The de Vere Deception (David Thorne Mysteries Book 1) (15 page)

            It was empty!

            He placed his hand into the cavity to make sure. Bending over, he turned the plaque around. The backside had been hollowed out, and force-fitted in a cavity in the rear of the plaque, was a bronze metal box about ten inches square and two inches thick. He pried the box loose with the trowel and took it down the stairs. On the ground floor, he set the box on the large table and pried it loose with the trowel. Pausing to look at his watch, he realized he had little time before the workmen would arrive. He untwisted the metal wire on the hasp of the box. When the wire was off, he gently opened the lid.

            Inside was an eight inches square, inch and a half thick, bound leather packet, secured with a heavy cord.

            He left the leather packet on the table and raced back up the steps. He replaced the box into the plaque, and the plaque into the wall cavity. His watch showed he was running out of time and he still had to-point the joints with the fresh mortar before the workmen came.

            The flashlight had now gone out. He smoothed the joints around the plaque by feel. As he replaced the hammer, chisel, and pail with the trowel in the drawer of the file cabinet, he heard a car approaching.

            He shoved the leather packet under his belt and ran to the central courtyard. Knowing the workmen would be entering through the side gate, he quickly went to a newly constructed visitor’s vestibule where he knew there would be a small window in the rest room wall. He wriggled through the small opening, crouched, and ran across the moat bridges and angled off away from the castle in the direction of the woods.

            More vehicles were arriving now and he angled off and hid in a clump of small hazelnut trees as he waited for them to pass. He waited until they were out of sight and continued through a break in the outer stone wall. His adrenaline was pumping, and with labored breath, he continued to jog until he knew he was out of sight.

            He arrived at the manor just as the kitchen lights were coming on. He crept through the French doors and silently made his way to his room. Once inside, he locked the door behind him, took off his jacket, and placed the leather packet on the bed.

            As he cut the cords and unfolded the leather packet he was stunned.

            What he saw before him made him catch his breath.

Chapter 31

In his research on Queen Elizabeth I, Thorne had found a picture of what now lay on the bed before him—the Royal Arms of England Great Seal of Elizabeth I. A large ER, the monogram of Elizabeth Regina, was engraved on a heavy gold plate, and the plate was affixed to the cover flap of a maroon velvet burse. The burse was wrapped with a satin ribbon, stiff and brittle with age. Thorne paused before opening the packet. He waited a long minute just looking at it, admiring the elegance and mystery of the gold plate on to the packet.

            The velvet packet was reinforced and made stiff, probably by layers of a heavy canvas inner structure sewn in between the layers of the velvet. The satin bow held the cover flap with the repeated ER monogram in gold thread.

            He moved his fingers lightly over the engraved design before cautiously untying the brittle ribbon. When he undid the bow and opened the four overlapping flaps of the cover, he saw before him, the most fantastic necklace he had ever seen.

            It was solid gold with an enormous emerald-cut pink diamond in the center. It was surrounded by nine brilliant cut and one oval white diamond, each at least twenty carats.

            The gold chains supporting the stones were laden with more than two hundred diamonds and rubies varying in size from two to five carats.

            He had no idea how many carats the large pink diamond would have weighed. He took a small architectural scale from his briefcase that showed both feet and inches as well as metric denotations, and measured the large pink stone. It was over an inch across and half again in the other dimension. It could have been seventy-five or a hundred carats—or even more, he had no way of knowing. The famed Hope Diamond was around 45 carats, and at 21 millimeters by 25 millimeters, was less than an inch in both dimensions.

            The large pink diamond had a hypnotic effect on him as he continued to stare at it. It was the most exquisite jewel he’d ever seen. He sat for a long time staring intently at the necklace. The stone had a magical power, and the fire emanating from it prevented him from taking his eyes off it.

A light knock at the door aroused him from his sleep. He had not gone to sleep until six o’clock and must have dozed off as he contemplated the treasure before him. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was after eight.

