Jewelry stolen from Edwina’s home

The theft from Edwina’s home was more than a loss of jewellery: a bright red box disappeared with irreplaceable family keepsakes inside, and the household’s response turned suspicion toward Alicia despite the lack of evidence against her. Recalled by Edwina more than forty years later, the burglary remains a shock marked by what was taken, whom the family blamed, and her bitter sense that the truth had been visible all along.

The Box and What It Held

The burglary occurred on a summer afternoon when Edwina was at the dentist having a crown fixed and Alicia had gone home. The thieves took the entire bright red, extendable jewellery box, including its contents. Edwina had kept both valuable and intimate things there: the only surviving photograph of the family of four on the beach at Sennen Cove, a lock of Ollie Treadaway’s hair, the children’s baby teeth, and dice she had hoped might bring luck.

What mattered most to her was not the monetary value of the stolen jewellery. She specifically remembers the tiny rings from her first marriage, the baby teeth, Ollie Treadaway’s lock of hair, and the photograph as the losses she still misses. The box had held objects whose importance came from their connection to family life and to people no longer present. Their removal made the burglary a theft of memory as well as property.

One keepsake escaped. Rowena had slyly borrowed the charm bracelet and then failed to return it, so it was not in the box when it was stolen. That small act of concealment left Edwina with at least one surviving piece of the collection, even as the objects she most cared about vanished.

The Afternoon and Its Alibis

The household was largely away. Both boys were at boarding school; Dickie was in his Westminster office; Rowena was sitting her history O level examination; and Edwina was at the dentist. Decades later, she can still recall details about Archduke Franz Ferdinand from that exam period. The ordinary specificity of these separate absences stands in sharp contrast with the unanswered question of how the thieves entered: there had been no sign of a forced entry.

Charlie called Edwina after the break-in. He pointed out that it could have been worse and expressed relief that she had been at her dental appointment. Edwina was touched that he knew where she had been, since she could not remember telling him. His attention to her comings and goings offered a moment of affection amid the shock, while also fixing the appointment in her memory as the reason she had not been home when the burglary occurred.

Suspicion Falls on Alicia

Because there was no forced entry, alibis mattered. The police, Lucas, and Dickie all pointed to Alicia, and Edwina recalls the accusation as so foolish that remembering it still brings back the hysterical disbelief she felt at the time. Their suspicion fell on the housekeeper, whose absence from the home could be turned against her, even though Edwina considered her more honest than any of them.

Edwina’s defence of Alicia is sharpened by Dickie’s own conduct. Some months before the robbery, he had suggested that Alicia pose as his personal secretary so he could claim her wages against tax. Edwina had rejected the idea and tried to explain why Alicia was not someone who could be trusted to steal: Alicia believed in God and believed herself watched by God at every moment. In Edwina’s account, even taking a bar of soap without permission would have seemed to Alicia an offence for which she might be punished. The accusation therefore exposes not only the family’s poor judgment but the hypocrisy of placing suspicion on Alicia while overlooking Dickie’s willingness to enlist her in a tax deception.

The Memory of a Misjudgment

In the later recollection, Edwina does not identify the thief. Instead, she stresses that the family’s certainty about Alicia was misplaced and that the truth had already been staring them in the face. Looking back, she feels a wave of sickness at how gullible they had been. The passage preserves the force of recognition without spelling out more than Edwina says: the family’s error was not simply that it lacked an answer, but that it fastened on the wrong person while overlooking what was nearer to hand.

The theft thus persists in Edwina’s memory as two linked injuries. The first is the permanent loss of the objects she still misses; the second is the household’s unjust suspicion of Alicia. Even Charlie’s kindness on the phone cannot undo either loss. After revisiting the memory, Edwina is overwhelmed by tiredness and lies down, the old burglary still carrying its shock into the present of the narration.