Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

And leaning towards Faro, he said, “What I still fail to understand is why he gave your name.”

But Faro had already worked out that ingenious part of the fraud. The first episode with the minister and the diamond ring, his dramatic arrest by the bogus inspector, and the subsequent return of both ring and sixty pounds were elaborate overtures to secure the jeweller’s confidence.

As for the bogus inspector, Faro guessed that he was a seasoned criminal and that perhaps their paths had already crossed. There was a certain grim humour in claiming to be Inspector Faro in the very neighbourhood where he lived and was a familiar sight.

Faro saw something else, too. That this was merely the beginning, carefully planned with intended results far beyond the remodelling of an emerald brooch into a ring.

Of one thing he was absolutely certain. The emerald brooch had been stolen. No doubt when he returned to the Central Office it would be listed as one of the missing jewels from the recent robbery at Jenners.

Mr. Jacob had to be unwittingly drawn into the thieves’ kitchen. The most invaluable and hardest accessory to find was a skilled craftsman who would be adept at totally altering the appearance of stolen gems, and melting down gold.

Once the jeweller was committed to them, then there was no escape for him. The gang would make sure of that, and their threats would be most effective, especially since the police would be ready to suspect an alien. Mr. Jacob’s visit to the Central Office, with his disastrous and wild-seeming accusations written down and filed as possible evidence, had landed him further into the net.

Faro knew that if the jeweller was to be saved and danger averted, there was only one way. The bogus inspector must be seized when he came to reclaim the brooch. But when might that be?

He stared out of the window. At three o’clock on a December afternoon, there was little light outside, the street already almost deserted.

He could hardly stand guard for an indefinite period, although most of his success in a long career owed much to that element of patient waiting. However, he had given up hope by the time the street lamps were lit and the smoking chimneys of Edinburgh that Robert Burns called “Auld Reekie” added their acrid stench to the freezing fog.

A thin stream of customers had long since gone. Not one resembled the bogus inspector and Mr. Jacob exchanged a despairing glance with Faro.

The plan had failed. Faro shook his head. Criminals, he knew, also have their intuitive moments. Perhaps the thief had already approached the vicinity of the shop in the dim light and, suspicions aroused, had decided that in his business, discretion was always the better part of valour.

Mr. Jacob went around the counter and was rolling down the door blind when a rap on the outside announced a last customer.

Concealed by the kitchen curtain, Faro observed a young woman. He groaned. His last hope had expired-

But wait-what was she asking?

“I have come from Inspector Faro-to collect my emerald ring. I am the inspector’s sister and here is the note he asked me to give you.”

As Mr. Jacob put on his spectacles and read the note slowly and carefully, Faro pushed aside the kitchen curtain. “Hello, my dear. I thought you were never coming. I’ve been expecting you for some time. What kept you?”

The young woman was clearly taken aback and would have bolted had he not stood firmly between her and the door.

Looking round desperately she stammered: “But-but-”

Taking the woman’s arm firmly, Faro said: “I have already collected the ring for you and outside I think you’ll see a carriage awaits. Thank you, Mr. Jacob, you have been most kind”

And Faro marched her out of the shop to the police carriage he had summoned earlier, which had been lurking discreetly out of sight round the corner. It approached rapidly and at the same time, another carriage bowled down the road.

A man stared out and seeing that the woman had been taken and that several constables were erupting from all directions, he leaped down, took to his heels, and bolted down one of the closes.

“Bastard!” shrieked the woman after him. “Bastard!” Her screams and bad language as two uniformed constables restrained her caused a few passersby to blanch. One elderly woman was so overcome by this display of unseemly emotions that she swooned on the spot.

As for Faro, he was already in hot pursuit of the bogus inspector, who had discovered too late that his headlong flight carried him down a cul-de-sac.

The struggle was short and swift, since Faro’s early training had included lessons in self-defence from a retired pugilist. The constables who had followed, truncheons at the ready, were not needed.

Handcuffing the man, who was tall and fair like himself but considerably younger, Faro said: “You had better start talking, or it’ll be the worse for you. I dare say your doxy is already telling them all she knows.”

And one look at the woman’s scared face, the way she cursed and spat as her confederate was hustled into the police carriage, obviously convinced him that he need expect neither discretion nor mercy from that quarter.

“All right, Inspector Bloody Faro, you’ve won this time…”

As Faro suspected, the bogus inspector and the minister were mere links in an organised gang of jewel thieves.

Most of the missing gems from the haul at Jenners were recovered.

But that is another story.

‘Ah!’ said Mr Septimus Coram, surveying the large plate of eggs, bacon, pork sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, and – his particular favourite – blood pudding. ‘Gives you an appetite, my job, that nobody can deny.’

It was something he said on all such occasions, accompanying it with a deep swig from the pewter beer mug that he always used at such late breakfasts.

‘Brute!’ mouthed his daughter Esther. It was something she said on all such occasions, but only silently.

‘He went quiet, did he?’ asked his wife. It wasn’t that she wanted to know, merely that the neighbours would ask.

‘Didn’t have no option. One brawny warder on one side of him, and another brawny warder on the other side. Not that I couldn’t have coped on my own if need be.’

Mr Coram had all his life been wiry rather than heavy in frame, though a lifetime’s addiction to massive fried meals and beer had given him an unattractive potbelly. His droopy moustache, pince-nez spectacles, and protruding ears produced a facial effect that was far from alluring.

‘People like to know,’ murmured his wife.

‘Don’t I know it! And haven’t I had hundreds of good pints on the strength of it. He went quiet – more depressed than anything else. None of this shouting that he was innocent all the way, though they say he was protesting it even as they served him his breakfast. Innocent!’

He laughed heartily and speared a sausage.

‘They said at the trial there was doubt,’ said his wife.

‘Said at the trial!’ said her husband contemptuously, but not interrupting his chewing. ‘ Who said it at the trial? The counsel for the bleeding Defence, that’s who said it. It’s his job. Beats me why they bother with one. No one believes a word they say. The police don’t make mistakes, and Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s judiciary don’t make them, either. Innocent? Innocent men don’t get hanged. And you can take that from me, who knows.’

‘Fool!’ mouthed his daughter, looking at her father closely as he finished the first tomato and sliced into the second.

‘Well, I’ll be off to the shops,’ said Mrs Coram. ‘And I’ll go along to see Bessy Rowlands afterwards. She’s poorly.’