The Emerald Casket Read online

  Mrs Rutherford wheeled her bicycle into a stone alcove and emerged with the wicker basket over her arm. She wandered around the end of the south wing. She reached an expanse of grass, took a look over her shoulder, then kicked off her shoes and took girlish delight in scrunching her toes into the velvet lawn. When she finally walked off the terrace and into the main drawing room, her cheeks were pink with life.

  ‘Morning, Mrs Rutherford.’ A girl of about thirteen sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor, surrounded by piles of envelopes and packages. ‘You’re looking happy this morning.’

  Mrs Rutherford placed her basket on a side table and brushed her hands down the front of her dress, a simple grey uniform that almost reached the oriental carpet at her feet.

  ‘I am very happy this morning, Miss Ruby,’ Mrs Rutherford said. ‘It is a beautiful day and one worth celebrating. I have plans for a particularly spectacular dinner this evening, if I do say so myself. Now, is there any sign of Master Gerald and your brother?’

  The girl slit open an envelope with a silver letter opener. ‘They’re mucking around outside,’ Ruby said. ‘I thought I better make a start here. Most of it’s left over from yesterday.’

  A door banged open and the tall man in a dark suit entered. He dragged a mailbag across the carpet and added it to the stack in the corner.

  ‘Are there any more, Mr Fry?’ Mrs Rutherford asked. Fry was massaging his right shoulder.

  ‘That’s the last of them,’ he said, without a jot of enthusiasm.

  ‘Excellent. You’ll be happy to hear the post office is starting an afternoon delivery as well.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ he said, and trudged out of the room.

  Ruby stifled a giggle. ‘He’s not too happy today.’

  Mrs Rutherford clicked her tongue. ‘He is never a bundle of joy at the best of times,’ she said. ‘But ever since Miss Archer’s death—well, he’s been even more unpleasant than usual.’

  ‘Has Mr Fry worked here for a long time?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘Let me see. I’d been here twenty years when he started with Miss Archer, so that would make it some twenty-five years that we’ve had the pleasure of Mr Fry’s company.’

  ‘Wow. And did she leave him anything in her will?’

  ‘A set of teaspoons, I believe. Quite nice ones. None of your tat.’

  ‘And she left the entire estate to Gerald?’

  Mrs Rutherford busied herself with a bowl of flowers on the mantelpiece. ‘That may explain why Mr Fry hasn’t been overjoyed since Master Gerald’s arrival. Most inappropriate I think, begging your pardon for saying so.’

  Ruby brushed aside a few strands of hair and re-tied her ponytail. ‘And Gerald is now the youngest billionaire in the world. It’s all a bit fantastic, isn’t it? One day he’s at school in Sydney and the next he’s flying to London to inherit twenty billion pounds.’

  ‘I understand there’s a prince in Dubai who may be worth a touch more,’ Mrs Rutherford said. ‘But Master Gerald’s landed in it, that’s for certain.’

  Ruby looked up at the housekeeper. ‘Do you mind if I ask what Gerald’s great aunt left you, Mrs Rutherford?’

  The woman smiled. ‘Not at all, Miss Ruby. Miss Archer left me the memory of a kind and generous soul, whom it was a pleasure and honour to know. And that is all any of us should ever hope to receive.’

  Ruby picked up another pile of envelopes. ‘So not quite like Gerald’s mum and dad, then?’

  Mrs Rutherford sucked on her lips. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Miss Ruby. Master Gerald’s parents are touring the Archer estate’s global holdings of luxury properties to ensure that all is in order.’

  Ruby grinned. ‘So will they be back from that Caribbean island anytime soon?’

  ‘Not while the gin holds out,’ Mrs Rutherford said under her breath. ‘Begging your pardon for saying so.’

  At that moment two bodies rolled into the room, a wrestling tangle of limbs across the carpet. Among the flurry of arms and legs it was possible to make out blond hair—Sam Valentine with his broad shoulders and summer tan. He slammed his opponent onto the floor, straddled his chest and pinned him to the rug.

  ‘There!’ he declared. ‘I win.’

  The other boy stopped struggling. His unruly mop of dark hair, plain T-shirt and blue jeans gave no hint that this was the richest thirteen-year-old on the planet.

