Read The Attenbury Emeralds for Free Online Page B

as they befell on your side of the baize door. Here is Harriet, all agog. You are agog, Harriet, I take it? It doesn’t sound like a pleasant state to be in. What exactly is it?’
    ‘I am very much agog,’ said Harriet. ‘We shall look it up later.’
    ‘Well, my lady,’ said Bunter, ‘I cannot make claims for my memory such as his lordship makes, but as I remember, it was upon this fashion…’
    Goodness! thought Harriet. How like Peter Bunter has become…

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    ‘When Lady Charlotte came to dress for dinner,’ Bunter continued, ‘she found that the emeralds laid out ready for her to wear did not include the carved central stone. They used to call it the king-stone, I believe. She at once rang for her maid. The maid was Jeannette, a French young lady who had been with the family some three or four years, ever since Charlotte graduated from the care of the governess. She came at once expecting to help her mistress dress, and was thunderstruck to find that the jewels were not complete on the stand, as she swore she had left them. She had fetched them from Lady Attenbury’s room, carried them down the corridor to Charlotte’s room, and laid them out ready only an hour since. The two women panicked – Jeannette with very good reason – and began to run around shouting for help.
    ‘The senior manservants of the household were in attendance on the guests assembling for dinner, but Jeannette fetched Lady Attenbury’s own maid, who opened the safe in Lady Attenbury’s bedroom of which she was trusted with the keys, to see if the emerald had become detached and was lying there loose, Jeannette all the while asserting passionately that it had been with the parure when she left it. When it was found not to be in the safe the panic escalated. Agitated voices reached me in my lordship’s dressing-room, and a couple of foot-men and the valet of Captain Ansel had also heard the commotion. A little parliament of the servants assembled. At my suggestion we began a systematic search of both the bedrooms – Lady Charlotte’s and her mother’s – and along the corridor between the two, which by unhappy chance was carpeted in dark green Axminster.
    ‘Time was passing, and Lady Charlotte was distraught. She was supposed already to be downstairs among the guests. Jeannette suggested that she simply put on her pearls, and go down. The stone must be somewhere near, and it would be found before her father or mother could ask questions. This simply provoked anguish from Lady Charlotte. She had already incurred her father’s displeasure by reluctance to wear the emeralds; they had been brought specially from London for her, and if she showed her face downstairs without them her father would interpret this as flagrant defiance. He might even suppose that the very absence of the Mughal stone was a trick of some kind that she herself had got up to in order to avoid doing what he asked of her.
    ‘There was now only some five minutes left before the dinner gong would sound. Crying woe was not getting anywhere, and the Axminster was greenly refusing to yield a dropped jewel. Sarah, Lady Attenbury’s maid, a lady of about her mistress’s age and with long service in the family, solved the immediate problem. I think she was as much concerned to avoid a public debacle and a scandal, which would certainly get into the press, as she was about the whereabouts of the jewel.
    ‘“Stop crying at once, Miss Charlotte,” said she. “You must wear the paste, and get downstairs immediately. Come here.” She produced the paste replica from a drawer of Lady Attenbury’s dressing-table, and put it round Lady Charlotte’s neck herself. “Run!” she said to the girl.
    ‘Meanwhile all the commotion had attracted the attention of the policeman who was posted on the upper corridor, who went and fetched Sergeant Parker, my lady—’
    ‘Goodness!’ said Harriet. ‘Charles?’ She was charmed to find that her brother-in-law had a part to