Property of a Noblewoman (3 page)

Hal Baker was waiting for her at the bank when she got there, and shook her hand with a friendly smile and an appreciative glance as he took in the pretty face and graceful figure. She was not at all what he had expected from the surrogate’s court. The clerks they sent were usually much older and very dour. Jane was a beautiful young woman with an interested, lively expression in her eyes. He led her downstairs to the safe deposit boxes, with the young female notary trailing behind them. Hal walked to the section with the largest boxes, used two keys to free the box, and carried it into a small private room, barely large enough to accommodate the three of them, and the notary brought in a third chair so she could sit down and observe the inventory, as they did it. Hal had Mrs. di San Pignelli’s file in his hand, with the inventory he had taken two years before. He handed Jane a copy of it as soon as they walked into the room, and she took off her red coat. She read down the list of the box’s contents, and when Hal opened the box, Jane looked inside.

She could see the individual jewelry boxes and the folders. He took out the papers first and set them on the desk, and then opened the folders one by one. Jane examined the one containing photographs first, and found herself looking at a beautiful woman with deep pensive eyes and a dazzling smile. It was obviously Mrs. di San Pignelli, since most of the images included her. There were some early photographs of her as a young woman, which were more serious, and many of her with a much older, very dashing-looking man. Jane turned each one over and noticed the date and his name, “Umberto,” carefully written in an elegant handwriting on the back. Some were taken at parties, others on vacation, and there were several on yachts. Jane recognized some as having been taken in Venice, others in Rome. She also noticed pictures of them in Paris, and one of them skiing in the Alps at Cortina d’Ampezzo, a few on horseback, and one of them in a race car with Umberto in helmet and goggles. The older man appeared to be very protective of the beautiful young woman, and she looked happy at his side, and nestled in his arms. She saw several pictures of them taken at a château, and some in elaborate gardens with the château in the background. And there were faded clippings from Roman and Neapolitan newspapers that showed them at parties, and referred to them as Conte e Contessa di San Pignelli. And among the clippings, Jane noticed the count’s obituary from a Neapolitan newspaper in 1965, indicating that he was seventy-nine at the time of his death. It was easy to calculate then that he had been thirty-eight years older than Marguerite, who was only forty-one when he died, and they had been married for twenty-three years.

It looked as though they had led a luxurious, golden life, and Jane was struck by how elegant they both were, and how stylishly dressed. Marguerite was wearing jewelry in the photos where she wore evening gowns. And in several of them, mostly the ones where she was alone, Jane noticed a deeply sad expression in her eyes, as though something terrible had happened to her. But she always appeared happy in the pictures taken with the older man. They were handsome together and seemed very much in love.

And at the very end of the file, there were a number of photographs of a little girl, tied with a faded pink ribbon. They had no name written on the back, but only the dates when they were taken, in a different, less sophisticated hand. She was a pretty little girl with a somewhat mischievous expression and laughing eyes. There was a vague resemblance to the countess, but not enough so as to be sure they were related. And Jane was struck with a sudden wave of sadness, looking through the memorabilia of a woman’s life, who was no longer there and must have come to a lonely end, if she had died without a will and no known heirs.

She wondered what had happened to the little girl, who, judging by the dates on the back of the pictures, would be an old woman now as well. It was all a piece of history from the distant past, and it was unlikely that any of the people in the images were still alive.

Jane gently closed the folder with the photographs, as Hal handed her the next one, with assorted documents in it. There were several expired passports, which showed that Marguerite was a U.S. citizen, born in New York in 1924, and the stamps in her passport indicated that she had left the States, and entered Portugal, arriving by ship in Lisbon in 1942, at eighteen. Portugal was a neutral country, and the subsequent stamps in her passport showed that she traveled to England the day after she arrived in Portugal. And she had only returned to the States for a few weeks in 1949, seven years later. Further stamps in her passport showed that six weeks after she arrived in England in 1942, she had gone to Rome, with a “special visa.” Jane couldn’t help thinking that the count must have pulled some very high-up strings, or paid someone handsomely, to get his bride into Italy with the war on. There were Italian passports in the folder as well, and the first one was dated December 1942, and showed her name as di San Pignelli, so they were married by then, three months after she’d arrived in Europe, and she had acquired Italian citizenship with the marriage.

