Straight (16 page)

“Do you make everything you sell?” I asked.

He laughed. “No, not myself personally, I couldn’t. I design everything, don’t get me wrong, but. I have a workshop making them. I just make the special pieces myself, the unique ones. In between, I invent for the general market. Grev said he had some decent spinel, have you still got it?”

“Er,” I said, “red?”

“Red,” he affirmed. “Three, four or five carats. I’ll take all you’ve got.”

“We’ll send it tomorrow.”

“By messenger,” he said. “Not post.”

“All right.”

“And a slab of rock crystal like the Eiger. Grev showed me a photo. I’ve got a commission for a fantasy. Send the crystal too.”

“All right,” I said again, and hid my doubts. I hadn’t seen any slab of rock crystal. Annette would know, I thought.

He said casually, “What about the diamonds?”

I let the breath out and into my lungs with conscious control.

“What about them?” I said.

“Grev was getting me some. He’d got them, in fact. He told me. He’d sent a batch off to be cut. Are they back yet?”

“Not yet,” I said, hoping I wasn’t croaking. “Are those the diamonds he bought a couple of months ago from the Central Selling Organisation that you’re talking about?”

“Sure. He bought a share in a sight from a sightholder. I asked him to. I’m still running the big chunky rings and necklaces I made my name in, but I’m setting some of them now with bigger diamonds, making more profit per item since the market will stand it, and I wanted Grev to get them because I trust him. Trust is like gold dust in this business, even though diamonds weren’t his thing, really. You wouldn’t want to buy two-to-three-carat stones from just anyone, even if they’re not D or E flawless, right?”

“Er, right.”

“So he bought the share of the sight and he’s having them cut in Antwerp as I need them, as I expect you know.”

I nodded. I did know, but only since he’d just told me.

“I’m going to make stars of some of them to shine from the rock crystal ...” He broke off, gave a self deprecating shrug of the shoulders, and said, “And I’m making a mobile, with diamonds on gold trembler wires that move in the lightest air. It’s to hang by a window and flash fire in the sunlight.” Again the self-deprecation, this time in a smile. “Diamonds are ravishing in sunlight, they’re at their best in it, and all the social snobs in this city scream that it’s so frightfully vulgar, darling, to wear diamond earrings or bracelets in the daytime. It makes me sick, to be honest. Such a waste.”

I had never thought about diamonds in sunlight before, though I supposed I would in future. Vistas opened could never be closed, as maybe Greville would have said.

“I haven’t caught up with everything yet,” I said, which was the understatement of the century. “Have any of the diamonds been delivered to you so far?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t been in a hurry for them before.”

“And ... er ... how many are involved?”

“About a hundred. Like I said, not the very best color in the accepted way of things but they can look warmer with gold sometimes if they’re not ultra blue-white. I work with gold mostly. I like the feel.”

“How much,” I said slowly, doing sums, “will your rock crystal fantasy sell for?”

“Trade secret. But then, I guess you’re trade. It’s commissioned, I’ve got a contract for a quarter of a million if they like it. If they don’t like it, I get it back, sell it somewhere else, dismantle it, whatever. In the worst event I’d lose nothing but my time in making it, but don’t you worry, they’ll like it.”

His certainty was absolute, built in experience.

I said, “Do you happen to know the name of the Antwerp cutter Grev sent the diamonds to? I mean, it’s bound to be on file in the office, but if I know who to look for ...” I paused. “I could try to hurry him up for you, if you like.”

“I’d like you to, but I don’t know who Grev knew there, exactly.”

I shrugged. “I’ll look it up, then.”

Exactly where was I going to look it up? I wondered. Not in the missing address book, for sure.

“Do you know the name of the sightholder?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“There’s a ton of paper in the office,” I said in explanation. “I’m going through it as fast as I can.”

“Grev never said a word he didn’t have to,” Jenks said unexpectedly. “I’d talk, he listened. We got on fine. He understood what I do better than anybody.”

The sadness of his voice was my brother’s universal accolade, I thought. He’d been liked. He’d been trusted. He would be missed.

I stood up and said, “Thank you, Mr. Jenks.”

“Call me Pross,” he said easily. “Everyone does.”

