Death Among the Ruins (24 page)

Arabella swallowed. “Do you know where it is?” she asked.

“Roughly.”

A pair of pelicans sailed past the cliffs, their shadows sweeping the terrace like a memory of prehistoric mosquitoes.

“On the day we went to Pompeii,” said the prince, “you witnessed an argument between myself and the good father here. Later on, you probably suspected me of conspiring to keep you away from the hotel for the afternoon.”

“The thought had occurred to me.”

“But that was not the subject of our discussion. I had only just learned that Terranova was behind the Herculaneum theft. And I was threatening him with legal action. I did not then know that he was Carbonari, and because I was not yet a member, he could not reveal himself to me. By the way,” he added with a smile, “one should never threaten a suspicious person with legal action. It cannot possibly help you to let the suspect know what you are going to do, and if he is desperate enough, it might just convince him that he needs to kill you.”

Arabella made a mental note to make an actual note of this in her CIN.

“Father Terranova recognized my ring,” the prince continued. “He knew that I was not Bergamini. And as soon as it was practical, he approached me with an appeal to join his organization, which I wholeheartedly accepted.”

Kendrick had been listening to all this with his good elbow upon the table, his chin in his hand. Now he spoke up for the first time. “Why then,” he said, turning to Terranova in some surprise, “
you
must be responsible for the art dealer’s murder!”

The priest lifted his hands in protest. “I am opposed to violence on principle,” he said, “but our brotherhood is sworn to promote the goals of the organization. And if one wishes to make a frittata, one must break a few eggs. It is true; the appropriation of the Herculaneum artworks was originally one of our projects, and the Englishman, this so-called art dealer, a Carbonari gone to the bad, seized the chance to cut in ahead of schedule and take the items for his personal profit. It was a bold plan, and would probably have succeeded, had his workmen not maintained their loyalty to the cause.

“I never said ‘kill him’ in so many words. But I gave the order to prevent the unlawful removal of those art pieces by whatever means necessary. If it helps you any, Reverend, the death was an accident. The men told me they only meant to render him unconscious, and deliver him up to a tribunal.”

“But why should the Carbonari be interested in art smuggling?” asked Arabella. “Aren’t you supposed to be fighting for Italian independence?”

“For
unification, signorina
. Just at present, Italy is a disconnected mess of kingdoms and principalities ruled over by foreigners. We cannot hope to win our purpose without the support of powerful nations like your own, particularly those with strong commercial connections in the Mediterranean. So . . . we give Britain priceless artworks for her museums, and Britain in turn lends her support to our cause.”

“I was frankly quite worried,” said the prince, “when you left us, in the company of that inquisitive Austrian diplomat. Without realizing it, you might have implicated either Father Terranova or myself, which would have implicated others, which would have set the cause back months or even years and resulted in the executions of brave and dedicated people whom you have never met.”

“That is why we went to all this trouble,” said the priest. “We wanted you to give up and go home, before you could do any damage, but you are rather stubborn. In fact, you are intractable!”

“But how did you know that I was coming to the hut?” asked Arabella.

“Because we told Pietro to take you there,” said the prince.

“Pietro!”

“. . . works for us; yes. He is one of our most valuable spies.”

“You mean, he is
not
really an orphan of the ruins?”

“Oh, he lives in the ruins, right enough. But that is his choice. And he is much more effective working from there. Street children are virtually invisible.”

“Then not one person I have met here was the person he appeared to be!”

“Under such oppressive conditions as we have,” said Terranova, “it is simpler to assume disguises.”

“Hmm . . .” said Arabella. “I should have thought that would complicate things. So, the blessing you dispensed from my balcony . . . that was not actually what you were doing, was it? You were not serious about baptizing the Hercu-laneans?”

Terranova appeared offended by the suggestion.
“Signorina!
How could you think that would be a good idea? Nobody would benefit! The Christian souls would of course be bound to welcome their persecutors to paradise, but I doubt whether they should be happy about it. And the pagan souls would be miserable in a Christian heaven. I am hurt that you could think I would willingly cause such misery!”

Belinda excused herself to answer a call of nature, and in her absence, the prince explained about those supposed “gifts” from Charles.

“The dog’s collar,” he explained quietly, “is split on the inside surface, an ideal place for hiding messages. After your . . . er, dance, with the Austrian, the watch they posted on your party was increased, and it was not safe for me to meet with Father Terranova directly. So I used the dog. She has had courier training, you see, and I knew that Father Terranova would recognize her. On the day that Charles presented the dog to your sister, the collar contained a warning to the good father to flee at the first opportunity.”

