Prince of Secrets by Paula Marshall Page B

grateful.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Dinah giving him a smile as blinding and as meretricious as the ones her husband frequently favoured the world with, ‘isn’t it?’
    After that, they had little chance to say anything. Their fellow guests crowded around them, Violet and Kenilworth among them, all deploring the manners of the police.
    Rainey said indignantly, ‘Is nothing sacred in these democratic days that the police have nothing more to do than persecute their betters instead of trying to track down the scum who actually carried out the crime?’
    Only Mr Hendrick Van Deusen was silent. He simply watched his friend Mr Jacobus Grant, also known as Jumping Jake Coburn, bank robber, thief, knave and liar, and wondered if anyone was safe from him if he thought it his duty to pursue them. His contemptuous pity was reserved for Sir Ratcliffe Heneage. He wondered what next trick Jake had in store for him.
    Dinah remained thoughtful. She pleaded a headache when most of the party went riding in the afternoon, and retired to her suite, to lie down, she said. Walker and Bates were comparing notes. Walker wanted to search the guests’ rooms, Bates advised caution. She knew nothing of this. Shetried to rest, finally gave up and walked agitatedly round her quarters—they were beginning to feel like a condemned cell. She had lied: Cobie must know that she had lied, and yet he had said nothing.
    Moved once again by an intense curiosity about him, she pushed open the communicating door to his bedroom, to walk around it, as though looking at his possessions might give her some clue to him.
    She inspected his books. His sketch-book was flung down, open at a page where he had drawn her sitting on the lawn, doing her canvas work—and he had caught her to the life. His guitar was leaning against the wall.
    There was a tallboy on the wall facing the big four-poster bed. Some more of his books were piled neatly on it. In front of them was a silver-framed photograph of herself, in all her new finery, taken in Paris. Otherwise there was nothing to show that he had family or friends.
    Beside the photograph was a box, an elaborate one in which cigars were kept. Two things about the box intrigued her. One was that Cobie, unlike virtually every other man in the house party, never smoked. The other was that she had seen it before among the magic boxes in his secret cupboard.
    Her hand stole out of its own volition. She lifted the box down and opened it. Cigars, as she had thought, nothing but cigars, two layers of them. She shrugged, went to put the box back and as she did so noticed that one of the intricately carved panels on the side was a little loose. Trying to replace it, she somehow moved it in the opposite direction—and the whole side of the box fell away.
    To reveal that the bottom of it on which the cigars neatly reposed was a false one! Tucked away inside the space below was a black silk handkerchief, folded around—what?
    Dinah, her heart in her mouth, praying that Cobie wouldnot return early from his ride, pulled the handkerchief out. She knew what it hid even before she extracted Lady Heneage’s diamond suite of necklace, ear rings, rings and brooch. White-faced, she sank on to the bed holding them to her, horrified to discover that what she had feared all along was true: Cobie had been the thief in the night, and had hidden the diamonds in his magic box.
    With trembling hands she put the box together again—now she knew its trick it wasn’t difficult.
    Then she picked up the diamonds, carefully folded them again inside the silk handkerchief and walked unsteadily back into her own room. There she picked up the tapestry bag in which she kept her canvas work, and opened it. There was a pocket inside where she stored her silks. She thought for a moment, substituted a white lawn handkerchief for the black silk one, then pushed it and the diamonds as far as she could beneath the silks, before