“Called a diamantaire, the upper section of Anna’s jewelry chest had a thick glass lid, now broken, with mirrored doors that had opened outward like a writing desk. Anna’s chambermaid, Natalia, held the only key. There, Anna had stored loose diamonds, covered with silk, along with the key to the lower section. In the bottom, she kept three boxes full of jewels, a white cashmere shawl given to her by her mother, and leather portfolios with important papers. The thief had left the key to the lower section in the lock, which also bore the marks of a sharp instrument. Investigators concluded the thief had tried to break the lower lock, failed, and smashed the top of the diamantaire, where he discovered the key. He had taken everything except the portfolios, likely discarded when they revealed no cash or valuables.”

A walking stick in America...

Those five words sent me on a quest. Like all good quests, it had me doubting everything from my life choices to my sanity. But it taught me that it’s possible to write a book about an event that took place 195 years ago in a country I’ve never seen, with sources in languages I don’t speak.

I found those words in a memoir by Walpurga Paget, a German noblewoman married to a British diplomat. In Scenes and Memories, she casually relates a story her friend, Grand Duchess Sophie of Saxe-Weimar, told about her mother’s stolen pearls, found hidden in a walking stick in America.

Sophie of Saxe-Weimar, Anna’s daughter.

What? I thought. America? It sounded like an urban legend. It couldn’t be real, could it? I googled Sophie’s mother, learned she was a Russian grand duchess, then googled her stolen pearls. I found a forum dedicated to royal jewels, where other people had asked the same question: what happened to her stolen jewelry? The consensus was there was almost nothing about the theft available in English.

That “almost” felt like a dare. Or maybe that moment in Dumb and Dumber, when Jim Carrey’s face lights up at the thought that odds of a million to one meant he still had a chance. “Hmm,” I thought. “Maybe I can add something to this.” And then, with a little digging, it snowballed into, “Holy smokes, I think I can figure this thing out.”

Suffice to say, I have never been happier that I took French in high school instead of Spanish. Because, lo and behold, I found documents in French that blew the case wide open. And then I corroborated them with accounts in English, Dutch, and German. For history lovers, this is an amazing time to be alive. You can find digitized sources that were only published on another continent, in another language, and read them in your language. You can track people’s movements across the world. Sometimes you can even find their signatures, their physical description, or an image of them. It feels like magic, or alchemy, or even cheating. It’s what allowed someone trained as a fiction writer - a storyteller - to tell a non-fiction story instead.

So that’s exactly what I did. This is my first non-fiction book, but it won’t be my last. I hope you enjoy reading The Hunt for Anna Pavlovna’s Stolen Jewels as much as I enjoyed writing it. If nothing else, I hope the fact that it even exists helps you realize:

We can do hard things.

“Every day, people in the Netherlands opened their newspapers to read about the latest developments – or lack thereof – in the hunt for the royal jewel thief. While the Brussels police focused on footprints and foreign traffic, the diplomatic corps and those closest to the royal family mulled over their own clues. It was impossible to ignore the Prince of Orange’s constant need for cash. Horses, art, furnishings, travel, parties, his male favorites: Willem had always lived beyond his means. Enquiring minds connected the spendthrift prince with the fortune that had just disappeared from his palace. How could these two facts be unconnected? Newspapers even published cartoons depicting Willem stealing from Anna’s jewelry box.”

On a moonlit February night in 1831...

A dark-haired heavyset man strode through the Brussels suburbs into the countryside beyond.

He walked past the ponds and swans of the village of Ixelles, and into the surrounding forest of Soignies, about a mile and three-quarters outside the city. The forest was idyllic, with thick stands of beech trees interspersed with ponds, creeks, and tiny villages. On the far side of the wood, ten miles from the city, lay the battlefield and village of Waterloo.

In the woods, the man veered off the well-worn path, looking for a place he’d been before. He relied on memory and the notches carved into a nearby tree. When he found the notches, he knelt to the ground and dropped the shovel and apron he carried. The man began to dig. His prodigious strength made short work of the task.

The wooden crate was exactly where he’d left it. Its rotted slats disintegrated as soon as he touched them. Inside the crate, a white wooden box had survived intact, its precious contents safe from harm. He transferred them into the apron and gathered the fabric into a loose sack, which he tied onto his shovel. Retracing his steps out of the woods, he stopped at his rented house just outside the Namur gate. As long as he didn’t enter the city, no customs agent could examine what he carried. When he finally closed the door behind him near midnight, he fell into bed, exhausted.

He’d been smart to leave the crate in the woods until now. Suspicion had fallen on the prince, Pereira, and Machado.

Then the revolution came, and no one wanted the Prince of Orange to return. The time had finally come.

America was waiting.

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“In the course of his research, he visited a well-known jeweler, Daux, in the Galerie Montpensier at the Palais Royale. Daux had the best stock in Paris and would later become a supplier for Cartier. Polari pointed out a ring with a large blue stone, similar to the one hidden in Rosine’s toy dog. Polari asked if it was a sapphire. The jeweler removed the stone from its case and put it in Polari’s hand. ‘Are there any bigger than this?’ Polari asked. Daux launched into a story about a very large sapphire he had once acquired, absolutely enormous, unique in all of Europe. The Princess of Orange had bought the stone, which was later stolen from her. Daux pulled out the Belgian court jeweler’s drawing of the stolen stone, sent to renowned jewelers all over Europe after the theft. Polari recognized it instantly. It was the big blue stone inside Rosine’s cardboard poodle.”