9

"Damn!"

Isabella winced as Sister Agnieszka's silhouette detached itself from the crowd and the angry nun approached her.

"Damn! Damn!"

A group of passers-by in colourful clothing, some wearing straw hats, stopped, looking first irritated, and then amused.

"Please, pull yourself together!" Isabella gave her fellow sister a light tap on her flank. "You can swear like a trooper for all I care, but not at the convent stall, where God and everyone else can hear you. Please! Honestly, what are you doing?"

Sister Agnieszka had been gone exactly two minutes before returning to the stall.

"I'm swearing, what does it fucking sound like? I forgot the durum wheat flour for the ravioli."

"And?"

"What do you mean, 'And?' Galetti's Panetteria is five streets away. I really can't be going all the way back there. Bad enough that I've got to walk all the way back." She settled down on a board box, slipped off her right shoe and rubbed the sole of her foot. "My feet are killing me. This bloody corn. This bloody, bloody …"

"Agnieszka!"

"Am I not right?"

"I can go for you," Isabella suggested impulsively. And even as she spoke, she thought it was the best idea she had had all day. She was tied to the stall until one o'clock. But now an opportunity had arisen for her to hand stall duty over to Sister Agnieszka, and pursue her investigation. Besides, the durum wheat flour really was important. No one wanted to miss out on Hildegard's ravioli with spinach-ricotta-parmesan filling. Not least because the alternative was unadorned German home cooking, like her much-feared jacket potatoes with fried liver sausage, which she always served when she ran out of other ideas. No one in the abbey was in the mood for that.

Agnieszka looked at her uncertainly. "You would do that?" Isabella nodded.

"Sure. After spending all day standing around here, it can't hurt to stretch my legs a bit."

"Hmm." She knitted her eyebrows. "That might not be such a bad idea. The way you are with the customers, you might wind up doing more damage if you stayed put." Agnieszka winked at her.

Isabella played along: "Yes, I have a lot to learn and I vow to do better." She folded her hands and bowed her head, making them both chuckle. "See you in a minute. I'll hurry."

It felt liberating to emerge from behind the stall and take the first steps into her new-found freedom. Not that she hadn't been enjoying her new duty – on the contrary. She really liked direct contact with the villagers and tourists. There had been a few deep conversations – fewer about God, more about worldly things – and she had laughed a lot. But more than anything else, she wanted to find out about Aurora at the hotel. Perhaps an employee there could tell her the reason for the girl's hasty exit. Her mind made up, she strode through the din of the market towards the hotel and looked around as she went. She saw why this market attracted so many tour buses. There was no cheap mass-produced junk here. All the goods at this market were local, lovingly hand-made to the highest standards.

The market teemed with the most diverse scents. Fragrant smells like the lavender cushions that the Creative Country Women's stall was selling; the fruity, bitter aromas of the small Mazzetti coffee stand at the end of the picturesquely narrow San Rossore alley; strong notes of Parmesan wafted from the local organic cheese dairy, which supplied the convent; and the spicy scent of cypress hanging over everything, heralding the coming summer. She would have liked to close her eyes and just follow her nose.

She paused briefly as something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. A fat child with blonde pigtails and chubby red cheeks, holding a basket full of apples and standing under a tree. Isabella stopped and looked at the porcelain figure more closely. It was the same one that Sister Raffaella had had on her dresser.

"Do you like it?"

Isabella looked up and was rewarded with a friendly smile from the stallholder, a woman in her mid-fifties with long, very dark hair. She wore a blue linen dress and a colourful patterned shawl over her shoulders to protect herself from the sun. "This is Greta, our bestseller." She pointed to the porcelain figurine. "Isn't she cute?"

Isabella nodded emphatically. "She certainly is."

She let her gaze wander over the table, which was piled with porcelain figurines, vases, plates and crockery.

"Mazza ceramics," she said more to herself as she read the ceramic sign that stood at the centre of the display.

"That's us!" The saleswoman beamed. "All original handwork from our factory in Lucca. Our figurine series is much sought-after by collectors."

Isabella turned to the woman, looking everything over very carefully. "May I?" She cautiously held out her hand.

"Gladly."

Gently she lifted the apple-tree porcelain figure. A hand-written price tag had been stuck on the base. It read "Thirty-five euros". Not exactly a bargain, but not as expensive as all that, either.

"So there is a collector's market for these figures?"

"Oh yes. Far beyond our region. Sofia, the figure you are holding in your hand, comes from our current spring collection. 'Carefree Country Childhood' is the name of this series and it is proving very popular with our customers."

Isabella nodded thoughtfully and gently put chubby little Sofia back down. "Think how valuable you might be one day …" She paused. "Forgive me! I'm being very rude. I am Sister Isabella. Over from the convent stall."

They shook hands and the woman introduced herself as Giorgia Martini.

"It's always hard to say and it varies from line to line," she explained. "The Mazza factory only added these porcelain figures to its range a few years ago. Since then, they have been getting more and more popular. But I wonder if they'll ever become really valuable." She shrugged. "Who knows! Why not? Even now, some unique pieces from the first special series fetch several hundred euros."

Isabella sucked in her breath appreciatively.