She came back into the States in 1960 on a U.S. passport that had been renewed at the American embassy in Rome. It was her first visit back to the States since her three-week trip in 1949 – and in 1960, she only stayed for days, not weeks. The passport showed no trips to the U.S. after that, until she moved to New York in 1994, when she was seventy years old. All her American passports had been renewed at the U.S. embassy in Rome. And she seemed to use her Italian one when traveling around Europe. She clearly had dual citizenship, and perhaps maintained her American one out of sentiment, since she had lived in Italy in the end for fifty-two years, the greater part of her lifetime, and all of her adult life till then. And she had not been to the States at all for thirty-four years, when she moved back for good in 1994.

Jane observed bank statements in the folder too, a record of her Social Security number, the rental papers for the safe deposit box, and a receipt for two rings she had sold in 1995 for four hundred thousand dollars. But nowhere among her papers could Jane find a will. There was nothing that referred to any heirs or next of kin, or anyone in fact. They found very little information in the folder. And other than that, there were only the two thick bundles of letters, written in fading ink, tied with a pale blue ribbon on one, and a pink one on the other. In one neatly tied stack, the letters were written in Italian, on heavy yellowed stationery, in brown ink, in an elegant handwriting that looked like a man’s, and were written by her husband, Jane assumed. The second set of letters seemed to be written by a woman and were in English. Jane glanced at a few of them without untying the ribbon and saw that many of them began with “My Darling Angel.” They seemed to be simple and direct outpourings of love, and were signed with the initial M. There was no will there. And the notary duly noted the two bundles of letters on her own inventory, as did Jane.

And then Jane carefully took out the twenty-two leather boxes, all of which looked like jeweler’s boxes, and one by one, she opened them, and her eyes grew wide as she saw their contents.

In the first box, she found a large rectangular emerald ring in an emerald cut. Jane didn’t know enough about jewelry to guess at its carat weight, but it was large, and the red leather box was marked “Cartier” in gold on the inside. She would have been tempted to try it on, but didn’t want Hal to think her unprofessional. So she wrote down the description, closed the box, and moved it to the other side of the desk, so as not to confuse it with the others.

The next box yielded a large oval ruby ring with a triangular white diamond on either side, again from Cartier. And the ruby was a deep, almost bloodlike color. It was a magnificent piece. And in the third box was an enormous diamond ring, again with a rectangular emerald-cut stone, like the emerald. It was absolutely dazzling and this time Jane gasped. She had never seen a diamond so large, and she looked up at Hal Baker in astonishment.

“I didn’t know diamonds came that size,” she said in awe, and he smiled.

“Neither did I, until I saw that one.” He hesitated and then smiled more broadly. “I won’t tell if you try it on. You might never get the chance again.” Feeling like a naughty child, she did as he suggested and slipped it on. It covered her finger to the joint and was absolutely spectacular. Jane was mesmerized by it, and could hardly bring herself to take it off.

“Wow,” she said unceremoniously, and all three of them laughed to relieve the tension in the room. It was a strange and slightly eerie experience going through this woman’s things, and it seemed so unusual that a woman with such valuable possessions had no one to leave them to, or had failed to do so, and never reclaimed them herself, to keep, wear, or sell. Jane couldn’t bear the thought of things as beautiful as this being sold for the benefit of the state, and not going to someone who would appreciate them, or had cared about her. This was just too sad.

