‘Should we go back and tell the inspector?’
‘Not straight away, no. He can wait until later. He wasn’t at all keen to share the contents of his telegram, was he. Well, if he can have his little secrets, then so can we. Speaking of which, we need to get to the Post Office. I’ve had a rather splendid idea and I have a telegram of my own to send.’
With our errands run and a sandwich eaten in the Dog and Duck, we were back in the dining room at The Grange with Inspector Sunderland. To judge from the wreckage of his own lunch on the sliver tray on the table, he’d been very well looked after, and I wondered if we were going to have trouble keeping him awake after such a handsome meal, but he seemed as alert as ever.
‘So, ladies, to business,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry if I seemed distracted before lunch but I’d had some interesting news and I was keen to get one or two things confirmed before we resumed this afternoon. Sir Hector was good enough to let me use his telephone and I’ve had confirmation from Scotland Yard and, through them, from our colleagues in the S?reté in Paris, that Mr Roland Richman is indeed a known smuggler. He’s been picked up a couple of times at Dover with bottles of cognac in his duffel, but never anything more. The French lads were sure he was responsible for moving some diamonds that had come down from Amsterdam last year but nothing was proven.’
‘That does seem to square with what Skins told us,’ I said.
‘It does, miss, yes. But there’s more. It seems that acting on information from customs officers in Marseille, the S?reté has just picked up one Praveer Sengupta, an English-educated Indian gentleman from Bengal. They have strong evidence against him on a number of charges of smuggling antiquities out of the Subcontinent and into Europe.’
‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘So he’s “posh but foreign”. This is all very encouraging.’
‘Very encouraging indeed, miss.’
‘We’ve just heard something even more encouraging, Inspector. Something that fills in yet another of the gaps,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘I’m all ears, my lady,’ he said.
She repeated Mr Verma’s story of the Emerald Eye with surprisingly few of her usual embellishments and when she had finished the inspector let out a low whistle.
‘And Verma just ran up to you and blurted this out?’ he said
‘He did, Inspector. Which is odd, don’t you think?’
‘Most peculiar. Most peculiar indeed. What did he hope to gain? Surely he knew it would implicate him or his servant in the murder.’
‘He’s a bright chap,’ she said. ‘That wouldn’t have escaped him. But he was genuinely surprised that we were involved in the investigation and I’m afraid I might have rather played up the “dizzy old biddy” routine at the party so he might not have had too high an opinion of my capacity for deduction.’
‘You, my lady?’ he said. ‘A dizzy old biddy?’
‘Oh, come now. Lots of bright young things, a few glasses of fizzy wine and some very reasonable cognac…? Everyone loves a bit of flattering attention, Inspector, and I thought I might get more as a disreputable aunt figure than a disapproving civil servant.’
‘Civil servant?’
Lady Hardcastle paused very briefly. ‘Figure of speech, Inspector. Someone boring and official, let’s say. But it seems I played my part well and he thought I might be exactly the sort of dizzy old biddy who would go trotting off round The Grange looking for his missing jewel without a second thought for how it might be linked to other events.’
The inspector looked thoughtful. ‘Perhaps, my lady. Perhaps. And if he’s looking for the jewel, it might mean that neither he nor the… the, er, “Man Mountain” are involved. If one of them had pinched the case, they’d have the jewel.’
‘Unless,’ I said, ‘it was still in the trumpet case when they hid it but someone else found it before they could retrieve it.’
‘Are you two sure you wouldn’t like a job on the Force?’ said the inspector. ‘I’ve got detectives on my squad that can’t see things like that.’
‘You’re a shameless flatterer, Inspector Sunderland, and we see right through you,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘But I suppose it’s my fault for revealing my weakness for such blandishments.’
I, on the other hand, was keen for more of any sort of flattery and blandishment and rather fancied being compared to a proper detective again.
‘What’s our next move?’ I asked. ‘Do we rattle Richman’s cage? Thumbscrews and Chinese water torture till he squeals?’
The inspector laughed. ‘Or we could just sit him down and ask him a few more questions. All calm and polite, like.’
‘Or that,’ I said. ‘But I know a few ways of hurting him that’ll leave no marks if you want.’
He gave me a puzzled frown. ‘I’ll bear that in mind, miss. But if you could just fetch him without causing him any damage, that’ll do for now.’
‘Righto, sir,’ I said, brightly. I turned to Lady Hardcastle. ‘He’s not nearly as much fun as I thought, you know.’
They both laughed.
Once again, Roland Richman was sitting in the dining room at The Grange, but he didn’t look nearly so comfortable and self-assured as he had last time.
‘Well, then,’ he said, almost nervously. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure of this second meeting? Has something happened? Do you know who did it?’
‘Not quite yet, sir,’ said the inspector. ‘But a couple of things have come to light which need some clarification.’
‘If I can help, Inspector, you know I shall.’
‘Thank you, sir. I wonder what you can tell us about Mr…’ he consulted his notebook. ‘Mr Praveer Sengupta.’
‘Praveer Sengupta,’ said Richman, thoughtfully. ‘Name rings a bell. Indian gentleman, I take it? Have we performed for him? I vaguely recall playing an engagement at a do in Cheltenham with some ex-Raj types. Was that it?’
‘Not quite, sir, no. This particular gentleman has just been arrested in Paris. Have you ever been to Paris, sir?’
‘More than once, Inspector. But I don’t recall–’
‘You see, sir, I’ve been in communication with my opposite number in the S?reté in Paris. I’ve been told that you met Mr Sengupta in a bar in Montmartre last month.’
I’d been wondering how he was going to reveal what we knew without dropping Skins in it. And without actually lying, too. Clever chap, that Inspector Sunderland.
Richman, meanwhile, didn’t seem nearly so delighted.
‘Ah,’ he said, at last.
‘“Ah” indeed, sir. Shall we start again? What business did you conduct with Mr Sengupta?’
‘It was some… ah… some courier work,’ said Richman.
‘Delivering messages around Paris, sir? Was the music not paying so well?’
‘Not as such, Inspector, no. It was more, ah…’