The Attaway Curse

When Robert Marten saw the woman with the calf-skin box, he signalled for an assistant to take the counter as he extended a hand in greeting. She, surprised by this welcome, extended her own. 

“I recognise the case,” he said, by way of explanation. “It is the Attaway pendant, no?”

“I believe that’s what it’s called,” she said, biting her lower lip. 

Robert led her into his office and offered her tea, coffee or something stronger. She chose the latter, so he poured a single malt. He noticed her hands were shaking when she took the glass. “You still have the provenance?” he enquired, referring to the original bill of sale, but at her perplexed expression he carefully lifted the gold hasps, and delicately raised the tray upon which the pendant rested. Beneath it was the paperwork, dated 1782 - a gift from William Attaway to his only daughter a week or so before she was due to marry. He replaced the tray and closed the hasps. Asked her to tell him the story. She told him it was too bizarre for words, and he assured her that whatever it was she had to say, he’d heard it before. 

“My sister,” she began, “was seeing a man, a married man. Very wealthy, all the usual.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “I tried to tell her that rich men don’t leave their wives if they want to stay that way, but she wouldn’t have it.”

Robert made a non-committal sound. 

“About six months ago he bought her that ..”

Robert whistled through his teeth. “£100,000 pounds might suggest otherwise?”

“Small change to him,” she said, before taking an audible intake of breath. “He gave it to her on the night she died. The married man had gone downstairs to book a table while she got ready. She rang me, all giddy with excitement. Anyway, he didn’t return to the hotel room after she …, so the police kept it until I could claim it. She had no children, so everything was left to me. I wish someone had stolen it, because really, who would have known?”

Robert let a silence settle, wondering how to put the right words in the right order. She pre-empted him. “It’s cursed, isn't it?”

Robert took a long sip and eventually said, “I should say so.” 

*****

When she was gone, carrying a cheque for a tenth of the pendant’s worth, Robert locked it away in the office safe. He was £10K out of pocket, but he could not, with all good conscience, sell it onward again. He spent the next hour calling all his contacts in the London high-end jewellery chain, all of whom had experience and stories to tell about the Attaway pendant. For two hundred and fifty years it had been passed from one to the other, and always with a dark tale to tell. It was time to end it. 

The customer, so relieved to be rid of the thing, took herself to a bar and, having acquired a momentary taste for single malt, dashed another couple down. She could hardly believe that she had told the urbane man her story and that he had heard it without sneering. She can still picture every colour and shade of the moment she traced the pendant with her fingers, mourning her sister but celebrating the sudden change in fortune. It was as she was about to lift it from the case that a figure appeared before her. It was just dusk, not even close to the witching hour, and yet there she was in mouldering funeral weeds, her hair long and blonde, her skin so lovely on one side of her face. The other side was crushed, as though someone had taken a bite of her, and although she meant to scream, she found she could not. She simply couldn’t breathe, neither in nor out. The figure pointed towards the pendant and at that moment, when she thought she was going to die, she snapped the case closed. Only then did the figure go away. And only then could she breathe. 

The following morning, she acquired a bank vault and there it had stayed until she took it out again, to sell. Just walking down London streets with it in her bag had her so fearful she had to keep stopping to catch her breath. The police had told her that the pendant was on the balcony floor, dropped before she jumped, choosing a pavement as a favourable option to not breathing. A moment of blind panic at seeing Frances Attaway and her half-face, drilling her one good, blue eye, into her sanity. 

*****

All major cities, especially London, will have a thriving community of amateur archivists. These are people who will plot every utterance from every printed newspaper or tract, and spreadsheet every piece of gossip and fact into a wide-reaching journal of city life stretching as far back as the written word will go. The London Jewellers’ Guild often use them to trace provenance on historical pieces. 

The origin of the Attaway pendant is relatively well-known in the industry. Frances Attaway was, by all accounts, an absolute darling, beloved by all, whose father was not born to wealth but acquired it through guile and determination. He may not quite have his foot in the door of aristocracy, but his daughter certainly stood a chance. Wealth and beauty will always trump the dowdy nobleman’s daughter. 