  ‘Go easy,’ Gerald said. ‘Leg feeling better, is it?’

  ‘That? Yeah, it’s pretty much right.’

  ‘And how about the morbid fear of rats? How’s that going?’

  Sam flinched as if his worst nightmare had just walked through the door. In a blink, Gerald flipped him over and sat on top of him, knees pressing his shoulders into the rug.

  Sam howled, struggling to escape.

  Gerald rolled off and the two of them got up from the carpet, laughing and breathing hard.

  ‘Boys,’ Ruby said.

  Mrs Rutherford shook her head. ‘And they don’t improve with age, believe me.’

  ‘Morning Mrs Rutherford,’ Gerald said. ‘Just showing Sam who’s boss.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Mrs Rutherford said through lemon lips. ‘Now, you three are to deal with this correspondence today. I’m interviewing for a secretary to handle the mail but for now it is your responsibility. Hop to it while I see how morning tea preparations are progressing.’ She bustled out of the room.

  Gerald and Sam flopped down on either side of Ruby.

  ‘Not fair using rats against me in a fight,’ Sam said to Gerald.

  Ruby leaned across and patted her twin brother on the knee. ‘Then you should try being less of a wuss around them, shouldn’t you?’

  Sam muttered something about a medical condition and picked up the nearest pile of letters. Ruby slapped him on the wrist.

  ‘Mitts off,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve already sorted those. Look, it’s quite straightforward. Even for you. The coloured envelopes go over here. That’s the greeting cards and pathetic love letters from stupid girls. All the long white envelopes go here—that’s the begging letters. The parcels go over by the fireplace and anything with a window in the front goes into this stack for Mr Prisk to look at. Clear?’

  Sam rubbed the back of his hand. ‘What’s this pile then, Miss Frustrated Librarian?’

  Ruby glanced at a mound of square buff-coloured envelopes, constructed from expensive looking parchment.

  ‘That’s invitations to opening nights, parties and sporting events,’ she said.

  Gerald scooped up an armful of envelopes. ‘This is ridiculous. Why are so many people writing to me?’

  ‘Because you’re richer than the Queen,’ Ruby said. ‘They’re all from people wanting something.’

  Sam held up a letter in one hand and a photograph in another. ‘This one wants locking up. Take a look at that.’ He handed the photo to Gerald who inspected it with alarm.

  ‘Dearest Gerald,’ Sam read from the letter, ‘I know you’re the one for me. Ever since I heard about your brave escape from that awful Sir Mason Green at Beaconsfield I knew we were destined to be as one. Promise me your eternal love. Or I’ll hunt you down and hurt you.’

  ‘What?’ Ruby said. ‘You’re making that up.’

  She snatched the photograph from her brother and took a look. Her eyebrows shot up.

  ‘She just wants a new friend, that’s all,’ Ruby said with a slight shudder. ‘She would have seen the news reports on TV—us recovering the stolen diamond, our run-in with Sir Mason Green—and she thinks we’re worth knowing.’

  Sam laughed. ‘Not you and me, sister. No one wants to be friends with Sam and Ruby Valentine. All this is addressed to one person: Gerald Wilkins, care of planet gazillionaire. Population: one. It’s about money, pure and simple.’

  They spent the rest of the morning going through the post.

  Ruby upended another sack of mail across the rug and Sam groaned.

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing in
here for me?’ he said. A handful of envelopes slipped through his fingers and onto the floor.

  Ruby looked at him. ‘Who would write to you out here in rural Somerset?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. There might be a letter for me. From India, maybe. A little thank you note. Or something.’

  Ruby laughed. ‘Sam, Alisha Gupta is not the least bit interested in you. She’s not going to take time from her oh-so-busy social life to stick a stamp on an envelope for your sake.’

  Sam bristled. ‘Just because you two hate each other. Her dad was really happy we got his diamond back from Mason Green. And Alisha thought I was pretty brave.’

  ‘I seem to recall the word she used was “foolish”. Or maybe it was “grossly stupid”. Anyway, it was Gerald she was drooling over, not you.’

  Sam looked to Gerald for support but he was sitting boggle-eyed on the floor, amid a mountain of love letters.

  ‘They don’t even know me,’ he said. ‘I could have fangs and drink blood for breakfast for all they know.’

