Killer Diamonds Read online

  Angel had pestered Mummy for ages after that to get a cat, but she just kept saying that it was too much responsibility. Now, however, looking into the tiger’s blue-painted eyes, he decided that what he truly wanted was a tiger. He could ride on it when he was tired, and curl up and sleep next to it, and it would bite anyone who was mean to him. He sat down, cross-legged, and reached a hand out to stroke the tiger’s head, wondering what name he would give it if it did, suddenly, step out of the vase and onto the carpet, just like animals in pictures sometimes did in films. He was so absorbed in deciding the best possible name for a pet tiger that he entirely failed to notice when, behind him, the sitting room door opened soundlessly on its well-oiled hinges.

  Pearl had assumed Baxter would come up to check on her, but it was actually a younger, slimmer, elegant man, with smooth blond hair, enviably narrow hips, and a pair of black glasses perched on his nose, so angular and imposing that they might have been designed by a fashionable architect. He cast a quick look around the sitting room, noted Angel sitting with his back turned to the door, and proceeded into the bedroom, walking so softly that neither Angel nor Pearl heard his tread.

  The sound of Pearl opening and closing drawers and jewellery boxes in the dressing room beyond was clearly audible. She was so absorbed in the pile of jewellery that she was accumulating on the glass-topped shelf in front of her that she completely failed to notice the presence of the young man standing watching her in the doorway. Only when she was stuffing the jewels in greedy handfuls into the small leather bag she wore slung across her slender torso did she turn towards the door.

  Pearl gasped in horror. Crimson and vermilion lights sparkled from the ruby bracelet clutched between her fingers: she had literally been caught red-handed. The bracelet tumbled to the floor, but Pearl didn’t stoop to retrieve it. Instead, she fixed her eyes plaintively on the young man’s, which were impassive behind the lenses of his glasses.

  ‘It’s Thierry, isn’t it?’ she said in a breathless, seductive voice. ‘I remember you from when I came to see Mummy before.’

  ‘Yes, Mademoiselle Pearl,’ the young man said. ‘I am Madame’s personal assistant and secretary.’

  ‘Well, Thierry, I know this looks bad, but please don’t jump to conclusions . . .’

  Pearl stepped towards the young man, over the bracelet, her big eyes fixed hypnotically on his face, depositing the rest of the jewellery she was carrying on a shelf without ever taking her gaze off him.

  ‘. . . but honestly, it isn’t what it looks like,’ she continued, launching smoothly into self-justification; this was by no means the first time that Pearl had had to talk herself out of a compromising situation. ‘I can explain. You see—’

  ‘Mademoiselle Pearl,’ Thierry said gravely, ‘I am afraid that I will have to inform Madame about this incident.’

  ‘Oh no! No, you don’t have to! Honestly!’ Pearl widened those magical amethyst eyes. ‘Seriously, let me explain! You see, Grandma left me an awful lot of jewellery in her will, which Mummy was keeping for me. Only then Mummy and I fought, because she’s been very unfair by not giving me the things that Grandma left me. Which is actually,’ she added, warming to her theme, ‘illegal, but of course I would never dream of taking Mummy to court, because of the publicity! Can you imagine! So I thought I’d just pop up and see if they were here—’

  ‘But those are Madame’s own jewels,’ Thierry commented, glancing at the heap Pearl had put on the shelf, and the bracelet lying on the carpet behind her, glittering alizarin crimson under the bright lights of the dressing room. ‘I myself supervised the most recent catalogue list of all Madame’s collection. I recognize them very well.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Pearl agreed smoothly, ‘yes, they are, but you see, I couldn’t find Grandma’s jewels . . .’

  This, of course, was because they didn’t exist. Pearl, an accomplished liar, had made the entire story up on the spot. But as a narcissist she could convince herself, as soon as she told a lie, that on some level it was true. Additionally, she instantly became offended if the person to whom she was lying didn’t believe her.

  ‘. . . and these looked about the same sort of value,’ she continued, and then swiftly corrected herself. ‘Um, I mean the same kind of style. And I thought that it would balance things out if I took these, and then I wouldn’t have to take Mummy to court, or tell the papers about her not giving me Grandma’s things . . .’