“My name’s Derek.”

“Right,” he said, smiling. “Now I’ll keep on dealing with you, I won’t say I won’t, but I’m going to have to find me another traveler like Grev, with an eye like his. He’s been supplying me ever since I started on my own, he gave me credit when the banks wouldn’t, he had faith in what I could do. Near the beginning he brought me two rare sticks of watermelon tourmaline that were each over two inches long and were half pink, half green mixed all the way up and transparent with the light shining through them and changing while you watched. It would have been a sin to cut them for jewelry. I mounted them in gold and platinum to hang and twist in sunlight.” He smiled his deprecating smile. “I like gemstones to have life. I didn’t have to pay Grev for that tourmaline ever. It made my name for me, the piece was reviewed in the papers and won prizes, and he said the trade we’d do together would be his reward.” He clicked his mouth. “I do go on a bit.”

“I like to hear it,” I said. I looked down the room to his workbench and said, “Where did you learn all this? How does one start?”

“I started in metalwork classes at the local high school,” he said frankly. “Then I stuck bits of glass in gold-plated wire to give to my mum. Then her friends wanted some. So when I left school I took some of those things to show to a jewelry manufacturer and asked for a job. Costume jewelry, they made. I was soon designing for them, and I never looked back.”

I
borrowed Prospero’s telephone to get Brad, but although I could hear the ringing tone in the car, he didn’t answer. Cursing slightly, I asked Pross for a second call and got through to Annette.

“Please keep on trying this number,” I said, giving it to her. “When Brad answers, tell him I’m ready to go.”

“Are you coming back here?” she asked.

I looked at my watch. It wasn’t worth going back as I had to return to Kensington by five-thirty. I said no, I wasn’t.

“Well, there are one or two things ...”

“I can’t really tie this phone up,” I said. “I’ll go to my brother’s house and call you from there. Just keep trying Brad.”

I thanked Pross again for the calls. Anytime, he said vaguely. He was sitting again in front of his vise, thinking and tinkering, producing his marvels.

There were customers in the shop being attended to by the black-suited salesman. He glanced up very briefly in acknowledgment as I went through and immediately returned to watching the customers’ hands. A business without trust; much worse than racing. But then, it was probably impossible to slip a racehorse into a pocket when the trainer wasn’t looking.

I stood on the pavement and wondered pessimistically how long it would take Brad to answer the telephone but in the event he surprised me by arriving within a very few minutes. When I opened the car door, the phone was ringing.

“Why don’t you answer it?” I asked, wriggling my way into the seat.

“Forgot which button.”

“But you came,” I said.

“Yerss.”

I picked up the phone myself and talked to Annette. “Brad apparently reckoned that if the phone rang it meant I was ready, so he saw no need to answer it.”

Brad gave a silent nod.

“So now we’re setting off to Kensington.” I paused. “Annette, what’s a sightholder, and what’s a sight?”

“You’re back to diamonds again!”

“Yes. Do you know?”

“Of course I do. A sightholder is someone who is permitted to buy rough diamonds from the C.S.O. There aren’t so many sightholders, only about a hundred and fifty world-wide, I think. They sell the diamonds then to other people. A sight is what they call the sales C.S.O. hold every five weeks, and a sightbox is a packet of stones they sell, though that’s often called a sight too.”

“Is a sightholder the same as a diamantaire?” I asked.

“All sightholders are diamantaires, but all diamantaires are not sightholders. Diamantaires buy from the sightholders, or share in a sight, or buy somewhere else, not from de Beers.”

Ask a simple question, I thought.

Annette said, “A consignment of cultured pearls has come from Japan. Where shall I put them?”

“Um ... Do you mean where because the vault is locked?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you put things when my brother was travelling?”

She said doubtfully. “He always said to put them in the stockroom under ‘miscellaneous beads.’ ”

“Put them in there, then.”

“But the drawer is full with some things that came last week. I wouldn’t want the responsibility of putting the pearls anywhere Mr. Franklin hadn’t approved.” I couldn’t believe she needed direction over the simplest thing, but apparently she did. “The pearls are valuable,” she said. “Mr. Franklin would never leave them out in plain view.”

