Property of a Noblewoman Read Online Free PDF Page A

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?”
    “Fine, I think,” Jane said, worrying that she might have forgotten to do something official. “She had some beautiful things,” she said softly, thinking of the contents of the jewelry boxes.
    “Any sign of a will?”
    “No, just photographs and letters, some newspaper clippings of parties and her husband’s obituary, old passports from a long time ago, some irrelevant bank forms, and the jewelry.”
    “Anything we can sell?” Harriet asked, sounding official and matter-of-fact. She hadn’t seen the photographs of the beautiful young woman with the dazzling smile and sad eyes.
    “I think so.” Jane pressed a button on her phone, and showed her the photographs of Marguerite di San Pignelli’s jewelry, without comment. Harriet was silent for a minute after she finished looking at them, and then stared up at Jane in obvious amazement with wide-open eyes.
    “You saw all this stuff today?” Harriet asked her in disbelief, and Jane nodded. “We need to call Christie’s right away to get it into an auction.” She jotted down a note to call Christie’s on a scrap of paper and handed it to Jane, who took it from her, looking worried.
    “Am I supposed to call them?”
    Harriet nodded, with slight exasperation. “I don’t have time.” Their understaffing problem seemed to have gotten worse lately. “Just call Christie’s and ask them to have someone from the jewelry department meet you at the bank, to have a look. We need an appraisal if any of the heirs shows up. And we’ll need it for the court too.” Jane confirmed to her then, in answer to Harriet’s questions, that the contents of the box were mostly jewelry. There had been no cash, no stock certificates or bonds, and Hal had told her that the funds in her checking account had dwindled to under two thousand dollars at the time of her death. She hadn’t written a check in years. The only money drawn out of her account was the automatic transfers to her nursing home in Queens every month, which she had set up when she moved there. But her jewelry was clearly worth a fortune.
    Jane went back to her desk, took off the coat she had worn for Valentine’s Day, and looked up the phone number for Christie’s. When the number came up on her computer, she saw that their offices were at Rockefeller Center. Although by then it was nearly lunchtime, she called the number and asked for the jewelry department when they answered. The phone rang for a long time, and she was about to hang up, when a female voice finally picked up, and Jane asked to speak to someone about an appraisal to submit jewelry items for an upcoming sale, and they put her on hold, while she listened to an endless piece of music. It appeared that