Postscript . • •
Imagine, therefore, how downcast we were, and more even than sentimentally, when our house was burgled, two years ago last August, and the pretty little ring, along with my wife's very modest little collection of jewellery—most of it small family pieces—was stolen.
The insurance company duly paid up, and the money duly got spent, in replacing necklets, ear- rings and on another pretty Georgian ring—but not, alas, a betrothal ring with a crowned heart, for we had never been able to find another.
Not, that is, until last week, when I saw a couple in a shop in the Burlington Arcade. Not quite as appealing as our own—what ring could have been?—but pretty, and I took my wife in on Saturday morning to look at them. They were much dearer than the one we had lost, but we were tempted. All the same, now that we had seen a couple in one shop, after more than two years of search, would it not be worth looking once again, a little more widely round London? The Burlington Arcade jeweller kindly let us take his rings away on approval; we called at another shop in St. James's, but it was closed; at another antique jeweller's, off the Haymarket, but they had none; and then it was time for luncheon.
We both fancied fish. Should we go to
Prunier's, hard by, or to another favourite t sb restaurant of mine, a good deal less handy? Convenience said the one; some whim dictated the
other; and we found ourselves strolling through a not very familiar street where—how odd! there were two more antique jewellers that I hardly knew, either by name or by sight. I glanced at one window, saw a number at old rings but no betrothal ring, walked idly into the shop thinking, 'They won't have any, of course, but no harm in asking: and as I reached ihe counter, and began my inquiry, saw my wife still on the other side of the window, dancing up and down on the pavement, waving and mouthing
What I had missed seeing in the window, !be had seen—displayed by itself, not on the r.ad of antique rings I had cast my eye over, and partly shadowed by the window grille: noi"8 Georgian betrothal ring, merely, but the HIV I was tact itself with the jeweller: this vva embarrassing, I said, and I knew (as indeed I do that jewellers and antique dealers can buy thing in good faith that have probably passed thiot g many hands before reaching theirs but arc, fact, stolen property. This was my wife's rii
ic had been stolen from us two and a half yea" ago; the design was extremely rare, if not unique and look, here was a break in the mount
an irregularity in the setting, both of which 41 recognised, that put it completely beyond doubt Tact got us nowhere. All the-jeweller ha1 needed to say was that he was so glad we'd fin rid our ring again, that he'd bought it in good fail, but was ready to put it on one side until we' told the police and the insurance company. NO' at all. What he did say was that he wasn't in habit of buying stolen property ('But of course we said, 'we assured you that we weren't chit] hi' ing you for a moment'); that he wasn't as at vinced as we were that the ring was the one lost—one ring could look very like another; that even if what we said was true, the ring wa! now our property but the insurance compa,iy+40. which we knew; and that he was just abptit,V close the shop, for it was a minute or two tr) one, and a Saturday. He volunteered, without our asking, that he certainly wouldn't put the r F10 on one side, and that if anyone came in on Mon day at nine o'clock to buy it, he would sell it 1 we wanted to buy it ourselves, it was £55. : he was prepared to take a cheque.
So we bought it, and there is no doubt at that the insurance company is entitled to asN to buy it again from them, for we have had •It cif money, and bought other jewellery with it. wife is overjoyed, and I hope to bring my manager round to the opinion I strongly “ro1d myself that I have never spent a better £55.
All I want to know now is what I should haVe done with the disagreeable and unhelpful jewe lei on Saturday morning that might have saved ruY money, and yet ensured that the ring would ! have been there on Monday. That, and 'S1101 the mathematical chances are against find14 ring stolen from you in London, 'IN I, in Aug! 1958, at a shop in London, WI, in March, Itl as the result of a mental toss-up over where eat a plate of fish.
to
10, ILl
CYRIL I
Previous page