“So, that’s why you were so attentive to the dog?” Arabella asked.

Terranova smiled, bowing his head in assent. “And then again, at the museum,” he said. “My meeting you there was no accident. His Highness had placed specific information for me inside the collar.”

“That is why I invented the story of the statues in the storeroom,” the prince admitted. “I had to get you, your sister, and her dog to the museum, so that Father Terranova might retrieve the document which I had hidden in the collar. We were watched, even there.”

“Yes,” said the priest. “And when Signorina Belinda left your notebook upon the bench, we thought that she was working for the enemy! One of my monks retrieved it just in time; two other men were making towards it in all haste. You wrote some things in there,
signorina,
whose import you could not possibly guess, but which would have been all too clear to certain other parties, and deadly for us.”

Arabella looked at her hands. “I . . . I am so sorry . . .” she began.

“Tut-tut!” said Terranova. “Do not mention it! Everything has worked out for the best, as you see!”

“But I beg you will not mention this—about the dog—to your sister,” said the prince. “She believes her to be a gift from her brother, and she is very happy in that belief.”

Charles opened his mouth, as if to speak, but he shut it again. The truth was, he had found the act of giving most agreeable. The gratitude bestowed upon him with such heartfelt delight by his sisters had made him feel extraordinarily good, and he resolved to do a
genuine
good deed for somebody someday, to see whether the sensation were reproducible.

“Where is my statue now?” asked Arabella as Belinda returned to the table.

“I wish you would not keep referring to it as ‘your’ statue,
signorina,
” said the prince. “Each time an excavated treasure leaves the country, Italy is impoverished. The Pan statue, and the other items taken from Pompeii and Herculaneum, are part of our heritage. They are what makes us who we are.”

“And where is it now, did you say?”

“I didn’t, but it is in London, at the moment.”

“Yes; despite what I have just told you, in this case, we have judiciously sacrificed a few pieces of our heritage in order to purchase our future. One day, perhaps, we will be in a position to buy them back.”

“Where in London?”

“The collection sailed over some weeks ago, bound for the British Museum.”

“And did it make the trip,” asked Kendrick, “in the
Sea Lion,
perchance? A xebec? With red sails?”

“How did you know that?” asked Terranova.

Arabella rested her forehead against her hand.

“I was so
close,
” she groaned.

“Take heart,
signorina,
” said the prince. “When you return, you may go to see ‘your’ statue at the museum, on public days.”

“Ha!” she said. “How little you apprehend my countrymen, Your Excellency! They would
never
place a double-horned statue on public display! It will be hidden from view; locked away in some closet, I’ll be bound. As things stand now, it might as well be lying at the bottom of the Aegean!”

Terranova shrugged. “Perhaps. But it will have served its purpose. Besides, how many people would have seen it, I wonder, had it occupied a room in your house?”

“More than will see it at the museum! Why have you allowed me to waste my time in this fruitless fashion?”

“By the time you arrived, the bronze was safely on its way to England, and your government had generously responded with money and weapons for our cause. But you were so interesting. So very entertaining, that we wanted to play a little with you, and let you have the fun of thinking you were solving a mystery,” said Terranova. “However, as His Highness has said, we did become concerned when the Austrians became involved. They tend to execute first, and ask questions later. Which rather defeats the purpose.”

“And why have you told us all this? Isn’t it supposed to be a state secret?”

“Yes,” said the priest. “So now, if you have quite finished your lunch, we are going to have you all thrown from the cliffs.”

“Pay no attention to him,” said the prince with a smile.

“I hope that you will have the goodness to keep what we have told you today to yourselves,” said Terranova. “But there is really not much danger of your informing our enemies, for they are England’s enemies, also. That is all there is to know. Now will you
please
go home?”

“Certainly,” said Arabella. “There is no point in staying, since the statue is gone to England.”

As Terranova got up from the table, his three monks, who had dined in the servants’ quarters, emerged from the palazzo to surround him once again, and the party moved off.

“I suppose those men are not really monks,” said Arabella, watching them go.

“They are, actually,” said the prince. “But they also function as bodyguards. Beneath their coarse robes you would find the honed bodies of athletes.”

