Vineyard Deceit (5 page)

The next album was more somber. A severe-looking father, serious young women. Young men in uniform. Fewer pictures of lawn parties. World War II had taken center stage. The girls, the Stonehouse sisters, Amelia and Emily, now in their late teens, were shown in the uniforms of nursing aides. The family was doing its share.

Then it was the mid forties and the young men had come home from the war and there were parties. Debutante balls in Boston. I recognized the old Copley Plaza. Then there were photos, some in color, of the emerald necklace, magnificent against a bed of silk, glowing against the skin of Amelia and Emily's mother as she stood with her daughters in their daring, low-cut gowns at the foot of a great stairway, seeming to shimmer as she danced with her husband and the girls danced with perfectly groomed and formally attired young men at some ball.

Then there were photos of Martha's Vineyard in the
forties, and suddenly the young face and form of Raymond Muleto began to dominate the pages of the album. Raymond leaning against a fence, Raymond grinning, with an arm across Amelia's shoulders, dozens of pictures of Raymond. Then a single snapshot of Amelia and Raymond standing with a man in shirtsleeves before a building, a house, perhaps, upon which there was a sign which, I guessed, read
JUSTICE OF THE PEACE.
Later, a series of pictures showing stiff-looking Stonehouses seated with an equally stiff-looking Raymond Muleto. In the last pages of the album there were pictures of a pregnant Amelia laughing as she sat at the beach, wearing a maternity bathing suit. And then there were baby pictures.

“I thought you might be interested in the sort of life my family led before I was married, but I didn't think you'd want to look at ten thousand pictures of our son.” Amelia, who had brought in coffee and said nothing until I'd finished looking at the albums, smiled. “Let me help you go through the scrapbooks. Most of what's there has nothing to do with the emeralds. It's just more family stuff.”

She came and sat between Zee and me and opened the first book.

Yellowed articles from newspaper society pages; notes of business successes with references to Eugene Stonehouse, the latest Stonehouse entrepreneur; clippings of weddings; of the birth of the Stonehouse sisters; of balls and travels. Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Stonehouse home from Africa, home from Paris, home from a world cruise.

“This is what you're after,” said Amelia.

An article from the society pages of the Boston
Post,
complete with blurry photographs, about the fabulous Stonehouse Emerald Necklace. I read it carefully, noting the breathless style of the writer, the strategic vagueness with respect to just exactly how the jewels first came into possession of Jacob Stonehouse, the discreet fawning over the then-current Stonehouse family and its social set.

It was a more detailed version of the summary tale given to me by the Chief. While the American colonies were separating themselves from England between 1776 and 1783, Jacob Stonehouse, an ex-officer in the British army described in the
Post
as a “gentleman adventurer,” was employed by one Mohammed Rashad to train and lead a rebel army against the then-Padishah of Sarofim. Here the writer provided a parenthetical description of a Padishah as a king, more or less.

Sarofim was a small kingdom mostly consisting of sand but commanding a strait that lay on the sea route between East and Middle East. The Padishah's fortresses overlooking the strait and his corsairs roaming it brought considerable wealth back to the Padishah, if not to his nomadic people, who benefited little if at all from their ruler's commercial successes. Mohammed Rashad, an intelligent and ruthless camel herder with lofty aspirations, noting that the Padishah's cannon and parapets faced the sea, where his enemies could be found, attacked from the desert, his ragtag army trained and led by Jacob Stonehouse.

Here the narrative became diplomatically obscure. The revolution was a success. The old Padishah's head was placed on a stake outside the main city gate. Mohammed Rashad became Padishah, and his sons and grandsons followed him to the throne. The Rashad dynasty still ruled Sarofim.

Jacob Stonehouse, ever an opportunist, reappeared in England with mysterious wealth, which he invested in companies producing goods for the British army and navy. During Napoleon's wars he made magnificent profits and earned a minor title from a grateful monarchy. It was at this time that the famous emerald necklace first came to public view. Stonehouse adorned the neck of his wife with the emeralds on the occasion of a royal ball and, when pressed for the story of the jewels, hinted that they were the gift of an Eastern potentate, given in thanks for a “bit of work” he had performed.

