‘The Excitements’ Chapters 49-52, Epilogue

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Penny. Please. I know all about it. I know how you’ve been funding the Foundation. I know how you funded all your charity work before that. ‘Clever investments.’ You know Gerald once said to me that perhaps we should entrust you with our life savings, given the returns you seemed to get no matter how choppy the markets.”

“I’ve just been very lucky.”

“You have been lucky. Lucky not to end up in jail. Jinx told me everything. She came to see me just before you got married.”

“She came to see you?”

“You always wanted her to consider our family her own. Gerald and I were very fond of Jinx. She was worried about you. What circles you moved in, Penny. What men you chose to love. Twenty years in an affair with a crooked cop then you got yourself mixed up with a gangster.”

Penny didn’t deny it.

“When you called to tell me Connor had died in the south of France, I have to admit, I felt relieved. I thought that with the life insurance payout upon Connor’s death, you might finally decide to go straight. Like you wanted Jinx to do.”

“If you thought what I was doing was so bad, why didn’t you confront me then?”

“What difference would it have made? You haven’t listened to me since you were old enough to talk. And there were years when I hated you, when it seemed like you were so happy and carefree while I had a hole in my heart where August should have been that would never, ever heal.”

“But you had Gerald.”

“I was Gerald’s beard. He wasn’t interested in women and I wasn’t interested in anyone but August. We were the perfect match. I saved him from the possibility of gossip and arrest for being gay. He saved me from sex. I’m not saying I didn’t grow to love him. Love comes in all shapes and sizes. He was one of the best people I ever knew. As are you. My funny, brave, crazy little sister. But blimey ... What a way to live.

“What are you going to do about the Foundation, Penny? Time is running out and we owe it to Archie to have everything squared away before we go.”

“I keep meaning to tell him the truth.”

“You can never tell Archie the truth. Because then he would have to know the truth about so many things, including how the QE2 dowager’s diamond came to end up in his pocket on his birthday trip to New York. You know he’d be appalled to know how you made him your unwitting partner in crime.”

“You’re right,” said Penny. “Archie was never going to follow me into the family business. He’s such a decent man. So open-hearted and trusting.”

“Like his granddad—our little brother. Let Archie think of you as a hero, Penny. You should tell him about F Section.”

“How do you know about that? No one knows about that.”

“You’re not the only one who signed the Official Secrets Act,” said Josephine.

“And what does that mean?”

“I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.” Josephine smiled. “A diplomat’s wife hears a lot of things at parties.”

“MI6?”

Josephine’s lips twitched into a smile.

“I might have bloody known,” said Penny. “No comment,” said Josephine.

“You always went one better.”

“Better than an F Section agent? I don’t think so. You got the family balls.”

“I failed in the one mission I had.”

“But you’ve been trying to set it right ever since. All those lives you’ve made better with the O’Connell Foundation. Which is ironic too. You know Jinx also told me that after you got married, Connor planned to kill you for the insurance money.”

“How did she know all this?”

“He was hoping she would help but she was too loyal for that. Did you kill him first?”

“No,” said Penny. “No, I did not. You have to believe that.”

“I do.”

“Josephine, are you very ashamed of me for everything I’ve done?”

“No. I’d be ashamed of you if you’d kept all the proceeds of your crimes to yourself but you haven’t. Everything you’ve ever done came from a good place. Are you ashamed of me?”

“Why would I be?”

“I had a baby out of wedlock.”

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s our grandparents who should be ashamed. And Ma.”

“She thought my baby died too. I believe that.”

“But he’s still alive.”

“And he’s eighty! It’s absolutely obscene to have a child that old. But I can’t wait to meet him.”

“Me too. Another nephew. After that, I think I might be ready to die.”

“Not yet. We both have to make sure Archie is settled. I think Stéphane may have woken up to what a catch he is by now.” They knew Stéphane had been texting Archie constantly while he was supposed to be doing the inventory at the auction house.

