Perfect (17 page)

T  H  I  R  T  Y  -  F  I  V  E

I was wakened by the sun coming straight into my eyes. I reached for the clock—it was after eight! I fell back into the featherbed and the down pillows. The sheets were the softest linen I’d ever felt—I couldn’t even imagine how many times they’d been laundered to reach such a state. I strongly considered spending the rest of the day in bed. I’d accomplished a great deal yesterday between securing the house, setting up my manufacturing studio, snowshoeing, engineering a successful foray into the enemy camp, a driving lesson, and a firsthand look at the target.

Was Robert Constantin in on the job with Sebastian Tremaine? Too soon to know. But I couldn’t come up with a single scenario that would make the world’s greatest tenor jeopardize the adoration of his fans by stealing jewelry, unless he had a kleptomania problem, though I seriously doubted that—a tabloid would have revealed such a dirty little secret by now. Perhaps he had a constant need for presents, the more exotic and dangerous the better. Perhaps he needed constantly to be shown how much he was loved. That was often the case with artists and performers; they did what they did because they required the approbation, the constant adulation, to be able to live. Tremaine had certainly demonstrated he could provide gifts that were outrageous. What was their relationship? How long had they been together? Why was Tremaine already at the café, not at home and riding into town with his friend? Had they had a disagreement? No, that wasn’t the case. It seemed that every time Tremaine opened his mouth to speak, Constantin laughed. I suspected Tremaine stole for the same reasons I did: to support his lifestyle. And, in fact, his success had landed him in a very lovely spot, as had mine.

There was one other possible scenario, of course: Tremaine wasn’t the thief at all. He’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe this whole affair would prove to be a wild-goose chase. Maybe all the pieces were in Singapore, Shanghai, Teheran, or Damascus by now, or broken down, their settings smelted and the stones in a safe, waiting until the dust settled before being recut and coming back on the market. Maybe they were already sparkling from some sultan’s or concubine’s fingers or throat. Maybe they’d been stolen on their way from Buckingham Palace to the airport, not, as Thomas claimed, by Sebastian inside the palace.

I didn’t have the answers to any of the questions, I could only surmise and have faith that the Windsor family’s security personnel had completed an extensive investigation before lighting on Sebastian and enlisting Thomas. And, further, I knew what my plan was and I knew it was workable. Unfortunately, I also knew that if I didn’t get out of bed and get to work, it was all just talk.

My video cell phone beeped. I picked it up and pushed a button. The screen came to life and showed Barnhardt shouldering his way through the kitchen door with a covered tray. He must have gone to the kitchen at the hotel and picked up what I liked for breakfast because he had with him a bowl of fruit, a small pitcher of what looked like grapefruit juice (one of my passions), a white cardboard pastry box tied with a green ribbon (which I prayed contained those cinnamon rolls), and the newspapers. He set a small covered pan on the stove and turned the burner on low—that would be the thick, soupy, almost chewy hot chocolate—and put a bowl of what I imagined was
Schlag,
that sinful sweetened whipped cream, in the refrigerator. No more Spa Super-Fitness breakfast for me. They’d taken note of the uneaten eggs and yoghurt. Then he kindled the kitchen and living room fires and left.

I got out of bed, pulled on my robe, stepped into my powder puff mules, and headed for the breakfast table.

It had been almost two years since I’d sat at the jeweler’s bench in the secret manufacturing studio in my London flat, and I was itching to get started, to see if I still had the touch. However, before I ventured in to reestablish my command of the craft, I adhered to the strict guideline I’d established for myself years and years ago and which, aside from yesterday’s brief fashion lapse with the headband and the tool belt, I continue to apply to everything I undertake: I always look my best. I’m always ready for anything, and furthermore, if I look my best, I do my best. It’s all part of my requisite ability to transit to another level, to vanish if need be, or to buy myself some time by my respectable appearance. I have always been ready to have my mug shot taken. Not that I expect that will happen, but particularly in an unknown environment such as this, any number of people—including, God forbid, Lucy Richardson—could drop in and welcome their new neighbor, and I needed to look as though I were having a leisurely, unpressured time of it working on my paintings, and invite them in for tea.

