back in 1879. So it was the right age to have a silver mount for the stones, as opposed to the stronger platinum claws used later.

Everything was right about it.

Or not.

“I’d love you to take a look at it,” I said. “After all, it’s not exactly my area, is it?”

“At our level, dear heart, we have to be Jacks and Jills of all trades. I know you can beat most people hollow when it comes to Victorian china, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t turn your hand to other things. I know, I know. You were spot-on with the date-but then,” he added, “I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t been. You worked hard to learn the assay marks.” He smiled, and tucked a lock of my hair in place. “There’s a good brain between those ears of yours, my child. For all you worry about having no paper qualifications, you’re a very bright young woman.”

I didn’t argue. But school and I had been relative strangers to each other, thanks to my life in care after my mother’s death. You’d have expected my father to take me in, maybe. But not my father, Lord Elham, of Bossingham Court. Lord Elham, old rogue that he was, had taken no more notice of me than he’d taken of my other thirty siblings. But then, he claimed he’d never known about any of us, not in any detail. And indeed, it was me who’d found him, not the other way round. (“I who’d found him, dear heart,” Griff would have told me gently.) And he hadn’t been especially keen on me, at least not until I’d dug him out of a particularly nasty hole and managed to cast him in the light not of a greedy criminal but of a public benefactor. My father called himself a gentleman-but since I’d always believed in the adage gentleman is as gentleman does, I’d yet to see him deserve the term. Or the title Noble Lord. Lord Elham. And no, that didn’t make me Lady anything, since I was born on what Griff would call the wrong side of the blanket. Well, with all those brothers and sisters in the picture, you’d probably worked that out for yourself. He’d taken the huff when I’d refused to leave Griff and go and live at Bossingham Hall, but that’s another story.

“Now, do I look at this bauble as if admiring your betrothed’s taste, or as if valuing it for auction?”

“As my dearest friend,” I said humbly. “And under a very strong lamp.”

“Tomorrow morning, then.”

Before I washed up I hung the ring on a little Edwardian ring-tree that for as long as I could remember Griff had kept beside the kettle. That was Griff for you. Forward planning. Or, more likely, seeing a charming little item going cheap and giving it a good home. Most of the stuff we bought we had to sell, of course-that’s how dealers make a living. But Griff made it a rule that we only bought what we ourselves liked. Usually.

“If you like something, you find out about it,” he’d told me when he’d first employed me. “And the more you know about something the more people regard you as an expert and come to trust you. Trust is like virtue-it’s its own reward.”

“And it doesn’t damage your prices.”

He’d chuckled. “Clearly, dear heart, you are a dealer in the bud.”

Over the next two or three years, I’d blossomed a bit. What I was best at was restoring damaged Victorian china, and not passing it as perfect. Unlike some I could name. So people trusted me when I said something was good, you see. And my prices rose accordingly. Occasionally other dealers would come to me when they found something hard to shift. If it was pukka, and only then, I’d pop it on our stall and sell it at the usual commission. Not that I would be selling Piers’s ring on my stall, for goodness’ sake!

“What worries me,” Griff said as he wiped up, “is that despite his lineage Piers works at the lowest end of the market. Collectibles, indeed! Junk, in other words.”

“There’s room for all sorts-and we’re not exactly at the top end ourselves.”

I wished the words back: What Griff was really afraid of was that I’d abandon him.

If only I could have talked Piers over with a woman. But I hadn’t many women friends my own age, thanks to my miserable upbringing, and Griff, though he was dearer to me than anyone seemed able to imagine, was hardly a role model for someone as young and romantic as me (or should that be I?): He’d been in a settled if semidetached relationship for more years than he cared to remember.

Washing-up done, I dried my hands and slapped on some cream. As beauty routines went, it didn’t go far, and Griff tended to nag when I didn’t use sunblock or moisturiser. I had to admit that the ring looked better on well-tended mitts than it would have done on my pre-Griff paws. Or did it look too good? Despite Griff’s offer, I took it and the eyeglass up to my workroom and switched on the strong spotlight I need for the most delicate restoration work. And then I called Griff.

“You’ve got better eyes than I have,” he said, somewhat grudgingly since I’d hauled him from his favourite television program, a docudrama about civilians being tested to SAS standards. “But you’re right. Those two stones aren’t exactly the same as the others. Pretty close. But a ring that age is bound to have been repaired.”

