“Marzo murdered your neighbor?” I asked.
“I believe so,” Vittoria said. She shouted something to her sisters and then came around the side of the booth to stand close to me, continuing in a low whisper. “I am not some innocent fool who believes every man who flirts with me might be interested in marriage. When Marzo and I went for walks, we always followed the same path, starting from my parents’ house, going through the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, and then up past the railway station and around in an unremarkable loop.”
“Not a route you would expect a young man with romantic inclinations to suggest?”
“Not at all. Wouldn’t you prefer a stroll along the Arno?” She glanced over her shoulder at her sisters and then, satisfied that they weren’t about to harass her, continued. “When we made our way back toward my home, instead of going the most direct way, he would always have us turn into the street immediately before the one on which I live. We would walk to the end, turn around, and then he would take me home.”
“The street dead-ends?”
“Yes, so why go down it?”
“He may have wanted to prolong his time with you,” I suggested.
“Nothing in the rest of his behavior made me think so,” she said. “It’s not as if he were bringing me to a secluded corner to steal a kiss. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Then, not long before Marzo died, a man called Signore di Taro was murdered in his house in that little street. We never again went that way.”
“Marzo may not have wanted to take you past the site of a grisly crime.”
“If so, he never mentioned it. Everyone was talking about the murder, but he showed no interest in it whatsoever. When I brought it up, he only shrugged and said that we all eventually die.”
“A callous reaction, certainly, but it doesn’t mean he killed the man,” I said.
“I know, signora, and I wish I had something more concrete to support my belief. I swear to you, Marzo was involved. We walked out together once more after that, and then he never called on me again. Soon thereafter he, too, was dead. I know in my heart there is a connection, even if I can’t prove it. I tell you all this only to warn you. Marzo was not the man he appeared to be. Asking questions about him could prove dangerous. There are many things about him that did not quite make sense. Now I must return to work. I wish you good health and safety.”
“Wait!” I called to her as she stepped back to her booth. “What is the name of the street where Signore di Taro lived?”
“It’s better that you don’t know.” She set about helping a customer and wouldn’t so much as look at me again. Recognizing that continuing to press her was unlikely to garner a result, I continued to make my way through the market, but gleaned no further information about Marzo.
My task was complete, but I had no intention of returning to the house yet. Instead, I marched straight to the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II and into the lobby of the Savoy Hotel, which had opened twenty years earlier and was still lauded as providing the most modern accommodations in Florence. A bit of Britain on the Continent, for the unadventurous traveler who required that sort of thing. I penned a message to Colin, asking him to meet me at the first possible moment, and had the concierge arrange delivery to the Palazzo di Vieri. Then, knowing it would be some time until my husband returned home to receive it, I settled into a comfortable spot in the lobby, ordered a pot of tea, and regretted that I did not have a book to occupy me while I waited.
In the ensuing hours, I went over everything I’d learned pertaining to Marzo and his death, so that by the time Colin arrived, I would be able to present him with a measured overview.
“My dear girl, are you all right?” I had seen him enter the lobby and saunter over to me as if we made a habit of meeting in hotels. The concern in his voice was at odds with his deliberately casual demeanor.
“I am,” I said, “but I thought it best not to return to the house without first speaking to you privately. I’m sorry if I alarmed you.”
He sat next to me on the settee, ordered a whisky from the waiter who appeared almost the minute he arrived, and listened without taking his eyes from mine as I recounted for him all that had happened. When I finished, he nodded. “You were right to err on the side of caution. I find it hard to believe that the household staff pose a threat, but we shall have to take what you heard very seriously. I suspect it’s nothing more than them wanting to find this wretched treasure, but I will speak to them and get to the bottom of it. I can promise you that everyone working in the house has been carefully vetted. The entire—”
“Yes, I know. The entire household was set up to protect the countess, and no systematic changes have been made since her death. I don’t doubt that she knew how to address outside threats, but in the ensuing years, those threats may have changed.”
“That’s entirely possible,” Colin said, “especially given that Darius and I are working from the palazzo.”
“I want to think more about what Vittoria and the couple at the market told me. Forgive me if that means I’m treading into forbidden territory. Marzo demonstrated odd patterns of behavior. He bought flowers every Tuesday, but only sometimes knocked over a display, often enough that it was noticed. I’m wondering if his clumsiness was deliberate, meant to send a signal to someone. His regular pattern of appearing in the market at noonish once a week would seem innocuous, unremarkable. But to someone watching, the occasional deviation in his actions could have a specific meaning.”
“You’re quite right,” Colin said. “It’s a variation—admittedly an unnecessarily complicated one—of a common enough technique for signaling a message.”
“Could Darius shed light on it?”
“He may be able to. Marzo was his contact, not mine. I can tell you it was not how he communicated with Darius. They used a different method.”
