Chapter 14: Fennel Row

The jeweler on Fennel Row had a brass bell on his door and a shop smaller than my mother's bedroom at the lake.

He was an old man with a loupe pushed up into his white hair.

He took one look at Gareth and went to a shelf without being asked.

"I wondered when you'd come," he said. "Twenty-two years, and this whole city has been told my work was stolen."

He laid a ledger on the counter and turned it to a page marked with a ribbon.

The ink had gone brown.

There were two lines, one under the other, in a fine slanting hand.

One ring, gold, heron crest, engraved G to A, Patience. One band, plain.

Under both, in the margin, he had written: Paid in full by Mr. Wincott. Not to be copied. Crest belongs to the Lorrimer family.

"Not to be copied," I said.

"The crest was theirs. I made that ring once, and I made it for her."

"Would you sign it?" Gareth asked. "Under today's date, with a line saying you've seen the ring this month?"

"I haven't seen it this month."

"I have," I said. "It's with Lavinia."

The old man looked at me over the loupe for a long moment.

"Then I'll sign what I know," he said.

He wrote four lines and dated them, and pressed the blotter down with the flat of his hand.

Gareth folded the page into his breast pocket.

"Thank you," he said, and meant it.

We went out under the bell.

The street was bright and full of lunchtime people with paper cups.

A black car was parked across the front of the shop, and two police cars sat behind it with their lights off.

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