“Cleaned and repaired?”

“Why not? The young man wants to impress his beloved.”

“Piers didn’t say anything about a repair. He said it came straight from a sale-he’d only cleaned it up a bit to see what he’d got.”

“He’s cleaned it very well indeed. To professional standards,” Griff mused. “So why didn’t he come clean-as clean as this ring, in fact-and simply tell you it had come with two stones missing and he’d had them replaced?”

“Why indeed?”

Next time we met, this time in a church hall in the Cotswolds so cold that Griff’s knuckles turned bluey-white, the rest of his fingers purple, Piers presented me with another ring.

“I’m not asking you to choose between them,” he said pettishly as I slipped it admiringly onto my right hand: It was a sapphire version of my ruby, with a lovely Sri Lankan stone, much lighter than you get these days, that put it back into the Victorian period.

I bit my lip: I’d better not tell him I preferred it.

“I’m asking you to sell it. It’s too good for my stall: It’ll just disappear amongst all the collectibles. But you’ve got nice, classy stuff. Everything guaranteed antique, with nothing less than a hundred years old.”

I nodded. We were totally out of place at this fair, as Griff bitterly acknowledged, to which we’d only come because Griff had a Thespian friend in the area and because I could meet up with Piers.

“China, glass, and treen,” I said. “No jewellery.”

“Then it’ll stand out all the better, especially with a spotlight trained on it. And your hand to model it.” He kissed it with enough passion to tempt me.

“I’ll have to ask Griff,” I said.

“He lets you fly solo with your restored china,” he pointed out. “I can’t see how he could object if you want to branch out into jewellery, particularly stuff as nice as this.”

“I’ll ask,” I said coldly, “because I value his opinion.” He should have known by now never to argue about anything concerning Griff.

“Do I recollect that you come of age shortly, my child?”

“You know I do. And we agreed to have no fuss.” Largely because Griff was increasingly terrified by his own birthdays, and in any case celebrating being twenty-one was a bit old-fashioned these days.

“It occurs to me that you are so attracted to that sapphire ring that it would make an ideal gift.”

I looked him in the eye. “Not so much attracted as suspicious, Griff. You look.” I passed the lovely thing to him.

“The sapphire’s exquisite,” he sighed. Then he stopped. “How many dodgy stones do you make it?”

“Three this time. I shall have to mark it sold as seen.”

“And the price? If you do that it’ll never reach what he’s asking. And I have an idea you were relying on the commission to buy your wedding dress.”

“Wedding, shmedding.” I took the ruby ring off as well. The two big stones blinked enticingly at me. The diamonds surrounding them didn’t.

“Shame,” Piers greeted my confession that we’d not been able to sell the ring. “But why don’t you keep trying? And I was hoping you’d shift these earrings for me.” He produced an elaborate case, fine leather and watered silk, containing a dazzling pair with free-hanging emeralds and diamonds on tiny springs.

“Victorian again.” They were so fine I’d have expected to see them at Christie’s.

“Got this aunt who’s fallen on hard times. Doesn’t want anyone to know.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Noblesse oblige, and all that.”

My eyes widened at the price he wanted. “That’s well above our usual range-but still not enough for such a lovely set.” I braced myself. “Are you sure these aren’t off the back of some lorry, Piers?”

“From the collection of Lady Olivia Spedding.” He looked coldly down at me, rather like the Duke of Wellington, now I came to think of it, holding out his hand for the earrings.

I returned them, shrugging. “No skin off my nose,” I informed him, my voice at its most common, all accent and attitude.

I wasn’t so much surprised as taken aback when, as we packed up at the end of a not especially profitable day, Piers sidled up, dropping the familiar jeweller’s box on our stall. “Usual commission,” he said, and disappeared.

It was Griff who got first look at them with the eyeglass this time. “Continental,” he said. “And all good stones.”

“You mean-?”

“What do you think?”

I peered. “Beautifully clean. Everything hunky-dory for the period. Feel the weight-they wouldn’t half stretch the old ear-lobes. Lovely quality stones-all of them. I’d be honoured to sell these.”