We both fell silent as the waiter brought Colin’s whisky. Once he’d gone, I continued. “I see a resemblance of sorts in the walks he took with Vittoria. They followed the same route each time, changing only after she brought up the murder. He may have been trying to establish a regular habit of being seen on the dead man’s street. Once he’d killed Signore di Taro, he had no further need either for Vittoria or the walks.”
Colin frowned. “That’s more of a stretch. First, we have not established any connection between Marzo and di Taro. Second, it would be careless to stop the walks so quickly after the crime. Better to keep taking them until more time had passed.”
“Perhaps he’d intended to do so, but being murdered prevented him,” I said. “I agree we need more evidence, but it taxes credulity to suggest that coincidence led him to walk out with Vittoria, who lived so conveniently near the victim, particularly as Marzo did not actively pursue the relationship in any meaningful way. She did not strike me as the sort of girl who expects every man she meets to fall madly in love with her. He was engaged to Lena. Why would he start a flirtation with someone else but make no move to so much as kiss her?”
“He could have been hoping to find a friend.”
“I do hope you’re being facetious,” I said.
“I am.” He drained his whisky, returned the glass to the table in front of us, and drummed his fingers on the wood. “Your observations about Marzo’s behavior are insightful, Emily. Good work. We should return to the house. I told Darius I was going to collect you after you’d had tea here at the hotel.”
“Does he think me too fragile to make the five-minute walk on my own?”
“No, of course not. I told him you’d been ambushed by an unwelcome acquaintance we’d made on the train and needed my help extricating yourself from the threat of a dinner invitation.”
“How complicated your life is,” I said.
“My dear, no loving husband would leave his wife under obligation to the dreadful Baroness von Hohensteinbauergrunewald.”
“The Baroness von Hohensteinbauergrunewald?” I beetled my brow. “Why is that name familiar?”
“Five years ago, when we were searching for Estella Lamar in Paris, you and Cécile stumbled upon the name in a hotel registry. The Meurice, I believe. The baroness had nothing to do with the case, but Cécile described to me a rather hilarious account of the lady’s adventures in Egypt. There was some sort of archaeological controversy. The surname was so outlandish I could not help but remember it. I’ve long hoped for the opportunity to use it.”
When we reached the house, Colin went straight to the top floor to talk to the staff, leaving me to find Darius in the Sala dei Pappagalli, reading. He leapt to his feet when I entered the room.
“What a lot of rot this is,” he said, waving the book. “Please tell me it’s not yours.”
It was my volume of William Le Queux’s stories. “I abandoned it soon after our arrival, but Cécile picked it up. She’s finding it rather diverting.”
“I suppose that’s what fiction’s meant to do,” he said. “In this case, I object, however. Le Queux isn’t interested in entertaining his readers. He’s trying to stir up fear among the British people.”
“I don’t think anyone takes him that seriously.”
“Forgive me. I have a tendency to outrage when I feel the citizens of the empire are being misled. How did you get on with the Baroness von Hohensteinbauergrunewald?”
“I’m surprised you can recall her name.”
“I met her once, nearly ten years ago, while hiking in the Bavarian Alps.”
“The baroness is an outdoorswoman?” I asked.
“Heavens, no. I was with friends from university, one of whom was acquainted with her family. Their estate was near the village we used as our base to access the mountains. She invited all of us to a positively appalling garden party, where she served the worst tea I have ever tasted and droned on about her collection of Egyptian antiquities. She was quite taken with me. It was appalling.”
“It sounds it,” I said. “Fortunately Colin bustled me out before she could invite me to dinner.”
“Well, I shall be giving the Savoy a wide berth as long as she’s there,” he said.
“No need, Darius,” Colin said as he entered the room and crossed to the end table upon which he’d placed the bottle of whisky he’d brought from home. “She’s leaving on a late train tonight, headed for Venice, I believe.”
“Heaven help La Serenissima,” Darius said. “Pour me a glass, will you?”
“If I’d known that before I sent my message, I wouldn’t have begged to be rescued,” I said, smiling at Colin. “One dinner would not have been too much to bear.”
“Oh, Emily, I assure you it would,” Darius said. “Not even the promise of her imminently having to leave for the station would have been enough to get you through the meal. Tedious doesn’t begin to describe her. You owe your husband a great debt.”
“I shall keep that in mind.” I met Colin’s eyes and felt my cheeks color. “I’m off to dress for dinner and shall see you both shortly.” I knew he would want to talk to Darius privately about what the servants had said. Before I reached our bedroom, I heard Cécile coming into the house. I waited until she had started up the stairs and then hailed her from the gallery landing. Together, we went to my study, where I updated her on the events of the day.
