think Emily has it. That sort of thing means much more to her than to me, Iâm afraid. Look those things over while I bring us some coffee. Or would you prefer beer?â
Coffee would do. She went into the kitchen, and I opened the first of the photo albums. It was filled with pictures from the late twenties and the thirties, many of two little girls growing up. The adults seemed to wear a great deal of white, and there were large houses and lawns and lakes in the shots. As Zee and I turned the pages, the girls and their parents grew older. Photos of early formal dances in large halls appeared. Nowhere was there any evidence of the Great Depression which had swept the world. The people in the pictures were happy and attractive. Uniformed servants could be seen in attendance. Young men were also on the scene, in sporting or formal clothing as the occasion demanded. There were pictures of healthy young people sailing, rowing, playing croquet.
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 Emilyâs 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 Marthaâs Vineyard in theforties, 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 Ameliaâs 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.
âI thought you might be interested in the sort of life my family led before I was married, but I didnât think youâd want to look at ten thousand pictures of our son.â Amelia, who had brought in coffee and said nothing until Iâd finished looking at the albums, smiled. âLet me help you go through the scrapbooks. Most of whatâs there has nothing to do with the emeralds. Itâs just more family stuff.â
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.
âThis is what youâre after,â 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