The Old Vengeful

'You see, Elizabeth, our Chief Inspector Andrew is an observant fellow, and he's done his time on the robbery squad, or whatever they call it. So when a certain Lebanese tycoon showed him a certain emerald-and-diamond necklace, with matching earrings, late yesterday afternoon ...

he remembered that he'd seen it all before, in a picture on the wall of a house in Hampshire he'd searched two days earlier ... as worn by Mary, Lady Varney, wife of Admiral Sir Alfred Collingwood Varney—necklace and earrings, and a lot of other jewellery, tiara and rings and suchlike. 'Got up like a Christmas tree', is how he remembered her . . . your great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth—or would she be great-great-great?'

Great-great-grandmother, dripping with jewels, thought Elizabeth, the cold at her back now.

'The way Del sees it, the jewels very often pass straight down dummy3

the female line, mother to daughter, grandmother to granddaughter, great-aunt to great-niece, with no publicity.

Even before death duties came into the picture they were passed as gifts on the quiet, with no fuss and bother. Which is how they must have come to your mother, Del thinks. But she died when you were a baby, so . . .' he trailed off diplomatically '. . . so that's how we think it was, Elizabeth.'

That was how they thought it had been. And that was how she thought it had been, too.

Paul shrugged. 'Del thinks . . . maybe Lippy tried to make it all sound difficult—or at least too difficult for a little wanker like Ray Tuck to try and get his hands on, anyway—'

' 'Wanker'?' For a moment Del's vernacular flummoxed her.

Paul waved one hand vaguely. 'Small-timer. . . The idea of hiding it in France, and historical research, and all that... It never occurred to him that Ray would sell the whole idea to Danny Kahn—'

'Who's got a lot of bottle?' She tried to hold on to the absurdity of the dialogue because she didn't want to think of Father quibbling about the house-keeping bills.

' 'Bottle'? Oh . . . yes . . . Danny Kahn's a whole lot smarter, yes—' Paul rallied '—smarter and even greedier, unfortunately. Not that he matters now . . .'

Not that anything mattered much—now, thought Elizabeth.

It was an odd feeling, to be a rich woman again, so quickly, with Madame Hortense and M'sieur Pierre at her elbow to dummy3

advise her, and yet to be so poor and lonely at the same time, in the traditional way in which unloved and unbeautiful rich women were supposed to be poor and lonely.

'We'll never know which of them made up the story for Ray Tuck.' Paul drew a deep breath. 'But anyway . . . that's the size of it, Elizabeth. And I'm sorry for disturbing your rest, but I wasn't going to tell you all this in front of that—that fellow Aske—'

'That 'wanker' Aske?' It was better to smile than to cry: that was the lesson she must learn from his charade, for the future. 'He can't help being what he is, Paul.'

He stood up, carefully adjusting his dressing-gown. 'Just leave me my irrational prejudices intact, Miss Loftus dear. I have problems enough without that.'

'What are you going to do about it?' The cold was in her voice

—she could hear it.

'Why—nothing, of course.' He stared at her. 'I mean, Del Andrew will put in his report to Jack Butler. But it isn't any of our business . . . and Jack Butler's not that sort of chap, I mean . . . And we had a deal, I seem to recall, eh?'

Prize-money, remembered Elizabeth. Father had lived in the wrong century for that, just as he had missed out on the battle-squadrons of dreadnoughts. But he had managed the next best thing with the Varney jewellery which should have been hers.

'You shouldn't think too badly of him, Elizabeth,' said Paul.

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'He may have spent a fair bit of it, but he also put plenty away for you—tax-free, remember.'

But Elizabeth was remembering other things—the penny-pinching on the laundry, and the unpaid secretarial work.

And what had nearly happened to her—

She sat up straighter in bed. 'Why did he tell that story about the Vengeful?'

'Maybe he didn't.' Paul shook his head. 'Maybe he just talked about the Vengeful research to Lippy, and Lippy spun the yarn on his own initiative.'

'Why should he do that?'

'Well . . . Del Andrew thinks Ray Tuck's eyes—and ears—

were bigger than his stomach. He could have heard something, or seen something—Lippy was getting sicker, so Ray Tuck was doing more of the leg-work around his place, and he could have heard something one day . . . And as Lippy didn't trust him he wouldn't have wanted him to believe that the Captain was sitting right on top of a lot of loot here in England... there in England—he made up this yarn about treasure to put him off the scent.'

Elizabeth almost smiled through her heart-ache: it was strange to hear Del Andrew speaking out of Paul's mouth, word for word.

'Don't go, Paul!' She had tried to throw her bonnet over the windmill, only to have it blown back into her face. But now she was desperately awake—and even more desperately dummy3

lonely. 'Sit down, please— please!'