“Oh, I’m not dying before that happens,” said Penny. “How did we get so lucky? Having Archie in our lives? Josephine,” Penny asked then. “What am I going to do with this bloody ring of Veronique’s if it ever makes a reappearance? I can’t tell Archie. It’s too hot to sell on.”

“Take it to a church,” said Josephine. “And put it into the poor box. I’m sure it will find its way home.”

 

ARCHIE HAD FINISHED his phone calls. He came into Josephine’s room backwards, pushing the door open with his bottom. He was carrying three ice cream cones from a nearby artisan gelateria.

“Strawberry for you, Auntie Josephine. Mint choc chip for you, Auntie Penny. And vanilla for me.”

Archie always had vanilla. It was a little quirk of his that always made Penny’s old heart hurt when she was reminded of it. He didn’t need anything fancy to be happy; just plain ice cream, a weak martini (very weak in Penny’s opinion), an afternoon spent watching In Which We Serve for the hundredth time. He could never have been a master criminal. He was good and kind and honest and that was perfectly alright.

The mint chocolate ice cream seemed to have an enlivening effect on Penny’s digestive system and before she left the hospital, she was able to assure Josephine, “It’s out.”

On the way back to the hotel, Penny told Archie she wanted to light a candle. She chose the church in the square at the top of the Rue du Mont Olympe. It was the church where Madame Declerc had tried to teach Madame Samuel how to pass as a good Catholic woman, in a Paris where to be anything else might be a death sentence. She thought of Madame Declerc differently now, remembering her not as the termagant concierge who had chased the girls with a broom or the newly rich heiress playing at aristocracy but as a brave woman who knew what it was like to lose a loved one to war, who had seen a fellow woman and mother in need of support and help, and who had risked her own life to protect that fellow woman as best she could.

Gilbert too, she remembered differently now. Penny wished she could hold his hands one more time and look into his gentle brown eyes and tell him she was sorry for having ever let herself believe that he might have betrayed August Samuel, his best friend and fellow Resistant. She was sure now that he would never have willingly sent little Lily to her death. How could she not have seen the way his decency shone through when he berated her for having revealed the existence of the Samuels’ safe all those years ago? Veronique’s revelation that she and Gilbert had used their fortune to endow schools for girls who might not otherwise have access to formal education should have come as no surprise.

She had been such a bad judge of character. Thinking the worst of pure souls like Gilbert while missing the truth beneath her nose when it came to real bastards like Connor O’Connell.

Jinx—her one-time mentee and soul sister—always had a better instinct for good and bad. They’d argued about it. Penny thought Jinx disliked Connor because she was jealous. She remembered now that she thought she had glimpsed her—Jinx—on the day that Connor died. She was coming out of a church in Antibes. She was wearing sunglasses that covered half her face and a scarf over her hair but Penny would have recognised her anywhere. Her mouth, her walk. It must have been Jinx who had taken the emerald ring from Penny’s hotel room, then left it in the church’s offertory box. Perhaps she had taken Connor’s life at the same time.

“Kill or be killed.”

Unlike Archie, Jinx did have that W.E. Fairbairn quote tattooed in black ink on the inside of her right forearm.

Stepping into the darkness of the Parisian church, Penny watched an old man—though he was almost certainly younger than she—dip his fingers into the holy water and make the sign of the cross. She followed suit, though she couldn’t be sure she was doing it the right way. She’d been raised firmly C. of E. She took a turn around the church. There was no one to take confession, but that was probably a good thing. She didn’t have all day. Then she put the ring into the black metal money box where you were supposed to deposit a euro in exchange for a candle. Given the magnitude of her donation, Penny decided that she might reasonably help herself to five candles.

One for Lily, one for Leah, one for August, one for Gilbert. And one for Madame Declerc.

Remembering the Jewish benediction, she’d once heard Leah Samuel say, Penny whispered over the flames, “May their memory be a blessing.”

