Some days later, Lili received Kaminski’s note asking her to call at his shop when she was able. Wary that the tong may be keeping an eye on the jeweller’s, she penned a note and gave it to hotel reception to deliver to Detective Forster at Russell Street.
“You mentioned,” she said when he arrived at her door in the early afternoon, “you had a question or two you wanted to ask him about my ‘case,’ as you call it.”
“Just to tidy up one or two minor details,” William replied. “It shouldn’t interfere with your business.”
Kaminski was amenable to the detective’s participation in the meeting. “Tea for my guests, if you please,” he said to an attendant after greeting them. He seated them in his back room, and Forster briefed him on the events that occurred after Lili’s previous visit. He appeared visibly stunned, then solicitous when told about the incident at West Melbourne Swamp. “My dear girl,” he said, “that is a most notorious area. You must promise me never to set foot there again.”
“I was coerced to go into that godforsaken wilderness,” she replied with implacable calm. “But with your kind offices, and the Melbourne Police Force at my side, now it all seems like a fading nightmare.”
“I wonder, sir,” asked Forster, “whether you might have some idea about the people who were pursuing her, since they managed to plant a note in her pocket just after she left here. I imagine they may have tracked her in the first place by watching the jewellers in the district.”
“I am loath to admit that some knaves number among my profession,” Kaminski said. “I am deeply grateful that Miss Chan chanced upon me with enquiries about her jewels, else she may have found herself even more gravely ensnared. However, I pride myself on being widely known for my high ethics, even among blackguards of their stamp. They know what to expect should they darken my door.”
One of Kaminski’s attendants entered with tea. When she had left, Kaminski continued.
“In other words,” he said, “our established clientele are impeccable – as is my establishment in the scrupulous measures we take to preserve all elements of their privacy.” His finger tapped slightly on a business ledger on top of the mahogany desk, which was set with some neat rows of velvet-lined trays, alongside one or two instruments of his trade.
“No, I did not mean to imply otherwise,” Forster was quick to reassure him. “Indeed, Russell Street has quite a comprehensive understanding of the establishments in this trade, and your own possesses an immaculate reputation with us. I presume, therefore, that you are unfamiliar with our felon from the other evening, a burly Chinese-American thug who goes – that is to say – went by the alias Algernon, and his associate, a young Victorian female, modest in means yet familiar with this neighbourhood, who calls herself Moira?”
“I should say not.”
Forster chuckled lightly at the man’s profound indignation. “Then, that’s all my loose threads tied up, thank you, Mr Kaminski. Miss Chan has asked me to remain while she completes her business, if you don’t mind.”
“Not in the least,” Kaminski said, and fetched from his safe a tray holding several small envelopes and some documents. “I have finished cataloguing your gems, Miss Chan, and a fine collection it is, including, as I mentioned during our last meeting, one outstanding stone. I will match them against the inventory and, if you don’t mind, have you sign for them.”
Lili and Kaminski examined the contents of each package, and Lili signed one of the papers. Forster sat back in his chair, casually overseeing the proceedings.
“After my ordeal at the hands of the criminal underworld, I should be rather anxious keeping these valuables about me here in the city. And my premises at Deep Lead are not altogether as secure as they might be,” she said.
Kaminski replied that he would be honoured to take charge of the jewels, act as her agent in any trade dealings she might require, and have them deposited in his strong-room box in the Bank of Australasia for safekeeping in the long term, where he kept his finest gems, to all of which she assented. Forster agreed to witness their transaction, signing where Kaminski indicated. Lili kept only a few gems to carry in the false bottom of her jewel case, “for any extraordinary expenses which may arise,” she said.
“Oh, and of course, I almost forgot,” said Kaminski when they finished. “The matter of that special stone, which I have researched a little about. Fascinating story…”
“Perhaps tedious for William…” Lili broke in.
“Go right ahead,” said Forster insouciantly, “I’m not in any hurry.”
Kaminski resumed his seat and took a sip of tea. “I recovered the issue of the Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review where I first saw mention of the rumour that an important historical gem was being offered for sale in the United States,” he said. “The stone was further rumoured to have entered the French royal collection during the reign of Louis XV. It is not reported as established fact, mind you; however, it was supposed to be among a number of pieces that disappeared during the theft of the Crown Jewels from the Garde-Meuble in Paris, in September 1792, amid the violence of the French Revolution and the imprisonment of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.”
Lili felt a tingle in her spine that was not entirely pleasant. Forster looked mildly interested.
Kaminski continued: “What caught my eye was the reported description of the stone as being cut in ‘an old, elongated navette’ form – that means like a ‘little boat’, pointed at both ends. There is a charming story, probably a myth, mind you, that the style came into fashion when Louis XV had a diamond cut in a shape intended to resemble the smile of his mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour. The cut itself came to be known as the ‘marquise cut.’”
He took up a small publication that lay in the tray, thumbed through a few pages, and continued, “You see, there is even a sketch of the rumoured stone.” He emptied a gem from one of the envelopes, and it lay there glistening alone on the black velvet, an intriguing pale, smoky violet glimmer about it. Lili took the Circular issue and peered at the sketch, then picked up the gem and compared the two. “Hmm…” She held it up to the window light and turned it slightly, causing its steel-blue heart to flash for the briefest instant.