Chiffon is such a lovely, forgiving fabric. It should only be worn by the very young and the very old, certainly never by a woman my age with one big exception: work clothes. I have always preferred to work in what I suppose could be called chiffon hostess pajamas. They are extremely comfortable and so light and unencumbering they’re almost not there. I’d found three pairs in Paris, all with tunic tops and floaty trousers, and decided to put on the melon set this morning. The color gave a little life to the snowstorm that had blown up again outside. I added matching lipstick, matching Jimmy Choo sling-backs, a torsade of natural pearls and pink coral beads, and went to work.

Once I accustomed myself to Tinka’s desk chair, a comfortable, ergonometric affair with six wheels and the ability to pivot in every possible direction, I tightened the headband to which the magnification lenses were attached, and then, keeping my eyes on the work surface, I reached up and touched each one of my tools, one at a time. They were all racked within easy reach and it was important to refamiliarize myself with their specific individual locations without needing to raise my head.

I switched on the halogen lights and opened the thick manila envelope I’d prepared from my archives before leaving the farm. I withdrew a stack of photographs, blowups of the Cambridge and Delhi parure and the Lesser Stars of Africa brooch. The brooch would be the easiest to replicate, so I would do it last. I wanted to think that the only people who would need to be duped by the copies were the police, but that would be true only in the dénouement I’d written in my mind—I had no way to know how the real thing would play out. My copies had to be as perfect as I could make them, and the parure, in particular, would require every bit of my skill and concentration. Thank goodness Sebastian hadn’t taken the tiara. Trying to replicate that on a tight time frame would have given me a nervous breakdown.

I decided to start with the necklace and slipped the other photos back into the envelope and set it aside. I placed four clear acrylic easels with clipboardlike clamps—two on either side of me—on the table’s pop-up flaps. On one I put a photograph of the overall necklace, on another the clasp, on the other two I put sections of the links. Exact dimensions and carat weights of the stones ran down the sides for quick, easy reference.

Although the six cabochon emeralds—three on each side—which graduated in size from ten to fifteen carats from the clasp forward, looked at first glance as though they matched, nothing is ever a perfect match, especially in colored stones where it is the imperfections that give them their character. Each was a slightly different size, shape, color, and quality—some had a number of inclusions, some had almost none.

The 14-carat emerald at the clasp was diamond shaped and the 18-carat center stone was square. The six brilliant-cut diamonds that interspersed the emeralds ranged from 5.5 carats at the clasp to 6.5 toward the center. There were ninety-four .03-carat brilliant cut diamonds in the double rows that linked the stones. Each emerald was set in 14-karat gold and surrounded by a quarter-centimeter-wide border of pavé diamonds set in platinum. In the pendant, the fifteen-carat pear-shaped emerald was suspended from a petal-shaped, pavé diamond clasp attached to a chain of twelve .025-carat diamonds, while the other pendant—the 11.5-carat marquise-cut Cullinan VI—hung from a shorter chain of eleven diamonds.

While it sounds extremely complicated, in fact what made the piece particularly challenging to duplicate was its simplicity. With the exception of the pavés around the emeralds, each stone, no matter its size, made its own individual contribution to the whole, each had its own place and personality.

I began with the diamond chains that linked the larger stones. I sliced a sliver of platinum from an ingot and rolled it to two millimeters of thickness. Then I sliced off two five-millimeter-wide strips, making several steady passes rather than a single deep cut. I measured constantly, and when I was satisfied the shape and proportion were exact, I laid three of the small brilliant-cut diamonds in place. Once they were all properly positioned, I pressed them hard onto their platinum beds where the culet, or bottom point, of each diamond made its own distinctive imprint.

A jeweler’s bench has dozens of implements, many of them appearing to be identical, but in fact each one is specialized to its task. There are buffs and burrs for finishing and polishing, pliers, tweezers and torches, and about fifty different gravers for cutting and shaping. My gravers were the finest available, made of the hardest Swiss steel, and therefore able to keep their blade longer on platinum, which was the metal I preferred to work in. Platinum is hard and light, as demanding to work with as it is rewarding. It requires patience, precision, and talent, and its beauties are manifold in the way it almost invisibly presents and holds stones.