 

Chapter Fifty-Two

At last it was time to go home. When Josephine was discharged from hospital, it was to a guard of honour comprised of the nursing staff who had overseen her recovery. Archie made sure she wore her battered Légion d’honneur medallion for the occasion. Her lucky shrapnel, which was infinitely more precious, she had tucked inside her purse awaiting that moment when she could hand it over to her newly-found granddaughter. Archie and Maddie had been talking several times a day to finesse the details of Maddie’s first trip to the United Kingdom, which would naturally take in a visit to Grey Towers. Josephine’s son Ralph, who was now called Edgar, was recovering from a hip replacement but would be visiting in due course. Josephine and Edgar had spoken via Zoom—a moment for tears all round.

At The Maritime, Archie gave the sisters their instructions for the journey home.

“We are booked on the 11:13 train back to London, which means we will need to be at the Gare du Nord by half past nine local time to go through passport control and security. I have ordered a taxi for half past eight. The journey should not take an hour but I am allowing time for traffic and toilet breaks.”

“Very sensible,” said Arlene.

“Though please let’s do our best to ensure there are no toilet breaks.

Even your bladder should last sixty minutes, Auntie Pee-Pee.”

 

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, there was the usual kerfuffle at the breakfast buffet, when Penny and Josephine were overwhelmed by the sheer number of ways they could have their eggs. They both plumped for scrambled. Archie was convinced the hesitation might make them late for their taxi, but Arlene had the sisters in the lobby for 8:25.

“I think that’s 8:30 naval time,” she said proudly.

The manager of The Maritime came down in person to see them off.

“This must be what it’s like to be a celebrity,” Josephine commented, as they posed for a photograph for The Maritime’s Instagram account.

“Famous or notorious?” Arlene joked.

All the same, they were surprised when, upon arrival at the Eurostar terminal, the Williamson team was met by another farewell party.

“Good to see you again,” Archie said to Inspector Emile Allard and Officer Nathalie Urban, who had taken their statements on the morning after the siege. “Have you come to make sure we leave the country, before we attract any more trouble?”

Archie’s joke did not raise a smile.

Officer Urban gave an order via her radio. Archie didn’t catch what she said but Penny, with fresh batteries in her hearing aid, caught every word.

“Nous avons apprehende le suspect ...”

There was no point trying to run. Penny’s running days were long since over. All she could do was play dumb. Or demented. Yes, whatever they were about to accuse her of, she had almost certainly forgotten.

Inspector Allard addressed the party in perfect English. “I’m afraid we’re here to take Madame Penny Williamson back to the station for questioning, in relation to an incident at Blanchet, the luxury jewellery store, on the Place Vendôme.”

 

SO MUCH HAD HAPPENED since they’d arrived in Paris, that Archie had completely forgotten losing his younger great-aunt outside The Ritz only to find her trying on diamonds in Blanchet. He’d certainly forgotten all about that moment at the Gare du Nord, when Penny was targeted by a young female beggar as they disembarked the train.

The young woman had tried the old “ring trick,” offering Penny a cheap piece of costume jewellery that she claimed was a real diamond ring, for a bargain price.

“Fifty euros,” was what she’d asked for.

“Oh dear, I don’t have that much on me in cash,” Penny said.

But Penny had clung on to the woman’s hand, swapping the ring for a single euro coin that would feel the right weight and keep the young woman from knowing what was going on until Penny was well out of the way.

Penny had taken the ring for fun but it wasn’t quite the cracker-quality crap Penny had been expecting. Rather she could see how someone less cynical might have been taken in and believed it was the real deal. It was good. Good enough to use in a little rehearsal for the performance she had planned for the reception at Brice-Petitjean. At Blanchet on the Place Vendôme, she swapped the beggar’s surprisingly convincing fake for a three-carat diamond ring.

“There must be some mistake,” Archie told Inspector Allard. “My great aunt is ninety-seven years old. She’s been awarded the Légion d’honneur.”

“So have half the world’s dictators,” said Inspector Allard. “Madame Williamson?”

