Cartier's Hope, page 14
“Sometimes I think it would be easier to like women,” Martha mused. “At least, the question of marriage and children and giving up your life for someone else wouldn’t come into it.”
Fanny sighed. “Like everything else, Martha, it only looks easier. We have our burdens. We have to hide our affection in public. No one thinks anything of a man leaning down and kissing his wife tenderly or taking her hand or a million other small niceties, but all of that is verboten to us.”
“But the freedom,” Martha continued.
“There is no freedom,” I said. Both women turned to me. “There is no freedom for any of us. Whether we take women as lovers, or men. Whether we vow to remain unmarried, or marry a sophisticated, supportive man. Even if we dress as men like Malinda Blalock or Elisa Bernerström, who did it to fight in wars, or use male pen names like George Eliot or Charlotte Brontë, who did it to get published, we will still and forever be women, never liberated from our sex. Never freed from our way of loving and grieving and mourning. Never free from the power that men can exert over us. We are prisoners of our feelings. Of our attachments. Of our sentiments. We can pretend that we can do everything a man can do and more. We can insist we get the vote and the respect that is our due. But in the end, we will still be the ones to cook dinner and make the bed and weep over a novel and be called weak. We will still be forced to try to fight off a drunken coward who knows he is stronger than us and can get away with it even though he is a stupid lout and we are ten times smarter. We will stand up and fight for our sisters and our rights, but when the baby is sick, which one of us will not forgo all else to sit by its side? What man would do the same?”
Fanny took my hand. “Vee, you have to use that anger.”
I shrugged. “I’ve always been angry at injustice,” I said. “There’s nothing different now.”
“Yes, there is. I don’t know what’s changed in you, but the anger isn’t impersonal anymore. It’s not you looking through a window at a tableau you find disturbing. You’re inside the house now. Don’t be defeatist by thinking that what we do doesn’t matter. That we’ll never be free. We will be. We have to be. Even baby steps are still forward movement. Even if all we can do right now is fight for it, it’s when we fight that we are really alive.”
I went home that night and wrote and rewrote my Silk, Satin and Scandals column to include a rallying cry about the march. Finally, at midnight, when I read it over, I decided I had accomplished my goal. Surely, after reading about Letty Garland Briggs stepping up to spearhead the March for Equality, my unsuspecting sister would, in fact, volunteer and become the patron of an army of women determined to fight the status quo and protect one of their own.
CHAPTER 13
After delivering the column to the World’s offices the next morning, I returned home and sat down at my father’s desk. A strong cup of coffee by my side, I began taking notes and making a plan for how to get more information about Cartier and the diamond for my article.
What do I already know?
What do I need to learn?
How much material will be required?
The first thing I put on my list was to research the history of the Hope Diamond before Mr. Cartier had purchased it.
Who owns it?
When did it change hands?
Is there any truth to the story Mr. Cartier performed for my sister and me?
I also needed to visit Mr. Cartier and convince him I was interested in buying the stone to keep him from selling it to anyone else until I’d finished my article. That and my ultimate goal would require a balancing act. I had to play the part of Scheherazade but in the opposite way. To string Mr. Cartier along… pretend to be getting closer and closer to making the purchase but always wanting one more story from him… making him feel that his exaggerated tales were the way to reel me in as a client.
Meanwhile, I would need to check each of his narratives, proving through research whether they were myths.
As a reporter, I had always known that my job was to dig deep and ferret out the truth for the public. But this time, I had an ulterior motive. The article itself was just step one in a larger plan. Which may have been why this felt more like I was outlining a mystery novel. My mind was stuck in a muddle of plots.
Was there enough material to write an incendiary enough story?
Did that even matter? If Mr. Cartier was inventing stories, couldn’t I, too?