“Mon dieu, I would not have suspected anything of that sort from Tessa,” she said. “I had a lengthy conversation with her last night. Her only secret is un petit copain called Giotto. Madame Orlandi knows his family and disapproves, so Tessa meets him away from the house.”
“What about the treasure? Did she say anything about it?”
“She confided that all of the servants have searched for it at one point or another, but that no one has found anything. She insisted that if any of them had, they would not have kept it for themselves but reported it to us or Kat or the countess, I suppose, when she was still alive.”
“Did you believe her?”
“I did, but not in the way you mean. I don’t think anyone has hunted for it in years.”
“Yet so many people have mentioned it to us,” I said.
“Yes, but most of them only after we’ve asked. Something was hidden here, long ago. Maybe it still exists, maybe it doesn’t, but regardless, it makes for good stories, like those told by the jewelers on the Ponte Vecchio. But to suggest that its existence matters now to anyone but us? I’m not convinced.”
“The servants were definitely discussing it in a context that involved me. If they mean to distract us with it, what are they distracting us from?”
“This terrible business with Marzo, I imagine. Kallista, I know how hard you are trying to respect the boundaries of Monsieur Hargreaves’s work. We are both aware that the murder has something to do with what he does for the Crown. I suspect your husband has asked Tessa and the others to encourage our interest in this little mystery so that we will apply ourselves to finding treasure and leave Marzo’s death to them.”
Could he be playing a more manipulative game than I knew? I didn’t think so. We were being honest with each other, even if that meant him being straight about admitting that he couldn’t tell me anything. “He wouldn’t rely on servants to do that. He’s been very clear with me and I’ve told him we accept the limitations of his work and won’t interfere.”
“He will not have believed you, not unless you put up a very strong fight before capitulating.”
“He believes me.”
“Kallista, the man is no fool. He knows we are investigating. About that, there can be no doubt. He could never be persuaded that you would abandon a murder investigation in favor of a treasure hunt likely to turn up nothing.”
She was correct, of course, but I couldn’t tell her that he not only knew exactly what we were doing but also that I was keeping him abreast of all our discoveries. It seemed ridiculous to hide it from her, but I had promised him I would and had to trust that he had reason to believe such subterfuge essential. I hated the deception, just as he had warned me I would. A dull pain ached in my abdomen.
“Let’s not worry about what he thinks or doesn’t,” I said. “How was your time in Chianti?”
“Kallista, I did not go to Chianti. If I had, I would not have arrived back here in time for dinner.” She sighed. “Renzo and I spent the day together, but we did not leave Florence. I invented the excursion to the winery so that neither Monsieur Hargreaves nor Monsieur Benton-Smith would know the more intimate nature of my plans. If they hadn’t been at the breakfast table, I would have never felt the need for such a fiction.”
“Colin wouldn’t have judged you, and Darius is far too polite to have commented. He would have pretended not to hear.”
“I am in complete agreement,” she said. “I’ve become so accustomed to leading them both astray in order to make them think we’ve abandoned our investigation that I find myself firmly in the habit of lying to them. It’s rather appalling how easily it happened.”
I knew all too well what she meant. “Let’s hope we don’t have to carry on in this manner much longer.”
Barking at the door told us that Caesar and Brutus had taken note of their mistress’s return. I let them in and they raced to Cécile, who scooped them up and deposited them into her lap. “Many of the details of my day are irrelevant to our purposes, although I will tell you that Renzo’s home has a roof terrace with an incomparable view of the city,” she said. “We shared a bottle of champagne—a delicate attention that did not go unnoticed—there this afternoon. He is intrigued by the possibility of the treasure and has done further research into it, digging through a cache of letters dating to the days of Savonarola’s control of Florence. They aren’t specifically connected to records or histories of this house, so he did not bring them to you when we were in the library. But now, knowing more, he thinks it could be advantageous to expand the search for other sources that might be of use. One of these letters—written by a silk merchant to one of his colleagues—mentions that there is a way to keep things safe.”
“Things?” I asked.
“Unfortunately there is nothing more specific as to the nature of the items. However, the author of the letter was an avid collector of art, who expressed concerns that Savonarola’s supporters would force him to destroy many of the paintings he owned. Those are the things that could have been kept safe here in this house.”
“Paintings, not jewelry.” I pondered the idea. “Or paintings and jewelry. The palazzo might have been a haven for anything to which Savonarola objected.”
“That is just what Renzo deduced,” Cécile said. “Many things could have been hidden here, but, alas, he believes that if that were the case, they all would have been returned to their owners after the friar’s execution.”
“Colin came to a similar conclusion. Does this mean you no longer give credence to the idea that there is any remaining treasure to be found?”
“Far from it.” She removed a small, folded paper from her reticule. “This all but proves there’s something yet to find.”