* * *
It had been getting dark while Libby was reading Ari’s diary. During the weeks she had worked for him, he had never spoken to her about his life at all. Gillian had given her a potted biography of Ari before she had begun working with him, so she had known a little bit about him. But as she read his own words, she felt as though she had looked through a window into his soul. As many diffident people do, he had poured out his thoughts and feelings onto paper. Through the rainy afternoon, as Michel worked on the photographs and sorted through papers, she sat cosily, absorbed in Ari’s thoughts. Guiseppa had brought them coffee earlier and Libby’s cup was still untouched at her side. She had been totally drawn into the unfolding story and had all but forgotten where she was. She felt inexpressibly sad. The events of the past few days seemed to have scooped her up and made her part of the lives of Ari Mayer and Ettore Bragadin.
She was startled by the loud exclamation that came from Michel and she jumped up and rushed over to him, Ari’s journal forgotten. Then she gasped at the vision of a necklace that winked and flashed in its womb-like hiding place. They stared at it for a long moment, and then Michel let out his breath in a long sigh.
‘Michel. It’s magnificent!’
He reached out his hand, and wonderingly, took the necklace and held it up to the light. Rubies and diamonds formed a wide collar, and a large ruby surrounded with diamonds hung from it as a pendant. It seemed to take on a life of its own as the stones caught the light in coruscating brilliance.
‘I only heard about this necklace from my grandmother,’ he said softly as he turned it from side to side, watching the flashes of light. ‘She never showed it to me, never told me where it was hidden, and I began to think it was just a family legend. When it disappeared, she had no proof that Jacques had taken it because there were other men staying in the house and of course, those days were dangerous. She said that she had been afraid that if she had made a fuss, she would be murdered for the chance that she might have had more jewellery. And then the rumour came that Jacques had died and she gave up hope that it would ever come back. She told me all this years later when she spoke of her belief that Dubois was Jacques.
‘This is what Dubois has been after! He kept it hidden all these years, for it is both a fabulous treasure and the damning proof of his crimes. The photographs are secondary to him. This is what he is prepared to kill for. Of course he would want to silence people like Ari who can name him for his Nazi associations during the war, but this!’ He turned to Libby and clasped it around her neck and she laughed out loud as the dazzling weight rested on her chest.
‘I can’t believe it! All the time I was carrying this around in my old bag! Wow! It must be worth millions! Please take it off. It makes me nervous.’ But he didn’t. Instead he swept her into his arms and they waltzed around the room, laughing. After a few minutes they sobered up and stood looking at each other, flushed and breathless from their wild dance.
‘I cannot think of a more beautiful neck to place this on,’ and he took her face in his hands and kissed her gently. Afterwards he just held her until she pulled away slowly.
‘Let’s be sensible now, Michel. You must put this in the safe right away! To be honest, I’m terrified of it. Just the idea that I could have left the parcel in my room and those people could have found it. And Bragadin was killed for it. I can’t bear to think about that.’
‘You know, I would give this for Bragadin’s life. To have that man back again, I would give more than this.’ He un-clasped the necklace and put it back in the place where it had lain safely for so long. ‘I wonder when it was hidden in this cover. I can speculate from the style of the album that some Victorian ancestor decided to make a photograph album with a cavity for just this purpose, so it could be hidden in plain sight. Thieves, normal thieves, I mean, wouldn’t think of stealing a family album. How Dubois discovered it, one can only imagine. He must have gone through Dieu Donné with a fine comb,’ he said as he closed the necklace in its hiding place and locked it in the safe.