The Attaways lived in a well-appointed mansion in an increasingly poorly-appointed area, that part called St Giles which, as the 18th century rolled on, become known for nefarious criminality. But Samuel Attaway wouldn’t budge from his city hub, and raised his children to remember where they came from. In this spirit, the blonde and lovely Frances would often load a basket with food and linens and take them to the old courts where poverty was rife. She did this fearlessly, and without condescension, relieving the burdens of hardship however temporarily. 

In short, this young woman, now a vengeful ghost, was an absolutely sweetie when she lived and breathed. The question of what changed all of that has exercised many minds, because her story, long-rumoured in the community that interests itself in London’s many ghosts, is that Frances was buried alive. 

*****

Natalie Bruckner, the best of the archivists, a woman with her own podcast and a wide reach, has been invited to attend an informal meeting of the jewellers’ Guild. She is more than familiar with this story, and on hearing the latest instalment, of the suicide jump from a London hotel, she gathers herself to address the members. The venue is a wood-panelled room above a jewellers in Bloomsbury. She’s a no-nonsense woman, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, who historically debunk more tales of the supernatural than they uphold. They have an open mind, but it’s ajar, not wide open. 

“Let’s start with what we know to be true.” she began. There was a murmur of approval at this extension of terra firma. “In 1782, two weeks away from a good marriage to a minor aristocrat, Frances complained of toothache. An account from her maid tells that one side of her face was completely swollen and that she was screaming in agony, “like a woman in childbirth.” A quack was called who gave her a dose of something which knocked her out. Probably morphine, and certainly too much of it. Anyway, Frances slipped into a peaceful slumber, relieved of her toothache for a while at least. The problem was that Frances never woke up. After a day, another quack was called, who declared her vital signs extinct.” 

She deferred to Robert Marten, who told how the pendant had been crafted in Prague, then in Bohemia, and that it consisted of a 22 Kt rope chain supporting a daisy encrusted with a ruby cabochon and quality cut diamonds. The drop was an enormous diamond, some flaws but not many, again set in gold. The value at the time is impossible to estimate, but it would certainly have been in the region of half-a-million in today’s currency. A wedding present to be worn on the night of her nuptials, and to act as security in case her husband’s estate failed. She was, by all accounts, enamoured of it, and often wore it in the privacy of her room, twirling in front of the glass.”

“We know this from the maid’s account,” said Natalie, regaining her feet. “So, poor Frances was declared dead and arrangements were made for her committal. We have no reason to doubt this tale, except that rumours persist from that time, and there is, of course, the irrefutable evidence that anyone who buys that pendant is in grave personal danger. So far, there have been eighteen known incidents of direct death, and those who had the foresight to drop it down have complained of breathlessness and of seeing a ghost. These descriptions all tally, and they come from all over the world. Somehow, this pendant always ends up coming home.” 

Robert got to his feet again, box and cox. “Currently, the Attaway’s in my office safe. I would rather it wasn’t, but I’ve no intentions of handling it. Now, as we know from various meetings, the obvious solution would be to break it up. The stones alone are worth a fortune. But that, of course, means that someone must touch it. So it stays whole.”

Another murmur of agreement. Natalie stands up again. 

“Right. Let’s get back to the persistent rumour. Frances’ funeral service was held at St-Giles-in-the-Field, not far from her home on Charing Cross Road. But she was not buried there because by that time the bodies outside were piled so deep the ground was eight feet higher than the nave. Plague victims primarily, one body on top of the other. So after the service, she was interred in the overspill cemetery at St Pancras Old Church. And here is where Arthur Gordon comes into it. Gordon was the grave-digger, a drunk and a gambler with a large family he struggled to support. At various times, they had been the recipient of Frances’ kindness, so he knew her, and made a great show of lamenting her death.”