Stonehouse, already wealthy, added to that wealth by shrewd investments in land and in ships carrying on the East India trade. Then, suddenly and without particular fanfare, he moved to America, where he continued his investments in trade but added whaling to his business interests. He grew old and richer and built his great New England houses. The now-famous emeralds dazzled New England society on the necks of Stonehouse women.

Jacob Stonehouse's grandson, upon inheriting the family fortunes, was the man who hired a Dutch jeweler to make the almost equally famous pastes of the original emeralds and to duplicate their setting. He, Nathaniel Stonehouse, was a New England Yankee in every sense, frugal and farsighted. He did not fancy risking the real jewels to some low ( or even high) thief, what with the migrations of “foreigners”—the Irish in particular—to Boston.

The emerald necklaces, both the real one and its copy, were placed in the vaults of a great, gray Boston banking and insurance company (Stonehouse, Chute, Cabot, and Adams) and thereafter, save for very rare, very special occasions, the Stonehouse women wore only the pastes, which, in time, took on a fame of their own.

The real jewels appeared so rarely that one generation passed without their being worn at all. Unwilling for
that
to happen again, the Stonehouse women prevailed upon the men and the representatives of Stonehouse, Chute, Cabot, and Adams to produce them for social events at least once every decade.

There was a dim photo of Mrs. Eugene Stonehouse before a large vault. Beside her, looking owlish and humorless, were four men in severely conservative suits. In front of them on a table were two wooden cases lined with silk, one holding the emerald necklace, the other the paste copy.

“Mom,” said Amelia. “With Stonehouse, Chute, Cabot, and Adams, I imagine. No . . . Actually, I think all of them
were dead by then. She was like me. She didn't really care much for jewels. Here's the next generation.” She took a second scrapbook and leafed through it. “Here we are.”

The photo was of her and her sister in front of the same great vault, flanked by four different but equally solemn men. The same cases and necklaces lay on the table.

“It's our official introduction to being Stonehouse women,” said Amelia with a little laugh. “We get to go down and be photographed with the keepers of the sacred jewels. I think Emily's daughter did the same pose several years back.”

I thought two of the men looked familiar. They were the youngest of the four.

“I saw their pictures in your photo album,” I said, pointing.

“You have a good memory. I imagine it came in handy when you were a policeman in Boston. Yes. The tall one is Willard Blunt and the short one is Jasper Cabot. Willard and I actually dated a time or two before and after the war. We were both considered a bit wild, if you can imagine that. Rebellious youth, our parents thought. We had been exposed to dangerous views. I at Radcliffe, he both at Harvard and off in the Middle East, where they posted him in the war. They considered our political and economic views to be absolutely radical. Of course to our parents, Roosevelt was somewhere left of Lenin and Marx. Willard and I both later became rather stodgy, I'm afraid. Still are, for that matter. He has informed me that he'll be down this week to see to it that arrangements for the transfer of the necklace are proper. You will meet him Saturday night, I'm sure. Jasper Cabot and Mr. Willard Sergeant Blunt have been guarding the Stonehouse emeralds for almost fifty years; Willard insists upon personally overseeing their transfer to the Padishah. Good riddance of them, I say. I am no admirer of the Padishah of Sarofim, despicable man that he is, but there may be some justice in the emeralds going back to the place where old
Jacob stole them originally.” She rose and went to her mantel. “If you really want to know something about Sarofim and the Rashads, you should probably have read this.” She brought back a book and handed it to me. There were also letters in her hand.

I took the book.
Free People,
by Hamdi Safwat. The subject was Sarofim. The print was small, and there were no pictures. It seemed to be a combination of history and political theory. A very gray book. I didn't know if I wanted to know that much about Sarofim or the Rashads.

