She put on gloves.
Cassian watched her transform.
At the club, she had looked amused by everyone’s performance.
Here, she became precise.
She examined clasps before stones, construction before signatures, wear patterns before provenance claims.
She asked for ultraviolet light, higher magnification, archived auction references, previous conservation records.
Cassian sat at the end of the table and said almost nothing.
For the first hour, Penelope forgot he existed.
Then she opened the third case.
Inside lay a diamond-and-onyx necklace attributed to a celebrated Parisian house, dated 1926.
The paperwork valued it at nearly eight million dollars.
Penelope leaned closer.
Her hands became very still.
Cassian noticed.
“What?”
She did not answer immediately.
She rotated the necklace beneath the lamp.
The stones were excellent.
The proportions were convincing.
The platinum work imitated the period beautifully.
Too beautifully.
She turned the central clasp over.
“There.”
Cassian rose but stayed on his side of the table.
“What am I looking at?”
“A problem.”
She exchanged the loupe for a microscope.
“The maker’s mark is correct in shape but wrong in depth.
The engraving tool is modern.
And these hinge pins were replaced recently.”
“Restoration?”
“Possibly.”
She looked through the microscope again.
“Except the solder composition is wrong too.”
Cassian’s expression hardened.
“Fake?”
“Not yet.
I do not call an eight-million-dollar jewel fake because one detail irritates me.”
Penelope reached for the provenance file.
The necklace had supposedly been photographed in the industrialist family’s collection in 1961.
She requested the archived image.
Twenty minutes later, a staff researcher brought it in.
Penelope set the photograph beside the necklace.
The room went quiet.
The old photograph showed a tiny asymmetry in the onyx panel surrounding the center diamond.
The necklace on the table did not.
Cassian stared at both.
“So this is not the same piece.”
“No.”
“Someone swapped it.”
“At some point after that photograph was taken.”
His voice cooled.
“Find out when.”
Penelope looked up.
“I am an appraiser, not one of your investigators.”
“Then appraise.”