"But that's peanuts compared to the Holy Grail, as we call it." Giorgia Martini lowered her voice conspiratorially.

Isabella did not interrupt her.

"In 2013, the then company owner Antonio Mazza created a special series in honour of Pope Francis, the first Pope ever to belong to the Jesuit order – just like Antonio Mazza did himself. He was a very religious person, you must know."

"Was?"

"Was. He died two years ago."

"Oh!"

She waved her hand. "He was very old by then, and he fell asleep peacefully surrounded by his loved ones and never woke up. Just the way we all want to go."

Aha, thought Isabella, and she almost had to smile. For this saleswoman, the death of the old head of the firm was incidental to her story, an inconsequential detail.

"This series is called 'The Six Popes' – as the name suggests, it consists of the six most recent popes." She raised a hand and counted off on her fingers: "John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and II, Pope Benedict XVI." Her face lit up as she stretched the thumb of her left hand: "And finally, the current Pope Francis. It was an extraordinarily pretty series. Very lovingly designed." She sighed – a little too showily, Isabella thought.

"So what's this about the Holy Grail?"

"Well hold on: I'm not finished yet. This series was made especially for the Vatican, for the Pope himself. And Antonio Mazza jumped at the chance to deliver the figures personally.” She shrugged again, reflexively. "But at some point the series was split up and now the figures are in a private collection. But it's not complete. It means that a figure has disappeared. It's like it has just fallen off the face of the earth."

Well now, Isabella thought to herself. So a porcelain figurine had just disappeared.

"They say that the right collectors would pay a five-figure sum for this lost piece, and not bat an eyelid." The woman leaned forward, speaking in a whisper now. "There is talk of thirty thousand euros."

Isabella's brows pushed together in disbelief. "For a porcelain figurine?!"

The saleswoman nodded with amusement. "You must remember that this collection once belonged to Pope Francis. It doesn't get any holier than that."

Isabella had to think about that one. She herself had not yet had the pleasure of meeting the Pope. But she was still young.

"And what is known about the whereabouts of this figure?"

"Nothing," Giorgia Martini answered through thickly painted lips. "After the Vatican, the trail of Paul VI went cold. It could be anywhere."

Anywhere. Isabella's right eyelid twitched as she let the word reverberate in her mind. The image of the soft dust-print on Sister Raffaella's dresser slid into her mind. By all appearances, one figure was missing from that collection. But what were the chances that it was the missing Pope Paul VI? Surely she wouldn't have put it out on a chest of drawers. But if that's what it had been, and now it was missing, then here was a motive for murder that not even Matteo could overlook.

The saleswoman lowered her eyes and gave Isabella a coy look. "Sister, may I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"I heard that one of your fellow sisters in the convent died in a tragic accident …"

Isabella lowered her head and folded her hands together.

"Was it Sister Raffaella? I haven't seen her at the stand for days, and now you're here, and …"

Isabella lifted her chin and looked the woman firmly in the eye.

"Yes, it was her. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you." The words came out with difficulty, and she had to swallow when she saw the sadness on the shop assistant's face.

"That's what I was afraid of." Isabella could see individual tears escaping from her darkly made-up eyes.

"Did you know her well?"

"I wouldn't say I knew her well. I just knew her from the market. Sister Raffaella loved these figurines, you know. She was a collector herself. And so, over time, we got talking and got to know each other a bit. She was a really funny person. Not at all how one imagines a nun to be."

Isabella didn't want to ask what the saleswoman imagined that sisters were like, but this confirmed the impression of Sister Raffaella that she had had during the short time they had lived together in the Convento di Nostra Cara Regina Maria. She had been a happy and positive person.

"So she bought the figures from you."

"Erm, not exactly." The saleswoman winked conspiratorially at Isabella. "It was more like … bartering."

"Bartering?" Isabella's ears pricked up.

"Well, every now and then we would exchange a figurine for a bottle of grappa." The saleswoman tittered cautiously at first, then laughed heartily when Isabella joined in.

She had not expected Raffaella to be so devious, and somehow she liked the idea of this unconventional black marketeer.

The saleswoman leaned forward. "Maybe you're a fan of these figures as well?"

"Well, ah …"

"Oh, that's all right. I'll just have to pay for the grappa with money from now on."

"Isabella!" Sister Agnieszka's shrill voice surprised her.

"You're still here! Would you please get moving and get that flour? I have to get back to the convent or Sister Hildegard will bite my head off."

"Will do! I'm on my way."

"Sister Isabella, it was a pleasure to meet you."

"My pleasure. I hope we meet again."

"We will. Most definitely." Smiling, Isabella turned away.

"Oh, by the way, Sister?"

She turned around in amazement. "Yes?"

"There are quite a few collectors of these pieces around these parts. In your convent, for example, a few sisters seem to take a close interest in our porcelain miniatures." A devious grin crossed her red lips.

"Just recently a nun came to see me and wanted to know all about them."

"Ah. And you wouldn't happen to know her name?"

The saleswoman shook her head. "No, but then I have an incredibly bad memory for names. It was a chubby one with quite serious features and a strong accent." She thought for a moment. "Maybe German."

"Isabella, come on!" she heard Agnieszka calling.

Without another word, she turned away, unsure of how to process this new information.