“Archie,” said Penny. “I’m sure this can all be sorted out. Please don’t worry. I will go along quietly, but may I just spend a penny first?” she asked Officer Urban to whom she was cuffed. Penny hoped she’d be able to choke down another ring in the time it took to fake a widdle.

 

STÉPHANE ARRANGED FOR a lawyer, Christophe Chastain, to meet Penny at the police station while Archie, Josephine, and Arlene waited anxiously at Stéphane’s flat. Penny assured Chastain that she didn’t have a clue what Inspector Allard was on about.

“I may have a little light dementia,” she said.

In the interview room, the charges were laid out.

The assistant at Blanchet remembered that the English woman came into the shop just after lunchtime. The woman was old—definitely—but seemed sprightly for her age. She’d asked to see several rings and a parure. She’d been wearing a knitted beret. The assistant thought that was a witty nod to their being in France. It was quite distinctive. When the assistant heard about the siege at Brice-Petitjean the following night, she was fascinated by the story. And there on the television was the old lady she remembered from the day the diamond ring went missing. She was convinced now that the harmless-looking biddy had swiped a solitaire worth fifty thousand euros, exchanging it for a worthless chip of glass.

“Well, how ridiculous,” said Christopher Chastain. “My client is ninety-seven years old and she has never before been accused of dishonesty. She has devoted her life to the service of others, first as an officer in Britain’s First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. The Fa-nay.” Penny had never before heard it pronounced quite so beautifully. “And later at the helm of the Connor O’Connell Foundation, providing healthcare, housing, and education for some of the most disadvantaged children in the world. She is a decorated veteran and a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur.”

That medal had been taken off her at the front desk, along with all her other personal items.

“How can you look at this woman, this humble, honest, elderly woman, and believe she could be a jewel thief? Where is your evidence? I very much hope you are able to explain why you’re wasting Madame Williamson’s precious time. All the more precious, for her being in her tenth decade.” He was really laying it on.

Inspector Allard was unmoved. “There is CCTV footage,” he said.

On the screen of Allard’s computer, the Blanchet showroom flickered in grainy black and white. There at the desk was the young assistant Penny remembered. She was tap-tapping away on a laptop, while the heavy who manned the door watched the goings-on outside. There was always something going on in the Place Vendôme. Tourists taking selfies in front of Napoleon’s vast triumphal column, business people heading for meetings, little old ladies dashing in and out of luxury hotels in desperate need of a wee.

After a few moments during which nothing much happened, the heavy swung the boutique door open to admit a customer. A small woman, obviously elderly, wearing a beret at a very jaunty angle. She kept her beret on as she approached the desk and sat down with her handbag on her knees. After a brief exchange, the assistant moved from cabinet to cabinet, assembling a collection of items on a velvet-lined pad.

Penny tried not to smile as she watched the collection on the velvet pad growing. Five items, seven, ten ... an insurance nightmare. Much too hard to keep track.

On screen the assistant swept a hand across the jewels she’d arrayed. Though there was no soundtrack to the footage, Penny could hear the sales patter inside her head. “Our finest ... exclusive to Blanchet ... one of a kind ...” Meanwhile, the client was picking items up and trying them on, until suddenly she sneezed and delved into her handbag for a tissue.

“That’s the moment when the priceless solitaire was exchanged for a fake,” explained Inspector Allard. “Just like that incident in Boodles in London, when that woman swapped a bag of pebbles for five million euros’ worth of diamonds.”

“That was a seriously amazing steal,” Officer Urban said.

“So there you have it,” said Allard when the film was finished. “What do you have to say?” He draped one arm across the back of his chair. Easiest case he’d ever had to solve.

Penny put her hand on her lawyer’s arm and beckoned him closer so she might whisper in his ear.

“Well,” Chastain said. “That’s a very clever old lady you’ve captured on film there. And perhaps she was indeed English. But as anyone with half a brain can see, she’s obviously not my client.”

“What?”

“Play the last minute again. Look closer.”

