Page 43 of Broken Princess

“What brings you in today? Pre-engagement shopping? Or a gift for a special someone?”

Engagement? Yeah, that plan got derailed when I met Logan. “I’m actually doing research on an item and was hoping you could help.” I walk closer, pulling the compact out of my purse.

She looks down at the clamshell in my hand. “May I?”

I pass it over, watching as she carries it to a workstation in the corner, and flicks on a lamp. “This looks very old, with a technique that I assume was entirely hand crafted.”

“It is, but I did some research on shops in the area, and your store came up as one of the oldest in the state. I was hoping you might have some information on who might have made something like this.”

“I’m afraid I’m way too young to be of much help, but my grandfather might.” She picks up a phone and dials, telling whoever is on the other end that her grandfather has a visitor. When she hangs up, she says, “He’ll see you now.”

“He’s here?”

“He can’t stand on his feet for long periods of time so, I run the front of the store and he still does custom jobs in his work area downstairs.”

“You’re not suggesting he may have been the jeweler for this, though, right?”

“Oh, no. Each person leaves a signature behind. This isn’t his or anyone in our families, but Grampy knows a lot, and he can probably get you closer to an answer than the internet will.”

She escorts me to the back of the store and down a flight of stairs. After a quick explanation of what I’m after, she heads back to the front of the shop, leaving me with her grandfather.

The kind gentleman offers me tea and I sit while he rehashes his time helping customers find the perfect gift and how he misses interacting with people. I have to ask him several times about the makeup case to get him back on track. He holds it up to the light, rubbing his thumb over the inscription. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“It’s very old.”

“But in pristine condition.” He glances up at me. “Where did you say you got it?”

“I didn’t.” So he won’t think I boosted it from someone’s house, I clarify, “My mother found it in a bunch of stuff we had in the attic at my grandmother’s house.”

“I’d date this back to the early nineteen hundreds. Maybe late eighteen-eighties at most. It’s exquisite workmanship with hand etched details you don’t see anymore.”

“Do you know of someone who would have made something like this back then?”

He lowers his magnifying glass. “Possibly…” He goes to the back of the room and comes back with a leather-bound book that looks like an accounting ledger.

“When my grandfather ran this shop, he started keeping a list of all the jewelers who ever existed in town. Some were competition. Some were inspiration.”

He flips through the yellowed pages of the book. “He liked to put little notes next to their names to identify what they were good at.”

The book clearly hasn’t been used in years. It kicks up a nice sheen of dust that tickles my throat and makes my eyes water each time he turns a page.

“This looks a lot like the way Swinton Diamonds marked their work. And I’ve seen several variations of parts of this little marking over the years, but I never saw it grouped together like this before.”

I lean closer, looking through the magnifying glass. In the middle of the inscription is a light etching. “It looks like a swirl.”

“Yes, but the points on the ends are what makes it unique.” He flips through some pages. “The swirl was the mark for Elcor and the rose petals were…” He turns another page and runs his finger midway down the page. “Ah, yes. Cloutier.”

“Are you saying this was made in pieces by two different jewelers and then somehow welded together?”

“It could have been, but I think it’s more likely that at one point there was one business and by the time we started documenting it they’d separated. Unfortunately, my grandfather didn’t start keeping track of things until my dad was in his early twenties.”

Now I have to figure out what businesses existed before his family started keeping records of the competition. “Is there a library or local newspaper around here that may have archives?”

“We have both, though I’m not sure how much help they’d be. There was a fire at the library about sixty years ago. Peculiar thing too. Only the section of the library dedicated to the history of this town, before the boundary lines were reformed, was destroyed. As for the paper, it wasn’t around back then. In either case, they both open on Monday.”

“I’m only in town for today.” Putting the compact back in my purse, I stand to leave. “Thank you for your time and help, Mr. Grenier.”

“I don’t feel like I was much help.”

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