Verlaine discovered the connection on a research trip he’d taken to the Rockefeller Archive Center earlier in the year. He’d driven twenty-five miles north of Manhattan to Sleepy Hollow, a picturesque town of bungalows and Cape Cods on the Hudson River. The center, perched upon a hill overlooking twenty-four acres of land, was housed in a vast stone mansion that had belonged to John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s second wife, Martha Baird Rockefeller. Verlaine parked the Renault, threw his backpack over one shoulder, and climbed the steps. It was a wonder how much money the family had accumulated and how they had been able to surround themselves with seemingly endless beauty.
An archivist checked Verlaine’s research credentials-a Columbia University instructor’s ID with his adjunct status clearly marked-and led him to the second-floor reading room. Grigori paid well-one day of research would cover Verlaine’s rent for a month-and so he took his time, enjoying the peacefulness of the library, the smell of the books, the archive’s orderly system of distributing files and folios. The archivist brought boxes of documents from the temperature-controlled vault, a large concrete annex off the mansion, and placed them before Verlaine. Abby Rockefeller’s papers had been divided into seven series: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Correspondence, Personal Papers, Art Collections, Philanthropy, Aldrich/Greene Family Papers, Death of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and Chase Biography. Each part contained hundreds of documents. The sheer volume of papers would take weeks to sort through. Verlaine dug in, taking notes and making photocopies.
Before embarking on the trip, he had reread everything he could find about her, intent to discover something original that might help him, some piece of information that had not been claimed by other historians of modern art. He had read various biographies and knew a considerable amount about her childhood in Providence, Rhode Island, her marriage to John D. Rockefeller Jr., and her subsequent life in New York society. He’d read descriptions of her dinner parties and of her five sons and one rebellious daughter, all of which seemed dull compared to her artistic interests and passions. Although the particulars of their lives could not be more different-Verlaine lived in a studio apartment and ran a haphazard and precarious financial existence as a part-time college instructor while Abby Rockefeller had married one of the richest men of the twentieth century-he had come to feel a certain closeness with her. Verlaine felt he understood her tastes and the mysterious passions that drove her to love modern painting. There would not be much in her personal life that hadn’t been examined a thousand times over. He knew full well that there was little hope of his finding anything new for Grigori. If he were to strike gold-or at least discover a fragment of material that might be useful to his boss-it would be a major piece of luck.
And so Verlaine bypassed the batches of papers and letters that had been pillaged by scholars, crossing the Chase Biography files off his list and turning to the box pertaining to art acquisition and the planning of the MoMA-the Art Collections, Series III: Inventories of artworks bought, donated, lent, or sold; Information pertaining to Chinese and Japanese prints and American folk art; Notes from dealers on the Rockefeller art collection. After hours of reading, however, he found nothing exceptional in the material.
Finally Verlaine sent back the boxes of Series III and asked the archivist to bring Series IV: Philanthropy. He had no concrete reason for doing so, except that Rockefeller’s charitable donations were perhaps the only element that he had not overexamined, as they tended to be dry sheets of accounting. When the boxes arrived and Verlaine began to work through them, he found that despite the dull subject matter, Abby Rockefeller’s voice intrigued him nearly as much as did her taste in paintings. He read for an hour before discovering a strange set of letters-four missives folded among a mess of papers. The letters were tucked among reports of charitable donations, neatly folded in their original envelopes without commentary or addenda. In fact, Verlaine realized, turning to the catalog for that series, the letters were entirely undocumented. He couldn’t account for them, and yet there they were, yellowed with age, delicate to the touch, giving off a dusty powder on his fingers as if he’d touched the wings of a moth.
He unfolded them and pressed them flat under the glow of the lamp to see them more clearly. Instantly he understood the reason behind the oversight: The letters had no direct relation to Abigail Rockefeller’s family, society life, or artistic work. There was no definite category at all for such letters. They were not even written by Abigail Rockefeller, but by a woman named Innocenta, an abbess at a convent in Milton, New York, a town he had never heard of before. He learned, upon checking an atlas, that Milton was only a few hours north of New York City on the Hudson River.
As Verlaine read the letters, his wonder grew. Innocenta’s handwriting was spidery and old-fashioned, featuring narrow European numerals and pinched, looping letters, obviously scratched out with nib and ink. From what Verlaine could gather, Mother Innocenta and Mrs. Rockefeller had shared an interest in religious work, charity, and fund-raising activities, much as any two women in their respective positions might. Innocenta’s tone started out as one of deference and polite humility but grew warmer with each letter, suggesting that a regular communication had transpired between the women. He could find nothing overt in the letters to substantiate this, but it was his hunch that some piece of religious art was at the bottom of it all. Verlaine became more and more certain that these letters would lead him somewhere, if only he could understand them. They were exactly the sort of discovery that could assist his career.
Quickly, before the archivist had a chance to observe him, Verlaine slid the letters into the interior pocket of his backpack. Ten minutes later he was speeding home toward Manhattan, the stolen papers lying exposed upon his lap. Why he had taken the letters was a mystery even then-he had no motivation other than that he’d desperately wanted to understand them. He knew that he should have shared his discovery with Grigori-the man had paid him to make the trip, after all-but there seemed little concrete information to relay, and so Verlaine decided to tell Grigori of the existence of the letters later, once he had verified their importance.
Now, standing before the convent, he was flummoxed once again as he compared the architectural drawings with the physical structure before him. Sheets of winter light fell across the pages of sketches, the spiky shadows of birch trees stretching upon the surface of the snow. The temperature was falling quickly. Verlaine turned up the collar of his overcoat and set out on his second trip around the compound, his wing tips soaked from slush. Grigori was right about one thing: They could learn nothing more without gaining access to St. Rose Convent.
Halfway around the building, Verlaine discovered a set of ice-glazed steps. Down he walked, grasping a metal railing so as not to slip. A door stood in the hollow of a vaulted stone entranceway. Giving the knob a twist, Verlaine found the door unlocked, and a moment later he was in a dark, damp space that smelled of wet stone, rotting wood, and dust. When his eyes had adjusted to the dim light he closed the door, securing it firmly behind him before walking through an abandoned corridor and into St. Rose Convent.