Property of a Noblewoman Read online

  About the Book

  An abandoned safe deposit box in a New York City bank is opened to reveal a treasure trove – a bundle of old letters, photographs and priceless jewellery, including a wedding ring and an old locket.

  Court clerk Jane Willoughby is charged with discovering more about the mystery of the box’s owner, the late Marguerite Wallace Pearson di San Pignelli. Jane is sad to think that these most precious possessions are to be sold off. Why did Marguerite never claim them? Had she no one to leave them to?

  After arranging for the jewellery to be valued, Jane and Christie’s auctioneer Phillip Lawton are thrown together in a quest to find out more about Marguerite’s story. But neither of them could imagine where the contents of the box could lead them . . . or how it will change their lives forever.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  Also by Danielle Steel

  Copyright

  To my so greatly loved children,

  Beatrix, Trevor, Todd, Nick,

  Samantha, Victoria, Vanessa,

  Maxx, and Zara,

  May you be greatly loved at every age,

  courageous in your lives,

  and honest and forgiving with others

  and yourselves.

  May your lives be filled with joy and hope,

  and may you be blessed in every way.

  And may you always know how

  much I love you.

  Mommy/d.s.

  “What blesses one, blesses all.”

  —MARY BAKER EDDY

  Chapter 1

  IT WAS ONE of those January days in New York that feels like winter will never end. There had been record-breaking snows since November. And the morning’s snowfall, the second one that week, had turned to sleet with a bitter wind. People were slipping and sliding on the ice, and wincing in the wind as it stung their faces. It was a good day to stay indoors as Hal Baker sat at his desk at a branch of the Metropolitan Bank on lower Park Avenue.

  Just over three years before, the bank was on the dividing line of the part of New York that had lost power in the epic hurricane that devastated the city. A few blocks north of the power outages and floods, the bank had continued to function and serve its clients, and even offered trays of sandwiches and coffee to flood victims in a gesture of civic compassion.

  Hal was in charge of the safe deposit boxes, a job others found tedious and that he had always liked. He enjoyed the contact with their older clients, as they came in to riffle through their belongings, check their stock certificates, or deposit new wills in the boxes they rented. He chatted with them if they wanted to, which they often did, or left them alone if they preferred. He knew most of the safe deposit box clients by sight, and many by name. And he was sensitive to their needs. He liked meeting the young clients too, particularly those who had never had a safe deposit box before, and explained to them the value of having one for their documents and valuables, since they lived in apartments that weren’t always secure.

  He took his job seriously, and at sixty, he was five years away from retirement, and had no burning ambitions. He was married, had two grown children, and running the safe deposit box department suited his personality. He was a “people person,” and had been at the branch for twenty-eight years, and at another branch of Metropolitan for ten years before that. He was hoping to complete the final years of his career where he was. The safe deposit boxes had always felt like an important responsibility to him. They were entrusted with their customers’ most valuable possessions, and sometimes darkest secrets, where no one else could go or pry, see or touch them, save themselves.

  The bank was located in the East Thirties on Park Avenue, a previously elegant, entirely residential neighborhood called Murray Hill, which had long since become interspersed with office buildings. The bank’s clients were a mixture of people who worked in the area, and the genteel older customers who lived in the remaining residential buildings. None of their elderly customers were venturing out today. The streets were slick from the sleet, and anyone who had the option would stay home, which made it a good day for Hal to catch up on the paperwork that had been gathering on his desk since the holidays.

  Hal had three matters to deal with today. Two of the smaller safe deposit boxes had not been paid for in exactly thirteen months, and the clients who had rented them had not responded to the registered letters he’d sent them a month before, reminding them of that fact. The lapse of payment usually meant that customers had abandoned them, although not always. After waiting a month past the unpaid year, with no response to the registered letter, Hal could now call a locksmith to drill them open, and assumed he would find the boxes in question empty. Some people didn’t bother to tell the bank they no longer wanted them, stopped paying the monthly fee, and threw away the keys. In those two cases, if the boxes were empty, Hal could then turn them over to the waiting list he had of people in need of safe deposit boxes. It was usually a long list for the smaller ones. And it was frustrating waiting thirteen months to reclaim them, but it was the accepted legal procedure at any bank in New York, once clients stopped paying for a box. It would have been easy to notify the bank, relinquish the box, and hand in the keys. But some people just didn’t bother. They forgot about it or didn’t care.

