The Secret Wife(16)

‘Do you have a sliding bevel?’ she asked, checking against her list.



‘You sure you need one?’ he asked, an eyebrow raised in a manner that indicated he didn’t think women knew about such things.

‘Yes. I have some steps to rebuild and need to get the angles right.’

He shrugged and began searching the shelves. ‘Just arrived?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Your husband with you?’

Kitty bristled. Why did men in DIY stores always assume there must be a man behind the scenes? ‘Nope,’ she said shortly.

He produced a bevel and she unfastened then retightened the wing nut before adding it to her pile.

‘You’ve come at the right time,’ the storekeeper said. ‘We’re nearing the end of bug season. A couple of weeks ago you would have had to fight your way through swarms of them.’

‘I did get a couple of bites last night,’ she admitted, scratching her neck. ‘Is there anything you recommend?’

‘Yup,’ he said, and added a large bottle of insect repellent to the pile. ‘Round here we wear this twenty-four seven, April to October.’

The chip and pin machine wasn’t working so she had to sign for her purchases.

‘Is there a supermarket nearby?’ she asked.

He directed her to one further down the main street. ‘You can’t miss it.’

‘How about a jeweller’s?’ She fingered the pendant she’d found, which she’d slipped inside her purse. It would be interesting to get it valued.

‘Lake George is the nearest jewellery store, but my brother-in-law used to work in the trade and he still keeps a stock of gift items. You’ll find him down Bennett Road.’ He wrote the name and address for her on the back of his business card. ‘Say Chad sent you.’

Kitty went to the supermarket first and stocked up on the type of tinned foods that could be heated over a camping stove, as well as crackers, cheese, apples, coffee and a few bottles of wine. The car was full to bursting as she drove down to Bennett Road, which was easy to find as there were hardly any other cross streets off the main road. When she rang the bell, two Great Danes came bounding across the yard, followed by a bearded man in a disconcertingly bright cerise shirt.



‘Hello,’ she began. ‘Chad said you used to work in the jewellery trade. I was hoping to get a valuation on a pendant.’ She took it from her purse and handed it to him.

He had a quick look. ‘Sure. Come inside.’

She took a seat at his kitchen table, which was covered in a floral waxed tablecloth. The man fetched a jeweller’s loupe from another room and held the pendant up to the light of the window before giving a low whistle. Kitty waited. He examined the setting of the stones then turned it over and squinted at the back. There was silence while he concentrated, then finally he turned to Kitty.

‘This is Fabergé! It’s one of the most beautiful pieces I’ve come across.’

‘You’re kidding!’ Kitty was not a jewellery expert but Fabergé was probably the world’s best-known luxury brand. Her grandfather must have been wealthy; or perhaps it was a family heirloom.

‘If I’m not mistaken, it’s rose gold set with a sapphire, a ruby and imperial topaz. The engraving on the back is a maker’s mark. It’s a little worn but it looks as though the workmaster’s initials were H.W.’

‘Can I see?’ Kitty peered through the loupe but couldn’t make out anything that looked like either ‘Fabergé’ or ‘H.W.’

‘It’s the Cyrillic alphabet,’ the man told her. He produced an iPad from a drawer and typed in a password then looked something up. ‘As I thought … it’s Henrik Wigstr?m, who was their head workmaster from 1903 through to 1918.’

‘Was he Russian?’ Kitty asked, wondering if Dmitri had brought the object over from Russia with him.

‘Wigstr?m was from Finland but he worked at the company headquarters in St Petersburg, under the great Michael Perchin, the most famous Fabergé workmaster.’ He glanced up to see if she recognised the name, but she looked blank. ‘The company was so popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that they used independent artisans to make up orders based on sketches supplied to them by Fabergé’s designers. You’ll have heard of the famous Fabergé eggs …’



‘Erm … I think so.’

He seemed disappointed by Kitty’s ignorance. ‘They were extraordinary jewelled creations that the royal family gave each other for Easter, with hidden surprises inside. Only sixty-five of them were ever made and recent prices at auction have reached close to ten million dollars each.’

‘Oh my God!’ Kitty was stunned. ‘For an Easter egg?’

The jeweller laughed. ‘Yeah, well, the one Tsar Nicholas gave to his mother in 1913 was made of platinum and gold, studded with’ – he read from his iPad – ‘1,660 diamonds on the outside and 1,378 in the little basket inside. Not your average Easter gift, I agree, but they were by far the richest family in the world. It was an absolute monarchy for three hundred years and the Russian people were serfs, so all the country’s wealth flowed into the family coffers.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Does that mean my pendant is valuable?’