Free The Irish Cottage Murder by Dicey Deere

was it worth? Twenty thousand pounds? More? Thirty? Enough, certainly, for the surgery that would release Donna from the wheelchair. Yet the thought of being in bed with Desmond Moore sickened her.
    In the rain, she wandered blindly through Dublin, gazing unseeingly into shop windows, staring from the bridge into the sluggishly moving Liffey, biting a fingernail, unable to make up her mind. She was not a cat with nine lives; she had only this one. “Tantalus,” she said, aloud. She was tantalizing herself, an agony of indecision. Pawn or sell the necklace and have money for Donna’s surgery? Or return the necklace to Desmond and be free of him? The drizzle stopped; she was hardly aware of it.
    Grafton Street. Ahead, across the street, she saw Weir’s. It was one of the most prestigious jewelry shops in Dublin. Torrey hesitated. Then she crossed the street.
    *   *   *
    “Good afternoon.” She placed her leather briefcase on the plateglass counter. An air-conditioner hummed. There was a smell of lemon oil–polished mahogany and a feeling of quiet elegance. Several clocks on a counter delicately chimed the quarter hour: 4:45. She’d run it close; most shops in Dublin closed at five.
    “Good afternoon.” The clerk smiled courteously. He was clean-shaven, in a dark suit, impeccable. At a counter nearby, an elderly woman clerk, polishing a silver urn, smiled at Torrey. Three or four customers browsed.
    “My necklace.” She had wrapped it in a tissue and put it in a business envelope. She snapped open the brass clips of the briefcase, took out the envelope, and unwrapped the necklace. “Perhaps you can help me. I’m told it’s quite valuable. But I don’t know. It was left to me by an aunt. I thought you might be able to tell me…” Or perhaps Weir’s itself might be interested in buying the necklace.
    “Left to you by your aunt, was it?” The clerk nodded encouragingly.
    Torrey held up the necklace. The diamonds glittered; the pear-shaped emerald at the V shot green fire.
    The clerk shifted the black velvet pad on the counter but did not touch the necklace. “’Tis its worth you’re interested in?”
    “Yes.”
    “We have a department for—”
    “Mr. Colby? Can you help me a moment?” The elderly clerk at the next counter was beckoning.
    “Excuse me, please.”
    Waiting, she dropped the necklace onto the velvet pad. She pushed it around, gazing at the glittering stones. She didn’t really like diamonds, couldn’t see what the fuss was all about; it was just that they were valuable. She preferred a burst of fireworks. Or what was that tangerine-colored bird? It would be the male; the male always had the plumage, brilliant colors like the male peacocks on the bandanna from her father.
    She glanced over at the next counter. Mr. Colby was not there. She had been waiting almost ten minutes. Ah, here he came, skirting another counter at her left.
    “I’m sorry to’ve kept you waiting.” He looked down at the necklace on the black velvet. He was perspiring. He looked up at her, then he looked past her shoulder and gave a great sigh.
    She turned. Two gardai in blue uniforms were coming toward her.
    *   *   *
    “But it is my necklace!” Torrey said, frightened and angry.
    No one looked at her. The elderly woman clerk was repeating to Detective Inspector O’Gorman, who had just arrived from the Garda Siochana, what she had told the two gardai minutes before. “I recognized it as the Moore necklace from the photo in The Sunday World about the diamond exhibit last year, the V of diamonds with the emerald at the base. And having heard about the murder on the radio—”
    “What has my diamond necklace got to do with the murder of Mr. Kasvi?” Torrey looked in bewilderment from the two gardai to Detective Inspector O’Gorman.
    “Not Mr. Kasvi,” Detective Inspector O’Gorman said, “the murder of Desmond Moore.”

25
    Inspector O’Hare wanted to retch. That would have made two of them