“It’s altogether quite possible,” Adam said. “The de Luce name is, as you know, an ancient one, of Norman French origin. It has appeared in many different forms. There was, of course, famously, Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote Park, in Warwickshire, who was said—probably wrongly—to have had a young man named William Shakespeare brought up before him on a charge of poaching the Charlecote deer.”
“Damn!” I said.
“Quite,” Adam agreed.
He picked up a pebble and shied it to one side of the dabbling ducks. There was a sudden excited quacking, a flutter of wings, and then they settled once more into their eternal dipping and diving.
“But there’s more,” he added. “Would you like to hear it?”
I gave him such a look.
“A few pages later, Ralph the Cellarer records that the bishop has been laid to rest—you’ll be interested in this—‘att Lacey.’ ”
“Not Bishop’s Lacey?”
“No. It wasn’t given that name until after his death.
“He was laid to rest, according to Ralph, who must have attended the funeral, ‘with greatte and soleymne pomp in hys mitre, cope and crosier.’ ”
“The crosier having the Heart of Lucifer set into it?”
“The very same,” Adam said in a low voice, as if there were some danger of us being overheard. “In the margin, Ralph made the note: ‘oculi mei conspexi’ and the single word ‘adamas’—which means, more or less, ‘I have seen this diamond with my own eyes.’ It’s interesting that he chose to write the marginalia in Latin.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“Because it would have been as easily understood by everyone at the abbey as the English in which his notebook was kept.”
“Perhaps someone else made the note.”
“No, it was in the same handwriting. What it means is that we have an eyewitness report—or as near as damn it—to the fact that Saint Tancred was interred with his miter, cope, and crosier, the Heart of Lucifer, and all.”
“But why has nobody ever found this out?”
“History is like the kitchen sink,” Adam answered. “Everything goes round and round until eventually, sooner or later, most of it goes down the waste pipe. Things are forgotten. Things are mislaid. Things are covered up. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of neglect.
“During the last century and a half, there have been amateur sportsmen who made a hobby of digging through the rubble of our island’s history, mostly for their own enlightenment and amusement, but with two recent wars, that’s come almost to a halt. Nowadays the past is a luxury which nobody can afford. No one has the time for it.”
“Do you?” I asked.
“I try to,” he said. “Although I am not always successful.”
“Is that all, then?” I asked.
“All?”
“All that you wanted to tell me? All that I’ve given you my pledge not to repeat?”
A shadow came over his face. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that it is only the beginning.”
He picked up another pebble, as if he were going to toss it carefree among the ducks, but thought better of it and let the stone drop from his fingers.
“The thing of it is,” he said, “that someone else within the past—say, ten years—has happened upon the scribblings of Ralph the Cellarer, and found them important enough to hide in a pile of old vellum. As is so often the case, I fear that there’s a diamond at the bottom of it all.”
“Saint Tancred’s crosier!” I let out a whistle.
“Precisely.”
“It’s in his tomb!” I said, hopping from one foot to the other.
“I believe it is,” Adam said. “Do you know anything about diamonds in history?”
“Not much,” I told him. “Other than that they were once thought to be both poison and antidote to poison.”
“Quite true. Diamonds were also thought to confer invisibility, to defend against the evil eye and, at least according to Pliny the Elder, to give men the power to see the faces of the gods: ‘Anancitide in hydromantia dicunt evocari imagines deorum.’ They were believed at the beginning of the sixteenth century, by a Venetian named Camillus Leonardus, to be ‘a help to lunaticks and such as are posessed with the Devil.’ He also believed they could tame wild beasts and prevent nightmares. The diamond in the breastplate of the Jewish High Priest was once believed to become clear in the presence of an innocent man and turn cloudy in the presence of a guilty one. And Rabbi Yehuda, in the Talmud, was said during a voyage to have placed a diamond on some salted birds which came back to life and flew away with the stone!”
“Do you believe those things?”
“No,” Adam said. “But I like to keep in mind that when a thing is believed to have a certain effect, that it often does. It is also wise to remember that when it comes to diamonds, there is one power which they possess without a doubt, and that is the power to make people kill.”
“Are you talking about Mr. Collicutt?” I asked.
“To be blunt, yes. Which is why I want you to keep well away from the church. Let me deal with it. That’s why I’m in Bishop’s Lacey. It’s my job.”
“Is it?” I asked. “I should have thought it Inspector Hewitt’s.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth than Inspector Hewitt,” Adam said.
“May I ask you one question?” I said, screwing up my courage.
“You may try.”
“Who are you working for?”
The air between us went suddenly cool, as if a phantom breeze had blown upon us from the past.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” he said.