I needed to remember that the end goal wasn’t discovering the truth but convincing Mr. Oxley to try to blackmail Mr. Cartier. And then convincing Mr. Cartier that calling Mr. Oxley’s bluff would bring even more attention to the Hope. Only then would I be able to expose the publisher and his diabolical schemes and in the process destroy his reputation and exact my revenge.
So what to do first?
Mr. Cartier had told my sister and me that the history of great gems was also the history of magic, alchemy, curses, shams, and superstitions. So I needed to acquaint myself with the annals of stones.
I spent the next two days in the New York Public Library, reading scientific treatises on different gems and their properties. I then perused current and older magazines and newspapers, looking for articles on the Hope Diamond specifically. There were quite a few mentions over the years but nothing of depth. And certainly nothing as dramatic as the stories Mr. Cartier had told.
In The Scrapbook, Volume 4, I read an article titled “The Melodrama of Diamonds” by Gilson Willets. It was subtitled “The Tragic Side of the History of Great Historic Gems—The Mystery of a Guillotined Court Beauty’s Jewels.”
The article romanced the history of the Hope, starting in the 1830s when Henry Philip Hope of Surrey, England, bought the blue diamond possibly from Daniel Eliason, an art dealer and diamond collector. In 1894, Lord Francis Hope removed the stone from his bank in order to give it to his wife, May Yohé, but there was no mention of a great curse on the stone. Bad luck visits most families over the years. It was foolish to assume a diamond could be blamed for the Hope family losing its money and May Yohé and her husband divorcing.
A Treatise on Diamonds and Precious Stones by John Mawe, published in London in 1813, gave me some insight into how people thought about gems a hundred years ago but yielded nothing spectacular. Nor did Harry Emanuel’s similar book, written in 1867.
Natal Stones: Sentiments and Superstitions Associated with Precious Stones, by Tiffany’s famous gemologist George Frederick Kunz, offered more help, as did several other articles written by him.
As I became more immersed in the material, I began to see how Mr. Cartier had taken bits and pieces from various sources to concoct his case for the existence of the curse. But nothing really surprised me until I came upon a pamphlet written by a well-known psychic that described the properties of different stones. Certain crystals told the future. One gem attracted unsettled ghosts. Another warded off evil energy. It reminded me a bit of the stories Mr. Asher had told my sister and me that day at Cartier’s, and I made a note to search him out and see what else I could glean from his knowledge. But first, I wanted to get more information about how practitioners of the occult used stones.
The next morning, I sent a note to Martha, who had been writing about New York City’s esoteric and arcane scene for more than two years, asking if I could take her out for lunch. She wrote back, saying yes, and at eleven thirty, I took the streetcar downtown to the Scientific American offices at 361 Broadway at Franklin Street. Upstairs, Martha grabbed her coat and bag, and we went to a restaurant a block away that she recommended.
Over our lunch of fresh salmon, mayonnaise, and salad, I asked her questions about the uses of different stones. Martha talked, and I took notes. Her latest investigation, she told me, was into a psychic who used crystals and certain gems to communicate with the dead. If I wanted to see the woman in action, Martha said I could join her at an event the next night. I readily accepted.
“What is this for, Vee?” she asked over a dessert of fried apple rings sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.
“I’m doing a story for the Gotham Gazette and need to learn all about gemstones, superstitions, and curses,” I said.
Her eyebrows rose. “When did you get that assignment? We just had dinner two nights ago, and you didn’t say anything. And you’re working for Oxley? Couldn’t you get your old job back?”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for the newsroom’s constant pressures. Oxley was willing to hire me as a freelancer and—”
“You’re fibbing. Not ready for the newsroom’s pressures? Tell me what is going on, or I won’t give you a whit of help.”
There were parts of the story that I couldn’t explain—after all, Vee Swann’s father hadn’t died. She was merely organizing a dead man’s library. She wasn’t out for revenge. So I told Martha the one truth in all of this that I could.
“I haven’t completely recovered from the fall I took last summer. I still have bouts of pain and am afraid of going back to work full-time. If I did and had to take time off, I’d look weak and then get even less respect.”
