Wrekin ruby mystery can only have a sorry ending
“My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.”
Thus begins A Case of Identity, one of Conan Doyle’s marvellously enduring short stories featuring the world’s most popular detective and his sidekick Watson.
I was reminded of the immortal detective by the Birmingham Post’s intriguing front-page lead on Friday ‘Riddle of collapsed firm and £11 million ruby’ unearthed in true Holmes-like style by colleague Tom Scotney.
The story related how Shropshire-based Wrekin Construction had issued £11 million worth of shares a year before it collapsed into administration in exchange for an item described as “probably the world’s most expensive ruby.”
Accounts studied by Scotney show that the Wrekin ruby, known as the “Gem of Tanzania” was bought in exchange for £11 million worth of shares from Tamar Group, a Derbyshire construction firm which later took overall control of Wrekin.
The tale, like all great detective stories, gets murkier.
The Gem of Tanzania was apparently valued by a “professional valuer at the Instituto Gemmologico Italiano, in Valenza, Italy, on August 31 2007.”
But the Italians have denied all knowledge while Tamar have sniffily told ‘Inspector’ Scotney: “We don’t give anything to the press.”
Administrators Ernst and Young aren’t talking either, at least not about the ruby.
What an extraordinary story! The Gem of Tanzania is surely a ready-made 21st century follow-up to The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, a Conan Doyle original where a blue gemstone causes “two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide and several robberies” before being eaten by a London goose just before Christmas.
‘The Curse of the Wrekin Ruby’ is clearly a Christmas blockbuster in waiting, with the great detective travelling up to the Midlands by steam train with Watson to explain how a long-established construction firm was ruined by a 38-carat ruby.
While Holmes would have relished such events, it is another matter whether the 412 redundant workers at Shifnal could fine the whole story equally as amusing.
