Hovering always was the uncomfortable thought that if any pointer to the diamonds’ whereabouts had been left by Greville in his office, it could have vanished with the break-in artist, leaving nothing for me to find; and indeed I found nothing of any use. After a fruitless hour I locked everything that locked and went down to the yard to find Brad and go home.
The day of Greville’s funeral dawned cold and clear and we were heading east when the sun came up. The run to Ipswich taking three hours altogether, we came into the town with generous time to search for Greville’s car.
Inquiries from the police had been negative. They hadn’t towed, clamped or ticketed any ancient Rover. They hadn’t spotted its number in any public road or car-park, but that wasn’t conclusive, they’d assured me. Finding the car had no priority with them as it hadn’t been stolen but they would let me know if, if.
I explained the car-finder to Brad en route, producing a street map to go with it.
“Apparently when you press this red button the car’s lights switch on and a whistle blows,” I said. “So you drive and I’ll press, OK?”
He nodded, seeming amused, and we began to search in this slightly bizarre fashion, starting in the town center near to where Greville had died and very slowly rolling up and down the streets, first to the north, then to the south, checking them off on the map. In many of the residential streets there were cars parked nose to tail outside houses, but nowhere did we get a whistle. There were public car-parks and shop car-parks and the station car-park, but nowhere did we turn lights on. Rover 3500s in any case were sparse: when we saw one we stopped to look at the plates, even if the paint wasn’t gray, but none of them was Greville’s.
Disappointment settled heavily. I’d seriously intended to find that car. As lunchtime dragged toward two o’clock I began to believe that I shouldn’t have left it so long, that I should have started looking as soon as Greville died. But last Sunday, I thought, I hadn’t been in any shape to, and anyway it wasn’t until Tuesday that I knew there was anything valuable to look for. Even now I was sure he wouldn’t have left the diamonds themselves vulnerable, but some reason for being in Ipswich at all... given luck, why not?
The crematorium was set in a garden with neatly planted rose trees: Brad dropped me at the door and drove away to find some food. I was met by two black-suited men, both with suitable expressions, who introduced themselves as the undertaker I’d engaged and one of the crematorium’s officials. A lot of flowers had arrived, they said, and which did I want on the coffin.
In some bemusement I let them show me where the flowers were, which was in a long covered cloister beside the building, where one or two weeping groups were looking at wreaths of their own.
“These are Mr. Franklin’s,” the official said, indicating two long rows of bright bouquets blazing with colorful life in that place of death.
“All of these?” I said, astonished.
“They’ve been arriving all morning. Which do you want inside, on the coffin?”
There were cards on the bunches, I saw.
“I sent some from myself and our sisters,” I said doubtfully. “The card has Susan, Miranda and Derek on it. I’ll have that.”
The official and the undertaker took pity on the crutches and helped me find the right flowers; and I came first not to the card I was looking for but to another that shortened my breath.
The flowers that went with it were velvety red roses arranged with ferns in a dark green bowl. Twelve sweet-smelling blooms. Dozen Roses, I thought. Heavens above.
“I’ve found them,” the undertaker called, picking up a large display of pink and bronze chrysanthemums. “Here you are.”
“Great. Well, we’ll have these roses as well, and this wreath next to them, which is from the staff in his office. Is that all right?”
It appeared to be. Annette and June had decided on all-white flowers after agonizing and phoning from the office, and they’d made me promise to notice and tell them that they were pretty. We had decided that all the staff should stay behind and keep the office open as trade was so heavy, though I’d thought from her downcast expression that June would have liked to have made the journey.
I asked the official where all the other flowers had come from: from businesses, he said, and he would collect all the cards afterward and give them to me.
I supposed for the first time that perhaps I should have taken Greville back to London to be seen off by colleagues and friends, but during the very quiet half-hour that followed had no single regret. The clergyman engaged by the undertakers asked if I wanted the whole service read as I appeared to be the only mourner, and I said yes, go ahead, it was fitting.
His voice droned a bit. I half-listened and half-watched the way the sunshine fell onto the flowers on the coffin from the high windows along one wall and thought mostly not of Greville as he’d been alive but what he had become to me during the past week.
His life had settled on my shoulders like a mantle. Through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I’d learned enough of his business never to forget it. People who’d relied on him had transferred their reliance onto me, including in a way his friend Elliot Trelawney who wanted me as a Greville substitute to drink with. Clarissa Williams had sent her flowers knowing I would see them, wanting me to be aware of her, as if I weren’t already. Nicholas Loder aimed to manipulate me for his own stable’s ends. Prospero Jenks would soon be pressing hard for the diamonds for his fantasy, and the bank loan hung like a thundercloud in my mind.
Greville, lying cold in the coffin, hadn’t meant any of it to happen.
A man of honor, I thought. I mentally repeated his own prayer for him, as it seemed a good time for it. May I deal with honor. May I act with courage. May I achieve humility. I didn’t know if he’d managed that last one; I knew that I couldn’t.
The clergyman droned to a halt. The official removed the three lots of flowers from the coffin to put them on the floor and, with a whirring and creaking of machinery that sounded loud in the silence, the coffin slid away forward, out of sight, heading for fire.
Goodbye, pal, I said silently. Goodbye, except that you are with me now more than ever before.
I went outside into the cold fresh air and thanked everyone and paid them and arranged for all of the flowers to go to St. Catherine’s Hospital, which seemed to be no problem. The official gave me the severed cards and asked what I wanted to do with my brother’s ashes, and I had a ridiculous urge to laugh, which I saw from his hushed face would be wildly inappropriate. The business of ashes had always seemed to me an embarrassment.
He waited patiently for a decision. “If you have any tall red rose trees,” I said finally, “I daresay that would do, if you plant one along there with the others. Put the ashes there.”
I paid for the rose tree and thanked him again, and waited for a while for Brad to return, which he did looking smug and sporting a definite grin.
“I found it,” he said.
“What?” I was still thinking of Greville.
“Your brother’s wheels.”
“You didn’t!”
He nodded, highly pleased with himself.
“Where?”
He wouldn’t say. He waited for me to sit and drove off in triumph into the center of town, drawing up barely three hundred yards from where the scaffolding had fallen. Then, with his normal economy, he pointed to the forecourt of a used car sales business where under strips of fluttering pennants rows of offerings stood with large white prices painted on their windshields.