I spent the next day nursing my aches and pains. In an effort not to think about Jacob, I picked up The Moonstone, which I’d never finished reading. I read until late that night and went to sleep thinking there was something that had happened in the last few weeks that I’d missed.
I awoke the next morning with a start. I knew what it was. Maybe it didn’t mean anything, but maybe it did. Either way, I wanted an answer.
On Monday afternoon, at closing time, I went to Cartier’s. I waited in front of the building for twenty minutes before Jacob emerged just before six. He saw me but kept walking. I followed him for two blocks and onto a streetcar. I stood next to him. He wouldn’t look at me, even though I kept my eyes locked on him. When he got off at Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue, I did, too. As he walked south on the avenue, I walked beside him. He sped up, I sped up. It started to rain. I ignored it. We reached his apartment building, and he ran ahead, reaching the front door with enough time to let himself in and then closed and locked it behind him.
I stood on the stoop, huddled under the narrow overhang, trying not to get wet. I was not going to leave.
After a half hour, he came downstairs and opened the door but stood blocking me from going inside.
“What do you want?”
“To apologize.”
“You are something else, aren’t you?”
“No. I want to apologize.” I couldn’t tell him another lie, even one of omission. “And ask you a question. Can I come up?”
“Why should I let you?”
“Because it is cold and wet out here. And because you and I are not that different. We only told each other some of our truths.”
He opened the door wider. I walked in.
Without saying anything, he led the way up the stairs, and I followed. Inside his apartment, I sat on the couch in the living room, and he stood by the window.
“When does devotion turn into obsession, Jacob?”
He didn’t respond.
“When does desire overtake reason? When does it become a compulsion? When do we lose our ability to see that we have become victims of our own passion for that object, that response, that solution, that end?”
He still didn’t respond, but I could tell he was listening.
“You, me, Mr. Cartier, Evalyn Walsh McLean, we are all the same. All obsessed. You and I with revenge. Mr. Cartier with success. Evalyn with an object. How dare you suggest that what I did was different from what you do? Mr. Cartier treats you like a son, and you have a secret that is an abuse of his largesse. Yes, I started talking to you for my story. I even thought about charming you for my story. But something else happened between us. Something very real.”
He was still quiet.
“There’s more to what is going on with Mr. Cartier and that diamond, isn’t there? There are other stories he hasn’t told me or anyone else. You said something in the hospital when you came to that I didn’t understand and have been mulling over ever since. You said, and this is exact, You weren’t supposed to be there. All this time, I was thinking you meant it in the context of fate. But you don’t believe in fate. You are a realist. You meant something quite different, didn’t you?”
“What I said coming out of brain trauma doesn’t let you off the hook for your duplicity.”
I laughed, but it was an ugly laugh. One I’d learned listening to people lie and cheat to protect their greed or weaknesses over the years. I didn’t want Jacob to be weak. I could accept his larceny, his mania for righting a personal wrong, but not weakness.
“You meant that I wasn’t supposed to be at the store that late. That no one was supposed to be there to get in the way of yet another of Mr. Cartier’s plans to imbue the diamond with more terrible luck. There was never supposed to be an actual robbery, was there? It was all staged. A robbery attempt. Just like in the book The Moonstone. He’s using Wilkie Collins’s plot to enliven the legends about the Hope. It’s just more salesmanship. So what went wrong?”
Jacob didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I’d figured it out. The novel had given me all the clues I’d needed.
“The men Mr. Cartier hired panicked and didn’t know how to proceed when they saw me, right? The plan was for them to break in and threaten you, but you’d scare them off. Mr. Cartier would report the attempted robbery and the story about his brave jeweler who’d protected the Hope Diamond. More front-page headlines,” I said sarcastically. “But something went wrong. Mr. Cartier never planned on his jeweler almost being killed in the process, and he didn’t expect the stone to actually be stolen. Am I right?”
Jacob shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore if you do know. Yes, you are right. The men Mr. Fontaine hired panicked when they saw you.”
“But who took the stone? You didn’t open the safe. You were with me the whole time in the showroom.”
He didn’t answer.
“Was someone else there?”
“Mr. Fontaine.”
“He took the diamond?”
“Or thought he did,” Jacob said with a sad smile.
“What are you talking about?”
“Who is asking me? Vee Swann?”
“I’m not trying to break another story. I’m trying to set up Mr. Oxley, remember?”
“Can I believe you?”
It was a fair question. Could he believe me? I’d lied to him so many times in so many ways. I didn’t bother to answer.
“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. Mr. Fontaine is gone, and we’ll never find him. It appears he was in the back, using the staged event as a distraction from a plan of his own. He stole what he thought was the Hope Diamond. But as it turns out, it was, in fact, a paste copy I’d made.”
Jacob must have seen my eyes widen.
“Yes, there is already a paste version.”
“So when I asked you at the museum…”
“I couldn’t tell you. Mr. Cartier had me make it once he brought the stone here from Paris. The stone in the necklace he has let everyone try on is paste. He may exaggerate the bad-luck stories, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to take any chances. Once a client expresses serious interest and makes a viable offer, Mr. Cartier invites them to his home to show them the actual stone.”
“Didn’t Mr. Fontaine know that?” I asked.
“No. He never knew there was a copy. Only Mr. Cartier and I knew the real Hope was safe in Mr. Cartier’s mansion.”
“So Mr. Cartier paid a ransom for a fake stone?”
“Fake money for a fake stone.”
“All to keep the story on the front pages?”
Jacob nodded.
“So now Mr. Cartier has the fake back?”
“Yes, and Mr. Fontaine—or whatever his real name is—is gone.”
“Hadn’t he worked in the jewelry business before? How was it possible he didn’t know the stone in the vault wasn’t real?”
“It’s very difficult to tell one of my paste pieces with the naked eye. Especially for someone who isn’t a trained gemologist. Mr. Fontaine was the manager, not a jeweler at all.”
“How does a jeweler tell paste from the real thing?”
“A real diamond will drop to the bottom of a glass of water. Paste will float. And now you have your story,” he said. “Oh, there’s one more piece. The men who broke in? They were actors, not Hindus at all. Just three men wearing dark stage makeup and elaborate costumes.”
“So the police have been looking for three men who don’t exist? The detective on the case had me go to the police station, Jacob. They had an Indian man they were questioning and wanted me to identify. What if I had? What if someone innocent is arrested?”
“But no one has been arrested. And if anyone is, I’ll be the one who is asked to identify them, and I won’t be able to.”
I was having a hard time processing the enormity of the deception. “All this to get front-page stories.”
“You can write your article about how everyone has been trying on a paste stone and that the robbery attempt was part of Mr. Cartier’s outrageous theatrics used to build excitement around the Hope.”
“Why have you told me all of this?”
“Because I want you to know you have everything there is to get out of me, so you don’t come back trying to get more information. Because I don’t want to be used any more than I already have been.” He stood up, walked to the door, and opened it, inviting me to leave.
I rose. Gathered my purse and coat. Walking toward Jacob, I realized that I might be seeing him for the last time. Despite everything, I wanted to stop, reach out, take his hands, and beg him to forgive me. And have him ask the same of me in return. I wanted to smell his scent again and feel his arms embrace me. Instead, I walked past him and over the threshold and stepped out into the hallway. I reached the staircase and only then turned back.
“Good-bye.” It took all of my will to keep my voice from cracking. You can cry on the street, I told myself. You can weep in your pillows once all this is over. “Thank you for giving me what I needed.” I kept my voice even.
He sighed. “I hope you’ll feel it was worth what it cost you when you realize that you can’t save your uncle’s life. And that you can’t bring your father back.”