“Aren’t there any empty drawers?”

“Well, I ...”

“Find an empty drawer or a nearly empty drawer and put them there. We’ll see to them properly in the morning.”

“Yes, all right.”

She seemed happy with it and said everything else could wait until I came back. I switched off the telephone feeling absolutely swamped by the prospect she’d opened up: if Greville hid precious things under “miscellaneous beads,” where else might he not have hidden them? Would I find a hundred diamonds stuffed in at the back of rhodochrosite or jasper, if I looked?

The vault alone was taking too long. The four big stockrooms promised a nightmare.

Brad miraculously found a parking space right outside Greville’s house, which seemed obscurely to disappoint him.

“Twenty past five,” he said, “for the pub?”

“If you wouldn’t mind. And ... er ... would you just stand there now while I take a look-see?” I had grown cautious, I found.

He ducked his head in assent and watched me maneuver the few steps up the front door. No floodlights came on and no dog barked, presumably because it was daylight. I opened the three locks and pushed the door.

The house was still. No movements of air. I propped the door open with a bronze horse clearly lying around for the purpose and went down the passage to the small sitting room.

No intruders. No mess. No amazons waving riot sticks, no wrecking balls trying to get past the grilles on the windows. If anyone had attempted to penetrate Greville’s fortress, they hadn’t succeeded.

I returned to the front door. Brad was still standing beside the car, looking toward the house. I gave him a thumbs-up sign, and he climbed into the driver’s seat while I closed the heavy door and in the little sitting room started taking all the books off the shelves methodically, riffling the pages and putting each back where I found it.

There were ten hollow books altogether, mostly with titles like
Tales of the Outback,
and
With a Mule in Patagonia.
Four were empty, including the one that had held Clarissa Williams’s letters. One held the big ornate key. One held an expensive-looking gold watch, the hands pointing to the correct time.

The watch Greville had been wearing in Ipswich was one of those affairs with more knobs than instructions. It lay now beside my bed in Hungerford emitting bleeps at odd intervals and telling me which way was north. The slim gold elegance in the hollow box was for a different mood, a different man, and when I turned it over on my palm I found the inscription on the back: G, my love, C.

She couldn’t have known it was there, I thought. She hadn’t looked for it. She’d looked only for the letters, and by chance had come to them first. I put the watch back into the box and back on the shelf. There was no way I could return it to her, and perhaps she wouldn’t want it, not with that inscription.

Two of the remaining boxes contained keys, again unspecified, and one contained a folded instruction leaflet detailing how to set a safe in a concrete nest. The last revealed two very small plastic cases containing baby recording tapes, each adorned with the printed legend “microcassette.” The cassette cases were all of two inches long by one and a half wide, the featherweight tapes inside a fraction smaller.

I tossed one in my hand indecisively. Nowhere among Greville’s tidy belongings had I so far found a microcassette player, which didn’t mean I wouldn’t in time. Sufficient to the day, I thought in the end, and left the tiny tapes in the book.

With the scintillating titles and their secrets all back on the shelves I stared at them gloomily. Not a diamond in the lot.

Instructions for concrete nests were all very well, but where was the safe? Tapes were OK, but where was the player? Keys were fine, but where were the keyholes? The most frustrating thing about it all was that Greville hadn’t meant to leave such puzzles. For him, the answers were part of his fabric.

I’d noticed on my way in and out of the house that mail was accumulating in the wire container fixed inside the letter box, so to fill in the time before I was due at the pub I took the letters along to the sitting room and began opening the envelopes.

It seemed all wrong. I kept telling myself it was necessary but I still felt as if I were trespassing on ground Greville had surrounded with keep-out fences. There were bills, requests from charities, a bank statement for his private account, a gemology magazine and two invitations. No letters from sightholders, diamantaires or cutters in Antwerp. I put the letters into the gemology magazine’s large envelope and added to them some similar unfinished business that I’d found in the drawer under the telephone, and reflected ruefully, putting it all ready to take to Hungerford, that I loathed paperwork at the best of times. My own had a habit of mounting up into increasingly urgent heaps. Perhaps having to do Greville’s would teach me some sense.