            “Mr. Thorne,” a soft voice said through the door. “Mr. Hollister was making inquiries about you. He understood you were to leave for the castle early this morning.”

            “Thank you, I overslept. Please tell Mr. Hollister I’ll meet him at the job site in an hour or so.”

            “Yes, Sir,” the voice answered. The sound of light footsteps went down the corridor and a door closed.

            Looking once more at the necklace on the night table, he carefully folded over the covers and retied the ribbon as he’d found it, and replaced the velvet burse in the leather packet. He put the leather packet in a paper bag and placed it on a high shelf behind a large set of undisturbed works by Milton. He removed his clothes from the night before, went to the bathroom, and took a shower to get his day started.

            He realized the game had changed. This was something he had to think about before he made a rash decision.

Chapter 32

Thorne tried to maintain a normal demeanor when he met Freddie at the castle just before noon. He wasn’t completely sure the voice he had heard the night before in the castle was Freddie’s, but the suspicion nagged at him. Freddie said he had to meet a book distributor back at his bookstore, and left after lunch. Thorne spent the rest of the day with routine matters and returned to the manor house for dinner.

After dinner, Thorne returned to his room and looked through the books in the bookcases for an illustrated book about the crown jewels. Finding nothing about the necklace, he set his alarm clock to two-thirty and drifted off to sleep.

            He left the manor house around three o’clock and walked to the castle. Except for the lorries and trailers where tools and equipment were stored, there were no vehicles parked at the side entrance. He made his way across the interior courtyard and into the kitchen wing of the building. He didn’t conduct a search, but waited in the kitchen just outside the pantry for the men he had seen the previous night. Footsteps in the courtyard alerted him, and he moved quickly into the pantry. He crawled into the alcove and silently closed the panel behind him. Through the hole in the wall, he saw the outline of three figures moving up the stairs, before stopping at the stone plaque.

            In the light of the flashlights, he could make out a figure’s arms moving, chipping away at the soft mortar placed there the night before. After a while, the figure began prying the plaque loose with a small crowbar. The figure bent over and set the crowbar gently on the floor before gently lifting the stone plaque out of the wall. An arm moved gingerly into the cavity behind the area where the plaque had been.

            The first voice he had heard from the night before was stressed as it exclaimed, “It’s empty! But it’s got to be here. It’s described in the letter clearly. Turn the plaque over.”

            There was a soft clunk as the plaque was being turned over. Then there was movement with the box being removed from the plaque and being placed on the table. The metal scraped as the box was opened.

            ”What’s this? It’s empty, too!” a low voice said. “The box is empty. It’s supposed to be here. It should be here. It says so in the letter.”

            “Are you sure you’ve found the right plaque?” a new voice said. “Maybe it’s behind one of the other stone carvings.”

            With annoyance the first voice said, “No! The information is specific. It’s supposed to be where the poesies are.” He said sarcastically, “Anyone can see these are flowers, or bouquets—or poesies?”

            The second voice responded with equal annoyance. “Don’t get short with me, Sir. It appears you have the wrong information. It also appears I’ve come a long way for nothing.”

            Thorne saw movement on the landing as a figure in a fur-collared dark coat and a plaid cloth hat, crossed in full view, and began to descend the stairs. The new voice said, “This has been a total waste of time for me. When you have something concrete, you come to
me
next time. I’ll be at the White Rose Inn in Bridgetown tonight, and I’ll be flying back to Antwerp tomorrow morning. If you have anything for me, show me. Otherwise don’t waste anymore of my time.”

            When they were alone again the first voice said, “This is serious. Our little partner is the only one who knows where it was. If he has it, we don’t want him passing any information along to others. I think you’ll have to follow him and convince—”

            A muffled voice said, “No, I’m not going to be involved in anything like that. Have Roberts or Kelly do it.”

            The first voice responded, “All right, it’ll be taken care of. I’ll also tell Roberts to keep track of Thorne. He could be our biggest problem.

