45

Raffaele Orsini was watching his partner work.

He himself had gotten Giulio Aventino’s trademark soft-voiced, phrased-as-a-question, piercing-gaze-over-the-eyeglasses reprimand earlier, but he was the first to admit he’d deserved it. Not so much because of what had happened inside Santa Maria della Scala while he sat in the café outside—hadn’t the maresciallo told him not to enter the church?—but because, though Giulio hadn’t mentioned this, the thin young man they now thought of as their suspect must have exploded out of one of the church’s main doors just as, through another, Raffaele had been charging in.

Raffaele had been forgiven, though, or at least considered properly chastised, and welcomed back into the fold. In fact, he’d proved his use already. Not only by his rapid, efficient, and book-proper handling of the crime scene. While the historian smoldered in the pew, Giulio Aventino patiently listened to the lamentations of the old ladies. Raffaele would have liked to stay and pick up some pointers on dealing with hysterical witnesses, but he’d been dispatched to run interference with the dyspeptic emissary launched in their direction by the Bishop. This vinegary Monsignore had arrived with a flurry and a frown, sent to ensure, in equal measure, that the search for the friar’s killer was made a high Carabinieri priority, and that untoward behavior at the monastery of Santa Maria della Scala, should any come to light, not find its way into the official report. Raffaele had done a good job, he was pleased to say, of placating the priest while upholding the honor and independence of the Carabinieri. At the moment the Monsignore, in the company of the monastery’s prior, was exploring the possibility that some valuable item might have gone missing (a suggestion that made the Monsignore’s eyes flash, as though Raffaele, by speaking the words, was in danger of bringing about the fact). After they’d gone off Raffaele had herded the rest of the monks—there were fourteen—into two pews not far from where the body lay. As a detective, he’d have been happier if they’d left the premises altogether, so as not to endanger the evidence; and his partner, as a nonbeliever, would probably be happier if they just vaporized. But Raffaele felt strongly that they had a right to sit in prayer and meditation near the corporeal remains of their brother, to keep vigil and ease his joyous trip into the presence of God.

Until the coroner’s men took the body away, of course. Now the monks, on the orders of their prior, had returned to their cloister. The prior and the acidic Monsignore were inspecting the side chapels one by one. Uniformed officers, armed with a dialed-back version of the old ladies’ descriptions, prowled the streets hunting down the thin young man. And Raffaele was in a rear pew taking lessons in interview technique.

He always enjoyed this process. In some ways observing Giulio with a witness was like watching a soccer game between unmatched teams. Each play unfolded uniquely, and so held individual interest; but the overall organization of the game was familiar and the outcome never in doubt.

“Now, Professore, please.” Seeming both distracted and ready to be grateful, Giulio addressed the historian. “Tell me what you can about this incident. Where were you when it took place?” The answer, of course, Giulio already knew, as he could also, no doubt, predict the objection of Spencer George.

“What I told your sergeant—”

“Is what you told my sergeant. I’m sorry, sir, but it’s my responsibility to hear all witness statements personally. As I did with those of the vecchie,” he confided in a tone of shared misery.

“Yes, of course.” Spencer George, his eye-roll making it clear he was yielding, unwillingly, to the inevitable, began his tale. It was essentially the same story he’d told Raffaele: he and two friends had entered the Reliquary Chapel at the end of the side aisle “to admire Santa Teresa’s chopped-off foot,” a phrase near enough to blasphemy that it caused Raffaele to suppress a shudder. George had remained after his friends had gone. He’d heard a scream, come into the main church, and seen the monk lying on the floor with an apparition in black hovering over him. Giulio lifted his eyebrows at this suggestion of the supernatural, until George went on to add, “I believe it was her sister-in-law who’d run howling outside.”

“Ah.” Giulio nodded and continued. “And the friends you were with, your fellow historians? Livia Pietro and Thomas Kelly? Where are they now?”

From the pause and the widening of the historian’s eyes, Raffaele could tell the question had hit home. The professore had never been asked, or volunteered, the names or occupations of his companions.

And this was the point and had been all along: the point of keeping Spencer George waiting, of Giulio’s pedantic civil servant act, to make him feel superior and therefore get careless.

In their brief conference when Giulio arrived, Raffaele had explained he’d been sent by the Cardinal to keep an eye on Livia Pietro; Giulio in turn told Raffaele about the theft at the Vatican Library and the red-haired American priest easily identified as one Thomas Kelly, who’d been with Pietro then. The third party involved in that fracas, it seemed, was a thin young man of suspiciously similar description to the suspect they were seeking now. The Gendarme detective on that case was on his way; but even without him, Raffaele and his senior partner could see something was going on here that required a more thorough explanation. And that this historian, now that he’d been thrown off-balance, might well be the one to give it.