  She tailed off, tilting her head in a way that men usually found endearing, as if she were asking them a question to which only they had the answer. Her rosebud lips were parted, her lashes fluttering.

  ‘You will put everything back together there,’ Thierry instructed, indicating the shelf. ‘Everything that is in your bag must be taken out.’

  ‘Oh, of course. I do understand. That’s fine, you’re just doing your job. But – can this be our little secret?’

  Pearl touched the tip of her tongue to her lips, very briefly.

  ‘You won’t tell Mummy, will you?’ she asked softly.

  And she reached out to stroke Thierry’s pristine shirtfront with one soft fingertip.

  ‘Please say you won’t?’ she continued, her voice cooing now. ‘Be an angel? No one really needs to know but you and me, do they? It can be our little secret . . . our naughty little secret . . .’

  The finger slipped between the seams of the shirt, into one of the gaps between the buttons, finding Thierry’s smooth bare chest.

  ‘I can be awfully nice when people are nice to me,’ she said softly, persuasively. And you’re very handsome. I noticed you when I came to visit Mummy before.’

  The finger emerged from the shirt gap and started tracing its way down his torso.

  ‘We could have a little fun right now to celebrate our secret,’ she suggested, watching the path of her finger as it landed on the waistband of his flat-fronted charcoal trousers. ‘Couldn’t we?’

  Thierry cleared his throat.

  ‘Mademoiselle, your son, you are aware, is outside in Madame’s salon privé?’ he inquired, his tone still studiedly neutral.

  ‘Oh, just close the dressing room door!’ Pearl said lightly. ‘Trust me, Angel knows very well never to come into a room when the door’s closed! It was one of the first things I taught him!’

  Her fingers were now touching his waistband, but just as she started to slide them further down, Thierry’s hand grasped her wrist and removed it firmly, replacing it at her side.

  ‘You will return all the jewellery to the shelf while I observe you, Mademoiselle, s’il vous plaît’, he informed her politely ‘And then we will all go downstairs together.’

  ‘But you won’t tell Mummy?’ Pearl asked eagerly. She was quite unaffected by the rejection of her offer of sexual services, just as long as she got what she wanted.

  ‘Mademoiselle, I regret,’ Thierry said, looking not regretful in the slightest, ‘but I am employed by Madame Winter, and I must report to Madame what has occurred here today.’

  White teeth sunk into her lower lip in frustration, Pearl dug her hands into her bag and emptied it out onto the shelf. She did not duck down to retrieve the bracelet, leaving it on the carpet. Thierry did not insist on that, but with a polite ‘You permit?’ he reached out to glance into Pearl’s bag, checking that nothing still sparkled inside it. Pearl bristled at this humiliation, but said nothing, snapping the flap of the bag closed and stalking past him through the doorway.

  Thierry bent to pick up the bracelet and put it on the shelf. Then he cast a glance around the dressing room, ensuring that nothing else was out of place. Almost instantly. his stare fixed incredulously on the yellow Post-it note still affixed to the door of the safe. A couple of swift strides took him to the note; he pulled it off the door, tilting it so he could decipher the series of dates printed on it in Pearl’s messy handwriting.

  Immediately, he realized what he was seeing. His mouth set in a tight, judgemental line, and he removed a calfskin leather diary from
the inside pocket of his sleekly tailored Harris tweed jacket, opening it and smoothing the Post-it onto a page as evidence. Closing the diary once more, returning it to his pocket, Thierry shook his head in silent disbelief as he turned off the lights and stepped out of the dressing room, closing the door behind him.

  As he turned, he walked straight into a massive blow to the face that sent him reeling back. His foot caught on the edge of the Persian rug. He tripped, his arms flying up as if to catch onto something that wasn’t there, some invisible support, and flailed wildly beating the air, even as he tipped backwards, sent fatally off balance, his head smashing into the marble edge of the mantelpiece with a dull thunk.

  It was a horribly muted sound, his thick hair muffling the direct impact of stone against skull. But it was followed by the most almighty racket as, his body limp, he crashed down into the fireplace, scattering the delicate painted fire screen and the poker and tongs neatly arranged in the wrought-iron stand behind it. Metal smashed into the brick, the tools tumbling everywhere.