Amelia gave Zee the letters. “Mail these for me, will you, dear? Since they moved the post office out by the triangle, I have to drive through that traffic jam in front of the A & P in order to mail anything. I hate it. But you're going by there anyway, so would you be a darling . . . ?”

“Aunt Amelia, I hope you're getting something out of this necklace business,” said Zee.

“Something? Oh yes. Quite a lot, according to Willard Blunt. But not anything public. Transferred funds from the Padishah's Swiss accounts to the Stonehouse Boston accounts. Frankly, I can use the money. Father was a sweet man who knew much about many things; unfortunately, money was not one of them. The same was true of my husband and is true of me as well. Happily, Willard Blunt managed to prevent Father from spending everything before he died, my sister married wealth, and Raymond and I never needed more than we had. What more could any of us have asked?”

“It sounds okay to me,” Zee said. “But now you'll be well off for a change. I'm glad.”

“As am I. Willard Blunt sent me quarterly checks for forty years. A trust of some sort, set up by some Stonehouse who properly doubted that his children would be as shrewd as he was. That money helped Raymond and me stay afloat on farmers' wages, but now it's run out, so this new money is just fine. The emeralds mean nothing to me, and I'm only sorry that Raymond isn't
here to enjoy the money they're finally bringing. Not that he would live any differently. He was a man who always did what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a farmer and he was. He'd still be a farmer.”

Most people don't like to talk about their money. There are exceptions, of course; usually people who have just made a lot of it and want you to know about it. Most other people don't discuss it because, I guess, they think they'll either embarrass you or embarrass or endanger themselves by whatever they reveal. Amelia Muleto seemed indifferent to the psychological issues surrounding money. She used money seriously but didn't take it seriously.

I said this to Zee as we drove away.

“Uncle Ray was the same way,” said Zee. “Money was like air or food or shelter to him. He knew you needed a certain amount of it, but he never went after any extra. He appreciated the checks from Willard Blunt, but never thought about them very much. He was interested in his vegetables and wine and his family. Money was only a tool. As long as he had enough, he was satisfied. I doubt if he ever imagined that he might die and leave Aunt Amelia a widow without income. I doubt if she thought about it either. When it happened, of course, she dealt with it, because that's the kind of person she is.”

“She'll be going to the big Saturday bash, though.”

“In formal gown, looking splendid, you may be sure. She even has a role in the drama. She will accept the paste necklace on behalf of the Smithsonian while Aunt Emily presents the real thing to the Padishah. Aunt Amelia is still a beautiful woman. She dazzled high society when she was a debutante and now she'll dazzle it again for one night. And then she'll come back to her little house and live a life without grand balls or Padishahs or any of the other adornments that Aunt Emily thinks necessary.”

Zee quite apparently favored Aunt Amelia over Aunt Emily. That was good news for me because my economic
system was more like Ray Muleto's than Edward Damon's. And I had to do without a trust fund, too.

“Did you notice the name of the royal family of Sarofim?” I asked.

“I thought I saw you twitch a little when you read the name. Do you imagine what I'm imagining?”

“That the jerk who nearly ran over us is the Padishah of Sarofim being passed off as a mere ‘Mister' Rashad? Yes. And that Standish Caplan's job is to make sure he's entertained and keeps out of trouble while he's over here.”

“And that Colonel What's-his-name is his bodyguard?”

“Nagy. Yes. And the boat belongs to your Aunt Amelia's brother-in-law.”

“Did anyone ever draw it to your attention that life is sometimes ironic?”

“You've been reading your philosophy books again. I can tell.”

I took Zee home so she could get some chores done before she changed for work. She was on the graveyard shift at the hospital. “For obvious reasons, we don't use that phrase,” Zee had once explained, a bit testily. Zee had wonderful full red lips, which I could still taste as I left her West Tisbury house and drove back to Edgartown to find Manny Fonseca, the Portagee pistoleer.

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