Cécile and I went to the Russian consulate the next morning, finalizing our strategy en route, so that by the time the consul agreed to see us, we were more than ready for him. My friend took the lead.
“Monsieur, one of your countryman has done a dear friend of mine a great service,” she said. “Her fiancé was killed in a terrible accident, and she would have collapsed outside the church following his funeral had not a Russian gentleman offered his carriage to take her home.”
“I would expect nothing less from a Russian,” the consul said. “We are a noble people.”
“The trouble is,” Cécile continued, “she now finds herself in a rather embarrassing situation. She doesn’t know the gentleman’s name, and hence, is unable to write to thank him for his kind service. We were hoping that you might be able to point us in the right direction. Do you keep a list of Russians in Florence? I always register with the French consulate when I travel.”
“We do, but I’m afraid I can’t give it out.”
“Of course not,” I said. “We completely understand the need for discretion. Would it be possible, however, for you to take a look at it and let us know the names of any likely candidates for our anonymous Samaritan? It would be someone in a position to have a carriage.”
“Or someone who had happened to hire one that day,” the consul said. “I’m afraid what you ask is impossible. The information I have is not all that detailed, just names and where each individual is staying while here.”
“Oh, but that’s quite enough, sir,” I said. “We know the date of the funeral, and we know the gentleman was staying in a house, not a hotel. Surely that narrows it down.”
“It would, to some degree,” he admitted.
“Please, monsieur, I beg you to help our poor friend. Having suffered so devastating a loss, thanking this gentleman would allow her the comfort that comes from social niceties,” Cécile said. “It seems a small thing, I know, but to her, it will mean much more. It will give her something positive to act upon, and that is what she needs more than anything right now.”
“I will see what I can do. Tell me the date of the funeral and then come back in an hour. That will give me time to check if anyone registered matches your criteria. I cannot tell you where, precisely, they are staying, but the names will give you something, at least.”
“We are indebted to you,” she said. “Я очень благодарен.”
His eyes lit up. “You speak Russian?”
“Not much,” Cécile said. “The Princess Mariya Alekseyevna Bolkonskaya is a dear friend. She’s taught me a bit.”
An enormous grin split his face. “You are a friend of Masha’s? Why did you not tell me that first? Of course I will help you. Together, we will find the gentleman you seek.”
When we returned as instructed, the consul greeted us at the door himself and gave us a list that included six names and complete addresses. “If I can offer any further help, do let me know,” he said. “I am at your service.” He kissed Cécile’s hand, nodded at me, and waved as we set off.
“Mentioning Masha was a stroke of genius,” I said. “You timed it perfectly.”
“I knew waiting until we’d finished the meeting would lead to the most desirous outcome,” Cécile said. “It made him feel guilty for not having been more helpful from the beginning, which is why he overcompensated by providing the addresses. I’m finding that I have quite an affinity for this sort of work. Perhaps I should speak to Monsieur Hargreaves about having the Palace hire me.”
“You’d be bored in three days flat.”
We stopped in a café, where we plotted the locations of each of the six houses on my map. Aside from one in the Oltrarno near the Palazzo Pitti, they were all in the city’s historic center, not far from the Duomo. Proceeding with caution was essential. It was quite likely that the man whom we sought had killed Lena, Marzo, and Signore di Taro.
“Do you think we should have Monsieur Hargreaves and Monsieur Benton-Smith accompany us?” Cécile asked.
“We’ll do better on our own,” I said. “Showing up unannounced with gentlemen in tow looks more suspicious than a pair of ladies calling to offer thanks. Our strategy worked perfectly on the consul and we should employ it now as well.”
“A violent criminal is unlikely to know Masha or even recognize her name.”
“We know for a fact she was friends with at least one murderer.” Almost four years ago, while Cécile and I were visiting St. Petersburg, a charming Russian prince, Vasilii Ruslanovich Guryanov, hired me to investigate the death of his mistress, the greatest ballerina of her generation, Irina Semenova Nemetseva. The identity of the murderer shocked us all.
