“Would Mrs. Prine pay that much money for something in Kenneth’s collection?”
“She was not impressed with his collection. His best pieces are ones she already owns or was not interested in. All except one.”
“The Hainelin snuff box?”
“Yes.”
“Would Mrs. Prine have paid seventy-five thousand for that?”
“I think so. Yes, she would have.”
The implications were obvious. If the Hainelin box was what Mrs. Prine had bought from Summerhayes, then it followed that the fifty thousand he’d paid Alicia Purcell on the same day was for purchase of the box. But why would she lie about having had it all along? Why the deception? It was legally hers anyway, as part of her husband’s collection.
There was only one reason I could think of: Everyone knew Kenneth had been carrying the box on his person that night. If she admitted having it after his death, suspicion might fall on her—suspicion that she’d got it from him out on the cliffs, before she pushed him off—
No, hell, that didn’t wash. She was alibied for the time of Kenneth’s fall; she couldn’t have pushed him. So why worry about being suspected, when everybody including the authorities was perfectly willing to call her husband’s death an accident? All she’d have to do in any case was to say he’d given her the Hainelin before he stalked out of the house.
And that brought me right back to the original question: Why hadn’t she admitted she had the box?
I put the question to Mrs. Summerhayes. She said, “I don’t know. I don’t understand women like Alicia, why they do things.”
“Your husband might know.”
“Yes, but he won’t tell you if he does. He won’t tell me.”
“Why do you suppose he kept the two transactions secret? Because of his affair with Mrs. Purcell?”
“Yes. And because of the money. He likes to gamble in the stock market and he knows I won’t give him money for that any more. He has lost too much in the past.”
I wanted to ask her why she put up with a bastard like him, why she stayed married to him. But I already knew the answer. She loved him, and it didn’t really matter to her what he was or what he did: she loved him.
She was still sitting in rigid profile, and this time I sensed that she had said all she’d come to say. It had not been easy for her to talk to me as she had; it had been an act of small vengeance, born of bitterness and pain, and I thought that she might regret it later on. But it wouldn’t be because of anything I did.
I said, “What you’ve told me here is in confidence, Mrs. Summerhayes. I won’t repeat it to anyone under any circumstances, especially not your husband. You have my word on that.”
She nodded as if she didn’t care one way or the other; but when I stood up she looked at me full-face for the first time, as if she had not expected a kindness from someone like me. Then she averted her gaze again, without speaking. And I left her there, a big woman sitting small and huddled and alone among the ruins.
I drove back downtown to O’Farrell, parked on the street—the downstreet garage was closed on Saturdays—and went up to the office. The books on snuff bottles and boxes that I’d checked out of the library were still there, on a corner of my desk; I opened the one I’d skimmed through previously, refamiliarized myself with some terms and types, and then got Margaret Prine’s telephone number out of the Chronicle file and dialed it.
An elderly female voice answered and admitted to being Mrs. Prine. I said I was Charles Eberhardt, from New York; that I was a dealer in antique miniatures; that I understood she was a prominent local collector of rare snuff boxes; and that I had for sale an exceptionally fine and unusual eighteenth-century ivory box bearing a portrait by the famed English miniaturist, Richard Cosway. Was she interested? She was interested, all right. But she was a wily old vixen: she wasn’t about to show enthusiasm to a voice on the telephone, to react to such a proposition with anything but coolness and caution.
She said, “May I ask how you obtained my name and telephone number, Mr. Eberhardt?”
“Certainly. They were given to me by Alejandro Ozimas,”
Pause. “I see. And why did you choose to call me about the Cosway piece?”
“Mr. Ozimas said you were a collector of discerning taste. He also said you were both discreet and quite able to pay my price.”
“And that price is?”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
“I see,” she said again. “Describe the box, please.”
“It is made of ivory, as I said; oval-shaped, with delicate gold ornamentation. The Cosway portrait is of the Prince of Wales—an associate of Cosway’s, as I’m sure you know. Or at least he was before the scandal that linked him romantically with Cosway’s wife.”