The back of a piece of good jewelry should be as beautiful and interesting to look at as the front—this is where quality and workmanship of the construction reveal themselves. The visible area of the stones on the back should be almost as large as the front. The smaller the visible area, the poorer the craftsmanship, and generally the poorer the stones and the metals. Most top jewelers, when they cut through the metal to seat a stone, have a trademark shape—spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs, circles, squares, triangles, ovals, and so forth. Naturally, mine was a shamrock. By the time a piece is complete, the original cut-through shape is no longer viable. Some experts claim that if a piece is subjected to intense expert scrutiny, occasionally the signature can be identified. I don’t believe it, particularly in the world of fine jewelry. If a design can be detected in the metal, then the workmanship is inferior and the piece is not worth studying or stealing in the first place.

I turned the first indented bed over and began to cut. The wooden knob handle of the scalpel-sharp graver was solid in my hand, but settling into the work after so long away was slow and frustrating. It took almost an hour before I began to feel my stride return, but I stayed on point and finally was rewarded with some of the most fluid, most skillful work I’d ever done. I completed the first series of cut-throughs, seated the stones, and then slightly heated the metal and softened and cajoled it into secure, silvery beds. On each diamond, I folded the sides up and cut off the excess platinum, tucking it down so it formed just the tiniest lip along the girdle, securing it in place. I soldered them onto miniscule platinum links so they were flexible and joined them together in short chains.

My concentration remained intense and I worked like a robot straight through lunch—I don’t recall even stopping for a glass of water. By midafternoon, I’d seated 28 of the 117 stones and completed eight chains, four with three diamonds and four with four diamonds. It was an excellent start. I stood up and, for a minute, thought I was paralyzed I was so stiff. I pulled off the headband and massaged my forehead and reached my hands over my head, stretching one arm to the ceiling, then the other. I forced my arms back behind me and stretched and wiggled my fingers as though I were getting ready to play the piano. After a couple of minutes of motion, I felt much better.

Once the bench was tidied and in the closet, which I locked and armed, I turned on the steamer in the shower, fixed a pot of coffee and ate a little of the remaining cheese and pâté. The ingredients for the devil’s food cake were still where I’d left them on the counter. Maybe later today. In the meantime, I took two dark chocolate truffles out of the bread box and ate them on my way to the bathroom, where I pulled off my clothes, went into the steam bath, and lay down on the bench, letting the eucalyptus clear my mind.

Barnhardt and I left for the square a little after four.

T  H  I  R  T  Y  -  S  I  X

Every day I followed basically the same schedule, but with a much earlier, more disciplined start. I got up at five and worked from six until two, eight hours, without a break, leaving myself enough time for a little snowshoe adventure or a massage before going to the square.

The first afternoon, one of my cell phones beeped and I watched Lucy Richardson ski through my gate, done up like a ski bunny all in white Bogner with a big white fur ruff around her hood and glamour-girl dark glasses.

I got on the intercom immediately. “Barnhardt. Mrs. Richardson is just arriving. Would you please go tell her I’m working and can’t be disturbed and I’ll call her later.”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

He intercepted her before she was able to get her skis off. I watched him talk and her nod and smile, and then she walked up the hill doing what is called in skiing lingo a herringbone step. Lucy was in seriously good shape.

She left at least two messages for me every day. She was driving me crazy, she was like a meddling little magpie. One afternoon, I watched her come in in her sleigh, a little two-person rig Swissed up to a fare-thee-well, and she actually
peeked in the windows on either side of the front door!
before I could get Barnhardt out there to waylay her. Fortunately, for some marvelous reason, she did not go to après ski at the café, but I was constantly on my toes, dodging her in the market. No matter what time I went, she was there. Avoiding her had given me a headache and was starting to give me indigestion.

And then one afternoon, my luck ran out. I was in Fannie’s picking up my dinner: a hanger steak and baby root vegetables to roast with olive oil and garlic. I was in the olive oil aisle when suddenly her head popped around the corner.

“Boo!” she peeped.

It took every ounce of my self-control to put a smile on my face and not slap hers. I was simply getting to hate her. “Lucy! How are you?”

“You’re working too hard,” she said. “You need to come out and play. Alma’s going to think I’m not taking good care of you.”

“I know—you’re certainly doing your best. It’s not your fault I have to be working. It’s just what I need to do right now if I’m going to be able to make my deadlines.”

“You still have to eat. Why don’t you come to dinner tonight? We’ve got a couple of very, very attractive men coming. Single. Possibly straight.”

I forced myself to laugh. “Thanks so much. For the moment, marketing is my only outing. Maybe in a couple of days.”

“Poo.”

Poo, my foot.

