An excerpt from a manuscript for "Hell Hath No Fury" by Joan Collins.
Chapter 5
Pauline stuck a Camel in her mouth, fired it up with a click of her gold-and-onyx lighter, and with the cigarette glued to her lower lip while squinting one eye against the rising swirl of smoke, lost no time in introducing each of the three men.
"This is Mr. Balfour from Garrard's, the Crown jewellers."
"How do you do, Miss Marlowe." Mr. Balfour stepped forward and gave Laura a slight bow.
Mentally she summed him up in one experienced actor's glance. He was a tall and trim stately gentlemen from the old school. Splendidly turned out in a worsted black suit from Huntsman of Saville Row, a gray silk shirt with a starched white collar, and matching gray silk tie, one could easily have mistaken him for a senior merchant banker from the City, especially with the hand-stitched attachÄ case he was carrying.
Laura smiled. "How do you do, Mr. Balfour? she replied softly.
"Very well, thank you madam." His mannerisms were deliberately unhurried and deceptively servile. "Hopefully, the same can be said for you."
"And this," Pauline continued, indicating the largest of the three men, "is Mr. Earl. He's your security guard, and he'll shadow you until the jewels are returned all in one piece."
Laura smiled charmingly at the beefy young guard, whose massive shoulders and biceps threatened to split the seams of his rented dinner jacket.
" 'Ello, Miss," he said, politely touching his forehead with a finger in a kind of salute. "It's a right 'onor. 'Course, my old mum an' I, we seen all yer pictures. She's a great fan 'o yers, is me mum"
"I'm glad to hear that," smiled Laura.
Pauline coughed impatiently. "And this," she rasped as a rebuke to hurry things up, "is Mr. Cooney, the protocol officer from the U.S. Embassy."
"Miss Marlowe." The third man stepped forward, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing.
Laura nodded at him. "How do you do, Mr. Cooney?"
He was the last person on earth she would have imagined occupying such a position. A thin fluttery bureaucrat, he seemed uncomfortable, fidgety - and a dead ringer for Norman Bates.
"Well?" Pauline demanded, glancing at her diamond-studded wristwatch. "How about we get the show on the road? We've got one hour before we have to be at the theater, and Laura still hasn't put in an appearance out there."
She indicated the door behind her with a jerk of her head, crossed over to the nearest ashtray, stubbed out her cigarette, and immediately lit another. She carried the ashtray over to the bed, where she lounged back on the quilted silk spread, keeping an eye on things while relentlessly smoking a chain of Camels.
"May I?" Scrupulously polite, Mr. Balfour gestured at the ottoman next to the tabouret on which Laura was perched.
"Of course." She nodded.
He laid his mahogany leather attachÄ case down on it and then, as though partaking in some obscure religious ritual, ceremoniously unlocked the case, undid both brass turnlock closures, and slowly raised the lid.
One by one, he lifted out three midnight-blue velvet cases of varying sizes and lined them up on the dressing table.
He opened the largest one first.
Laura clapped her gloved hands to her mouth. "My God!" she gasped, her eyes huge as saucers.
She was so mesmerized, nothing else seemed to exist and she was suddenly deaf to all sounds. The entire world was reduced to nothing more than the dazzling treasure spread out in a crescent against its nest of black velvet.
It was a necklace, a breathtakingly magnificent necklace composed of seven pigeon-blood rubies, each surrounded by diamonds of various graduated sizes.
Reverently, Mr. Balfour lifted the necklace out of the case by its ends.
"All seven of the rubies are Burmese, perfectly matched and flawless," he pointed out. "They weigh exactly twenty-eight point three carats each. As for the diamonds, they are, I must admit, of the old-fashioned mine cut, but they are a beautiful make."
He saw her slight frown and smiled.
"That madam," he explained, "is industry jargon for proportion, finish, polish and the symmetry of the facets. In other words, each stone is clear white and flawless. I might mention that there are two hundred and fourteen individual diamonds in all, ranging in size from one quarter of a carat to three-and-a-half. Excluding the rubies, the total carat weight of the diamonds comes to three hundred and thirty-two."
Laura slowly lowered her hands. When she spoke, her voice was hushed. "Do you mind my asking what this is worth?'
Mr. Balfour smiled. "Considering the provenance, it's actually priceless. Now then. If you'll permit me, madam?"