I thought I heard Griff mutter something about sprats catching mackerel, but perhaps I was mistaken.

A couple of weeks later I handed over the cash for the earrings in the traditional brown envelope. It was hardly out of my hand when another slightly battered jewel case appeared, purple leather outside, purple silk in, showing off a diamond pendant and matching earrings to perfection. Victorian, again, and perhaps a bit fussy for modern tastes.

It was all so low-key we might have been business partners, not engaged to become life partners. Theoretically engaged. Anyone who could palm off a piece with stones I could feel in my bones were false was no longer my fiancé. I said nothing yet. Grassing someone up was something not to be done lightly. But in a trade that totally depended on trust, what else could I do?

Griff removed the eyepiece and rubbed his face. “And what four-letter word, first letter S, last letter M, springs to your suspicious mind?”

“Scam,” I said flatly.

“A profitable one, too. You buy a couple of these so-called man-made diamonds for a song, remove two decent-sized but not particularly noticeable stones from pieces where no one will immediately notice the exchange, replace them with the fakes, and pocket the difference. If you got brave enough to replace a one-carat diamond, say, with a fake one, you could profit by four or five thousand pounds.”

I nodded. “To get away with it, you really need someone totally reliable like us. If by any chance people found they’d bought a wrong ‘un they’d hotfoot it back to us and complain. And we could only say we’d had them from someone else and terribly sorry and here’s your money back.”

“And you complain to Piers, who laughs in your face. Or says his great-aunt or whatever must have replaced them to raise cash for her gambling habit. Or his aunt’s dead, and he reminds us it’s caveat emptor.”

There weren’t many Latin phrases I knew but that was one of them. “To my mind it’s more a case of caveating Trading Standards or even the police.”

“Oh, dear one, you can’t use caveat like that,” he sighed. “But you’re right about the legal implications. To my mind, the only question is how much Piers knows about it.”

“If his genes are anything like Lord Elham’s, a lot. But we need proof: You and I know there’s something wrong, but neither of us could stand up in a court of law and say what these stones actually are. And surely, Griff, in that thick Filofax of yours, you’ve got the number of a-whatsit-a jewel expert.”

“Gemologist, angel heart. Yes, I’m sure I have. One, moreover, I can trust implicitly. Now, that chicken should be cooked to perfection.”

Over supper we debated long and loud what we should do next. My initial impulse was to pack up the pendant and earrings and send them straight back to Piers. With both gorgeous rings. But if we did, he’d certainly try to palm them off on someone else less canny than us.

“Equally, of course, Piers might be an innocent dupe of someone to whom he’d innocently taken old items to be cleaned,” Griff observed resignedly. “And it’s the cleaner who’s at fault.”

I pulled a face. But it was of course true. “So how do we find out-any of this?”

I might have known who would do the dirty work. Yours truly, of course. Well, not for anything would I have put Griff at risk. His arthritis was better since he’d cut down the drink and was downing measures of an evil-looking liquid prescribed by an alternative therapist, but he tended more and more these days to let me go to sales while he stayed at home and ran the shop. That way he had more energy to go to the very taxing antiques fairs we set up our stall at. So there was no argument. Especially as I didn’t tell him what I was planning.

He and Lord Elham had disliked each other at sight. Lord Elham loathed Griff’s campiness, Griff Lord Elham’s dishonesty. At bottom, I suspect Lord Elham wanted to wrest me from Griff’s care, for no better reason than that he needed a skivvy. Griff wanted to keep me with him because he loved me. There was no point in forcing them into each other’s company: I’d sussed out that getting to know each other would only make matters worse. The main reason why I’d spend occasional days at Bossingham Hall was because Lord Elham had rooms full of the most amazing junk, some of it extremely saleable. Since his favourite tipple-indeed, his only tipple-was Champagne, my skill in sorting out items I could sell for him was called for quite often. This time, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, I popped round at a time when daytime TV was at its nadir, taking with me a couple of homemade casseroles he could warm up in his new microwave. He looked worse than ever: Though he was ten years younger than Griff, his complexion was purply-grey and very dry looking. At least since I’d come on the scene his hair looked better: He’d seen some terribly expensive product in a TV advert and I now bought some whenever I shopped for his Champagne. If only I could get him to exercise something other than his zapper thumb and drinking elbow.