By the end of my first full week in Mont-St.-Anges, I had completed the necklace and was sufficiently up to speed that I knew I’d have the ear clips, brooch, and bracelet done in no time.

There was no question in my mind that by now Thomas had figured out where Robert Constantin lived and had been in contact with George Naxos, who would no doubt tell him that his agent was already embedded on the scene. I felt sure he knew where I was and wondered when, and if, he would try to contact me. I’d been keeping my eyes open for Thomas’s assistant, David. But so far, unless he were very skillfully disguised, I didn’t think he was in Mont-St.-Anges.

To tell the truth, I liked the idea of Thomas knowing where I was. This was a huge caper. While the theft itself would not be impossible to pull off, once I’d been able to reconnoiter the Constantin chalet further, the locale was insurmountable, literally and figuratively, in many ways. Because of the location of the club, the fact that transportation in and out was only by helicopter or train, every escape route was basically controlled—there was no way to move spontaneously in or out of the valley. The knowledge that I had Thomas as a safety net if I found myself in physical danger, or if the whole project went south in any number of other ways, gave an extra oomph to my confidence.

In spite of the ever-present threat of the Terrible Lucy, I had easily fallen into the schedule of the place, arriving for my well-earned après ski at the café at a little after four every day. It had snowed on and off since I arrived. A couple of times there’d been an especially big snowfall, and it made the skiers rhapsodize so euphorically about how the skiing had been, I considered taking it up. Other days the snow just danced about like little feathers. I’d even gotten somewhat accustomed to the cold. No matter the temperature, I always dressed up and made sure to wear noticeable jewelry, which was hard to do, bundled up as I was in outdoor gear. But at least I managed to wear largish earrings and rings and bracelets. I noticed that Constantin had some affinity for jewelry as well. He seemed particularly partial to jeweled cuffs, sometimes he had three on each wrist. He also wore a large stud earring in his right ear, a different precious gem every day. He reminded me of a pirate.

Sebastian Tremaine, on the other hand, fascinated me more every time I saw him. The more I observed him, the less he seemed cut out for the high-wire life of a jewel thief, unless he was a complete reincarnation of the Scarlet Pimpernel—a bon vivant on the outside and a worthy adversary on the inside—which was certainly possible. He seemed open and accessible, and evidently had a wicked wit because often his words made his listeners open their eyes wide and drop their jaws.

I always sat at the same table, and Constantin and Tremaine and their circle of friends were always at theirs. I knew they were curious about me because I’d catch glances now and then and I was beginning to think they’d never make a move, when finally, on the sixth day, Tremaine got to his feet and headed my way.

My pulse kicked up a beat or two as the next step in my plan fell into place.

Tremaine typically wore a handkerchief around his neck; today’s was yellow-and-blue calico. He stopped in front of me and after making a silly little schoolboy bow, he offered his right hand, and kept his left flat against his back, as though he were in the Prussian army.

I raised my eyes to meet his, but did not offer my hand in return. His eyes were grayish blue.

“Sebastian Tremaine,” he announced. The eyes took in my ruby cabochon earrings and ruby-and-diamond brooch pinned to the neck of my pale pink turtleneck, just visible through the open top of my gray fox parka. All in all, it was a smashing getup, although rubies have never ranked very high on my list of favorites—however, I do love ruby cabochons.

I declined to offer my name. “Yes?”

I could tell he was injured by my attitude. Who did I think I was?

“I’m so sorry to interrupt. I told them you weren’t going to be nice about it. I told them you didn’t want to be disturbed because if you did you would have made it known to us but they disregarded me completely and made me come over to find out who you are. Well, at any rate.” He looked over his shoulder at his friends. Constantin shooed his hands at Sebastian, instructing him to proceed with his inquiries. “We see you here every day reading by yourself and . . . what book are you reading? It must be positively gripping.”

“Manchester’s biography of Churchill.”

“Ah. Wonderful man. Wonderful. How we could use more like him.”

“Indeed.” I nodded, trying not to laugh.

“Well,” he began again. “Again, please accept my apologies for the interruption. I feel a perfect fool. My friends and I want to know if you’d like to join us for one more café before we all
go
on our way for the evening?”

“No, thank you. But please thank your friends for the invitation.”

“Perhaps another time,” he said.

“Perhaps.”

I needed at least one more invitation before I’d accept. After all, we hadn’t been properly introduced.