Page 166 of The Gathering Storm

Lennie took it from her. ‘I think it’s gold,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t tarnished at all, though it must have been in there a long time.’ He shook it gently, and heard a rattle. ‘There’s something in it.’

‘Open it, then,’ Polly urged.

The lid didn’t lift. ‘It’s locked,’ he said. ‘I need a chisel or something.’

‘Don’t damage it,’ Polly protested.

‘Do you want it opened or not? Unless you’ve got the key …’

‘That could be anywhere. If it still exists. I’ve never heard of anything being kept under there, so it must be old, or Papa would have told me about it, or Aunt Hen.’

They took it to the steward’s room, where shortly Barlow brought a fine-bladed chisel, and everyone who had been helping gathered round while Lennie set the blade into the gap between the lid and the box and levered gently. Then less gently. Then with considerable force. The lid flew back violently, breaking one of the gold hinges that held it on.

Inside, the box was lined with velvet. ‘In surprisingly good condition,’ Lennie said. ‘It must have been absolutely dry in there, or it would have rotted away.’

Polly leaned over to look. ‘Black beads,’ she said, in disappointment. ‘I thought it would be diamonds, or gold sovereigns at least.’

Lennie took one out, and lifted it level with his eye between finger and thumb. ‘Not beads,’ he said. ‘This is a pearl. A whole lot of black pearls.’ He peered in again. ‘I suppose they were strung when they went in, but the thread has worn away.’

Polly snapped her fingers. ‘Black pearls!’ she said. ‘There’s a painting in the gallery of one of our ancestresses, wearing a necklace of black pearls. I remember now, Aunt Hen saying they would have been really valuable, because I’d said I thought they looked dull and wondered why she’d had her portrait painted wearing them. I wonder if these are the same ones.’

‘Hardly likely there would have been more than one necklace of them,’ Lennie said. ‘Black pearls are pretty rare now, probably even more so in those days.’

The whisper was being passed back through the onlookers to others outside for whom there’d been no room. Black pearls … black pearls … black pearls …

‘Do you think they’re worth anything?’ Polly asked.

‘Oh, I should think so. We’ll have to get them valued. And re-strung. You ought to wear them. They’d suit you, you’re so fair.’

‘I wonder why they were hidden,’ Polly mused.

‘The box is solid gold, I think,’ Lennie said. ‘So that’ll be worth a bit.’

‘And we’d never have found it if it hadn’t been for that poor boy and his solo flight.’

On their way upstairs to wash off the grime of the treasure hunt, she said, ‘Funny to think …’

‘What?’

‘Well, there were probably lots of times when finding the gold box and the pearls would have made a lot of difference to the family. Hard times. Even when my father inherited and all the land had been sold off and the house was in a poor state. But here we are, and you’re a millionaire, and Ren left me a fortune, and we really don’t need to find hidden treasure at all.’

‘You’re all the treasure I ever want,’ Lennie said, and stopped her on the top stair to kiss her.

Stuffy Elphinstone presented himself at Arlington Street with the utmost casualness, saying he’d happened to be in the neighbourhood; but Molly saw the longing way he looked at Charlotte when he thought she wasn’t watching, and promptly invited him to stay for dinner. He was a very different young man now from the days when he had been a red-faced and tongue-tied investor in Dolphin Books. He was tall, well-built, far from unattractive, and now had a gravitas that suited him. It was not that Molly was a match-maker – indeed, she thought interfering in someone else’s emotional life was both impertinent and dangerous; and besides, Charlotte had only just parted ways with Launde. But she thought Elphinstone much more eligible in every way, and his attachment to Charlotte had never wavered – he was still unmarried, and his name had never been connected to any other woman’s. In the fullness of time, it would not be a bad thing at all if … And with war coming, they would all need to grab what happiness they could. Launde, damn his eyes, might have had the decency to run away sooner if he was going to run at all … They really ought to stop referring to Elphinstone as ‘Stuffy’. What on earth was his first name? He had a very decent estate in Hampshire …

Charlotte was comfortable with him, chatted with him, no signs of shyness, which might have been a good thing or a bad thing. At the moment she wanted to know about the international situation more than anything.

‘There’s a lot of negotiation going on,’ Elphinstone said. ‘Diplomacy and so on. Halifax is still hopeful. It looks as though Hitler was ready to go on the 26th – troops on the Polish border and so on – but at the last minute he heard about our formal treaty with Poland, and called a halt. Oh, and I understand that Mussolini told him he wasn’t ready to go to war yet. I don’t know how much Hitler was depending on the Italians, but it was another scruple to add to the balance.’

‘So we’ve got a breathing-space,’ Molly said.

‘There’s a suggestion from America that they think Hitler’s bluffing, that he can’t really want war with Britain and France. And it’s a fact that yesterday he presented Henderson – our ambassador to Berlin, you know – with an offer, guaranteeing the safety of our Empire if we let him solve the “Polish problem”, as he calls it, without interfering.’

‘Solve it?’ Vivian said, pausing in the dissection of a potato. ‘We know what his method of solving problems is. I take it we’re refusing?’

‘Not right away,’ Elphinstone said.

‘Of course they didn’t refuse, Vivian,’ Molly said. ‘What kind of diplomacy would that be? You keep on talking – am I right?’