  Angel came tearing into the bedroom at the noise, eyes wide as saucers. He was amazed to see a strange man lying half in the fireplace, half out. But he skidded to a halt, clapping his hands to his cheeks in horror, as he came closer and saw the blood streaming from the man’s face, the pool that was beginning to form around the caved-in back of his head.

  Pearl was stock-still, still clasping the weapon she had used to hit Thierry in the face, which she had snatched from the mantelpiece in desperation as she saw him preserve the evidence of her attempt to open her mother’s safe. It was one of Vivienne’s Oscars, shining and sleek, the face and hands of the statue now thickly clotted with blood. Made of solid metal, coated with 24-carat gold, the Oscar was undamaged by the blow. The cartilage of Thierry’s nose, however, had smashed, spurting blood, which was now beginning to run down the smooth surface of the statue and onto the priceless rug.

  Mutely, Angel took one hand from his face and pointed down at the dripping gore. Pearl looked down, following his gesture, and then shrieked, jumping to the edge of the rug, putting the Oscar down on the edge of the fireplace, where the blood started to trickle onto the brick surround.

  ‘This is all your fault!’ she screamed at Angel, relieving her stress and shock, as she so often did, by abusing her son. ‘If you’d kept watch, like I told you to, this would never have happened!’

  Tears started to form in Angel’s eyes.

  ‘Is the man dead, Mummy?’ he asked in a pitifully small voice.

  ‘I don’t know!’ Pearl screeched. She fell to her knees by Thierry’s body, but her first action was not to put her fingers to his throat, feeling for a pulse. Instead, she scrabbled in his jacket, dragging the diary out from his inner breast pocket, flipping it open and ripping out the incriminating Post-it, crumpling it and shoving it into her bag. She hesitated for a second, thinking of the jewellery back in the dressing room. There would be no time to put it all back in its place, so why not snatch some advantage from this awful situation?

  Jumping to her feet, she ran back into the dressing room, emerging with her palms cupped together to form a bowl piled high with glittering gems. She dropped to her knees in front of her small son, frantically stuffing the jewels into his cargo trousers. Bracelets, earrings, necklaces, brooches tumbled into all the various pockets as Pearl hissed: ‘The nasty man tried to kiss Mummy and make her kiss him back, okay? That’s what you have to tell everyone. Mummy told him to stop, but he wouldn’t, so Mummy had to hit him to make him stop trying to kiss and grab her. Got it?’

  Tears were pouring down Angel’s cheeks. Usually Mummy didn’t like him to cry, but she wasn’t shouting at him as she usually did to ‘turn the tap off’, and he honestly didn’t think he could have stopped, not when the man who had mysteriously appeared from nowhere was lying there in front of him with more and more blood coming out of him, and nobody trying to help him or make him better . . .

  ‘Mummy, shall I get something to put on his head?’ he asked.

  ‘No! He attacked me, you stupid boy!’ Pearl screamed. ‘Don’t you remember? You saw him attack me – I was defending myself! And we don’t say anything to anyone about these, okay?’

  She tapped his pockets, which were noticeably bulging with the swag she had stolen from her mother.

  ‘Not a word! You went to the loo, the nasty man tried to kiss me and I had to hit him, you came out of the loo and saw everything . . .’

  ‘I do need the loo now,’ Angel sobbed piteously. ‘I do need it, Mummy!’

  ‘You’ll have to hold it!’ Pearl snapped. ‘Now, remember the story.’

  Angel’s face was wet with tears now; they were dripping off his chin, just as the blood was dripping from the Oscar, staining the bricks. Pearl’s voice softened a little. Still kneeling in front of her son, she reached out and rubbed her thumbs over his cheeks, wiping away some of the tears.

  ‘You’re Mummy’s good boy,’ she crooned to him. ‘You’re Mummy’s favourite boy in the whole world. It’s not the first time you’ve told stories for Mummy, is it?’

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ interrupted a contralto voice that would have been instantly familiar to half the population of the world. ‘Pearl, what are you doing in my rooms? You know I’ve banned you from making unauthorized visits!’

