Molly said, “Ms. Carven? You may not remember, but I bought this necklace from you at the Peddlers Flea Market.”
The woman peered at the necklace over her glasses, and then took hold of it and lifted it up. “Yes, of course I remember. It’s very unusual, isn’t it? I mean, it’s only glass, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen another one quite like it.”
“Do you know anything about its provenance?” asked Sissy.
“Provenance? I don’t think it has any kind of provenance. It’s just a costume piece, that’s all. I pick up quite a few interesting bits and bobs when I’m clearing houses. I wouldn’t sell them here, so now and again I take them down to the flea market to see what I can get for them.”
“So you don’t know anything about it? Where it came from, or who collected all of these mascots?”
“Well, I bought it from an elderly woman in Hyde Park. Her husband had died and she wanted to get rid of everything. He had one or two very fine paintings, as I remember, and a wonderful longcase clock. But he also had an awful lot of junk. Boxes and boxes of newspapers and old theater programs and buttons and coins. I think he was one of these people who never throw anything away.”
“You don’t have the woman’s name?”
“May I ask why you want to know?”
“Oh, I’m writing a book about jewelry and superstition,” Sissy lied. “You know, charm bracelets and birth-stones and things like that. And, as you say, this necklace is very unusual, isn’t it? I’m sure it must have a story.”
Ms. Carven went over to the gilded desk, opened the top drawer, and took out a leather-bound book. She licked her thumb and leafed through it until she came to the page she wanted. “Here you are. Mrs. Edwina Branson, 1556 Observatory Road. There’s a telephone number, too, if you want it.”
Mrs. Edwina Branson was well into her eighties. She was white haired, small, and stooped, and was dressed in a smart cream blouse with a pearl pin at the collar and a green plaid skirt. She obviously took good care of herself.
She lived in a ground-floor apartment overlooking a small courtyard. Her ginger cat was sleeping on the bricks outside her window. The apartment was furnished entirely with modern furniture — a beige couch, two beige chairs, and an oak-topped coffee table. The only pictures on the walls were photographs of her children and grandchildren.
“I have some iced tea if you’d care for some,” she told them.
“Thanks all the same,” said Sissy. “We don’t want to take up too much of your time.”
“But I enjoy having visitors. When you get to my age, most of your friends are dead, and your children are all too busy.”
She turned toward Molly and said, “It suits you, dear — the necklace. I think I only wore it once. I never liked it. Too flamboyant for me.”
“So it wasn’t yours, originally?” Sissy asked her.
Edwina Branson shook her head. “My late husband Felix gave it to me. He brought it back from France after World War II. I used to teach European history, you see, at Miami University in Oxford, and Felix thought that I would find it interesting.”
“Do you know anything about it? Who it used to belong to?”
“He said that some woman in Paris gave it to him, in exchange for chocolate. Well, I hope it was in exchange for chocolate. She said that it was called a ‘necklace of fortune.’ None of the charms on it are worth very much, but every one of them is supposed to have belonged to somebody famous.”
“Such as?”
“The woman didn’t know who all of them were. But the little crocodile allegedly came from Alexandre Dumas, who wrote The Three Musketeers. He used to wear it on his watch chain. And those earrings were brought back from Devil’s Island by Alfred Dreyfus, after he was pardoned. This ring here, with the small red stone, that used to belong to Vincent van Gogh.”
“Surely this is worth a fortune,” said Molly.
“Not really. None of the charms are particularly valuable, and there’s no proof at all that any of them are genuine. Felix and I did quite a lot of research into them, but we couldn’t find any way to authenticate them. No certificates, no letters. No bills of sale. All we had was the word of a French woman who wanted chocolate.”
She was silent for a moment, and then she said, “These days, I don’t take much of an interest in history, not like I used to. History does nothing but take away the ones you love.”
“You say this ring was supposed to have belonged to Vincent van Gogh?”
Edwina Branson lifted up the ring between finger and thumb. “It’s only brass, and the stone is only a garnet. But if it really is Van Gogh’s ring, there’s quite an interesting story behind it. You know that Van Gogh shot himself, don’t you?”
Molly nodded. “I learned all about him at art college.”
“I’m afraid I only saw the Kirk Douglas movie,” Sissy confessed.
“Well, Van Gogh went out into the countryside one day and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. But he didn’t die straight away. He managed to walk back to the inn where he was staying, and it was two more days before he finally passed away. I looked all this up on the Internet, and I came across a letter from Van Gogh’s brother, Theo. Apparently — because he had no money — Vincent gave his ring to the serving girl at the inn who took care of him while he was dying.
“Vincent told the girl that, whatever she did, she must never give the ring to another artist, because it had madness in it. He said something like, ‘je suis deux personnes. there are two of me, the good and the evil, and this ring can separate us, and allow my evil self to walk where it will.’ He had a split personality, didn’t he? And I guess that this was his way of describing how he felt.
“Funny thing, though. According to Theo, a local farmer saw Vincent propping up his easel before he went around to the back of this château where he shot himself. But only a few seconds afterward, he saw Vincent for a second time, with his pistol in his hand, ‘almost as if there was another Vincent following the first, intent on shooting him.’ ”
Sissy gave Molly a meaningful look but raised her fingertip to her lips to indicate that Molly should say nothing.
Edwina Branson picked up another charm, a tiny citrine brooch with a single pearl dangling from it. “I can tell you the story behind this one, too. This used to belong to Marie Curie. It was given to her by her first boyfriend, just before she left Warsaw to go to Paris. He hoped that she would be persuaded to stay in Poland and marry him. Think what a different world it might have been if she had! No radioactivity! But then — no X-rays, either.”
Sissy said, “Even if this necklace isn’t genuine, it’s a fantastic conversation piece. I’m surprised you didn’t want to keep it.”
Edwina Branson let the citrine brooch drop. “No,” she said. “I don’t want to put you off it or anything, but I never liked it. That’s why I only wore it once. I felt as if I had dead people hanging around my neck.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Trevor Says No
“No,” said Trevor. “Absolutely not. You’re nuts even to think it.”
“But it could be the only way,” Sissy told him.
“Have you heard yourself? You want to bring Dad back to life? Not that I believe for a single second that you actually can.”
“We showed you the roses.”
“All right, you showed me the roses. But what kind of proof is that? You could have thrown the real roses away and painted some more.”