Cornwall had the look of a cornered animal and nodded to me.
I shifted my attention to the duchess. “Mr. Stafford confirmed that the entire piece is a forgery.”
She smiled and turned on the managing director with a pointed finger. “See, Joseph? The blokes counted on me not noticing and getting away with the theft. Probably figured we wouldn’t catch on for a year or two and they’d be long gone.”
Cornwall swallowed. “We’ll look into it.”
“I tell you,” she continued, “there’s an epidemic of this. The same thing happened to Elizabeth Haversom. You and the Met should get a handle on this right away.”
Cornwall nodded.
“Now that you’ve had confirmation of what has happened, I’ll expect a check in the morning, Joseph.”
Cornwall had a deer-in-the-headlights look to him.
The duchess placed the necklace back in its box. “And I’ll need to take this as well.”
That woke Cornwall out of his trance. “You can’t.”
The duchess straightened up. “I can’t very well show up at the next function and admit that it was stolen. What would people say? And, that would alert the thieves that we’re on to them, now wouldn’t it?”
Cornwall’s face regained some of its color. “I can’t authorize both a payout and this temporary replacement, is what I meant.”
She closed the lid on the box and scooped it up. “Shall we say half, then? And I’ll take this, for the time being?”
Cornwall was trapped, and he knew it. “We’ll need to keep this confidential while we investigate.”
She stood. “Of course, Joseph. I’m bloody well not yelling this from the rooftops. Can you imagine?” Now she was into image-conservation mode. She turned and stopped at the door. “You will keep me informed of your progress.” It came out more as a command than a question.
Cornwall nodded. “Your grace.”
A few seconds later, the door closed and we were alone again.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Cornwall demanded.
“I tried to.” I wasn’t letting this be my fault. “It wasn’t her switching out the gems.”
He rubbed his temple. “This makes three now.”
When more of an explanation didn’t follow, I asked, “Three what?”
“The Haversom incident she mentioned was a brooch pinched at a party two months ago—same thing, an exact replica switched. And Amalgamated Insurance told me they also had a jewelry payout a few weeks ago. This has got to stop. We can’t afford to have losses like this very often.” He pointed at me. “Smithers said you were the best we had.”
I swelled with pride and didn’t know what to say.
“You’ve got to find the buggers and stop this.”
That burst my balloon. “Me?” Now I could see how this would go. Smithers had been given an impossible task and nominated me as the sacrificial lamb for when it failed. “I don’t think we can handle this alone.” He had to face the facts now instead of later, regardless of what Smithers had told him.
He half laughed. “The duchess said she thought the Met should get involved. She has much more influence with them than I do, so I’ll make it her job to get them on board to help you.”
He’d just removed my one excuse, lack of resources. Working with what we Americans called Scotland Yard and still not putting a quick end to this would strike a stake through my career for sure.
“You’re excused. Go see Smithers and work up a plan.”
I stood. “This could require significant resources.”
“You have my complete support. Whatever you need.” He waved me away like a fly on his desk.
I found Smithers in his office one floor down from Cornwall.
The door was open, so I peeked in.
He looked up. “Sommerset, come in.”
I took the chair he motioned to and smoothed my skirt. “I just finished with the managing director.” I used his title because I wasn’t sure of the etiquette on this floor.
“Report,” he said.
“First, Stafford’s assessment of the piece was worse than Grimley’s.”
A wrinkle formed on his brow. “You said that.”
“The chain, the settings, the stones, it’s all a replica.”
The wrinkle increased. “Not the gems alone? That’s very odd.”
“Not if the theft was meant to go undetected. The copy was substituted for the original during a very narrow window.”
He nodded slowly. “So you don’t buy Cornwall’s theory that the duchess herself replaced the gems?”
“Not likely. If she commissioned the replica, why bring the switch to our attention just days after the original had been verified at the jewelers? It doesn’t make sense. She would have waited until next year.”
He wrote something down on the piece of paper in front of him. “What else?”
“Cornwall got a visit from the duchess while I was there. He’s assigning her to get the Met to cooperate on the investigation.”
He laughed. “That must have been something. I had to pick up the necklace from her. She was in a mood to knock heads.”
I sighed. “I wasn’t expecting to be in today. I’m still on west coast time.”
The crinkle around his eyes didn’t indicate he was pleased to hear me say that. “Go get some rest then. We’ll pick this up in the morning. By then I expect the duchess will have gotten the Yard’s attention.”
I rose slowly. “Thank you, sir.”
Punching the button for the elevator, I had one imperative that wouldn’t wait another minute—dig through my bag for some flats.
Ethan
At the lunch break, I got the note to visit my chief inspector, who’d left my lecture early.
I heard him on the phone before I reached the doorway. “Damned aristocracy. We should have shipped them all off to Australia with the convicts.”
I waited for the call to end before moving to the door. He had lifted the top off a sandwich to examine it.
He looked up. “Bloody cheese and cucumber again. Is it too much to ask for a little meat in a man’s lunch once in a while?”
I didn’t sit or attempt an answer.
He replaced the bread and picked up the sandwich, waving it toward the chair across from him. “Sit down, Blakewell.”
I did as commanded and waited for him to finish chewing. “Did you have a comment about the lecture?”
He shook his head and slid a piece of paper across the desk before taking another bite from his lunch.
I took the paper, which had a name on it: Superintendent Maxwell.
“Just because some old lady lost a bauble, they want us to drop everything.” The they he referred to could only be somebody up the chain of command that the chief didn’t dare talk back to.
I stared at the paper without comment. When the chief was in a mood, it didn’t pay to interrupt him.
“We have more than forty knife crimes and millions in e-crime every day, and we’re supposed to drop everything because a shiny bauble is missing.”
I waited again for him to finish chewing. “How do I fit into this?” My specialization didn’t have anything to do with jewelry theft.