Arabella struggled to retrieve her wicked mind from under those rough robes, whence it had flown. As to which were the coarser, the garments or her thoughts, there was no reliable way to judge.

Charles and Kendrick having seen the pious retinue to the door, Arabella and Belinda found themselves alone on the terrace, in the glow of the sunset, with their prince and host, Benedetto Gandini-Palmadessola. The odor of ancient seas was borne in to them on the wind. And then Belinda, who had been very quiet all afternoon, gathered her dog onto her lap and spoke up at last.

“Are you really a widower?” she asked timidly.

“No,” he replied, smiling down at his wedding ring. “I have a wonderful wife, and three beautiful children.”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought perhaps you . . . I mean, the way we’ve been, together, and, well, at that luncheon . . . in Pompeii . . .”

The prince regarded her with mild amusement. “I am a man,” he said. “Not a lap dog.”

Observing her sister’s desolate expression, Arabella forgot their host’s extreme generosity, forgot her own position, forgot everything, in fact, in the searing heat of her all-consuming anger.

“No?” she lashed out. “Our mistake, then! You must have spent three quarters of an hour in Belinda’s lap that day, having spent the previous quarter of an hour lapping
at
her lap. And you most certainly
are
a dog, sir!”

He smiled again and shook his head. “You do not understand, because you are Protestants.”

“Actually, we are not,” said Belinda quietly.

“But you live in a Protestant country, so you
think
like Protestants. I am sorry if I have hurt your feelings,” he told her, “but you see, we are different. Protestants must behave themselves at all times, while Catholics may do anything,
anything,
as long as they tell a priest about it afterwards. If we break the law, we are subject to legal punishment, of course. Otherwise we go home to our families with clean consciences.”

“That’s a neat system!”

“We like it.”

At that moment, all the church bells began to ring for Vespers.

“If you will excuse me,” said the prince, rising and kissing Belinda’s hand in farewell, “I must attend confession.”

 

 

A
light snow, the first of the season, had sprinkled itself over the iron railings and gray stone doorsteps of Regency London. Arabella and Belinda had risen early (for them) and run out of the house, in order to lose no time in applying for news of the family scandal.

“I shall take the left side of the window,” said Arabella, “and you take the right. Then we can work our way towards the middle without missing anything.”

But in its reportage of the ways of the world, Ackermann’s window, like great literature, is both highly instructive and “monstrous entertaining.” So, despite their single-minded purpose, Arabella and Belinda soon found themselves diverted by a plethora of non-essential information: Napoleon had suffered heavy losses and been defeated at Moscau. Arabella had actually heard about this, because people had talked of little else wherever she went. But of course, she had not actually
seen
Napoleon, as she did here, clad as an infant in a cockade and diaper, weeping floods of tears and leading an army of human and horse skeletons through a blinding snowstorm.

Next to this was a picture of British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries in America, setting fire to things and generally misbehaving themselves. It was most gratifying to find the princess regent, Belinda’s particular enemy, presented as a fat, tantrum-throwing hussy. Of course, the regent himself was
always
depicted as bloated and repulsive, but Arabella never tired of seeing his caricature. It made her laugh, every time. And here was Lady Ribbonhat, too, with her enormous head and dwarfish physique, embroiled in some sort of contretemps concerning a mud puddle, a London constable, and a lot of cats.

The sisters reached the center of the window at the same moment, and found themselves looking at a double Beaumont family portrait. In the left frame, Arabella and Belinda were shewn, out of doors, this time, and with their clothes on, demurely walking along the street on either side of Charles. His arms were spread protectively behind them, in a pose vaguely reminiscent of that sketch of the Pan statue. But the frame on the right shewed the same scene from the rear, with Charles’s hands lasciviously fondling his sisters’ respective rumps. The caption read “Sibling Ribaldry.”

Belinda groaned and clutched her muff to her breast. “Whatever shall we—”

“Ladies! Welcome home at last!”

Lord Egremont tipped his hat and smiled at them, as he rode past on his gleaming chestnut mount. Farther up the street, Lord Alvanley could be seen approaching on foot.

“Miss Beaumont! Miss Belinda! London has not been the same without you!” he cried. And he shook them each by the hand with evident satisfaction.

“Alleluia! The Miss Beaumonts have returned!” shouted the eccentric Mr. Beckford, waving from the window of his ornate carriage. “We’ll have a house party at Fonthill in your honor!”

