“Kings are not the currency they once were. They can be easily deposed as the French have just shown. The creed of the republicans has swept Europe like a forest fire.”
“The French!” sneered Glenbuchat.
“Wasn’t it the English who showed the way? They executed one Stuart king and chased another out of the kingdom. For over a hundred years the Stuarts have been in exile. Now we have a frail old man, a Cardinal no less, as the last of the line. Do you think anyone really cares now whether this old man can suddenly be restored to the throne of his grandfather?”
Glenbuchat had turned almost apoplectic with rage.
“How dare you, sir! You insult my King. I have fought duels for less.”
Volpe sat back unperturbed.
“I am prefect commander of the guard protecting all the princes of the church meeting at this monastery to elect a new Holy Father. You, Marchese, are here on sufferance only because you are employed by one of the Cardinal delegates. I should be careful with your threats. Now, I make the point, that monarchy is unfashionable, the Irish seem to have turned to republicanism, even your own Scottish nation with its Friends of the People seem to be declaring for a republic. The Stuart cause is no longer justified.”
Glenbuchat was still angered.
“I called you here to investigate a theft and bring a criminal to justice. My family and I have devoted our lives, our estates and our good name to the cause of the Stuarts and we are still prepared to defend that cause.”
Count Volpe rose abruptly.
“I can see that, Glenbuchat. I think that you may be what the English call the last of the Jacobites. I believe you to be an honest man in that cause.”
Glenbuchat regarded him in bewilderment at his conciliatory tone.
“Well, sir, are you to proceed in solving and resolving this theft and naming the culprit?”
“I think I already see a solution to this affair,” Volpe replied complacently. “Before the culprit is named, I would like another word with His Eminence.”
Glenbuchat looked surprised.
“You have… if you have the name of the culprit, give it to me. I am chancellor to…”
Volpe raised a hand.
“Please, Marchese. I have little time to indulge in discourse on protocols.”
Glenbuchat stood up in annoyance.
“I will see if His Majesty will receive you,” he said stiffly. He turned to the Cardinal’s bedchamber, knocking softly before entering. A moment later, he reappeared and beckoned to Count Volpe.
The old Cardinal was sitting in a chair by his bed.
When Glenbuchat made no move to withdraw, Volpe said: “Eminence, I would have a few words with you alone.”
At once Glenbuchat began to protest but Cardinal York said quietly: “You may wait outside, my lord. I will call you when needed.”
With an expression of annoyance, Glenbuchat withdrew, shutting the door behind him. For a few seconds the Cardinal and Count Volpe remained in silence, their searching eyes meeting as if duellists preparing to engage.
“Well, Eminence,” Volpe said, after a while, “is it worth my while to order a search of the room and belongings of Father Vane for your jewels?”
A few moments passed and then the Cardinal gave a long, low sigh.
“You are undoubtedly a very clever man, Count Volpe,” he said.
Volpe shook his head.
“It required little cleverness, only logic. To make this look like theft it was but poorly done. Little thought was given to arranging opportunities by which a thief might have stolen the jewels, which might have confused me. With few opportunities to dwell on, what was left, however improbable, had to be the solution. You, yourself, removed the jewels and dropped them out of the tiny window to where this Father Vane was waiting below to receive them. Is that not so?”
Cardinal York lowered his head.
“I thought that I would have had a little more time to arrange things, but before I had a chance, Glenbuchat demanded sight of the document which we had put in the safe the night before and, in doing so, realized the jewels were no longer there. I tried to stop him making an official furore but there was little I could do.”
“So no theft had been committed?”
“As you have deduced. Count Volpe, I am old and weary. Tired of pretending to something that I know that I cannot have and, frankly, that I do not want to have. My grandfather suffered a mental decline after his exile and took refuge in religion. My father was, all his life, a depressed and gloomy individual, resigned to failure from the years of ill fortune. He became a refugee, dying in Rome with only the Holy Father insisting on addressing him as King of England. My brother, as you well know, ended his life ended his years as a depressive and a drunk. I have found solace in serving Holy Mother Church. I live frugally and in poverty. Why should I keep these remaining baubles of happier times for my family? I will never be, and never want to be, King of England, Scotland or Ireland.”
Volpe waited patiently and then asked: “But the descendants of your family? They might have been entrusted with the jewels?”
“There is no issue after me. My brother had a daughter, illegitimate, who married the Duke of Albany and died the same year as my brother. I am the last of the Stuarts. Let the offspring of the Brunswick-Lúneberg-Celle family keep the throne. After all, they’ve had it for so long I’ll wager no one in England can even remember our family except with bitterness.”
“So I presume that this incident was but a surreptitious handover of these Crown Jewels to…?”
“Let us say that they have been passed on to the nations over which our family once ruled.”
“What will you tell the likes of Glenbuchat? He will be angered at the demise of his cause.”
“He has lived in the past too long. I will make my confession in due course and hope the new Holy Father, once we have elected him, will allow me to retire to Frascati to end my days in peace as a due servant of the Church.”
On 14 March 1800, after three months in conclave in the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, the Cardinals elected Giorgio Barnaba Chiaramonti as Holy Father. He took the name of Pius VII. One of his first acts was to disband the Order of the Noble Knights of Our Lord and replace them with a new unit called the Guardia Nobile del Corpo di Nostro Signore. Count Volpe refused to renew his commission and retired to his estates of Ferarra and Imola, south of Venice. In the same year, George William Frederick, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke and Elector of Hanover, agreed to pay to Cardinal York, Bishop of Frascati, a pension of £4,000 for life. The last of the royal Stuarts died at the age of 82 at Frascati on 13 July 1807, and was buried in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
And the mystery of the Stuart Crown Jewels? When the Princess Alexandrina Victoria was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India at Westminster Abbey on 28 June 1838, she wore a newly reworked State Crown. The famous Stuart Sapphire occupied a prominent position on it and today it is one of the two famous sapphires that rest in the collection of the British Crown Jewels.
The Flung-Back Lid by Peter Godfrey
Peter Godfrey (1917-92) was a South African born writer and journalist who settled in England in 1962, because of his opposition to the apartheid regime, and continued his career as a reporter for the Daily Herald, the Sun and The Times. He wrote scores of stories for South African and American magazines and newspapers but during his lifetime only a handful were collected between covers in Death Under the Table (1954). More recently his son Ronald, also a journalist, compiled a new volume, The Newtonian Egg (2002). They all feature the cases of Rolf le Roux, a detective in the Johannesburg police force. All are unusual, but here is possibly the most perplexing.