I put on my ultralight earphones and pressed the on switch on the cigarette packet-sized amplifier, and sure enough, I could straightaway hear Annette across the hallway talking to Lily about remembering to ask Derek for time off for the dentist.
I removed the earphones and looked at June.
“What did you hear?” she asked. “Secrets?”
“Not that time, no.”
“Scary, though?”
“As you say.”
The sound quality was in fact excellent, astonishingly sensitive for so small a microphone and amplifier. Some of Greville’s toys, I thought, were decidedly unfriendly.
“Mr. Franklin was telling me that there’s a voice transformer that you can fix on the telephone that can change the pitch of your voice and make a woman sound like a man. He said he thought it was excellent for women living alone so that they wouldn’t be bothered by obscene phone calls and no one would think they were alone and vulnerable.”
I smiled. “It might disconcert a bona fide boyfriend innocently calling.”
“Well, you’d have to warn them,” she agreed. “Mr. Franklin was very keen on women taking precautions.”
“Mm,” I said wryly.
“He said the jungle came into his court.”
“Did you get a voice-changer?” I asked.
“No. We were only talking about it just before...” She stopped. “Well... anyway, do you want a sandwich for lunch?”
“Yes, please.”
She nodded and was gone. I sighed and tried to apply myself to the tricky letters and was relieved at the interruption when the telephone rang.
It was Elliot Trelawney on the line, asking if I would messenger round the Vaccaro notes at once if I wouldn’t mind as they had a committee meeting that afternoon.
“Vaccaro notes,” I repeated. I’d clean forgotten about them. I couldn’t remember, for a moment, where they were.
“You said you would send them this morning,” Trelawney said with a tinge of civilized reproach. “Do you remember?”
“Yes.” I did, vaguely.
Where the hell were they? Oh yes, in Greville’s sitting room. Somewhere in all that mess. Somewhere there, unless the thief had taken them.
I apologized. I didn’t actually say I’d come near to being killed twice since I’d last spoken to him and it was playing tricks with my concentration. I said things had cropped up. I was truly sorry. I would try to get them to court by... when?
“The committee meets at two and Vaccaro is first on the agenda,” he said.
“The notes are still in Greville’s house,” I replied, “but I’ll get them to you.”
“Awfully good of you.” He was affable again. “It’s frightfully important we turn this application down.”
“Yes, I know.”
Vaccaro, I thought uncomfortably, replacing the receiver, was alleged to have had his wanting-out cocaine-smuggling pilots murdered by shots from moving cars.
I stared into space. There was no reason on earth for Vaccaro to shoot me, even supposing he knew I existed. I wasn’t Greville, and I had no power to stand in the way of his plans. All I had, or probably had, were the notes on his transgressions, and how could he know that? And how could he know I would be in a car between Lambourn and Hungerford on Sunday afternoon? And couldn’t the notes be gathered again by someone else besides Greville, even if they were now lost?
I shook myself out of the horrors and went down to the yard to see if Brad was sitting in the car, which he was, reading a magazine about fishing.
Fishing? “I didn’t know you fished,” I said.
“I don’t.”
End of conversation.
Laughing inwardly I invited him to go on the journey. I gave him the simple key ring of three keys and explained about the upheaval he would find. I described the Vaccaro notes in and out of their envelope and wrote down Elliot Trelawney’s name and the address of the court.
“Can you do it?” I asked, a shade doubtfully.
“Yerss.” He seemed to be slighted by my tone and took the paper with the address with brusqueness.
“Sorry,” I said.
He nodded without looking at me and started the car, and by the time I’d reached the rear entrance to the offices he was driving out of the yard.
Upstairs, Annette said there had just been a phone call from Antwerp and she had written down the number for me to ring back.
Antwerp.
With an effort I thought back to Thursday’s distant conversations. What was it I should remember about Antwerp?
Van Ekeren. Jacob. His nephew, Hans.
I got through to the Belgian town and was rewarded with the smooth bilingual voice telling me that he had been able now to speak to his uncle on my behalf.
“You’re very kind,” I said.
“I’m not sure that we will be of much help. My uncle says he knew your brother for a long time, but not very well. However, about six months ago your brother telephoned my uncle for advice about a sightholder.” He paused. “It seems your brother was considering buying diamonds and trusted my uncle’s judgment.”
“Ah,” I said hopefully. “Did your uncle recommend anyone?”
“Your brother suggested three or four possible names. My uncle said they were all trustworthy. He told your brother to go ahead with any of them.”
I sighed. “Does he possibly remember who they were?”
Hans said, “He knows one of them was Guy Servi here in Antwerp, because we ourselves do business with him often. He can’t remember the others. He doesn’t know which one your brother decided on, or if he did business at all.”
“Well, thank you, anyway.”
“My uncle wishes to express his condolences.”
“Very kind.”
He disconnected with politeness, having dictated to me carefully the name, address and telephone number of Guy Servi, the one sightholder Greville had asked about that his uncle remembered.
I dialed the number immediately and again went through the rigmarole of being handed from voice to voice until I reached someone who had both the language and the information.
Mr. Greville Saxony Franklin, now deceased, had been my brother? They would consult their files and call me back.
I waited without much patience while they went through whatever security checks they considered necessary but finally, after a long hour, they came back on the line.
What was my problem, they wanted to know.
“My problem is that our offices were ransacked and a lot of paperwork is missing. I’ve taken over since Greville’s death, and I’m trying to sort out his affairs. Could you please tell me if it was your firm who bought diamonds for him?”
“Yes,” the voice said matter-of-factly. “We did.”
Wow, I thought. I quietened my breath and tried not to sound eager.
“Could you, er, give me the details?” I asked.
“Certainly. We purchased a sight-box of color H diamonds of average weight three point two carats at the July sight at the CSO in London and we delivered one hundred stones, total weight three hundred and twenty carats, to your brother.”
“He... er... paid for them in advance, didn’t he?”
“Certainly. One point five million United States dollars in cash. You don’t need to worry about that.”
“Thank you,” I said, suppressing irony. “Um, when you delivered them, did you send any sort of, er, packing note?”
It seemed he found the plebeian words “packing note” faintly shocking.
“We sent the diamonds by personal messenger,” he said austerely. “Our man took them to your brother at his private residence in London. As is our custom, your brother inspected the merchandise in our messenger’s presence and weighed it, and when he was satisfied he signed a release certificate. He would have the carbon copy of that release. There was no other, uh, packing note.”