The James Bond Anthology

‘Fifteen thousand pounds. And sixteen,’ a pause. A glance at someone in the front row. ‘Against you, sir.’ The flick of a catalogue being raised. ‘Seventeen thousand pounds I am bid. Eighteen. Nineteen. I am bid twenty thousand pounds.’ And so the quiet voice went, calmly, unhurriedly on while down among the audience the equally impassive bidders signalled their responses to the litany.

‘What is he selling?’ asked Bond, opening his catalogue.

‘Lot 40,’ said Mr Snowman. ‘That diamond rivière the porter’s holding on the black velvet tray. It’ll probably go for about twenty-five. An Italian is bidding against a couple of Frenchmen. Otherwise they’d have got it for twenty. I only went to fifteen. Liked to have got it. Wonderful stones. But there it is.’

Sure enough, the price stuck at twenty-five thousand and the hammer, held by its head and not by its handle, came down with soft authority. ‘Yours, sir,’ said Mr Peter Wilson and a sales clerk hurried down the aisle to confirm the identity of the bidder.

‘I’m disappointed,’ said Bond.

Mr Snowman looked up from his catalogue, ‘Why is that?’

‘I’ve never been to an auction before and I always thought the auctioneer banged his gavel three times and said going, going, gone, so as to give the bidders a last chance.’

Mr Snowman laughed. ‘You might still find that operating in the Shires or in Ireland, but it hasn’t been the fashion at London sale rooms since I’ve been attending them.’

‘Pity. It adds to the drama.’

‘You’ll get plenty of that in a minute. This is the last lot before the curtain goes up.’

One of the porters had reverently uncoiled a glittering mass of rubies and diamonds on his black velvet tray. Bond looked at the catalogue. It said ‘Lot 41’ which the luscious prose described as:

A PAIR OF FINE AND IMPORTANT RUBY AND DIAMOND BRACELETS, the front of each in the form of an elliptical cluster composed of one larger and two smaller rubies within a border of cushion-shaped diamonds, the sides and back formed of simpler clusters alternating with diamond openwork scroll motifs springing from single-stone ruby centres millegriffe-set in gold, running between chains of rubies and diamonds linked alternately, the clasp also in the form of an elliptical cluster.

* According to family tradition, this lot was formerly the property of Mrs Fitzherbert (1756–1837) whose marriage to the Prince of Wales afterwards Geo. IV was definitely established when in 1905 a sealed packet deposited at Coutts Bank in 1833 and opened by Royal permission disclosed the marriage certificate and other conclusive proofs. These bracelets were probably given by Mrs Fitzherbert to her niece, who was described by the Duke of Orleans as ‘the prettiest girl in England’.

While the bidding progressed, Bond slipped out of his seat and went down the aisle to the back of the room where the overflow audience spread out into the New Gallery and the Entrance Hall to watch the sale on closed-circuit television. He casually inspected the crowd, seeking any face he could recognize from the 200 members of the Soviet embassy staff whose photographs, clandestinely obtained, he had been studying during the past days. But amidst an audience that defied classification – a mixture of dealers, amateur collectors and what could be broadly classified as rich pleasure-seekers – was not a feature, let alone a face, that he could recognize except from the gossip columns. One or two sallow faces might have been Russian, but equally they might have belonged to half a dozen European races. There was a scattering of dark glasses, but dark glasses are no longer a disguise. Bond went back to his seat. Presumably the man would have to divulge himself when the bidding began.

‘Fourteen thousand I am bid. And fifteen. Fifteen thousand.’ The hammer came down. ‘Yours, sir.’