Free Deadly Jewels by Jeannette de Beauvoir Page A

to make a big deal of it yet. I wanted to think about the ramifications. He was the one who made me take it to the mayor.”
    â€œI see.” I couldn’t stop looking at the skeleton. I was never going to feel the same about Halloween again.
    â€œLet’s take a closer look.” She moved past me, squatted beside the bones. “Martine.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œMartine.”
    â€œWhat is it?” I couldn’t tell if the pressure in her voice was a good or a bad thing. I pushed aside a rotting crate to make my way over to her. “Hang on, I’m coming. I mean, if you think that—“I broke off midsentence. Something very bright and very beautiful was in the middle of the bone collection. “No,” I said.
    â€œYes,” she breathed.
    â€œThey can’t be,” I said. “Not after all this time. Someone would have noticed them gone. Things like that don’t just go missing. Someone would have known, there would have been a scandal.” I was suddenly aware that I was babbling, and fell silent.
    Patricia was squatting beside the bones, her floodlight directed at the tiny cluster of brilliant jewels that, even after all this time, glittered as though they were still affixed to a royal crown. As if they emitted a light of their own.
    But I’d disturbed the skull, and my initial reaction of revulsion at touching it disappeared as I focused on what I was seeing now that it had rolled over.
    A hole in the back of the skull, in a place where no hole should be.
    *   *   *
    We were still sitting beside the boxes ten minutes later, our goggles pushed back onto our foreheads, our feet inches from the skeleton. And I was getting tired of arguing. “I trusted you,” said Patricia, and there was bitterness in her voice. “I trusted you to be my witness, not to ruin everything. I want to keep this my find, my information. You have no idea what will happen when academia gets hold of it.”
    â€œThis person was shot , Patricia,” I said for what felt like the thousandth time. “That’s a crime. We have to have the police in.”
    â€œNo! That will make it public.”
    I was losing patience. “They already know. They were at the meeting. They know you are on your way to proving the jewels were in Montréal, and they probably know you think some were stolen. Obviously you were right. They’ll want to know why.”
    â€œBut they don’t know about this. About them being here .”
    I said, as reasonably as I could, “I know that your career is your first priority. But this person was murdered , don’t you see? You could lose your big scoop; he lost his life. There’s a matter of perspective here.”
    There was a long silence, and I could hear water dripping somewhere behind me. “But it was a long time ago,” she said persuasively. “Don’t you see? He was probably killed when the jewels were moved here from Dorchester Square. Sometime towards the end of the Second World War, for heaven’s sake! No one’s going to catch the murderer now.”
    She was probably correct, but that didn’t make it right. “Okay,” I said finally, biting my lip. “Here’s a compromise. I know someone with the city police. He’s—he’s a bit of a black sheep over there. He does things differently. Let me get him here to look at it. I don’t know at what point something becomes an archaeological find rather than a crime scene, but he’ll know. And he’ll be discreet.”
    â€œI don’t want—”
    â€œIt’s nonnegotiable, Patricia,” I said, feeling the weight of my years and the lightness of hers. She sounded like a sullen two-year-old. “Someone has to see this. I’m offering you someone who won’t call up the newspapers. I’d take it if I were you.”
    She was regretting getting me involved. She’d