Dear Diary
I found out that Shirin had made it to Lofty and his family, where her uncle was staying, but I didn't anticipate gate-crashing my own memorial service. I had absolutely no idea I was reported dead and I suppose I was a bit crass in my greeting of Jack. I wasn't sure what to say when I realised he had come all that way and now I look back on it he was right to be angry, he was right to be done with me and it hurt – god how it hurt. He knew I was married to the Maharajah Eleanor told me, but he didn't know why and as he strode off I didn't have chance to explain myself, even though I always say I don't have to explain myself to anyone – it's just it is Jack and ...
Lofty drank rather a lot at dinner, the Sheikh was a little too close to Eleanor but it was Shirin who needed me.
Shirin had a letter delivered, asking her to meet her 'guardian angel' and I confess to being intrigued, but I was not on home soil and I would be alone ... unless...
I found out where Jack was staying, why he wasn't with the Lofthouse family I don't know, stubborn pride knowing him, but at least I was able to find his lodgings from a short snoop on Eleanor's desk. A boarding house in London.
He was reluctant, no surprise really, but my language was a bit flowery, I did lay it on a bit thick as I told him what Shirin had told me about the end of her village.
We are too alike, me and Jack, when it comes to a puzzle and he did follow me to the church where Shirin was to meet this man, I was glad, it was like old times.
It was quiet, even with the few saying prayers; there was no priest and as I sat there watching people leave the shadows I found one man waiting, he threatened me with a sword, he wanted to see Shirin but as I was trying to persuade him to talk to me he was shot by someone who had snuck in behind Jack.
The poor man, obviously English, wanted her forgiveness for something, but he died before he could tell me. He gave me a pendant, beautiful with a lovely clear emerald at its centre.
Jack and I weren't exactly arrested but we did have the police speak to us, have the bullet checked – it wasn't from my gun, but we knew that -the officer, Forsyth, gave me back my gun but kept both our passports, so Jack couldn't get home which peeved him and he strode out in that way he does; I narrowly missed being caught by Montague who decided to have a row with Forsyth in his office – I think he expected me at least to have been locked up. He's involved in this, whatever it is, somehow, of that I am sure, but I need Jack to be on my side.
I caught up with Jack and we argued on a bridge over the Thames, it was silly, petty, I even apologised for not being dead, well yelled at his retreating back.
I won him over, eventually, and dragged the poor man to see Professor Linnaeus, who has been kicked out of Jerusalem because of me. I needed to know what the pendant was, apparently something to do with Alexander the Great, and a powerful curse. The pendant meant the crypt that Alexander had protected with an enormous emerald called the All Seeing Eye had been disturbed. When I say enormous believe me it was huge! I needed two hands to hold it!
I don't really believe in curses per se, Jack certainly doesn't, but there was something about this pendant and the story that got my blood running.
While the Prof was supposed to be finding a transcript for us, someone attacked Jack while I was upstairs wondering what Linnaeus was doing. It was rushed, and frantic, and whoever attacked Jack didn't get the pendant – and then we had another interrupted moment, in the pouring rain – am I cursed!
Who wants this pendant, and why? What does it mean? Perhaps Shirin will tell me.