She nodded. “I know exactly how you feel. But I did some work for Oxley a while back. Don’t you remember how miserable I was? He’s not above putting female reporters in compromising positions. And then there are the ever-present rumors that he uses his army of reporters as spies to find stories he can use to strong-arm his victims into advertising in his magazine in exchange for keeping their stories quiet.”
I knew that Oxley’s methods were hardly a secret, but it was startling to hear Martha discuss them so casually.
“Yes.” I nodded. “So I’ve heard.”
“So why work for someone so disreputable?” She was frowning. But then, before I had a chance to answer, she started to nod and then smiled. “I know you, Vee. You aren’t fooling me with your back pain. You want to expose Oxley’s racket, don’t you?”
Martha and I had been friends for a long time. I shouldn’t have been surprised that she had guessed.
“Yes. I do.”
“He is dangerous, Vee. Very dangerous.”
“I’ve sparred with dangerous men before, you know that.”
“And gotten your back broken in the process. I fear Oxley is a far worse adversary than Mr. Danzinger.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“You can’t be careful enough.”
“I will.”
“So how are you going to do it? What are you going to write about?”
I decided it couldn’t hurt to tell my best friend my plan, as long as I left out the personal aspects.
“You’re going to use Cartier to set Oxley up?”
“Yes.”
Martha burst out laughing. “That’s my Vee. Well, I’m happy to help you. A man like Oxley is bad for the industry. So what’s your angle? What have you got on Cartier?”
“Not enough. That’s why I need as much information as I can get about stones and superstitions. I’ve been reading up, but I’m still coming up short.”
“What do you have so far?” she asked.
I told her as much as I had been able to pull together. Halfway through my explanation of what Cartier had claimed about the Hope’s history, her eyes lit up.
“Some of that sounds very familiar…” She thought for a moment. “I know why! There’s a very famous book with some of that story in it. Have you heard of Wilkie Collins?”
“I read The Woman in White, yes. But isn’t that a fairly old book? I think critics called it the first mystery novel?”
“Exactly. Well, Collins also wrote The Moonstone, which was quite popular as well. And still is. I see it all the time in bookstores. It sounds as if your Mr. Cartier might be using some of Collins’s story.”
“How so?”
“It takes place at a country estate and is about the theft of a great blue diamond originally stolen from a Hindu god.”
“I’ll definitely get it,” I said.
“Now, about tomorrow night,” Martha said, and then gave me the address of the séance she would be going to and why she thought it might help me in my efforts. Indeed, it sounded perfect. The psychic used all kinds of precious stones to contact the dead. While Martha didn’t think the woman was doing anything of the kind, she would be a wealth of information.
The next evening, I met Martha outside the psychic’s brownstone on 143rd Street. The well-appointed sandstone building was decorated with sophisticated architectural embellishments. We walked up the six steps and entered an equally fancy vestibule and took a marble stairway up to a second-floor apartment.
As we walked through the foyer and into a high-ceilinged parlor, I smelled the exotic scents of vanilla and frankincense. The tall stained-glass windows on the back wall must have looked out onto a garden. Since it was dark out, instead of shedding the room in color and light, they created a closed-in feeling. A brown-and-red-domed glass chandelier cast a somber glow over a large round table and eight chairs. Tiny votive candles resting on the fireplace mantel sent shadows dancing on the walls. The joss stick I had smelled burned in its holder, sending a thin plume of scented smoke wafting upward.
Several people were already seated. A heavyset woman with hennaed hair, wearing a flowing cobalt-blue gown shot with silver thread, sat between two well-dressed men. One appeared to be around sixty and the other much younger, perhaps my age. There was also a couple who looked to be in their twenties and who appeared uncomfortable.
The heavyset woman turned out to be Madame Bunotti, who greeted us and then said we would wait a few more minutes for the last two people who were expected. She suggested we use the time to introduce ourselves.
