Charlotte Wynthorpe and the Case of the Disappearing Diamonds

16. Someone Who Knows Someone Who Knows Someone

The telephone rang at around ten thirty the next morning just as Charlotte was turning the page to start chapter twenty of The Rat-Chewed Rope. Preston answered and immediately called Charlotte to the phone, saying it was Mr Oakham. 

Charlotte took a deep breath as she picked up the telephone, placing the earpiece against her left ear. "Hullo?"

"Miss Wynthorpe? Robert Oakham. I have the names and addresses of the owners of 10 automobiles with the beginning registration number of A-51. I'll have a message boy deliver the list to you today, along with my bill."

"Could I trouble you to tell me the names now, if you please?" Charlotte said, her nerves getting the better of her. She simply couldn't bear another moment not knowing. Would she recognise one of the names or would they all be complete strangers? The back of her neck prickled with excitement, or fear, she couldn't tell which. 

There was a rustling on the other end of the line before Mr Oakham began to read.

"A-510, Jeremy Williams. A-511, Andrew T. McCullen. A-512, Emma Pecking. A-513, Bramwell Tarkington. A-514, Peter Far-"

Oakham continued to read, but Charlotte heard none of the rest of the names.

Bramwell Tarkington.

That's who had been sitting in the motor outside of Celia's house waiting for a servant who had just collected her stolen diamonds from Arthur.  

Charlotte noticed the silence on the line after a few moments. Oakham was probably waiting for her to say something.

"And you have addresses for all of them?"

"That's correct."

"Thank you, Mr Oakham. I will expect your messenger by six o'clock today as I am engaged to go out this evening. Good day." Charlotte said, and rung off. 

For several minutes, Charlotte stood in her entrance hall observing the black and white checkerboard flooring tiles and the light coming through the window above the front door, but not really seeing them.    

Linny had said Bramwell had an automobile and was renting a house in a fashionable street in Mayfair. Or rather, a strange young man who had come to town to rub elbows with the real aristocracy and who nobody knew very much about, had an automobile and was renting a house in a fashionable street in Mayfair. 

For the last fifteen years or more, The Tarkingtons had been absent from London society. And Bramwell had never really been involved that much in the first place. They'd left too early for him to have made it through all the necessary hurdles to be accepted by his peers. 

Why they'd left, she couldn't recall. All she knew was that they'd gone to live permanently at their residence in the country. Or at least, that's what the word was. Nobody in her set, or even in older sets she sometimes had contact with, had mentioned them in donkey's years. 

Charlotte went back into the sitting room, lowering herself into her wing chair by the window.  

Bramwell. Celia. Old diamond jewellery. Blackmail. A love letter to a man several years dead. A woman servant. I don't know him, but he certainly knows me. 

Charlotte turned images, words, memories and ideas over in her mind, creating combinations and seeing if they made sense, exactly like Inspector Bump advised. After a while she had a theory she felt was as sound as a ceg of thirty-year old whisky.  And packed just as much of a wallop. 

Bramwell wanted back into society. If he was asking for one hundred and thirty pounds a month, he certainly didn't have the cash he needed to accomplish that. There were those who did, however, and so he'd targeted them like so many squirrels simply waiting to be shot out of their trees. Not wanting to get his hands dirty, he'd made use of the only bit of leverage he'd had: an old, compromising letter.