The door opened and a woman came in. Everybody stood; this must be the widow, he thought. She was a beautiful woman, dark haired and elegant; Gertrud twenty years ago had never looked that good. She was wearing a fitted black suit that showed off a slim, yet delightfully curved, body, a shirt of ivory satin, and two thick rows of pearls, which he noted at once were over fourteen millimetres apiece, lustrous and quite magnificent.

His baleful glare softened just a touch. On her right hand she was wearing a simple solitaire, a ruby ring, emerald cut in four carats, translucent and extremely fine. It was one of his wife’s pieces; they had made it perhaps twelve years ago. He remembered the stone. They had both agreed it would be criminal to ruin such fine material by crowding it with any other accents. Not even the clearest diamonds could enhance such a ruby.

He supposed if he were to be ruined, it would at least be by a woman of taste.

“Please don’t get up,” she said, and they all sank to their chairs again. “This shouldn’t take long. I am going to outline our plans for House Massot, and then Miss Dean will begin to form her strategy, as to how best to release them to the media.”

She turned and looked straight at Heinrich.

“Herr and Frau Brandt, it is a great honour to have you here.”

“You did not give us much of a choice, Fräulein,” Gertrud said, but Heinrich nudged her in the ribs.

“Thank you for the Fräulein, but I haven’t deserved that for two decades,” the widow said, smiling most disarmingly. “And I am so sorry to have inconvenienced you. But you and Frau Brandt are the heart of House Massot and of everything we plan to rebuild.”

There was a short, stunned silence.

“Then you did not bring us here to dismiss us?” Gertrud rasped.

“Dismiss you?” She shook her dark head. “Gnädige Frau, why on earth would I want to do that? You are the most precious asset this company possesses.”

Gertrud hesitated; Heinrich could see her trying, and failing, to repress her plainspoken nature.

“I have read your company is about to fail. We thought surely you will wish to replace us with younger—modern—designers. Ones that string citrines and canary diamonds on chicken wire. And such things,” she said, with contempt.

Sophie Massot smiled. “No indeed. House Massot does not make trash.”

Judy Dean said, “It is trash that sells.”

“To Mayberry customers,” Sophie responded. “Not to ours.”

Judy smiled thinly. “If I may, Sophie—it has been very hard to get Elle and In Style to cover our collections. Even our jewellery collections.”

Sophie inclined her head. “Of course; we do not sell to Elle readers. Nor should we be trying to.”

She leaned forward, placing her hands on the table, holding the gaze of everybody in the room.