“Piers Hamlyn!” he exploded. “Going to marry Piers Hamlyn! And why didn’t the young bastard seek my permission?”

I ignored the term “bastard,” quite restrained of me in the circumstances. “I don’t think young men do, these days.” It was one thing wishing I’d asked Griff to vet my choice, quite another letting Lord Elham in on the act. “In any case, I said I was engaged to him, not that I was going to marry him.” I explained about the dodgy diamonds.

He slammed his fist on the Sheraton occasional table beside his chair. I winced. “Any young man who puts fake diamonds on my daughter’s hand will not marry her.”

All that Champagne was making him a bit slow. Or it might have been his diet, mostly Pot Noodles, with the odd frozen ready-meal thrown in.

“He doesn’t know I know they’re fake,” I said, taxing his limited abilities.

“If you say they are, they are,” he declared loyally, topping up my 1860 cut-crystal flute.

“I need to prove it. And I want to know if it’s his scam, or if he’s a victim, like me. He’s brought a few things for me to sell-from the collection of Lady Olivia Spedding, he says.”

“Olivia Spedding! Good God! I didn’t know she was still alive.”

“Fallen on hard times; having to sell bits and pieces. Would she have had a few stones replaced here and there?”

“More likely to have the whole lot exchanged for paste,” he mused. “You sure she’s still alive?”

“He ought to know: He’s her nephew. Great-nephew.”

“Is he indeed? That must mean I’m related to her. Are you sure?” He peered at me, then, more hopefully, at the bottom of his glass.

“It’s what he says. Anyway, what shall I do?”

A familiar expression of piggy greed settled on his puffy features. “Sell that sauceboat for me and I’ll make a few enquiries.”

It may have looked like a sauceboat, but it was in fact an eighteenth-century ladies’ urinal-a vessel for ladies to wee into during long sermons or ceremonies. But that made it more, rather than less, valuable. I hoped that the women in the family had more sense of hygiene than my parent, or I couldn’t have sworn that anyone had washed it before it had come to its present use.

Even with my ten-percent commission, I was able to return a week or so later with four cases of Champagne.

“That Piers Hamlyn chappie still sniffing after you?” he greeted me, though his eyes were on the cardboard boxes in the back of our van.

“He’s in Ireland,” I said. “Doing a few sales.” Which was unlikely, come to think of it, given his stock in trade, which last time I saw him included a couple of Ty Beanie Bears. If he’d taken me, with my divvy skills, I’d have made us a mint. But for some reason he’d never suggested it, and I was too sure I didn’t want to marry him to ask. And then I cursed myself for being so damned moral-maybe Ireland was where he got his dodgy gems.

Lord Elham sniffed. “Not good enough for you, my girl. Not good enough.”

Not good enough for the illegitimate daughter of a drunken old lecher like him? Griff referred to him fastidiously as a reprobate, which sounded nicely eighteenth-century.

“The man’s a fraud. At least that tosh about Olivia Spedding is. Popped her clogs years ago: no stamina, those Speddings. So wherever he’s getting it from it’s not Olivia. In any case, she spent all her dosh on the gee-gees: never wore a diamond in her life. You sure you got the name right?”

I didn’t see how I could have misheard a name like that, but until I got all that booze into his domain and a glass of it in his hand, I’d get no more sense out of him.

When he was settled at last, I asked, “Has Piers any other relations who might have asked him to sell the jewellery?”

“That was the respectable branch of the family. Have you met Hamlyn’s family yet?”

I shook my head. I had an idea it was because he was afraid I wouldn’t pass muster, and would start dropping aitches and eating my peas with a knife. Or was it only the middle classes like Griff who worried about such niceties?

“Or his friends?”

Another shake of the head.

“Are you sure he’s kosher?”

I looked him straight in the eye. “That’s what I’m hoping you’d tell me.”

He took the sort of pull on his Champagne that I can only manage on water, and then it gives me hiccups. “Tell you what, you sell those plates for me and get me some more bubbly, and I’ll see what I can do.”

I nodded. I knew of old that the plates were a pretty tatty collection, mostly more Piers’s sort of price range than mine, but for the information he might come up with I’d buy him a case of fizz myself.

