A mile of shelf space is filled each year at the Public Record Office

In early 1950 she married a Romanian, Ion Bunea, and with the help of a British diplomat, they planned to leave the country. But the Communists found out about the plot. They arrested both Buneas in the summer of 1950 and insisted the diplomat be recalled to London.

The lists of contents now open in the Public Record Office show some of Mrs Bunea's property was extremely valuable.

"Package number five" contained "one gold bracelet with a brown diamond surrounded by white diamonds; one gold bracelet with three diamonds; a gold locket with inset horse shoe of sapphires; a diamond brooch...", as well as pearl necklaces and earrings and gold coins.

However other packages were full of silver cutlery: number seven contained 22 silver salt spoons, salt cellars, and other miscellaneous silverware.

Bags returned

Three of the bags belonged to Annie Samuelli, who had also worked in the Legation's press department, but had been arrested as a Western sympathiser.

One bag belonged to a Mrs Ottolescu. Her husband Emil was a leading barrister. His cousin Vassil, now 96 and still living in Bucharest, remembers Emil as a key figure in the anti communist National Peasants' Party. He recalls Emil being arrested as part of a clampdown on opponents in 1950.

Before his arrest, Emil Ottolescu had frightened the diplomats by asking for his wife's jewellery back. He believed the valuables were still in Bucharest and had no idea they had been sent to London. The Communists had confiscated all his other property and, like the Buneas, he needed cash to try to escape.

Officials in the legation were worried their actions would be uncovered. The bag had to be sent back to Bucharest in November 1950, and was returned to Ottolescu via intermediaries.

RG Watts in the Legation reassured the Southern Department at the Foreign Office in London that other hitches were unlikely:

"In the case of the other deposits ... the owners are as you know serving long prison sentences and we need not anticipate any similar complications for some time," he wrote.

But there was a problem with the bags.

Secrets remain

In late 1950, the Foreign Office in London warned Bucharest the bags might be stopped because they were too heavy. The guideline for each diplomatic bag was 11 pounds - one of the shipments weighed 18.5 pounds.

Now the valuables were all in the Foreign Office - and there was nowhere safe to store them. The Bank of England was asked, and refused.

In October 1950 one official wrote that "Mr Reilly's friends" had agreed to store the jewellery "indefinitely".

"Friends" was the euphemism for the secret services. And this is where the 'open' trail ends. The secret intelligence service records remain closed.

But Gill Bennett, chief historian at the Foreign Office, has established that the valuables were returned many years later: