Crimson Shore

I spent an hour, my back aching from bending beneath the low ceiling, my eyes and nose and hands and clothes powdered with dust, and found nothing of value. Just as I was about to give up and descend back into the land of the living, however, the beam of my flashlight landed on an ancient wooden filing cabinet. Something about it piqued my curiosity: even with its veneer of dust I could see that the cabinet was of a higher quality than its neighbors. A swipe with the cuff of my jacket revealed the cabinet to be made of high-quality rosewood, with brass fittings. Luckily, it was unlocked. I opened it — and found precisely the treasure-trove I had been hoping for.

Inside the two drawers were scores of Lady Hurwell’s personal documents: papers relating to the estate; various deeds; legal documents in a right-of-way dispute she’d carried on with a neighbor; an early copy of her will. But of greatest interest to me was a diary that she had kept in her teens and early twenties, and a bundle of letters, tied up in a ribbon, that was the correspondence she’d kept up with Sir Hubert Hurwell during their courtship. This was a rare find indeed — after all, Lady Hurwell had been something of a free thinker as well as a proto-feminist, and her marriage was rumored to have been a stormy one before it was cut short by her husband’s premature death — and would no doubt prove fascinating. I immediately began planning my campaign to convince the remaining Hurwells to allow me to transcribe both the diary and the letters.

There was another set of intriguing documents in the cabinet, consisting of a maritime contract, an insurance document, and a list — carefully enumerated — of a series of gemstones.

I turned first to the list of gems. There were twenty-one in total, all cabochon cut rubies of the star and double-star variety, and all of the highly prized “pigeon’s blood” color. The carat weights varied between 3 and 5.6. Without doubt, this was a catalogue of the famous “Pride of Africa” suite of family jewels given to Elizabeth by her husband as a wedding present. Because the stones have since been lost, I knew this detailed catalogue would prove of great interest.

The attached insurance document was of still greater interest. It was from Lloyd’s of London and it verified the enumeration and evaluation of the gemstones, which had been done at Lloyd’s request, and was stamped with the notation “This cargo is now certified and insured.”