“That man would have fooled anyone,” Cécile said.
“My point is that a well-heeled Russian traveler, murderer or not, may well move in the same social circles as Masha.”
Cécile shrugged but did not look convinced.
We started with the house in Oltrarno, and by three o’clock had made the acquaintance of every gentleman on the consul’s list. Half of them we dismissed the moment we set eyes on them, as their white hair and advanced age did not meet the description Signore Bastieri and Tessa had given of the man with the carriage. The others each seemed promising in their own way, but none admitted to having assisted Lena, nor could offer any suggestions as to any fellow countrymen who might have. They all were acquainted with Masha.
“We’ve been naïve,” I said. “A Russian assassin wouldn’t register with the consulate.”
“Nor would the consul divulge the identity of someone skulking about undercover,” Cécile said.
“The consul probably wouldn’t even be aware of the presence of such a person.” I frowned. “No wonder Colin was so willing to let us pursue this angle.”
“What now?” Cécile asked.
“We play tourist, just for an hour or two. I need to let my thoughts percolate and do that best when my brain thinks I’m otherwise occupied.”
We went to the Palazzo Vecchio, where we wandered through the enormous Salone dei Cinquecento—the Hall of the Five Hundred—built on the order of Savonarola in the late fifteenth century. The friar, having helped create the environment that led to the ousting of the Medici, had longed to return Florence to Republican glory. With the Medici gone, he finally had his chance. He established a Great Council of five hundred men and needed a space in the palazzo that could hold them all. After Savonarola’s downfall, the room was enlarged again, with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci hired to decorate the walls, but neither artist completed their work.
My brain would not quiet. I couldn’t master my thoughts, which remained disjointed and confused. I half snapped into focus when Cécile and I entered the La Sala delle Carte Geografiche, a wood-paneled room whose walls hid cupboard doors, behind which jewelry, scientific instruments, and a variety of other precious items had been stored over the centuries. Fifty-four maps decorated them, each depicting the known world at the time of Cosimo I’s rule. Beneath the wooden-coffered ceiling stood a huge globe in the dead center of the room. Hovering next to it was a young man working as a docent, who introduced himself as Frosino.
“Ladies, please, may I show you something very special?” he asked, bowing as he spoke. “There is a chamber accessed from a hidden door, just over here, behind one of the maps. Would you like to see?”
“Most definitely,” I said. We followed him through the door into a small room.
“Bianca Cappello, a courtesan, was the mistress of Francesco de’ Medici. Someone conveniently murdered her husband. Two years later, Francesco’s father, Cosimo I, died, and Francesco became grand duke. This gave him the power to do what he’d long wanted: move his mistress into the palazzo. Four years later, his wife died, and he secretly married Bianca, but the Florentines never accepted her as their duchess. They used to sing The Tuscan Grand Duke has married a whore / Who was a Venetian noble before. This little room was her private space. She could look through that window to watch, unobserved, everything happening in the Sala dei Cinquecento.”
“Was their marriage happy?” Cécile said.
“I believe they did care deeply for each other,” the docent said, “although it did not end well. They died one day apart, after both falling hideously and simultaneously ill. Many suspect they were poisoned by enemies.”
“How ghastly,” I said. “Was it common for secret passages to be built in palazzi?” I asked.
“Common enough,” Frosino said. “There was much fighting in Florence before the days of the Medici. Violent factions loyal to powerful rival families frequently caused chaos. Those families wanted to be able to come and go from their houses without being seen. Some even had tunnels dug so that they did not have to walk in the street.”
“Do those tunnels still exist?”
“I very much doubt it, signora,” he said. “Such things were not necessary once the violence stopped. They were probably filled in long ago.”
“What caused the violence to stop?” Cécile asked.
“The merchants eventually convinced the city that it was bad for business. The oldest palazzi originally had tall towers for defense, but they were ordered to be taken down so that the government, not individual families controlled Florence.”
