Jolt for a Job-Hunter

Fortnight ago, the Duke & Duchess of Windsor arrived quietly in London, went straight to Lord Dudley's tranquil Ednam Lodge estate near Windsor. The unrelenting royal family had sanctioned their visit only if there was a minimum of publicity and display.

To pacify insistent newsmen, they agreed to meet a few top correspondents at a small Mayfair cocktail party. The Duke, dressed in a mousy lounge suit and striped tie, babbled amiably about Britain's coal problem, the difficulties of Continental postwar life. The slim, charming Duchess looked closer to 35 than 50. She wore a handsome but unobtrusive red woolen suit with demure earrings and lapel brooch, made a point of chatting with each guest. Correspondents got the impression that the Windsors wanted a quiet and friendly press because the Duke was job-hunting and wanted no reminders of old scandals. Next day, they got such a splurge of print as they had not had since the abdication.

In the misty Berkshire dusk, while the Windsors were in London (he at the Palace to see the King, she, excluded, to have tea with an unnamed friend), a nimble burglar had slipped past two Scotland Yard detectives, clambered up a drainpipe at rambling, red brick Ednam Lodge and gained entrance to the Windsors' white-walled bedroom. He went to a Gladstone bag, removed a brown leather jewel case. From a small leather box on the Duke's bedside table, he plucked a valuable watch. Two hundred yards away, he stopped, picked through the jewel case, discarded some inexpensive hatpins. Then he drove away. According to the Duchess, he had stolen every jewel she owned except those she had on. The loss: (Windsor's estimate) $80,000.

At week's end, those few clear facts had been culled out of the mad confusion of the world press. In London, the Daily Mail fell overboard, estimated the value of the loot at $2 million. U.S. papers wildly reported that two socialite women were under suspicion, and that the Duchess had stored part of her million-dollar collection in a safe-deposit vault. The Duchess regretfully denied that one: ". . . It was stupid. I've been kicking myself all over the place." The Duchess was asked to describe the basis on which she selected jewels to match her costumes. She said: "A fool would know that with tweeds or other daytime clothes one wears gold arid with evening clothes one wears platinum." Among the missing was her famous diamond stork-shaped clip; a pair of diamond and sapphire earrings; a 58.2 carat aquamarine ring.

Although the chic Duchess was calm, the proud, pathetic little Duke was blazing mad. His never-good chance of a Government job (he wanted the Governor Generalship of Australia) had been crushed between the rollers of Fleet Street's presses.

An $80,000 jewel collection stood for the kind of life no longer popular with austerity ridden Britons or Australian socialists.

Said Windsor: "I don't think I will play very good golf this afternoon."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.