“But Frances’ father made a dreadful mistake. He chose to bury his daughter with the pendant, against the advice of his wife. He must have loved her dearly to sink that amount of money into the ground, but he was resolute. Remember, at this time grave-robbing was rife, and a son of the toil should have known better, particularly in that neighbourhood. So the story as it stands is not difficult to believe: that Gordon broke into the grave a day or so later, and took the pendant. After all, who would question the presence of a grave-digger in a graveyard?”

“And now we come to the speculative part, and the rumour tells that Frances was in a morphine stupor, but not dead. When the coffin was cracked open and Gordon took the pendant from her neck, she woke up. He, in a state of shock, slammed into her head with a spade until he was certain that this time, she really was gone.” 

“This would be a romance tale, although not entirely implausible, except that everyone who has described her ghost has mentioned that half of her face is very damaged. They can’t all have known this story. Some of the rumours began almost immediately, and the pendant has been poison ever since. In short,” she Natalie, “whether we agree with hocus-pocus or not, it seems obvious that Frances wants it back.”

“And this has always been the problem,” said Robert. “My grandfather came to the same conclusion, but no one knows where her body is. In the mid-1860s, part of the cemetery was requisitioned by the Midland Railway as a cutting, and some graves were removed. Her name appears in the list of moved corpses, but it doesn’t say where, or if, she was reinterred. Her bones could have simply been thrown in the Thames.” 

They broke for drinks, but Natalie had a look on her face which Robert recognised. She had something else up her sleeve. When they resumed, she pulled it out. 

“Gordon died almost immediately. His body was found in the Thames, where else? His wife also died, although the circumstances are unknown. There is a gap in ownership for a few years, but it ended up appearing in bills of sale, which makes it easier for us researchers to guess the outcomes. In fact, for most of its life, it’s been locked away in someone’s safe.” She nodded at Robert. “The most recent purchase, this rich man for his mistress, was overwritten in Prague, where it all began.” 

“But now I have news,” she said, a modest flourish to her statement. “Thanks to the internet and so many people getting their metaphorical spades out, we can perhaps end this story. Because it turns out that Frances Attaway is buried in a manor house in the West Midlands. It seems that when the railways wrote to the family, a great-nephew took her back to the ancestral home. This is new information. We now know where she is, and what’s more, the current Mr Attaway is more than willing for the grave to be opened. It’s private land, so there is nothing to stop us.” 

*****

It was raining in the Black Country, but as Robert and Natalie approached the grave site, it let off enough for them to close their umbrellas. Frances was buried beneath an oak tree, with just a modest headstone. Surrounding her were graves of beloved family pets. Facing her was a manor house, a much smaller residence when Frances’ father grew up there; embellished later by his Victorian descendants. Robert grips the case tightly. It is assumed that Frances will not exact her curse upon those intent on helping her, but the doubt remains. 

The hole has already been dug, by Paul Attaway himself. He does not trust the services of a gravedigger. The story has been hard to contain and Attaway, who has a farm shop and hopes for a restaurant, is happy for it to riot across the internet. Today will be the day when Frances is reunited with her pendant. The press are kept to the perimeter, now watched by cameras. Only Natalie will take photographs. Her story, her claim. The coffin has already been lifted, strapped to stakes in temporary suspension. It is in remarkable condition. No expense was spared. 

The lid was opened. It will later be sealed shut. And there within, as described, was a blonde woman in a shroud. Puce flesh still attaches to bone. One half of the skull is collapsed. The hair is still long, still blonde, but wispily thin. The mouth is wide open in an immortal scream. The hands claw towards the lid. Natalie steadies her hands to take photos. It was all true. Frances was buried alive, not once but twice. The kind-hearted girl with the basket of goods. 

Paul Attaway takes the pendent from the case and draws it around her neck, panicking in shock as he tries to secure the clasp. 

“Think of her as a kind, beautiful young woman,” Robert urges. “She is your family.” The crows caw in the oak, and there are voices from the car park, and yet an aura of peace settles. The lid is closed, the casket is dropped, the priest approaches. The Attaways always clung to their Catholicism.

By day’s end, access to her grave will be impossible, but if anyone should succeed, only God can help them then. It is widely believed that such salvation would not be forthcoming.