The next box yielded an emerald and diamond brooch in a handsome design by an Italian jeweler. There was an invisibly set sapphire necklace from Van Cleef and Arpels, with matching earrings in a separate box, and an incredibly beautiful diamond bracelet that looked like lace. As she opened box after box, Jane found herself staring at one piece of jewelry more beautiful than another, and some of it, particularly the rings, set with very large stones. And there was a large round yellow diamond set in a ring by Cartier in the last box. It looked like a headlight, as Jane sat staring at the dazzling array in the now-open boxes. Hal Baker had said that Marguerite had some nice jewelry that might be of considerable value, but Jane had expected nothing like this. She hadn’t seen anything of its kind since she’d gone to London with her parents at sixteen, and went to the Tower of London to see an exhibit of the queen’s jewels. And some of these were prettier and more impressive than the queen’s. Countess Marguerite di San Pignelli had owned some truly spectacular jewelry, and Jane could easily guess that what she had before her, in the elegant leather boxes from some of the finest jewelers in Europe, was worth a fortune. She wasn’t quite sure what to do next.

“Maybe we should photograph it,” Jane suggested, as Hal nodded agreement. “That way I can show my boss what’s here.”

She took out her cell phone and took photographs of each item. It would show the value and importance of the collection far better than her meticulous inventory. Among the pieces, there was also a pearl and diamond choker by Cartier, and a long string of very large perfect pearls in a creamy color. And she had also come across one box that contained a simple gold ring with a crest on it that looked like Marguerite might have worn it as a young girl, a gold chain with a heart-shaped locket on it with a tiny baby picture in it, and a plain gold wedding band. The items in the box were of very little value and looked completely unrelated to the expensive pieces in the other boxes, but the nature of them suggested that they must have had sentimental meaning to their owner.

Jane could only imagine that the countess must have led a very grand life at one time, and the locations of where the photographs were taken and the clothes she was wearing in them suggested that as well. She was wearing beautiful gowns and dresses, extravagant furs, and elegant hats in every photo. It made Jane curious now about who Marguerite di San Pignelli had been. All that she could tell from the contents of the box was that she had been a young American woman who had gone to live in Italy at eighteen, married the older man in the pictures within a few months, and he had died twenty-three years later. And years after that, she had moved back to the States and never left again after her return, until her death at ninety-one. Among all the passports in the safe deposit box, none were current. Her last one had expired two years after she moved back to New York, and she had never gone back to Italy again. All the information Jane could glean from photographs, newspapers, and documents were pieces of a puzzle, but so much about her was missing. When Marguerite died six months earlier, she had taken all the answers to their questions with her.

After Jane had finished taking the photographs of each item, from several angles, she closed the jewelry boxes, and Hal put them back in the safe deposit box.

“I think we’d better leave them here for now,” Jane said nervously. She had no intention of taking them on the subway with her, when she went back to work. The photographs were good enough to show Harriet what they were dealing with. They would have to call an auction house to dispose of them, and Jane was wondering which one Harriet would use. Sotheby’s and Christie’s were the obvious choices, and Jane had no idea if there were other venues for selling jewelry like this. She had no experience with items of this value and magnitude, and the kindly banker didn’t either. Hal strode out of the little cubicle, and the notary and Jane observed him put the safe deposit box back where it belonged and lock it securely into place with both keys.

“You’ll hear from me as soon as they tell me at the office what they want me to do. It sure is pretty stuff,” Jane said dreamily. All three people in the tiny viewing room had been somewhat stunned by what they’d seen. They had never been exposed to jewelry like this before, and Jane suspected Harriet hadn’t either, but she would undoubtedly know what to do.

Jane thanked Hal Baker and the notary when she left, and took the subway back to her office at the surrogate’s court. The building itself was a beautiful example of Beaux-Arts architecture, built in 1907, and was landmarked. It was a handsome place to work, although not a happy job. When she got there, she found Harriet at her desk, going over some documents the probate court had sent over, and she looked up when she saw Jane standing in the doorway, hesitating to interrupt her.

“Nice coat,” Harriet said, with a wintry smile. “What’s up?”

“I just came back from verifying the inventory in the di San Pignelli case.”

“I forgot you were doing that this morning,” Harriet said, distracted, expecting it to have been routine. “How did it go?”