Who Stole the Black Diamonds?

Who Stole the Black Diamonds?

"Who Stole the Black Diamonds?" is a short mystery story by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, narrated by the "man in the corner," a recurring eccentric detective figure who solves puzzling cases through pure logical reasoning while sitting in a tea shop. The story concerns a spectacular jewel theft from Eton Chase, a mansion near Chislehurst in England, rented during the summer of 1902 by the King and Queen of "Bohemia," whose identities are deliberately obscured. The royal couple had come to England partly to sell their famous parure of black diamonds, an utterly unique and priceless set of necklace and tiara valued at half a million pounds. An American millionaire named Mr. Wilson had agreed to purchase the gems for £500,000, but before the transaction could be completed, the jewels were stolen in a daring burglary. A rope ladder was found attached to an upper balcony outside the Queen's bedroom window, and the iron box containing the diamonds was taken bodily from her dressing table. Despite the house being full of guests and servants, no one witnessed the crime directly, and the thief vanished without trace. Suspicion quickly fell on Mr. Wilson himself, since evidence emerged that he had suffered financial losses and appeared to be seeking a way out of his expensive commitment. Society turned against him, and he was openly snubbed. Determined to clear his name, Wilson's solicitors engineered a situation in which Lord and Lady Barnsdale publicly accused him of the theft, and Wilson then sued them for slander, seeking fifty thousand pounds in damages. Before the slander case came to trial, however, a sensational development occurred. At a Court presentation at Buckingham Palace, a wealthy American widow named Mrs. Vanderdellen appeared wearing a magnificent parure of black diamonds. The stones were immediately recognized as the stolen gems. When Detective Marsh of Scotland Yard questioned her, Mrs. Vanderdellen explained calmly that her late husband, known as the "Petrol King," had given her the diamonds shortly before his death, which had occurred just days after he sailed from France to New York in early July 1902. She refused to surrender the jewels without a legal proceeding, insisting on vindicating her husband's reputation. At the subsequent court action, an American witness named Albert Sedley testified that Vanderdellen had told him as early as March 1902 that he had purchased remarkable black diamonds from a mysterious vendor in Vienna under an unusual arrangement: he would hold the gems for three months without payment, and only if no suspicion arose during that period would the agreed price of £500,000 change hands. Vanderdellen had duly paid the vendor in Paris on or around July 4th, 1902, just one day before the burglary at Eton Chase. Despite widespread sympathy for Mrs. Vanderdellen, the court ruled against her, as the defense rested largely on the words of a dead man. She was compelled to return the diamonds, but immediately afterward purchased them legitimately from the King of Bohemia for another £500,000, ending the affair in possession of the jewels she had refused to relinquish without a fight. The man in the corner then presents his solution, which is the true heart of the story. He argues that the King of Bohemia, desperately short of funds, devised an elaborate and criminal scheme to sell the diamonds twice. First, he secretly sent an emissary to sell the actual loose stones to Vanderdellen in Vienna in March 1902, receiving £500,000. Before doing so, he had commissioned perfect imitation diamonds in paste or glass, mounted into the original settings. These fakes were then displayed as the genuine parure and publicly offered for sale to Mr. Wilson. A trusted confederate subsequently staged the theatrical burglary, climbing the rope ladder and stealing the false jewels, which were afterward destroyed. The theft conveniently collapsed Wilson's purchase agreement, and the ensuing international hue and cry for the stolen diamonds was entirely for stones that did not exist. Vanderdellen, holding the real gems under the original agreement and paying his £500,000 only after the three agreed months had passed without incident, had no reason to connect his purchase with the later theft. The King of Bohemia thus collected a full million pounds for one set of jewels, the slander case against the Wilsons collapsed with their vindication, and no one was ever convicted of the theft because the stolen property was worthless paste. The narrator is left to wonder whether the Queen of Bohemia herself knew the truth of who really stole the black diamonds.

By Baroness Emmuska Orczy · First published 1935 · Genre: Mystery, Detective Fiction, Crime Fiction · 4 chapters

Contents

More by Baroness Emmuska Orczy