  Sam flicked through a wad of photographs. ‘They’d probably find that attractive.’

  Gerald surveyed the piles that surrounded them. ‘I didn’t think being a billionaire would involve so much paperwork.’

  He plucked a letter from a bright pink envelope, releasing a perfumed shower of glitter. Then, out of nowhere, he asked, ‘Do you think Sir Mason Green will resurface?’

  The once-respected businessman, philanthropist and chairman of the British Museum Trust hadn’t been far from Gerald’s thoughts since the incident at Beaconsfield a fortnight earlier. Sir Mason Green was now an international fugitive, wanted for ordering the murder of Geraldine Archer—the very act that had paved the way for Gerald to inherit the Archer fortune.

  ‘We won’t see him again,’ Ruby said. ‘He found what he was looking for. Why would he come back?’

  Gerald hoped that was true. He still found it difficult to sleep. And even when he did manage to drift off, there were the dreams.

  The night in the cavern under Beaconsfield played over and over in his mind: Sir Mason Green using the stolen Noor Jehan diamond to unlock a legendary casket that had lain hidden in a burial chamber for 1700 years; Green reaching into the casket and removing an ornate golden sceptre and gazing upon it like he’d found some lost love. He’d grabbed Gerald by the hair and laid the rod across his forehead. That moment was now etched in high definition into Gerald’s mind: the brain collapsing vision that Gerald had experienced, the sensation of being shattered into an infinite number of particles and blown by a hot wind into every moment throughout the sands of time. He hadn’t told anyone about this vision, not even the Valentine twins.

  ‘Green’s someplace overseas for sure,’ Sam said. ‘He’s a billionaire—he could be anywhere.’

  ‘Don’t let it hassle you, Gerald,’ Ruby said. ‘Inspector Parrott will take care of it. You don’t need to worry about Sir Mason Green.’

  Gerald picked up another pile of envelopes. The top one had an elegant letter ‘R’ embossed in red on the back. He tore through the stiff paper.

  ‘Hey, look at this,’ he said. ‘A get-well card from Lord Herring at the Rattigan Club.’

  Sam laughed. ‘Didn’t think you’d hear from him again.’

  ‘Unless he was threatening to sue you,’ Ruby said.

  Gerald smiled to himself. The exclusive Rattigan Club—they’d got up to some mischief there trying to find the stolen diamond. All that old world finery and stale cigar smoke. Those garishly-decorated rooms. The Pink Room, the Blue Room, the…

  ‘That’s it!’

  Ruby and Sam stared at Gerald with alarm.

  ‘What’s it?’

  Gerald jumped to his feet. ‘I’ve got to call Inspector Parrott.’

  The next day, Gerald, Sam and Ruby stood in a long corridor on the first floor of the Rattigan Club in London outside a door painted a lustrous bottle green. Mr Fry had driven them up—three hours in the upholstered comfort of a customised Rolls Royce limousine. Fry didn’t utter a word the entire trip.

  They were joined by Inspector Parrott and Constable Lethbridge of the Metropolitan Police, and the Rattigan Club chairman, Lord Herring.

  ‘We’ve searched every inch of Sir Mason’s office and his house and found nothing,’ the inspector said. ‘This investigation has reached a dead end. And a great deal of the interview evidence central to the case has gone missing.’ He cast a furious eye at Lethbridge. The constable glanced down at his shoes and absent-mindedly slipped a hand around to scratch at his left buttock. ‘I hope this theory of yours leads to something, Gerald,’ the inspector said. ‘We need a breakthrough.’

  ‘It just struck me,’ Gerald explained. ‘I’d been in the Pink Room and the Blue Room and we’d run past a door to the Green Room.’

  Lord Herring pulled a key from his vest pocket. ‘Sir Mason was a member of this club for a very long time. He had the Green Room for his exclusive use. He said it was a tidy space away from his office—handy for his private papers and such. The staff tell me no one except Mason has been in here for five years. He even employed his own cleaner.’

  Herring placed the key in the lock and turned. A heavy deadbolt slid aside. The door swung in and seven heads peered into the dark room.

