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Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 57, No. 3. Whole No. 328, March 1971

The Gobineau Necklace

by James Powell[1]

A new story by James Powell

Another of James Powell’s absolutely charming stories of San Sebastiano... and sharpen your wits: clever, crafty, cunning, this Louis Tabarin, diamond merchant extraordinaire; when Tabarin wanted a diamond necklace for his antique-jewelry collection — even if it was the last of a family’s heirlooms and with a potent legend to protect it — he left no stone (no pun intended) unturned...

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In the Riviera Principality of San Sebastiano the name Tabarin et Cie means diamonds of the first water and pearls of great price. Louis Tabarin’s jewelry shop on the rue Mazeppa had brought him not only wealth but entry into the best society where he was admired for his impeccable sense of style and envied for his air of bored imperturbability. And yet here he was, stopped dead in his tracks and his mouth ajar, on the Opera’s broad marble and onyx staircase as the intermission crowd pushed by him on both sides. Below, just inside the refreshment salon, was the most exquisite diamond necklace the renowned jeweler had ever seen.

Tabarin moved closer. The salon was crowded and he was able to stand almost next to the diamonds and the weak-chinned little woman who wore them. The stones were all six-sided, an old-fashioned cut which the ancients believed brought good luck. The setting was superb: Sixteenth Century, definitely from Rotterdam and probably by van Gelder.

As Tabarin watched, the woman was presented with a glass of punch by a short man with sad bulging eyes and a thin black mustache. Together they were a study in gentility gone to seed: his cigarette holder was gold-inlaid ivory, but his brand, Grand Moguls, was the cheapest; her dress — a dusty mauve with mutton-chop sleeves — belonged to quite another age.

And yet the necklace was worth at least three-quarters of a million francs — even more to Tabarin who was a passionate collector of antique jewelry.

Tabarin admired the necklace until the sound of a buzzer announced the final act. Reluctantly he returned to his box, resolved to have the necklace for his collection. Of course, as he knew from past experience, acquiring it might prove to be a delicate matter. More often than not, the direct approach, the blunt offer to buy, proved disastrous. Once Tabarin had coveted a Twelfth Century episcopal ring, the last valuable possession of a certain Lady Milgrain who lived in a damp bed-sitting room in a squalid house run by an immense ox of a woman with bad teeth. Several visits to Lady Milgrain had failed. “As the last of my line I intend to take the ring with me to the grave,” she told him over weak tea and broken cookies. “Perhaps a tradesman would find that hard to understand,” she had added with a little smile.

But that particular story had a satisfactory ending. A few months later Lady Milgrain passed away in her sleep. It was the landlady who found her body. So when the ring was not among the dead woman’s effects, Tabarin knew where to go. With a wink and a poke in the ribs the landlady had sold him the ring for a fraction of its value.