Part 5 (2/2)

I said, 'I'm not a gemmologist. I'll probably sell the business after probate.'

He nodded comfortably. 'That might be the best course. We would expect the Saxony Franklin loan to be repaid on schedule, but we would welcome a dialogue with the purchasers.'

He produced papers for me to sign and asked for extra specimen signatures so that I could put my name to Saxony Franklin cheques. He didn't ask what experience I'd had in running a business. Instead, he wished me luck.

I rose to my crutches and shook his hand, thinking of the things I hadn't said.

I hadn't told him I was a jockey, which might have caused a panic in Hatton Garden. And I hadn't told him that, if Greville had bought one and a half million dollars' worth of diamonds, I didn't know where they were.

'Diamonds?' Annette said. 'No. I told you. We never deal in diamonds.'

'The bank manager believes that Greville bought some recently. From something called the DTC of the CSO.'.

'The Central Selling Organization? That's De Beers.

The DTC is their diamond trading company. No, no.'

She looked anxiously at my face. 'He can't have done.

He never said anything about it.'

'Well, has the stock-buying here increased over the past three months?'

'It usually does,' she said, nodding. 'The business always grows. Mr Franklin comes back from world trips with new stones all the time. Beautiful stones. He can't resist them. He sells most of the special ones to a jewellery designer who has several boutiques in places like Knightsbridge and Bond Street. Gorgeous costume jewellery, but with real stones. Many of his pieces are one-offs, designed for a single stone. He has a great name. People prize some of his pieces like Faberge's.'

'Who is he?'

'Prospero Jenks,' she said, expecting my awe at least.

I hadn't heard of him, but I nodded all the same.

'Does he set the stones with diamonds?' I asked.

'Yes, sometimes. But he doesn't buy those from Saxony Franklin.'

We were in Greville's office, I sitting in his swivel chair behind the vast expanse of desk, Annette sorting yesterday's roughly heaped higgledy-piggledy papers back into the drawers and files that had earlier contained them.

'You don't think Greville would ever have kept diamonds in this actual office, do you?' I asked.

'Certainly nos.' The idea shocked her. 'He was always very careful about security.'

'So no one who broke in here would expect to find anything valuable lying about?'

She paused with a sheaf of papers in one hand, her brow wrinkling.

'It's odd, isn't it? They wouldn t expect to find anything valuable lying about in an office if they knew anything about the jewellery trade. And if they didn't know anything about the jewellery trade, why pick this office?'

The same old unanswerable question.

June with her incongroous motherliness brought in the typist's chair again for me to put my foot on. I thanked her and asked if her stock control computer kept day-to-day tabs on the number and value of all the polished pebbles in the place.

'Goodness, yes,' she said with amus.e.m.e.nt. 'Dates and amounts in, dates and amounts out. Prices in, prices out, profit margin, VAT, tax, you name it, the computer will tell you what we've got, what it's worth, what sells slowly, what sells fast, what's been hanging around here wasting s.p.a.ce for two years or more, which isn't much.'

'The stone's in the vault as well?'

'Sure.'

'But no diamonds?'

'No, we don't deal in them.' She gave me a bright incurious smile and swiftly departed, saying over her shoulder that the Christmas rush was still going strong and they'd been bombarded by fax orders overnight.

'Who reorders what you sell?' I asked Annette.

'I do for ordinary stock. June tells me what we need.

Mr Franklin himself ordered the &ceted stones and anything unusual.'

She went on sorting the papers, basically unconcerned because her responsibility ended on her way home. She was wearing that day the charcoal skirt of the day before but topped with a black sweater, perhaps out of respect for Greville. Solid in body, but not large, she had good legs in black tights and a settled, well groomed, middle-aged air. I couldn't imagine her being as buoyant as June even in her youth.

I asked her if she could lay her hands on the company'

s insurance policy and she said as it happened she had just refiled it. I read its terms with misgivings and then telephoned the insurance company. Had my brother, I asked, recently increased the insurance? Had he increased it to cover diamonds to the value of one point five million dollars? He had not. It had been discussed only. My brother had said the premium asked was too high, and he had decided against it. The voice explained that the premium had been high because the stones would be often in transit, which made them vulnerable.

He didn't know if Mr Franklin had gone ahead with buying the diamonds It had been an enquiry only, he thought, three or four months ago. I thanked him numbly and put down the receiver.

The telephone rang again immedi?tely and as Annette seemed to be waiting for me to do so, I answered it.

'h.e.l.lo?' I said. j A male voice said, 'Is that Mr Franklin? I want to speak to Mr Franklin, please.'

'Er . . . could I help? I'm his brother.'

'Perhaps you can,' he said. 'This is the clerk of the West London Magistrates Court. Your brother was due here twenty minutes ago and it is unlike him to be late.

Could you tell me when to expect him?'

'Just a minute.' I put my hand over the mouthpiece and told Annette what I'd just heard. Her eyes widened and she showed signs of horrified memory.

'It's his day for the Bench! Alternate lbesdays. I'd clean forgotten.'

I returned to the phone and explained the situation.

'Oh. Oh. How dreadfully upsetting.' He did indeed sound upset, but also a shade impatient. 'It really would have been more helpful if you could have alerted me in advance. It's very short notice to have to find a replacement.'

'Yes,' I agreed,'but this office was broken into during the weekend. My brother's appointments diary was stolen, and iA fact we cannot alert anybody not to expect him.'

'How extremely inconvenient.' It didn't seem an inappropriate statement to him. I thought Greville might find it inconvenient to be dead. Maybe it wasn't the best time for black humour.

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