“But the Medici controlled the city after that,” I said. “They were an individual family.”
Frosino made a dismissive gesture. “We Florentines have never much minded having to reconcile contradictory facts. There were remnants of the old republican democracy, even under the Medici.”
I was still mulling over the existence of those long-forgot tunnels after we’d thanked Frosino for his tour and walked back to Kat’s palazzo. Upon reaching front door, I did not immediately go inside but instead stepped into the narrow alley that ran along the side of the house.
“If you’re hoping to find a secret door, don’t bother,” Cécile said. “In addition to inspecting every inch of the inside of the house, I’ve done the same to the exterior. There’s nothing to see but the old service entrance the countess had blocked up.”
“There could be hidden passages inside that we’ve missed. Do you think Signore Tazzera could find the architect’s original designs?”
“I’ve no doubt he could, if they still exist, but surely they would not include anything meant to be secret. If the Vieri family wanted to hide something in their house during the time of Savonarola, they could have added a passageway or little room at that point.”
“Such a project would have been risky,” I said. “The builders might have talked. Better to conceal a treasure somewhere extant.”
“Are we back to looking for the treasure? What about Lena?”
“I’m frustrated, Cécile. If her death has something to do with the treasure, we’ve a chance at finding her murderer, but if it’s connected to Colin and Darius’s work…”
“We’ve no hope at all.”
“Quite.”
“Non,” Cécile said. “I refuse to accept this. From the beginning, we’ve known we would not have access to certain resources and information available to Monsieur Hargreaves. That has not changed. We’ve always believed we could find something from Marzo’s life that would point us to his killer, even if only by discovering how an assassin may have intended to misdirect anyone investigating.”
“Thank you.” I squeezed my friend’s hand. “I ought not lose faith. Marzo went to the Mercato Nuovo every Tuesday to buy flowers. Sometimes, in the course of doing so, he knocked over a display, often enough that the florists noticed. I’m convinced this was a deliberate signal to someone.” I was about to say that I’d talked to Colin about it, and knew Marzo was not using it to contact Darius, but stopped myself in time.
“It is a rather clunky method, is it not? Monsieur Le Queux’s spies are far more subtle,” Cécile said. “This makes me suspect it is something Marzo came up with himself.”
“He wanted money. Darius might not be the only person to whom he was supplying information.”
“Have we even the slightest insight into the nature of the information Marzo supplied?”
“Broadly speaking, I assume it’s something politically sensitive coming from Britain’s enemies, perhaps to do with their military or strategy or—”
“How would someone like Marzo gain access to anything of that ilk?” Cécile asked. “It’s not as if he could have waltzed into a gentlemen’s club and eavesdropped on other members as they lunched.”
“No, he couldn’t. It may be that he was simply a messenger.”
“Unless he was a master of disguise,” she said. Her eyes sparkled, and I knew she was about to embark on a flight of fancy. Her voice grew dramatic. “To those who knew him in Florence, he was an ordinary laborer, but those who saw him in Berlin or Moscow encountered someone entirely different: a gentleman educated at the Sorbonne, who developed a passion for adventure after joining friends on an ill-conceived expedition to ski across Greenland.”
“Ski across Greenland?” I raised an eyebrow.
“The frostbite he suffered put him off cold weather, but did not dissuade him from looking for more civilized forms of excitement. He became a spy, effortlessly moving between worlds, making contacts in every world capital.”
“A mercenary spy, willing to do anything for anyone, so long as the payoff was sufficient.”
“Precisely,” Cécile said.
“I will never believe he tried to ski across Greenland, though the image is more than a little amusing.”
She shrugged. “The details are not important. It is the essence of the man that matters.”
I would never believe Marzo sophisticated enough to have become a master of disguise, but then again, maybe it was wrong to completely dismiss Cécile’s outlandish theories. A good spy, after all, should be able to deceive everyone around him. Still, I doubted very much Marzo had been leading a complicated double life. More likely, he was selling his information to more than one party, and that deception, once discovered, was enough to get him killed.