“He forgave me,” he said.
He must have thought I didn’t believe him.
He said wretchedly, “I wished I hadn’t done it almost from the beginning, if you want to know. It was just an impulse. He left the diamonds here while he went off to do a bit of shopping, and I happened to have some rough CZ the right size in those drawers, as I often do, waiting for when I want special cutting, and I just... exchanged them. Like you said. I didn’t think he’d lose by it.”
“He knew, though,” I said. “He knew you, and he knew a lot about thieves, being a magistrate. Another of the things he wrote was ‘If laws are inconvenient, ignore them, they don’t apply to you.’ ”
“Stop it. Stop it. He forgave me.”
“When?”
“In Ipswich. I went to meet him there.”
I lifted my head. “Ipswich. Orwell Hotel, P. three-thirty P.M.,” I said.
“What? Yes.” He seemed unsurprised that I should know. He seemed to be looking inward to an unendurable landscape.
“I saw him die,” he said.
16
“I saw the scaffolding fall on him,” he said.
He’d stunned me to silence.
“We talked in the hotel. In the lounge there. It was almost empty... then we walked down the street to where I’d left my car. We said goodbye. He crossed the road and walked on, and I watched him. I wanted him to look back and wave... but he didn’t.”
Forgiveness was one thing, I thought, but friendship had gone. What did he expect? Absolution and comfort? Perhaps Greville in time would have given those too, but I couldn’t.
Prospero Jenks with painful memory said, “Grev never knew what happened... There wasn’t any warning. Just a clanging noise and metal falling and men with it. Crashing down fast. It buried him. I couldn’t see him. I ran across the road to pull him out and there were bodies... and he... he... I thought he was dead already. His head was bleeding... there was a metal bar in his stomach and another had ripped into his leg... it was... I can’t... I try to forget but I see it all the time.”
I waited and in a while he went on.
“I didn’t move him. Couldn’t. There was so much blood... and a man lying over his legs... and another man groaning. People came running... then the police... it was just chaos...”
He stopped again, and I said, “When the police came, why didn’t you stay with Greville and help him? Why didn’t you identify him to them, even?”
His genuine sorrow was flooded with a shaft of alarm. The dismay was momentary, and he shrugged it off.
“You know how it is.” He gave me a little-boy shamefaced look, much the same as when he’d admitted to changing the stones. “Don’t get involved. I didn’t want to be dragged in... I thought he was dead.”
Somewhere along the line, I thought, he was lying to me. Not about seeing the accident: his description of Greville’s injuries had been piercingly accurate.
“Did you simply... drive off?” I asked bleakly.
“No, I couldn’t. Not for ages. The police cordoned off the street and took endless statements. Something about criminal responsibility and insurance claims. But I couldn’t help them. I didn’t see why the scaffolding fell. I felt sick because of the blood. I sat in my car till they let us drive out. They’d taken Grev off in an ambulance before that... and the bar was still sticking out of his stomach...”
The memory was powerfully reviving his nausea.
“You knew by then that he was still alive,” I said.
He was shocked. “How? How could I have known?”
“They hadn’t covered his face.”
“He was dying. Anyone could see. His head was dented... and bleeding...”
Dead men don’t bleed, I thought, but didn’t say it. Prospero Jenks already looked about to throw up, and I wondered how many times he actually had, in the past eleven days.
Instead, I said, “What did you talk about in the Orwell Hotel?”
He blinked. “You know what.”
“He accused you of changing the stones.”
“Yes.” He swallowed. “Well, I apologized. Said I was sorry. Which I was. He could see that. He said why did I do it when I was bound to be found out, but when I did it, it was an impulse, and I didn’t think I’d be found out, like I told you.”
“What did he say?”
“He shook his head as if I were a baby. He was sad more than angry. I said I would give his diamonds back, of course, and I begged him to forgive me.”
“Which he did?”
“Yes, I told you. I asked if we could go on trading together. I mean, no one was as good as Grev at finding marvelous stones, and he always loved the things I made. It was good for both of us. I wanted to go back to that.”
Going back was one of life’s impossibilities, I thought. Nothing was ever the same.
“Did Greville agree?” I asked.
“Yes. He said he had the diamonds with him but he had arrangements to make. He didn’t say what. He said he would come here to the shop at the beginning of the week and I would give him his five stones and pay for the teardrops and stars. He wanted cash for them, and he was giving me a day or two to find the money.”
“He didn’t usually want cash for things, did he? You sent a check for the spinel and rock crystal.”
“Yes, well...” Again the quick look of shame. “He said cash in future, as he couldn’t trust time. But you didn’t know that.”
Greville certainly hadn’t trusted me, and it sounded as if he’d said he had the diamonds with him when he knew they were at that moment on a boat crossing the North Sea. Had he said that, I wondered? Perhaps Prospero Jenks had misheard or misunderstood, but he’d definitely believed Greville had had the diamonds with him.
“If I give you those diamonds now, then that will be the end of it?” he said. “I mean, as Grev had forgiven me, you won’t go back on that and make a fuss, will you? Not the police... Grev wouldn’t have wanted that, you know he wouldn’t.”
I didn’t answer. Greville would have to have balanced his betrayed old friendship against his respect for the law, and I supposed he wouldn’t have had Prospero prosecuted, not for a first offense, admitted and regretted.
Prospero Jenks gave my silence a hopeful look, rose from his stool and crossed to the ranks of little drawers. He pulled one open, took out several apparently unimportant packets and felt deep inside with a searching hand. He brought out a twist of white gauze fastened with a band of sticky tape and held it out to me.
“Five diamonds,” he said. “Yours.”
I took the unimpressive little parcel, which most resembled the muslin bag of herbs cooks put in stews, and weighed it in my hand. I certainly couldn’t myself tell CZ from C and he could see the doubt in my face.
“Have them appraised,” he said with unjustified bitterness, and I said we would weigh them right there and then and he would write out the weight and sign it.
“Grev didn’t...”
“More fool he. He should have done. But he trusted you. I don’t.”
“Come on, Derek.” He was cajoling: but I was not Greville.
“No. Weigh them,” I said.
With a sigh and an exaggerated shrug he cut open the little bag when I handed it back to him, and on small fine scales weighed the contents.
It was the first time I’d actually seen what I’d been searching for, and they were unimposing, to say the least. Five dull-looking grayish pieces of crystal the size of large misshapen peas without a hint of the fire waiting within. I watched the weighing carefully and took them myself off the scales, wrapping them in a fresh square of gauze which Prospero handed me and fastening them safely with sticky tape.
“Satisfied?” he said with a touch of sarcasm, watching me stow the bouquet garni in my trousers pocket.