I took the two baffling little gadgets from Greville’s sitting room upstairs to Greville’s office and showed them to June.
“That one,” she said immediately, pointing to the thumb-sized tube with the whine, “is a device to discourage mosquitoes. Mr. Franklin said it’s the noise of a male mosquito, and it frightens the blood-sucking females away.” She laughed. “He said every man should have one.”
She picked up the other gadget and frowned at it, pressing the red button with no results.
“It has an aerial,” I said.
“Oh yes.” She pulled it out to its full extent. “I think...” She paused. “He used to have a transmitter which started his car from a distance, so he could warm the engine up in cold weather before he left his house, but the receiver bit got stolen with his Porsche. Then he bought the old Rover, and he said a car-starter wouldn’t work on it because it only worked with direct transmission or fuel injection, or something, which the Rover doesn’t have.”
“So this is the car-starter?”
“Well... no. This one doesn’t do so much. The car-starter had buttons that would also switch on the headlights so that you could see where your car was, if you’d left it in a dark car-park.” She pushed the aerial down again. “I think this one only switches the lights on, or makes the car whistle, if I remember right. He was awfully pleased with it when he got it, but I haven’t seen it for ages. He had so many gadgets, he couldn’t take them all in his pockets and I think he’d got a bit tired of carrying them about. He used to leave them in this desk, mostly.”
“You just earned your twenty percent all over again,” I said.
“What?”
“Let’s just check that the batteries work,” I said.
She opened the battery compartment and discovered it was empty. As if it were routine, she then pulled open a drawer in one of the other tiers of the desk and revealed a large open box containing packet after packet of new batteries in every possible size. She pulled out a packet, opened it and fed the necessary power packs into the slots, and although pressing the red button still provided no visible results, I was pretty confident we were in business.
June said suddenly, “You’re going to take this to Ipswich, aren’t you? To find his car? Isn’t that what you mean?”
I nodded. “Let’s hope it works.”
“Oh, it must.”
“It’s quite a big town, and the car could be anywhere.”
“Yes,” she said, “but it must be somewhere. I’m sure you’ll find it.”
“Mm.” I looked at her bright, intelligent face. “June,” I said slowly, “don’t tell anyone else about this gadget.”
“Whyever not?”
“Because,” I said, “someone broke into this office looking for something and we don’t know if they found it. If they didn’t, and it is by any chance in the car, I don’t want anyone to realize that the car is still lost.” I paused. “I’d much rather you said nothing.”
“Not even to Annette?”
“Not to anyone.”
“But that means you think... you think...”
“I don’t really think anything. It’s just for security.”
Security was all right with her. She looked less troubled and agreed to keep quiet about the car-finder; and I hadn’t needed to tell her about the mugger who had knocked me down to steal Greville’s bag of clothes, which to me, in hindsight, was looking less and less a random hit and more and more a shot at a target.
Someone must have known Greville was dying, I thought. Someone who had organized or executed a mugging. I hadn’t the faintest idea who could have done either, but it did seem to me possible that one of Greville’s staff might have unwittingly chattered within earshot of receptive ears. Yet what could they have said? Greville hadn’t told any of them he was buying diamonds.
And why hadn’t he? Secretive as he was, gems were his business.
The useless thoughts squirreled around and got me nowhere. The gloomiest of them was that someone could have gone looking for Greville’s car at any time since the scaffolding fell, and although I might find the engine and the wheels, the essential cupboard would be bare.
Annette came into the office carrying a fistful of papers which she said had come in the morning mail and needed to be dealt with — by me, her manner inferred.
“Sit down, then,” I said, “and tell me what they all mean.”
There were letters from insurance people, fund-raisers, dissatisfied customers, gemology forecasters, and a cable from a supplier in Hong Kong saying he didn’t have enough African 12mm amethyst AA quality round beads to fill our order and would we take Brazilian amethyst to make it up.
“What’s the difference?” I asked. “Does it matter?”
Annette developed worry lines over my ignorance. “The best amethyst is found in Africa,” she said. “Then it goes to Hong Kong or Taiwan for cutting and polishing into beads, then comes here. The amethyst from Brazil isn’t such a good deep color. Do you want me to order the Brazilian amethyst or wait until he has more of the African?”
“What do you think?” I said.
“Mr. Franklin always decided.”
She looked at me anxiously. It’s hopeless, I thought. The simplest decision was impossible without knowledge.
“Would the customers take the Brazilian instead?” I asked.
“Some would, some wouldn’t. It’s much cheaper. We sell a lot of the Brazilian anyway, in all sizes.”
“Well,” I said, “if we run out of the African beads, offer the customers Brazilian. Or offer a different size of African. Cable the Chinese supplier to send just the Af rican AA 12mm he’s got now and the rest as soon as he can.”
She looked relieved. “That’s what I’d have said.”
Then why didn’t you, I thought, but it was no use being angry. If she gave me bad advice I’d probably blame her for it: it was safer from her viewpoint, I supposed, not to stick her neck out.
“Incidentally,” she said, “I did reach Prospero Jenks. He said he’d be in his Knightsbridge shop at two-thirty today, if you wanted to see him.”
“Great.”
She smiled. “I didn’t mention horses.”
I smiled back. “Fine.”
She took the letters off to her own office to answer them, and I went from department to department on a round trip to the vault, watching everyone at work, all of them capable, willing and beginning to settle obligingly into the change of regime, keeping their inner reservations to themselves. I asked if one of them would go down and tell Brad I’d need him at two, not before. June went and returned like a boomerang.
I unlocked the vault and started on topaz: thousands of brilliant translucent slippery stones in a rainbow of colors, some bigger than acorns, some like peas.
No diamonds.
After that, every imaginable shape and size of garnet, which could be yellow and green, I found, as well as red, and boxes of citrine.
Two and a half hours of unfolding and folding glossy white packets, and no diamonds.
June swirled in and out at one point with a long order for faceted stones which she handed to me without comment, and I remembered that only Greville and Annette packed orders from the vault. I went in search of Annette and asked if I might watch while she worked down the list, found what was needed from twenty or more boxes and assembled the total on the shelf. She was quick and sure, knowing exactly where to find everything. It was quite easy, she said, reassuring me.
I would soon get the hang of it. God help me, I thought.
At two, after another of June’s sandwich lunches, I went down to the car and gave Prospero Jenks’s address to Brad. “It’s a shop somewhere near Harrods,” I said, climbing in.