Chapter 5 - THE WESTCHESTER INVENTORY
Harrington’s preliminary inventory listed eighty-three scheduled objects.
Most mundane.
Jewelry.
Photographs.
Books.
Letters.
Clothing with family provenance.
Two small paintings inherited from Isabelle’s grandmother.
A nineteenth-century writing desk.
Silver.
The music box.
Locket.
Estimated aggregate value:
About $2.6 million.
Enough to matter.
Not enough to explain obsession on its own.
High-value pieces already sat in secure storage.
Evelyn was not going to walk away with two million dollars of jewelry by changing a label.
She knew that.
So did I.
Then the household-use items.
Twenty-seven objects remained physically displayed in my house.
Those were the problem.
The writing desk in the library.
Silver-framed photographs.
A pair of lamps.
Two vases.
A painting in the breakfast room.
Music box in Grace’s nursery.
A small antique clock.
Objects that had become visually inseparable from my home.
Evelyn began calling them:
“The house collection.”
Harrington called them:
Trust property on revocable household display.
Language is power in old families.
May you like
One phrase makes objects look permanent.
The other tells the truth.
