stones
will be distributed among various carriers and the risk of loss through
accident lessened. This time of all times, it seemed, the precaution
had not worked. It was so unusual that all the stones should have been
put on one plane that the British Post Office itself was surprised, as
well as appalled. The officials postponed admitting the truth until no
more doubt was possible; on December 30 they made a statement: "About
250 bags of letters and parcel mails . . . were on board the aircraft.
It is not unlikely that a number of packets declared to contain
diamonds were in the letter mails, but it is not yet possible to
confirm this. The post office has received no claims from the senders
of registered mail posted at about the time concerned, although
inquiries have been made by insurance assessors."
In
other words, the Diamond Trading Company had not been bombarding the
post office with anguished demands for reassurance. But there was no
reason for the company to be unduly alarmed. The lost property wasn't
theirs any more; it belonged to the purchasers. Lloyd's the insurers,
however, being heavily involved, lost no time getting in touch with
their insurance adjusters, and on December 30, five days after the
crash, one of their investigators with several associates went to
Prest-wick. All this time the salvaged mails were being dried out and
shipped to post office headquarters in London for identification and
sending again. (As it happens, one of these letters was mine. It
arrived two weeks late at its destination in New York, water-stained
and muddy, stamped "Salvaged Mail, Aircraft Crash, Prestwick
25-12-54.") Research had finally turned up the fact that it was more
than likely the whole diamond consignment had indeed been aboard that
plane, owing to an unusual circumstance: another plane which had been
carrying
