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The Aldershoff Hotel, New York

It was midnight when the four ladies made their way purposefully through the Aldershoff Hotel’s lobby towards the Walter-Wyatt drawing room, which lay on the other side of an imposing pair of white double doors.

Light bounced off the marble floor and threw into relief the original French-inspired mouldings that adorned the ceilings and walls, and the grand sweeping staircase, once one of the finest in New York, that dominated the hall.

If one was unaware of the time, it could easily have been the middle of the day, owing to the brightness of the electric lights and the various guests who sat in the comfy velvet chairs dotted about the lobby, staring into their smartphones.

The slick young man at Reception did not detain the women, for Mr Stirling, the owner, had made it clear that they had important business to attend to and were not to be disturbed.

The drawing room, therefore, had been reserved exclusively for their use, even though it was unlikely to be in high demand at this time of night.

Alma was still striking. Her hair, once a luscious brown, was now completely white and fastened into a loose updo held by a diamond comb once belonging to her grandmother, the famous doyenne of Gilded Age society, Mrs William Aldershoff, known to her friends as Didi.

Besides jewellery, with which Alma adorned her person in a feverish desire to connect herself to the past, and the heirlooms that she crammed into her small Brooklyn apartment, Alma had inherited the formidable Aldershoff chin and piercing blue eyes, and the strong, uncompromising will to go with them.

She was accompanied by her daughter, Leona Croft, a fey and mousey woman of sixty-four who had inherited few of the Aldershoff genes and was meek and compliant, with an over-anxious desire to please, and her two dear friends, Phyllis de Vere and Bonnie McAllister, who trailed behind her like a pair of aged bridesmaids.

Alma strode into the drawing room and stood before a sturdy round table fashioned out of polished walnut, which had been cleared of the floral display and glossy decorative books for her clandestine purpose.

She appraised the room with a critical gaze and inhaled contemptuously through her aquiline nose.

It had once been her father’s library but was nothing like it used to be.

They had long since taken out the bookshelves and covered the walls in green silk and what she considered, disdainfully, ‘fashionable’ art.

She didn’t think much of the modern décor, but nothing could compare to the Gilded Age when her grandmother had bought antiques from Paris and Vienna with which to embellish her magnificent home.

Alma could see her father now in his immaculate three-piece suit, tailored at Kaskel she knew better than to challenge her mother.

Alma noticed that Mr Stirling had also seen to it that the curtains were closed, shutting out the night and any prying eyes that might be curious to see what the ladies were up to. If she remembered rightly, the curtains had been made of a rich red velvet in her father’s day.

At the memory of those curtains, Alma felt a sudden stab of anguish and put a hand to her breast. Oh, the opulence!

The grandeur! The sheer splendour of the mansion as it had been then – the crystal chandeliers, the paintings by the great Italian and Flemish artists, the sculptures, ornaments, furniture, imported from all over the world as far away as China.

Gone now. Sold at auction years ago. Vanished with a vanished world.

These days, the names Vanderbilt, Astor and Rockefeller – and, indeed, Aldershoff – were merely legends of a bygone age of elegance and excess that had emerged after the Civil War and risen to greatness like a magnificent phoenix out of the ashes of conflict.

Alma felt its loss keenly for by the time she was old enough to appreciate the power and influence the name Aldershoff carried, the new world with its desire for change had robbed it of its gilt.

‘Close the door, Bonnie,’ she said, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

‘And dim the lights.’ She handed her daughter her walking stick and watched her lean it up against the wall – a wall that had once been an impressive library, the envy of New York.

She couldn’t recall what had happened to all the books; perhaps they had been sold at auction with all the other beautiful and valuable things that had once embellished her life.

It was awful to think about it, but the Aldershoff millions had dwindled over the decades following the introduction of income tax in 1913 and the subsequent dividing, wasting and unwise investing by Alma’s two late husbands, older sister and cousins.

In three generations, William Aldershoff’s fortune had all but disappeared.

Leona’s daughter and grandchildren had nothing, not even the name.

Alma waited while Bonnie and Phyllis seated themselves. Bonnie, full-bodied and big-breasted, groaned like a rusty old hinge, but Phyllis dropped her behind onto the seat without so much as a gasp. The three women looked to Alma to tell them what to do next.

‘Light the candle,’ she commanded. Obediently, Leona struck a match from the green glass match-striker Mr Stirling had considerately placed beside the candle, along with a small ashtray for the match.

The flame flared momentarily, lighting up the apprehensive faces of Alma’s loyal acolytes.

Their fearful eyes fell upon the blue box, fashioned out of wood like an ordinary paint box, as they waited with uneasy anticipation for the contents to be revealed. They knew it did not contain paints.

The candle was lit. The match discarded in the ashtray.

Alma placed her hands on the box and spread her bony fingers, upon which inherited jewels glinted sharply.

She inhaled through dilated nostrils and closed her eyes, as if basking in the sanctity of the moment.

‘This belonged to my grandmother, Didi Aldershoff, Leona’s great-grandmother,’ she said at last, and her voice was soft and low as her mind drifted down the well-trodden path into the past, which was bathed in the eternal, untarnished glow of nostalgia.

‘There was always great ceremony in its opening, for one must not play with these things. She would light a candle and say a prayer, wrapping us in angelic protection against dark entities who would take pleasure in doing us harm.’

Phyllis glanced at Bonnie, whose round eyes widened at the thought of dark entities. As if sensing collusion, Alma lifted her heavy lids and looked at them in turn, a fierce glimmer in her blue gaze. ‘It’s good to be a little afraid,’ she whispered. ‘It adds a suitable reverence to the ritual.’