“Oh yes, down to the exact engraving on the back,” he affirmed.
“The engraving that connected the gift definitively to you,” I pointed out.
“Dash! You’re quite right,” he said unhappily. “It didn’t occur to me then, you see. I just wanted to help out a friend. But once I gave it to her, I realized unscrupulous persons might use it to make a scandal, and I was worried it might get to Alix’s ears. My family are no strangers to gossip,” he added darkly.
“I’m certain,” I murmured. “In any event, that was when you asked for the jewel’s return, is that correct?”
“Yes, and she never came out and refused, but she put me off. Said she had it laid away for safekeeping and it would take some trouble to retrieve it.”
“Madame Aurore kept all of her jewels in her personal safe,” I reminded him.
“So she did! I ought to have recollected that,” he said, tugging at the ends of his moustaches.
“When did she send word that she would return the star to you?”
“Oh, the day of the masquerade. She sent a coded wire to me at Balmoral and said if I wanted the star I had to come to her and she gave a time, saying it was quite urgent and if I didn’t retrieve it then, she could not be held responsible for what became of it.”
“And you did not view that as a threat?” I demanded.
“How could I?” His expression was frankly dumbfounded. “She said she was returning the jewel. I thought she was simply in some sort of trouble. So I went to Louise, my sister, and told her I needed gear for a masquerade. She fitted me out with a gown and some paste jewels and face paint in a bag and I dashed for the express train down to London. I made it only just.”
“When did the wire come from Madame Aurore?”
He shrugged. “Just before luncheon.”
I calculated swiftly. Shortly after Stoker and I had decided to attend the masquerade, the wire had been sent to Eddy, luring him to the evening’s entertainment. I did not believe in coincidences. I thought of Archibond’s careful maneuvering. We had been invited to sleuth on the princess’s behalf, but when we had refused, it was Archibond’s oblique hints as to Lady Wellie’s distress that had prompted us to investigate her desk, unearthing the diary and the notes she had made regarding Eddy’s whereabouts during the Ripper murder.
“I believe Inspector Archibond has been making a good deal of this up as he goes along,” I said slowly. “The original intention was no doubt to implicate you in a scandal of a most sordid nature at Madame Aurore’s. But the Ripper murders gave him an opportunity to do something far more devious.”
“The Ripper murders? What on earth have they to do with me?”
I explained swiftly about the anonymous note and Lady Wellie’s attempts to establish his alibi.
“Poor Lady Wellie,” he said softly. “How horrified she must have been.”
“You don’t blame her for even entertaining the notion?” I asked.
“How could I? She has looked after us all of her life. She was looking after me still. She made it her business to put me quite in the clear,” he said firmly. “If she had not fallen ill, she would have made it perfectly apparent that I was nowhere near Whitechapel during those terrible crimes.”
I did not disabuse him of his illusions. Lady Wellie’s proof of his innocence would hold in a court of law but not the court of public opinion. One whisper attaching his name to the murders and he would go down in history as an homicidal maniac.
I went on. “The Ripper murders have been a stroke of luck for Archibond,” I mused. “Nothing else could keep Special Branch so preoccupied that he could work out his schemes undetected. He has no doubt kept careful records of your visits to Madame Aurore’s house with an eye to presenting them once you were implicated in her murder.”
“You think that was his plan?” Eddy paled in horror.
“I do. That was why you had to be lured back to her house at a specific time, to ensure that Archibond and his men were there to do the deed. And the time was set for an evening when Stoker and I were there as well so that Archibond could kill three very particular birds with one stone.”
Eddy ticked them off on his fingers. “Eliminating a co-conspirator in Aurore, establishing my presence at the house at the time of her murder, and giving them an opportunity to abduct you and me, so that we would be in their power.”
“Precisely.”
“I cannot approve such actions, but they were efficiently done,” he observed.
“I think it is as much a lack of manpower as efficiency driving their actions,” I pointed out. “We have seen my uncle de Clare, Archibond, Quiet Dan, and one other. I think they have chosen to keep their little plot as quiet as possible in order to avoid word getting out.”
“That would be a reasonable precaution,” Eddy agreed.
Just then the door opened and my uncle de Clare appeared, leaning on his walking stick, with his minion, Quiet Dan, lurking behind.