  ‘Hold on,’ Herring said. ‘There should be a switch.’ He fumbled a hand around the wall. A bulb flickered on. Seven sets of eyes adjusted to the light.

  After a moment of shocked silence, it was Ruby who spoke.

  ‘Oh my,’ was all she could say.

  Chapter 2

  The Green Room gave up its secrets. On the right side, against the far wall, was a large wooden desk, neatly ordered with stacks of documents and magazines. The left side was lined with filing cabinets and bookshelves. In the middle of the room two armchairs sat either side of a low table, on which sat a single cup of very stale coffee.

  Gerald saw none of that. His eyes were fixed on the wall in front of him. It was a good ten metres long and painted a light green. Its surface was covered in pen marks. At first glance, it could have been a work of modern art: an abstract wave of rectangles and lines sweeping inwards from the extremities to collide in the centre. But it was the image that sat in the hub of the converging arcs of ink that captured everyone’s attention. There, at the heart of the bizarre mural, was a large colour photograph of Gerald Wilkins. It was held in place with a silver letter opener stabbed through Gerald’s throat.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Gerald yelped. He slumped back against the doorframe.

  Everyone looked at Gerald, then back at the picture skewered to the wall.

  ‘Does this count as a breakthrough, inspector?’ Ruby asked.

  Sam pushed through the jumble of people in the doorway and crossed the floor. He reached out to touch the silver dagger when Inspector Parrott barked, ‘Stop!’

  Sam whipped his hand back as if a Doberman was about to latch on to it.

  ‘This is a crime scene,’ the inspector declared. He took a pair of thin rubber gloves from his pocket and stretched them over his hands. ‘Only Constable Lethbridge and I are to handle anything. Clear?’

  Sam nodded but stepped as close to the wall as he could without touching it. The others joined him. Except for Gerald. He remained rooted to the spot by the door.

  ‘It’s a family tree,’ Ruby said, studying the scrawls on the wall. ‘There are names in all these boxes. Hundreds and hundreds of them.’

  Everyone was drawn to the diagram of generation upon generation of Gerald’s ancestors laid out with meticulous care.

  Gerald still couldn’t move. He stared unblinking at the wall opposite. What had he done to attract this attention? And what sort of man would go to this effort?

  Gerald nearly hit the top of the doorframe at the sound of a gruff voice in his right ear: ‘Has the party started without me?’

  He spun around to find a large red-headed man with an unkempt beard and a set of eyebrows like hairy awnings.
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br />   ‘Professor McElderry!’ Gerald said, with some relief. ‘What are you doing here?’

  The man stepped past Gerald and cast his eyes around the room. ‘Someone had to bring some intelligence to this event. And by the look of it, I’m not a moment too soon.’

  Inspector Parrott glanced up. ‘Ah, professor. Thank you for coming at such short notice.’

  McElderry retrieved a pair of spectacles from his shirt pocket and joined the others by the wall. ‘The British Museum can spare me for a wee while,’ he said. He peered at the marks that covered the wall. ‘Or possibly quite a long while.’

  Gerald had last seen Professor McElderry over tea and scones at Avonleigh. It was shortly after the confrontation with Sir Mason Green. Since then the professor had been camped in the cavern under Beaconsfield, trying to decipher the riddles contained in the ancient burial chamber.

  Inspector Parrott moved to the far right corner of the room, following the pen lines as they branched out across the wall. ‘The first name over here looks like it’s Clea,’ he said.

  The professor had moved to the opposite corner. ‘Over here it’s Quintus. Quintus Antonius, circa 350AD. Any of this sound familiar, Gerald?’

  Gerald hadn’t moved from the door, unwilling to get close to anything associated with Mason Green.

  ‘Never heard of them,’ he said.

  Professor McElderry grunted. He traced his way back along the web of lines until he reached their ultimate product: Gerald Wilkins. The full page photograph was torn from one of the hundreds of magazine articles that had been published about him. The headline on this one was Who’s a lucky boy?

  Sam piped up. ‘Gerald, did you see this?’ He pointed to a hole in the picture. It was about the size of a pound coin and was burned between Gerald’s eyes. It looked like someone had twisted a hot poker into his forehead.

  ‘What’s all this mean, professor?’ Gerald asked in a soft voice. ‘Why would Mason Green want to know about my family?’