She took his hand back and ran her thumb over the engraved surface of the oval red stone set into the gold. ‘It’s carnelian.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A semi-precious stone. Very hard. Ideal for engraving.’ She glanced up, the strangest look in her eyes. Confusion. Even fear. ‘You know what the engraving is?’
She was still holding his hand. He looked at the ring again. ‘To be honest, I’ve never really thought about it. Looks like a crooked arm holding a sword.’
‘Where did you get it?’ she asked again. More insistent this time.
He pulled his hand away. ‘It was my father’s. Passed down through the family, I guess. I got it when he died.’
She stared at him for a long time with a strange, silent intensity, then looked down again at his hand. ‘I have a pendant,’ she said. ‘Bigger. But oval, and set in gold, with exactly the same symbol engraved in the carnelian. I’d swear it was identical.’
Sime shrugged. ‘It was probably fashionable at some time in history. I bet there’s thousands of them out there.’
‘No.’ Her contradiction was sharp and its vehemence startled him. ‘It really is identical. A family crest of some sort. I’ve looked at it hundreds of times. I can show you it.’
In spite of his curiosity, Sime was wary of indulging her in this bizarre turn of events. ‘I don’t think that would serve any purpose. And, anyway, you can’t go back into the big house for the moment. Not while it’s still a crime scene under investigation.’
‘I don’t need to. The pendant’s here. I brought most of my personal stuff back into the summerhouse after James left. Including my jewellery box.’ She turned and hurried into the house. Sime stood for a moment with the rain whipping in under the eaves, and felt infused by the oddest sense of uncertainty. He had already been unsettled by his sense of knowing her. Now this. He looked at the engraving on the ring. It could only be some kind of bizarre coincidence. He pushed through the screen door back into the sitting room as Blanc brought the flight cases containing the monitors through from the bedroom.
Kirsty ran down the stairs holding a polished wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She set it on the coffee table in front of the fireplace and knelt to open the lid. Blanc glanced from Sime to Kirsty and back again, the almost imperceptible raising of one eyebrow asking his silent question. Sime’s response was the merest of shrugs. Both men turned their heads at the sound of her gasp of frustration.
‘It’s not here.’
The curiosity that Sime had felt out on the porch was replaced now by a burgeoning cynicism. He walked over to the coffee table and stood above her as she knelt in front of it, searching through the clutter of jewellery inside the open box. Then in frustration she tipped its contents out on the glass tabletop. Rings and bracelets, necklaces and pendants, brooches, clasps, dress pins, all rattled across the glass. Silver, gold and platinum set with precious and semiprecious stones. Some of the items were modern, others clearly from a bygone age.
She tried to sort through them with clumsy, trembling fingers, until he saw her upturned face filled with confusion. ‘I don’t understand. I’ve always kept it in here. Always. And it’s gone.’
Sime was aware of Blanc looking at him. He said, ‘What you may or may not have done with an item of jewellery is of no concern here, Mrs Cowell. Murder is.’ He paused. ‘We’ll see you in the morning, weather permitting.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
I
There were fewer people on the quayside for the departure of the ferry that afternoon than had met it in the morning. But it was probable that the weather had more to do with it than any lack of curiosity on the part of the Entry islanders. The Ivan-Quinn was rising and falling dangerously, even in the sheltered waters of the harbour, and Lapointe had difficulty reversing their minibus up the ramp to the car deck.
James Cowell was zipped into a white plastic body bag and lay on the floor between the seats. Nobody had spoken a word on the drive across the island to the harbour with his body lying among them like a ghost. And now everyone was keen to get into the bowels of the ferry and out of the rain. Except for Sime. His jacket already soaked through, he climbed slippery rusted steps to the upper deck and made his way along a narrow walkway to the stern of the boat. From there he could see over the interlocking concrete fingers that made up the breakwater, back across the bay towards Cap aux Meules. It was already almost lost in rain and low cloud. Just a sliver of blue and gold lay along the horizon behind it. The sea in between looked angry. Rising and falling in foaming slabs of grey water like molten lead.