In the event, I didn’t have to. I found a red anchor mark Chelsea plate at the bottom.

“Ireland!” Griff repeated, when I reported back our conversation as word for word as I could make it. “Why didn’t you tell me the little rat had gone to Ireland?”

“Because I know you don’t like me talking about him, and I thought you’d think I was upset not to be invited.”

He frowned as he worked out what I meant. That was the trouble with not finding words easy: Sometimes they shuffled themselves into clumsy lumps. “And you weren’t upset?”

“Glad not to be. I wouldn’t want to sleep with him under false pretences.”

“God knows where you got your moral principles from-not Lord Elham.”

“Mostly from you!”

I could see he was pleased. But he added, quite seriously, “On the other hand, think of the stuff you could have picked up over there. Anyway, Ireland. And Dublin in particular. Diamond merchant.”

“Not Amsterdam? Or Hatton Garden?”

“We’re not talking about real diamonds, are we, petal? Not according to my contact.” He touched his nose.

“They are fakes?”

“As true as a six-pound note. As we always suspected.”

“But that doesn’t get us any further forward with Piers. For my own satisfaction, Griff, I need to know if he’s running the show or if he’s a dupe. I may suspect… but I need to know.”

“For that, my love, unless you wish to involve the police, you may have to rely on Lord Elham.”

“Set a thief to catch a thief, you mean.”

“Not in your trade vehicle!” Lord Elham insisted.

“I’m not going to turn up advertising it’s me, am I? We’ll do what Griff and I always do if we want to go to London. We catch the train, and after that take a cab. There’s nothing more incognito than a cab, surely.”

“And you’re happy to lurk outside the establishment-in that cab, for preference-while I Do the Deed?”

I wasn’t, but I didn’t see my getting admitted into what called itself a massage parlour but sounded more like a high-class brothel, except as an employee. And I’d always drawn the line at that, even when I was at my lowest, before Griff came to my rescue.

So when the day came, and Lord Elham had had the nod and the wink he’d hoped for, I collected him in my Fiesta and drove us to Ashford International Station.

“Travel first class? Dear me, I can’t afford that!” was his reaction to my offer, but I could tell he was sacrificing himself. However, he perked up considerably when he saw even the second-class areas were comfortable and our seats even had a little table on which to place our Champagne, which I was determined to ration. To my amazement, he showed me how to tackle Sudoku, rattling through the Times’s fiendish puzzle as if he were a child with an abacus. The journey passed surprisingly quickly.

“Now,” I prompted him, “you remember how that little tape recorder works? And you won’t have more than one bottle?”

“Shampoo at six hundred pounds a pop? You jest!”

All three faces were serious as we sat around Griff’s dining table. He’d made a huge effort, not to impress Lord Elham, but to show me how generous-spirited he was, entertaining a man he still saw as his rival under his own roof. To be honest, the delicate soup, tender guinea fowl, and exploding meringues were wasted on my father. But he too was on his best behaviour, praising as judiciously as if we didn’t know that Spicy Beef Pot Noodles were his real preference, and gossiping about the famous faces he’d seen at the brothel. I’d spotted, from the depths of my cab, a further couple he’d missed. One face we’d both seen was Piers Hamlyn’s.

At last Lord Elham extended a spatulate finger and pressed the Play button. We could hear Piers’s voice quite clearly, against the chink of glasses and the raucous voices of the rich. He was boasting about his fence, how it was like taking candy from a baby.

And then we heard Lord Elham’s voice: “Young man, it happens to be my baby from whom you are taking the confectionary. My little girl Lina. She will not be marrying you, of course. And, unless you want an exposé that would shock even your family to the roots, I suggest you listen very carefully to what I say…”

“The Falklands!”

“I do wish, my love, you wouldn’t squeak,” Lord Elham reproached me, just as if he were Griff. “Yes, the Falklands. I believe he will find his niche out there: sheep or mineral rights, whichever interests him more. Not forever. Just long enough for you to mop up all the fake gems he’s scattered about the country.” He laid a wad of notes on the table. “That should suffice. You will keep any change.” He looked at my ringless finger. “You should find enough there to purchase genuine stones for the two rings in your keeping.” He sat back, belched, and looked as his watch. “Now, I always watch Big Brother at this time. And then, my child, you can run me home.”