            “We’ll have to find out what our little partner has been doing on his own. I can’t believe he’d be stupid enough to cross us, but one never knows. In any case, we’ll have to find out who took it if it wasn’t him. It might have been Thorne. We’ll just have to make sure Roberts watches him closely.”

            Thorne was confused. How many people were involved in this? Was one of them—the “little partner”—Freddie? Were they still looking for the documents, or were they aware the treasure spoken of in the letter was the priceless necklace? He knew he might find out more if he followed the man in the coat with the fur collar staying at the White Rose.

            Thorne waited until the two men on the landing had descended the stairs and passed through the courtyard before leaving the alcove. He rushed to the small window in the visitors’ rest room, hoping to make out the identity of the three men inside the SUV. All he could see were the tail lights of the SUV as it disappeared into the darkness.

After returning from the castle to the manor house Thorne showered and had an early breakfast.  He told Bada demolition had reached a point where he wouldn’t be needed for a couple of days, and he was going to take two or three days off and go down to London.

            The third man—the man in the fur-collared coat at the White Rose—might reveal who the other two men in the castle the previous night might be. He decided he would go to the White Rose Inn in the morning, follow him to Antwerp, and see who this man might be, and if he could shed light on the men he had met in the castle.

            He drove an Austin from the manor garage to Bridgetown and parked in a far corner of the hotel’s parking lot. Under normal conditions, he would have used the Austin to follow the man at the White rose, but he thought it best to rent a non-descript car that couldn’t be connected to the manor house.

            He walked two blocks back to the Excel Auto Rental office, and asked the young woman behind the counter, “What’s the most popular car in England?”

            “Oh, you’re a Yank. Welcome to England. About the car, there’s no doubt about it,” she gushed with just a hint of a Cockney accent. “That’d be the Ford Focus. Popular family car, don’t you know. Of course, the VW’s are popular, then there’s the Vauxhall and . . .”

            He looked at her nametag, which read
BETH WRIGHT
in large red letters. Interrupting her, he said, “You know, Miss Wright, I think I’d like to try one of those Ford Focus cars. I’ve never driven one before.”

“Cor,” she said “I could tell right off you was a family man. Oh, you’ll like it. Me Mum’s got one. Loves it.”

Trying to stay with as non-descript car as possible, Thorne asked, “I like gray. Would you have a gray sedan?”

“Of course, Luv, we have a whole line of them,” she said, pointing to five Ford Focus sedans lined up in the lot.

After he gave the name David Riley and placed a bogus driver’s license on the counter for identification, she placed forms in front of him. She said brightly, “All we need now is your signature here Mr. Riley, and initial here, and here, and here, and then here, and Bob’s Your Uncle.”

Thorne knitted his brow as he signed the contract form with the name David Riley and asked, “Pardon?”

“Oh my,” she said with a tinkling laugh. “You ain’t only a family man; I forgot you was a Yank, too. Bob’s Your Uncle is a term we use that means, well—everything’s finished. You’re ready to go, Luv.”

Thorne allowed himself a chuckle at her repeated indirect inquiries about him being married. “A family man has to have a wife, which I don’t. It also appears I still have a lot to learn about the English language. I’ve already learned to drive on the right—I mean the correct side of the road, since I’ve been in England.” He broke into an imperfect British accent. “I’m also practicing my British accent in case I have to order something unreasonable at the café instead of kidney pie or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.”

Her lips stretched into a wider smile at him being unmarried, and laughed at his clumsy attempt at the accent. “Cor, you’re a proper sport, you are, Mr. Riley, I would have taken you for a right proper English gentleman. As you say in America, have a nice day.” She paused and handed him a business card. “Oh, and if you need help with the car or the paperwork, Luv, just tell them to call Beth Wright. My phone number’s on the contract—with a twinkle in her eye that was not lost on Thorne—and my phone number’s also on my card.” She handed him the key and they exchanged knowing smiles.