They were hailed by nearly a dozen well-known worthies in the space of five minutes. Nobody seemed to be taking the scandal very seriously. As the sisters proceeded from one establishment to another, the shopkeepers served them with as great a pleasure as ever, and Arabella finally professed herself glad to be home.

“Apparently, it was not a problem, then,” she said as the carriage made its way back to Brompton Park. “We need not have taken the men with us after all.”

“No; and Mr. Kendrick need not have risked his own life in fighting to save yours,” Belinda replied . . . somewhat spitefully, Arabella thought.

“I am not saying I
wish
I had not taken them. I am merely observing that an overhasty misjudgment may produce unnecessary expenditure.”

It was the last remark spoken by either of them until the carriage rolled in at the gate, where they encountered the rector’s horse in their stable, and its owner in their smoking room, sharing the proverbial feedbag with Charles. The gentlemen were enjoying Mrs. Moly’s
bredela,
small, Alsatian Christmas cakes, of which Arabella was particularly fond. But if Kendrick was slow to rise when his hostess made her entrance, she hardly remarked it.

“Bunny, my love,” said Arabella, removing her gloves, “ring for more
bredela
and two more plates.”

It was scarcely gone two hours since breakfast. But this was the orange and cinnamon variety and it was nearly Christmas and Mrs. Moly only made it once a year and, after all, ’twas the season.

“It is good to see you, Mr. Kendrick,” said Arabella, “although I should have thought you would want to go home to Effing after such a long absence from it.”

“I spent last night at my club,” he said quietly, “in order to do some snooping. And I shall go home, presently, for I daresay you are sick of the sight of me. But I have some news about your bronze, that I thought you might be glad of.”

Kendrick had traced the Herculaneum artifacts, listed at the shipping office as “unspecified cargo,” from the docks to a removal van, and from said van to their present location.

“Yes. I know,” said Arabella, removing her bonnet and patting her hair in the large looking glass. “They have been locked away forever in the bowels of the British Museum.” She dropped into a chair, with the force of conviction.

“Well, no, as a matter of fact. That was what
I
supposed, too, but I wanted to make certain. And I am glad that I checked, because your bronze, and all the other treasures, are currently reposing at Carlton House!”

“Oh, no!” she groaned. “I had nearly become reconciled to the failure of my endeavors. Eventually I might even have come to acknowledge some kind of lesson from this. But,” she said, through gritted teeth, “that my wonderful statue should end up with the Great Git, at
Carlton House? This
is simply not to be borne!”

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Charles, heedless of the emotional turbulence boiling up before him, “the incest scandal which you predicted with such dire forebodings has completely blown over. If you ask me, it never was a problem in the first place! Kendrick and I could have remained ensconced here at Lustings the whole time you were gone, eating whatchamacallems and staying safely out of harm’s way! Of course, I shouldn’t have found my Fortuna figurine,” he admitted. “In any case, though, the scandal is quite over; everyone has forgotten about it.”

“Not everyone,” said Arabella, pouring out tea for Mr. Kendrick. “Bunny and I have just seen another cartoon about our family in Ackermann’s window.”

“Everyone who
matters,
I meant.
En garde!
”

He thrust a pasteboard rectangle under her nose, so close to her eyes that she could not read it at first.

“What is it?” she asked, pushing his hand away.

“Exactly what it looks like: an invitation to the snow ball.”

“The what?”

“The regent’s winder ball. D’you think I’d have had an invitation to that, if I had been judged a social leper? I am not going, of course.”

“Oh!” said Belinda. “The
winter
ball, you mean!”

Upon the instant, Arabella felt a fountain of renewed hope and energy surging through her, expanding upward and outward in all directions, like the contents of a champagne bottle that is uncorked at a picnic, after a rough journey in a hackney carriage.

“Yes, Charles,” she said. “You
will
go to the ball, and furthermore I shall go, too, with you as my escort!”

“But won’t that revive the scandal?” asked Belinda, gnawing her nether lip.

“I shall be in disguise!”

“That is what you always say, and yet everyone always knows who you are.”

“Oh, nonsense. You should come too, Bunny. The invitation says ‘Charles Beaumont
and guests
.’ A ball is just what you need, dear, to restore the pink to those adorable cheeks!”

It did not occur to her to include Reverend Kendrick in their party. Perhaps this was owing to the fact that he was sitting in the shadow cast by one of the bookcases, but the fact was, she had quite forgotten he was in the room at all.