“No use, Ivan,” he said wearily. “You rolled out of the Derby Arms, through the dark, till you came to the canal, and like a true Russian, in you jumped. No use again—you were followed. My friend, a noble soul, a sergeant, Jonathan Beddoes, he pulled you out in the name of humanity and the Metropolitan Police. But they were following you—all the evening since you left the Vanbrugh. They didn’t trust you, they wanted to see that you really went to Bright’s Row, and if not, where. When you ran out of the house, they guessed why. One stayed, I think, to report developments. The other tagged along behind you. They had to get hold of you, before you babbled. They might have shut you up in a quicker, rougher way than they did. That’s how I’ve guessed you kept to Upper Street, too bright and busy for you to come to harm—not that you could have known or thought of that. They, the one of them, watched you into the Derby Arms. That’s where Beddoes came in. I think they saw and knew him, sent for reinforcements, a car, perhaps, to lurk nearby. When you came out, you all lolloped along behind each other like a string of dogs, you, Beddoes, them. When you jumped, they let Beddoes rescue you, then knocked him out and took you away. And what they’ve done with you since, and why they’ve kept you, I don’t know. You certainly couldn’t tell them where to find what was lost. You didn’t know then, you don’t know now. In any case, they soon had a good, if vague, idea of their own, which I believe I unwittingly suggested to them.”

“My dear fellow, are you sure you—”

“You see, unbeknown to you, she was at work in the last couple of weeks irrevocably to deprive you of the trunk. Did she sense the approach of death, without necessarily guessing that it would be unnatural? Even if that’s too fanciful, she can’t have failed to notice a change, a strain, in the atmosphere. If you overacted before indifferent strangers and colleagues, how much more in that brooding presence! She decided to make haste. She summoned to Bright’s Row, on your pay day, so that she could be reasonably sure that you’d stay at work, a well-known jeweller.

“Of course, she wasn’t conscious of the enormous irony of her choice.” Brett paused. “The man was also a collector, a lover of jewels, a connoisseur of Fabergé’s work. He instantly coveted, or loved, your own beloved. It was too easy for him, trusted as he was. What excuse he offered I don’t know, but he took it away with him, just that one star of the collection. Perhaps he even paid a token sum. We found no cheque, no cash, but it’s not impossible that she slipped out and put it in the bank. I said, you remember, that one of them probably stayed to watch the house on the night of the twenty-second. They had their reward. They saw the police cars, they saw me. They followed me on to a bus and off it, and watched me knock on the jeweller’s door. Enough. They put two and two together. They watched him. But he foxed them, almost to the end.”