Forster uncrossed his legs and sat a little more forward in his seat. “Miss Chan,” he said quietly, “do you happen to have brought your ‘Blue Marquis’ with you, which we returned to you at Russell Street?” She withdrew it from her jewellery case and placed both gems down together on the tray.
Kaminski let out a guffaw. “No, no!” he laughed. “This vulgar piece of strass bears not the slightest resemblance to a true diamond, let alone the so-called Blue Marquis, rumoured to have been seen some years ago in America.”
Forster had set his mouth in a grim line, but said nothing more. Lili sensed his detective’s mind at work, connecting her via Moira’s testimony to acts she may have committed in San Francisco that were, strictly speaking, felonies.
“All hearsay,” she could say.
He would regard her with that cool eye of his. “Perhaps, but I am struck by the alignment of these details with the gems in your possession. In particular, I note that you allowed me to carry on under the delusion that this rumoured Blue Marquis was strass, while keeping this valuable stone, the real one, here under lock and key and having it valued.”
“I had never heard of it before this fantastical history lesson.”
“No? And yet our tong friend at the Swamp seemed deadly familiar with the name.”
“This is all terribly interesting, Mr Kaminski,” Lili said. “But why Marquis and not Marquise?”
“To distinguish the particular stone from its generic cut – the Marquise style I described.”
“Do continue. You were telling us that the stone was stolen during the Revolution.”
“Indeed. Most of the stolen Crown Jewels eventually reappeared during the years after the theft, but a small number – this one possibly included – did not resurface for decades. Others perhaps never will. The rumoured Blue Marquis is somewhat smaller than the stones recorded in the inventories of the Ancien Régime, but similar enough in cut and colour for some experts to conclude that it may have been recut from one of the original royal stones.”
Forster leaned forward. “What order of value are we speaking of, Mr Kaminski?”
“As an ordinary stone, it is worth a small fortune – easily eight hundred pounds sterling.”
“And if it is this lost…Blue Marquis?”
“If this provenance as rumoured can be established, I hesitate to give a figure – immeasurably more.”
“Enough to kill for,” he would say.
“And you would be able to prove that to a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt? Or would you be stuck with another – what did you call it – ‘circumstantial case,’ I wonder?”
He would shake his head, as though questioning how he could have been so taken in.
“I did nothing out of greed, believe me, William.”
“As the theory has it,” Kaminski continued, “further evidence for the Marquis appears in a London auction catalogue of 1851, which refers to ‘a valuable blue navette-cut diamond, of six and three-quarter carats, of uncertain provenance, but unquestionably French.’”
“And the weight of the article before us?” said Forster, already anticipating Kaminski’s answer.
“That’s the marvellous thing,” Kaminski said with a wide smile. “Six and three-quarters precisely.”
“The documented trail ends in London, though,” Lili suggested blandly.
“The documented trail, perhaps. There are later reports of a similar blue stone circulating among merchants in the Pearl River trade, though nothing firm enough to establish ownership or continuity.”
“All extremely iffy,” Lili said.
“Except for 1853 murmurs in a San Francisco newspaper about a ‘blue talisman’ discovered in a crate of curios from China,” Kaminski insisted, “which quickly became an object of frantic desire among waterfront gamblers and dealers.”
Lili was quiet.
“The point is,” Kaminski insisted, “that the San Francisco report refers to it in a marginal note as Le Marquis Bleu, and suggests royal origins deliberately obscured by a name that preserved a French aristocratic flavour while distancing the stone from the Crown. There is no specific carat weight given in the Circular, but there is the sketch, you see.”
“The circumstances?” asked Forster.
“It was offered for sale but the deal collapsed. There have been no further reported sightings. It goes underground again.”
There was little more to say at Kaminski’s, and even less during their walk to her hotel, where they lingered restlessly in the lobby.
“Well…” said Forster, but did not finish whatever it was he had intended.
“You don’t have to say anything, I know what you are thinking. I can tell you where the trail went after London. To a smuggler in San Francisco; to my employer, Madame Ah Toy, whose note Mr Lee Kong Wing, the Elder at the See Yup Temple, delivered to me; then to Fang, who stole it from her. Finally, to me.”
“So Moira was right. You murdered Fang Jing Dock for the Blue Marquis.”
“I did nothing for that diamond nor any others.”
“The most heinous of crimes.”
“If I had not bitten through in that circumstance, I would have been devoured whole – and I very nearly was. Perhaps a man cannot understand.”
“I sympathise deeply with you for the plight you suffered in San Francisco. But I never dreamed you capable of such a crime.”
“Men,” she said under her breath. “Merely circumstantial evidence, Detective.”
“Then let me ask you straight out, Lili. Did you kill Fang Jing Dock?”
“I have not come so far,” she said steadily, “to confess, so to speak, any of my acts to a man. Even a man like you.”
From the draft novel Stawell Bardo © Michael Guest 2026