Allard looked more closely. He stared at the film. He stared at Penny. He stared at the film. He had to play the footage twice more until he too could be convinced that the woman who actually looked up at the CCTV camera and winked as she left the store was not the same old dear now sitting in front of him.

“But you do own a knitted beret,” Allard persisted.

“As does that old lady,” said Penny. “They’re very fashionable.” The detectives, the lawyer, and Penny all watched the footage one more time. “But that isn’t me.”

“It really isn’t,” Chastain confirmed. “I can see how mistakes might have been made,” he said as he shuffled his papers into a neat pile ready to be put away. “But I don’t think there’s any justification whatsoever in questioning Madame Williamson for a moment longer. Except to hear your apology.”

It did not take long to secure Penny’s release after that. As they left the police building, Penny was very satisfied to hear Allard tearing into his junior.

“You made me look a fool in there. How could you have made such a mistake?”

“Old ladies all look the same to me.”

“Did you just say that? Did you just actually say that? Old ladies all look the same? How were you raised? Did you never have a grandmother? How could you be so disrespectful? And now we have another suspect to track down in a world full of identical old ladies. According to you ...”

“I could tell at once that it wasn’t you,” said Chastain.

“Thank you, yes,” said Penny. “While I do have a knitted beret, I would not be caught dead in shoes like that. Mouton dressed as agneau.”

Chastain helped Penny into the back seat of his chauffeured car. Who said crime didn’t pay? He must have had some extremely successful clients. “I wonder if they’ll catch their daring thief,” Chastain mused when he was buckled in beside her. “It can’t be every day the police encounter find themselves looking for such an ...” He was about to say “ancient,” Penny knew. “Such an experienced criminal.”

“The cost-of-living crisis is forcing everyone to work for longer these days,” Penny said.

“But what a woman,” Chastain nodded in admiration. “Right under the assistant’s nose.”

“She used quite a basic technique actually.” Penny couldn’t resist pointing that out because Penny knew exactly who the elderly woman in the CCTV footage was. She wasn’t about to tell anyone—not even her lawyer. There was still a little honour to be found amongst thieves—but the thief in question was her erstwhile apprentice. Good old Jinx. How nice to know she wasn’t yet dead. Wily little thing.

“I wonder,” Penny asked then. “Do you think you might take me via a pharmacy on the way to meet the others? I need to take some laxatives again.”

 

Epilogue

 Three months later

Archie Williamson no longer subscribed to the view that nothing bad could happen at Peter Jones because he now knew that absolutely was not true. As he entered the store on his way to his lunchtime rendezvous, he scanned the ground floor china department for items that might accidentally end up in an old lady’s handbag, like a new parent scanning a room for plug sockets and sharp corners. Peter Jones was a veritable den of temptation. Fortunately Arlene had promised to bring the sisters straight to the Top Floor Restaurant, via the lift, to minimise the risk of the wrong kind of excitements.

Already waiting in the café was Archie’s newly discovered second cousin Maddie Scott-Learmonth of Halifax, Nova Scotia, who had spent the morning in Green Park admiring the floral tributes to the late Queen. Maddie had been in London for a week now—staying with her grandmother Josephine and great-aunt Penny in South Kensington—and in that time she and Archie had become firm friends. The following weekend they would be going up to Scotland together, to Grey Towers, to see the land of their ancestors and to pay their respects to Connie Shearer, whose scribbled note on the back of Josephine’s last letter to August had been so important in finally bringing Edgar and Josephine together again. They’d been discussing the possibility of arranging for her to have a new, bigger headstone, to better commemorate the heroine she truly was.

Maddie couldn’t get enough of hearing about the moment when Archie saw the faded pencil scribble on the back of his great-aunt’s letter to August Samuel and solved the mystery of their complicated family connection. Naturally, that led to a wider discussion of the trip to Paris and the various excitements and near-death experiences it had involved.