“I’m Sally Frankel,” Martha said, using the made-up name she’d created for her meetings with Madame. “And this is Annie Pearl,” Martha said, coming up with a name for me on the spot. A second pseudonym, I thought. As if I needed another.
We had just finished the introductions when a couple arrived. They looked to be in their forties, subdued and elegantly dressed. Both wore dour expressions and introduced themselves as Gertrude and William Albright.
Once they were seated, Madame Bunotti rose, went to an étagère sitting against the wall, opened its bottom drawer, and retrieved a round silver tray that she placed on the table. Next, she pulled out an ornately carved mahogany box and set it beside the tray.
She stood looking down at the casket as if in meditation but more to create a dramatic effect, I thought. Once she had all of our curiosity and focus, she lifted the box’s lid. The overhead lamp shed light on its contents: a treasure of rainbow-colored stones, glowing and glittering.
She touched the tray. “We use silver as a base for each stone because it acts as a conduit, helping the spirits reach from their world to ours.”
One by one, she pulled out different rocks and crystals, arranging them in a specific pattern on the tray while keeping up a running commentary about the power of each stone.
“This is to ward off the evil eye,” she said, as she placed a large round piece of malachite in the center of the tray. “Its emerald-green color is soothing to behold, and it absorbs negative energy.”
Her explanation reminded me of Mr. Asher’s explanation of amethyst’s properties.
“Now for a sprinkling of garnets,” Madame said, as she created a circle around the malachite. Each deep-blood-red stone was approximately the size and shape of a raspberry.
“The garnet was one of the twelve stones in the breastplate of the high priest,” she said. “From the Mayans to Native American Indians, mystics know it expands our awareness and helps us be more powerful. Garnets were used to protect soldiers during the Crusades.”
Next, one by one, she withdrew eight clear, prism-shaped crystals. Each plinth, the size of her hand, appeared heavy from the way she lifted them. Walking back and forth around the table, she placed one in front of each of us.
“These are clear quartz,” she said. “No stronger connection to the spiritual world exists.”
Once she’d circled the table, she withdrew yet more stones and added them to her mosaic, explaining why she was adding emeralds, turquoise, tourmalines, and amethyst.
Finally, she positioned a large candle on either side of her arrangement.
“Now,” she instructed, “place the forefinger of your right hand on the edge of the crystal to your right and the forefinger of your left hand on the crystal to your left, which will create an unbroken circle of connection both to one another and to the stones.”
We did as we were told.
Madame then turned off the overhead chandelier. Next, she lit the two candles, both of which emitted heavy, fragrant smoke.
Then the show began. And what a show it was.
First, a soft breeze blew through the room, carrying the scent of roses with it, while far off in the distance, we heard the cry of a child.
Across from me, the Albrights looked at each other. She with an expression of hope, he with one of grief. The sound of the crying continued. Was it coming closer? I thought so.
“That’s my baby,” Mrs. Albright said, choking on a sob.
Her husband nodded. “It is, that’s our boy.”
Madame Bunotti, eyes closed, head bowed, began to speak in a high-pitched voice, her mouth hardly moving. It seemed as if the baby was inside of her and she was simply letting his voice out.
“Mama, Papa, don’t be sad…”
The smoke from the two candles thickened and began to form into the shape of a child.
Mrs. Albright let out a cry as she pointed. “Oh, my, it’s my Bobby! It’s him, it’s him!”
Suddenly, all hell broke loose. While the Albrights, Madame, Martha, and I remained at the table, the three other attendees quickly rose, two of them knocking back their chairs. The young woman ran to the wall and flipped the switch, turning on the lights. One man raced into a room beyond the parlor. The other man turned to Madame and, before she realized what he was doing, handcuffed her. Seconds later, the first man and the woman who’d since also left the room emerged, dragging a handcuffed man with them. The woman held a fireplace bellows in her free hand.