  Vivienne Winter swept into her bedroom with the élan of a woman who had been both a renowned beauty and an international film star since the age of fourteen. She was instinctively theatrical. Only with her closest intimates was she fully comfortable being completely natural – and for Vivienne, who had been surrounded by an entourage from a young age, the concept of behaving entirely naturally was rather different from the average person’s.

  Pausing just inside the doorway, unfastening her fox-fur tippet and dropping it casually onto a silk-upholstered occasional chair, Vivienne stood there, as poised as if she were expecting to be photographed by a horde of paparazzi, surveying the scene before her. Pearl and Angel both turned to look at her, instinctively moving so that they concealed Thierry’s body, their faces so guilty that Vivienne heaved a long sigh of gloomy anticipation, wondering what could be the latest mess Pearl had managed to get herself into.

  Angel forgot momentarily about the man with the blood on his head and the story he was supposed to tell for his mummy as he stared up at Grandma Viv in wonder. He was always riveted by her when he saw her afresh. He knew not to say this to Pearl – and of course he loved his mummy best – but in Angel’s opinion, Grandma Viv was the most beautiful lady in the whole world. Her skin was so smooth and creamy; she always smelt of wonderful perfume; her jewels were like the Queen’s. And though Mummy often boasted that she had inherited Grandma Viv’s eyes – which didn’t make sense to Angel – Grandma Viv’s eyes were a deeper, more spectacular purple than either his or Mummy’s. He had spent ages comparing them in the mirror, sitting on Grandma Viv’s lap, and he knew he was right. But he wouldn’t have dreamed of saying that to Mummy either.

  He drank in all the details of her appearance. Vivienne’s hair was piled up loosely on top of her head in a careful arrangement of curls, her make-up elaborate and carefully applied. Her Donna Karan knit dress hugged her curves and emphasized her tiny waist without any help from shoulder pads. Her Paloma Picasso gold earrings, specially made for her by Tiffany, were set with baguette-cut diamonds.

  She was wearing her customary four-inch heels, Italian leather designed for her in Italy by Fiamma Ferragamo. Fiamma’s father had made shoes for Ava Gardner, Greta Garbo, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and Rita Hayworth, but it was Fiamma, fifteen years ago, who had sketched for Vivienne a patent platform pump with a matching grosgrain strip across the toe. Vivienne owned the shoe in a wide variety of colours. For the last ten years, she had been polishing and perfecting her signature style. There was no fudging your age for the public when you had been famous since your teens, and had a daughter at twenty-one; she was known to be forty-eight, and
she was intensely aware of the need not to seem to be dressing younger than her age.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the gilded Louis XVI mirror on the dressing table across the room, and her lips quirked in satisfaction. Even faced with her wayward daughter’s latest crisis, her own perfect appearance could cheer her up.

  So far the day had gone wonderfully: her fitting that morning at Christian Lacroix’s atelier had been extremely gratifying. She was in Paris to play a duchess in a British/French co-production of a film version of a nineteenth-century historical novel. M. Lacroix had shown her a design for the dress she would wear for the crucial ball scene, together with fabric swatches of gold brocade that had made her smile like a cat presented with a dish of fresh prawns in cream. It would be impossible for the viewer to look anywhere but at her in that shimmering golden dress. Her younger female co-star would be writhing in jealousy. She had expected to come back here in triumph, drink a glass of champagne with lunch, celebrate in style. But instead she had to deal with yet another crisis involving her wretched daughter.

  She gazed down at Pearl and Angel, whose pretty faces, upturned to hers, provoked a whole raft of conflicting emotions. Pearl was absolutely forbidden to be in here. Her daughter was not only a spendthrift, but completely untrustworthy. Pearl had stolen many times not just from her mother – which would have been bad enough – but from Vivienne’s friends, too.

  Mortifying, humiliating; but there was no time now for the ‘where did I go wrong?’ questions that often tormented Vivienne. She needed to deal with this situation immediately, without getting tangled up in what-ifs. There would be plenty of time for those later.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded, hands going to her hips, the toe of one black patent-leather pump tapping impatiently on the parquet floor. ‘I’m waiting! Please explain to me immediately why you’re in here, when you know perfectly well you’re forbidden to come into my bedroom on your own!’