The diamonds were not under the old terra-cotta flowerpots.

Nor did we find them in the shallows of the lake, the wet mud squidging between our toes.

Not among the spiders in the cellar or with their cousins in the attics.

Or among the rotting tack in the stables.

Or in the greenhouses, as we tiptoed among the broken glass and the empty snail shells that littered the floor like spent bullet casings.

Still, I felt a singing feeling in my blood, as though Mary Ashton’s discovery of her loss, the following uproar in the manor, the arrival of the police, were not events long past, but just about to happen.

“Diamonds,” Em sang. “Oh diamonds, where are you!”

And David smiled at everyone with his eyes, and it was like a lamp shining. It made you want to get closer, because David thought he was special, and within the ring of light he cast, you were special too.

Still, I kept a careful distance. For Peter’s sake, for Marcus’s.

Later, parked up in the lanes, Marcus leaned forward to tune the van’s radio.

“It’s nice for Peter, you know, to have someone, a friend, isn’t it? Peter’s important to you, kind of like a brother.” His eyes flicked from the dial to my face, looking for confirmation of something. Later, when I kissed him, I tried to give him the answer he was looking for.

Peter photocopied pages from the books in the library. A photograph of Mary Ashton as a debutante, flanked by a Mitford and an Astor, the diamonds slung around her neck, remarkable only from the other baubles on view by the single teardrop diamond, glistening like a fat tear in the suprasternal notch. There were a few black and whites of Lord Denford himself, and one of young Denford in uniform—his pose heroic but his eyes terrified as though he was facing down, not the lens of the camera but the barrel of a gun. Perhaps most exciting of all, was the picture of James Mortimer, an artist’s sketch of the dead man’s face printed in newspapers across the country in the hope that someone would come forward to identify him.