  The third box he was planning to deal with that day was a different situation. He had seen the client a few times over the years, and remembered her distinctly. She was a very distinguished-looking older woman, who was polite but never chatted with him. He hadn’t seen her in nearly five years. And payment for the box had stopped three years and one month before. He had sent the standard registered letter one year after the payments stopped and then waited the month as required by law before the box could be drilled open in the presence of a notary public. It was one of the five largest boxes available at the bank. And in front of the notary, he had carefully inventoried the box’s contents, as he was supposed to do. There had been several folders with the owner’s neat handwriting on them, one with photographs in it, another with documents and papers, including several expired passports, both American and Italian, issued in Rome. There had been two thick bundles of letters, one in an old-fashioned European handwriting, written in Italian, with a faded blue ribbon holding the letters in a neat stack. And the other letters, tied with a pink ribbon, were in English, in a woman’s handwriting. And there were twenty-two leather jewelry boxes, most holding a single piece of jewelry, which he had noted but not examined closely. But even to his untrained eye, the pieces looked valuable. He had listed them simply as diamond ring, bracelet, necklace, pin, without further detail, which would have been beyond his competence on the subject, and was not required of him. He had also looked for a last will and testament, should the box holder prove to be deceased, and he had found none among her documents. The client had rented the box for twenty-two years, and he had no idea what had happened to her. A
nd also as required by law, he had waited exactly two years after the box had been drilled open, and there had been no response from the client. His job now was to notify the surrogate’s court of New York of the existence of the abandoned box, the lack of a will, and turn the contents over to them.

  They would be obligated to try and determine if the renter of the box was deceased, and in the absence of a will, or noted next of kin, they would place an ad in newspapers, inviting relatives or heirs of that person to come forward to claim her belongings. If no one turned up within a month, the surrogate’s court would move forward to sell her possessions as abandoned goods, and the proceeds of a sale would go to the State of New York. And any papers or documents would have to be held for another seven years in case a relative showed up. There were very strict laws that governed intestate estates, where there was no will. And Hal always followed what was required of him scrupulously.

  He would be moving into the second phase of action today, notifying the surrogate’s court of the abandoned box. And since the woman who had rented the box would be almost ninety-two years old, there was a strong possibility that she was no longer alive, and the court would have to determine that, before taking action to dispose of her possessions. Her name was Marguerite Wallace Pearson di San Pignelli. And Hal had had a gnawing suspicion for two years that the jewelry he had inventoried might be of considerable value. It would be the surrogate’s court’s job now to find someone to appraise it, if its owner was in fact deceased and had left no will, and no heirs came forward. The court would have to determine its value before it went to auction to benefit the state.

  As part of the routine, Hal called the locksmith first for the two smaller boxes, and then called the surrogate’s court to ask them to send someone to examine the contents of the larger box with him. He figured they would take their time before they came. They were understaffed and always busy and backlogged, handling the property and affairs of people who had died leaving no will.

  It was eleven o’clock by the time Hal called the surrogate’s court and Jane Willoughby answered the phone. She was a law student interning for the surrogate’s court for a trimester for credit, before she graduated from Columbia Law School in June, and took the bar exam that summer. Clerking at the surrogate’s court wasn’t the assignment she had wanted, but it had been the only one open to her. Her first choice had been the family court, which was the specialty she hoped to go into, focusing on advocacy for children. And her second choice had been the criminal court, which seemed interesting, but nothing had been available in either court. She had only been offered clerking positions in probate court and the surrogate’s court. She thought both courts were so depressing, dealing only with the affairs of dead people and endless paperwork, with little human contact. She took the surrogate’s court, felt stuck there, and disliked the woman she worked for. Jane’s boss, Harriet Fine, was a tired, faded-looking woman, who clearly didn’t enjoy her job but needed the money and had never had the guts to quit. Her constantly negative comments and sour attitude made Jane’s job harder, and she couldn’t wait for her assignment to end. She was almost finished with her law studies, except for two final months of classes, and a term paper she still had to turn in. The clerkship was a final step toward graduation, and she needed a good report from Harriet to add to her résumé. She had been applying to New York law firms for the past two months.

  Jane answered the phone on her desk on the second ring, and Hal explained the situation to her in a pleasant businesslike voice. She wrote down the information he gave her about Mrs. di San Pignelli’s safe deposit box, and knew that the first thing she had to do was determine if the box holder was deceased. After that, they could proceed from there, and someone from the court would meet Hal at the bank, to go over the inventoried items with him, and claim them for the state, pending an answer to the ad they would place to locate heirs. It was always interesting to see who would respond to the ad, if anyone did. The surrogate’s court had recently handled a case with no heirs, which had resulted in a sale at Christie’s, and a nice tidy sum for the state, although Jane hadn’t worked on the case. Harriet, her boss, acted as though it was a personal victory when no heirs appeared, and she could turn the proceeds of a sale over to the state. Jane preferred the more human aspect of people coming to claim items they didn’t expect to inherit from relatives they barely knew, scarcely remembered, or in some cases had never met. It was found money for them, and always an agreeable surprise.