“Yes, the moment we thought Josephine had been shot was heart-stopping,” said Archie. “But I don’t think I ever felt closer to death than at that time when the gendarmes turned up to arrest Penny at the Eurostar terminal. Can you imagine? Jewel theft? At her age? I was mortified. The worst of it was, I wouldn’t have put it past her, not after what happened here back in April with that awful elephant ornament.”

“She’s such a card,” Maddie agreed. “I wish I had grown up around Auntie Penny. What excitements you must have had over the years.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Perhaps you ought to learn some Defendu if you’re thinking of sticking around ...”

 

WHEN ARLENE AND the sisters finally arrived, they were half an hour late. “What took you so long?” Archie asked. “You were supposed to be here at one o’clock, naval time.”

“My fault,” said Arlene. “Josephine persuaded me that we needed to stop on the ground floor to choose my birthday present.”

Arlene showed them an elegant silver-topped cocktail shaker.

“Not entirely an altruistic purchase,” Josephine admitted. “Now perhaps she’ll make better martinis.”

“I’m desperate to learn how to make a good soixante-quinze,” said Maddie.

“For that you need the Prinz Eugen. I mean, Sister Eugenia,” said Josephine. “She and Davina Mackenzie will be at our house tomorrow afternoon, dear. Dan Snow is going to be recording a special podcast about the excitements in Paris. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a word in.”

“I’ll make sure you do,” said Arlene.

Arlene was not going to be working for the sisters for very much longer, having decided to go part-time while attending an access course so she might do a fashion degree. It was Davina Mackenzie who’d helped her to fill out the online application forms. She had forgiven Arlene for the Jamaica lie and almost apologised for having pushed Arlene to make it. “I know I’m a tough old bird,” she’d admitted. “But I also know what it feels like not to be able to follow your heart. As the granddaughter of an admiral, I have always felt the weight of other people’s expectations. Arlene, you must follow your heart and go to fashion school. Apart from anything else, they might encourage you to experiment with less ... less strident colours.”

Archie had news for the sisters too. He showed them a photograph that Stéphane had attached to an email sent that morning. The rescheduled “important early twentieth-century jewellery sale” had taken place at Brice-Petitjean the previous evening, with Veronique Declerc’s emerald ring fetching a record price. There had been a lot of interest in the sale, generated by the fact that when Stéphane and his team did their post-siege inventory, they’d discovered that the valuable emerald had been swapped for a fake. The recovery of the real ring a few days later had made all the papers.

“They’ve still got no idea how the original turned up in the poor box at that church though,” said Archie. “But all’s well that ends well. It went for twice the price expected and that means two new schools.”

Penny agreed that was the very best outcome.

With everyone settled, Archie took the ladies’ orders for sandwiches, scones, and various pieces of cake.

“Do they serve alcohol here in Peter Jones?” Penny asked then. “I forget.”

“I think they might,” Archie said. “What is it you fancy, Auntie Penny?”

“I think we deserve a small glass of fizz, don’t you?”

“Well, if we can’t get that here, we’ll go to Colbert afterwards. But what are we celebrating?”

“There’s always something to celebrate,” said Josephine.

“Got to be toujours gai, right?” said Maddie. She was learning fast.

“Toujours gai,” the others agreed.

While Archie looked out for a Peter Jones partner who might be able to help them procure something sparkling, Penny rifled through her handbag for a tissue. The news about the sale of the emerald ring had made her just a little tearful, especially to be hearing it as she sat opposite Maddie, who looked so much like her paternal great-grandmother, Madame Leah Samuel.

Around that table in Peter Jones, the past reached into the present and Penny saw a future she would not be a part of for long, but for which she was still very happy, knowing that Archie and his new-found cousin Maddie had so many excitements still ahead of them. She felt her breath catch in her throat at the thought.

Penny found no tissues in her handbag that afternoon, but from next to a fluff-covered roll of cough sweets, another small crystal elephant gaily waved his twinkling trunk.

 

—The End—

 

From THE EXCITEMENTS by CJ Wray. Copyright © 2024 by C J Wray. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.