“If his genes are anything like Lord Elham’s, a lot. But we need proof: You and I know there’s something wrong, but neither of us could stand up in a court of law and say what these stones actually are. And surely, Griff, in that thick Filofax of yours, you’ve got the number of a-whatsit-a jewel expert.”
“Gemologist, angel heart. Yes, I’m sure I have. One, moreover, I can trust implicitly. Now, that chicken should be cooked to perfection.”
Over supper we debated long and loud what we should do next. My initial impulse was to pack up the pendant and earrings and send them straight back to Piers. With both gorgeous rings. But if we did, he’d certainly try to palm them off on someone else less canny than us.
“Equally, of course, Piers might be an innocent dupe of someone to whom he’d innocently taken old items to be cleaned,” Griff observed resignedly. “And it’s the cleaner who’s at fault.”
I pulled a face. But it was of course true. “So how do we find out-any of this?”
I might have known who would do the dirty work. Yours truly, of course. Well, not for anything would I have put Griff at risk. His arthritis was better since he’d cut down the drink and was downing measures of an evil-looking liquid prescribed by an alternative therapist, but he tended more and more these days to let me go to sales while he stayed at home and ran the shop. That way he had more energy to go to the very taxing antiques fairs we set up our stall at. So there was no argument. Especially as I didn’t tell him what I was planning.
He and Lord Elham had disliked each other at sight. Lord Elham loathed Griff’s campiness, Griff Lord Elham’s dishonesty. At bottom, I suspect Lord Elham wanted to wrest me from Griff’s care, for no better reason than that he needed a skivvy. Griff wanted to keep me with him because he loved me. There was no point in forcing them into each other’s company: I’d sussed out that getting to know each other would only make matters worse. The main reason why I’d spend occasional days at Bossingham Hall was because Lord Elham had rooms full of the most amazing junk, some of it extremely saleable. Since his favourite tipple-indeed, his only tipple-was Champagne, my skill in sorting out items I could sell for him was called for quite often. This time, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, I popped round at a time when daytime TV was at its nadir, taking with me a couple of homemade casseroles he could warm up in his new microwave. He looked worse than ever: Though he was ten years younger than Griff, his complexion was purply-grey and very dry looking. At least since I’d come on the scene his hair looked better: He’d seen some terribly expensive product in a TV advert and I now bought some whenever I shopped for his Champagne. If only I could get him to exercise something other than his zapper thumb and drinking elbow.
“Piers Hamlyn!” he exploded. “Going to marry Piers Hamlyn! And why didn’t the young bastard seek my permission?”
I ignored the term “bastard,” quite restrained of me in the circumstances. “I don’t think young men do, these days.” It was one thing wishing I’d asked Griff to vet my choice, quite another letting Lord Elham in on the act. “In any case, I said I was engaged to him, not that I was going to marry him.” I explained about the dodgy diamonds.
He slammed his fist on the Sheraton occasional table beside his chair. I winced. “Any young man who puts fake diamonds on my daughter’s hand will not marry her.”
All that Champagne was making him a bit slow. Or it might have been his diet, mostly Pot Noodles, with the odd frozen ready-meal thrown in.
“He doesn’t know I know they’re fake,” I said, taxing his limited abilities.
“If you say they are, they are,” he declared loyally, topping up my 1860 cut-crystal flute.
“I need to prove it. And I want to know if it’s his scam, or if he’s a victim, like me. He’s brought a few things for me to sell-from the collection of Lady Olivia Spedding, he says.”
“Olivia Spedding! Good God! I didn’t know she was still alive.”
“Fallen on hard times; having to sell bits and pieces. Would she have had a few stones replaced here and there?”
“More likely to have the whole lot exchanged for paste,” he mused. “You sure she’s still alive?”
“He ought to know: He’s her nephew. Great-nephew.”
“Is he indeed? That must mean I’m related to her. Are you sure?” He peered at me, then, more hopefully, at the bottom of his glass.
“It’s what he says. Anyway, what shall I do?”
A familiar expression of piggy greed settled on his puffy features. “Sell that sauceboat for me and I’ll make a few enquiries.”
It may have looked like a sauceboat, but it was in fact an eighteenth-century ladies’ urinal-a vessel for ladies to wee into during long sermons or ceremonies. But that made it more, rather than less, valuable. I hoped that the women in the family had more sense of hygiene than my parent, or I couldn’t have sworn that anyone had washed it before it had come to its present use.
Even with my ten-percent commission, I was able to return a week or so later with four cases of Champagne.
“That Piers Hamlyn chappie still sniffing after you?” he greeted me, though his eyes were on the cardboard boxes in the back of our van.
“He’s in Ireland,” I said. “Doing a few sales.” Which was unlikely, come to think of it, given his stock in trade, which last time I saw him included a couple of Ty Beanie Bears. If he’d taken me, with my divvy skills, I’d have made us a mint. But for some reason he’d never suggested it, and I was too sure I didn’t want to marry him to ask. And then I cursed myself for being so damned moral-maybe Ireland was where he got his dodgy gems.
Lord Elham sniffed. “Not good enough for you, my girl. Not good enough.”
Not good enough for the illegitimate daughter of a drunken old lecher like him? Griff referred to him fastidiously as a reprobate, which sounded nicely eighteenth-century.
“The man’s a fraud. At least that tosh about Olivia Spedding is. Popped her clogs years ago: no stamina, those Speddings. So wherever he’s getting it from it’s not Olivia. In any case, she spent all her dosh on the gee-gees: never wore a diamond in her life. You sure you got the name right?”
I didn’t see how I could have misheard a name like that, but until I got all that booze into his domain and a glass of it in his hand, I’d get no more sense out of him.
When he was settled at last, I asked, “Has Piers any other relations who might have asked him to sell the jewellery?”
“That was the respectable branch of the family. Have you met Hamlyn’s family yet?”
I shook my head. I had an idea it was because he was afraid I wouldn’t pass muster, and would start dropping aitches and eating my peas with a knife. Or was it only the middle classes like Griff who worried about such niceties?
“Or his friends?”
Another shake of the head.
“Are you sure he’s kosher?”
I looked him straight in the eye. “That’s what I’m hoping you’d tell me.”
He took the sort of pull on his Champagne that I can only manage on water, and then it gives me hiccups. “Tell you what, you sell those plates for me and get me some more bubbly, and I’ll see what I can do.”
I nodded. I knew of old that the plates were a pretty tatty collection, mostly more Piers’s sort of price range than mine, but for the information he might come up with I’d buy him a case of fizz myself.
In the event, I didn’t have to. I found a red anchor mark Chelsea plate at the bottom.
“Ireland!” Griff repeated, when I reported back our conversation as word for word as I could make it. “Why didn’t you tell me the little rat had gone to Ireland?”