  “How soon do you think you can be here?” Hal asked her politely, as Jane glanced at her calendar, knowing full well she couldn’t make the decision on her own. She’d have to be assigned, and Harriet would probably give it to someone else, since she was only a temporary clerk. Hal mentioned to her discreetly that he thought some of the items in the box might be of considerable value, and would have to be appraised accordingly, possibly by jewelry experts.

  “I don’t know when someone can be there,” Jane said honestly. “I’ll do the research on Mrs. Pignelli, to find out if she’s deceased, and I’ll have to turn the information over to my boss. It’s up to her who to send, and when.” Hal stared out the window as she said it. It was snowing harder, laying a thin white carpet over the icy sleet. The streets were getting more treacherous by the minute, which was often the case at that time of year.

  “I understand,” Hal said, sounding matter-of-fact. He knew the court had an overload of cases. But he had done what he was supposed to do, and followed procedure to the letter, as he always did. Now it was up to them.

  “We’ll notify you of when we’re coming,” Jane assured him, thinking of what he had told her about the possible value of the contents, and a moment later they hung up, as she sat watching the icy rain from her office. She hated days like this, and couldn’t wait to go back to school and finish. And the holidays had been depressing too.

  She hadn’t been able to get home to her family in Michigan for Christmas, and she and John, the man she lived with, had been trapped in the apartment, studying for months. He was getting his MBA at Columbia Business School, and was due to graduate in June too, and with the pressure of papers and exams, things had been stressful between them. They had lived together for three years, and had gotten along well until the past six months, in the mounting tension before graduation. And both of them were starting to look for jobs, which was causing them anxiety too.

  He was from L.A., and they had met in school. They shared a small, unattractive, furnished apartment near Columbia, in a rent-stabilized building on the Upper West Side, and their battle against the cockroaches that infested it made it a less than charming place to live. They were hoping to rent a nicer place when they both found jobs after graduation and could afford it, although her parents still wanted her to come back to Grosse Pointe to live, which wasn’t in her plans. She was going to stay in New York and wanted to practice law there. Her father was the CEO of an insurance company, and her mother was a psychologist, although she hadn’t practiced since Jane was born. And they were unhappy that she didn’t want to return home, since she was their only child. She hated to disappoint them, but she was excited about pursuing a career in New York, and had warned them of it all along.

  Jane knew that no matter who got assigned the Pignelli case, Harriet would expect her to check the death records first, to determine if Mrs. di San Pignelli was still alive, and she rapidly typed her name and date of birth into the computer. The response she got was quick. Marguerite Wallace Pearson di San Pignelli had died six months before. Her last known address was in Queens, and she had died there. It was not the same address that Hal Baker at the bank had in his records, which was an address in Manhattan near the bank. And given Mrs. di San Pignelli’s age, Jane wondered if perhaps she had no longer remembered she had the safe deposit box, or had been too ill to remove her belongings from it before she died, and dispose of them herself. In any case, she was no longer alive, and someone from the surrogate’s court would have to go through
the contents of the box more thoroughly to see if they could find a will among her papers.

  Jane filled out a form with the details, and walked it to Harriet’s office, just as she was leaving for lunch, bundled up in a down coat with a knit cap and scarf and heavy boots. She often went home to check on her mother during lunch, and looked like she was going to the North Pole as she glanced at Jane when she walked in. Harriet had the reputation of being tough on clerks and law students, and she seemed to be unusually hard on Jane. Jane was a pretty young woman, with long blond hair and blue eyes and a terrific figure, and had the look of someone who had grown up with money, no matter how discreet she was, and had all the advantages Harriet had never had. At twenty-nine, Jane had her whole life ahead of her, and an interesting career.

  In contrast, Harriet had lived with and cared for her sick mother, was in her early fifties, hadn’t had a relationship in years, and had never married or had children. Her life and job felt like a dead end.

  “Just leave it on my desk,” Harriet said when she saw the form in Jane’s hand.

  “Someone will need to go to the bank,” Jane said quietly, not wanting to annoy her. “The subject died six months ago. They’ve been holding the box for three years, according to procedure, and they want us to empty it now.”

  “I’ll assign it after lunch,” Harriet promised as she hurried out.

  Jane went back to her office and ordered a sandwich from a nearby deli to eat at her desk. It seemed better than going out in the miserable weather. While waiting for her lunch to come, she did some minor paperwork.

  She had made good headway with the routine tasks she had at hand by the time Harriet came back from lunch, looking worried, and said her mother wasn’t doing well. Jane had left two completed files on her desk. It was tedious work, but Jane was meticulous and had made few mistakes while she was there and never the same one twice. She had been a paralegal before going to law school, and Harriet admired her work ethic and attention to detail. She had even told several people in the office that Jane was the best intern they’d had, but she was sparing with her praise to Jane. She called Jane into her office an hour after she returned from lunch.