“Veronica. Your expression has gone glassy again. What the devil are you thinking about?” he demanded as he released me. He seemed singularly unaffected by our proximity, but I noted his own respiration was laboured and a pulse beat wildly in his throat. I resisted the urge to nip at it lightly with my teeth and forced myself to reply in a casual tone.
“I was simply wondering how you managed ingress to this suite without detection.”
He pointed behind him to the window of the dressing room. “The creeper on the wall. It goes right up to the floor above. An easy way to get around provided one has a good head for heights.” Which of course he did. As a surgeon’s mate in the navy, he ought to have had little cause for swinging nimbly amidst the sails and masts, but I knew he had done so out of a natural affinity for climbing. I had witnessed his skill with such feats myself, and on one memorable occasion his abilities had saved our lives.[*]
Stoker turned to the figure on the bed, his expression grim. “Far too young for such an end. I cannot perform a proper postmortem, but I can examine her and possibly gain some insight into how the poison was administered.” He paused. “It is not entirely decent, to handle the dead.”
It was perhaps the first time since our reunion in Bavaria that he had spoken to me without restraint, and I responded with instinctive reassurance. I touched his hand. “Decency will be in finding who did this.”
I turned away as he bent to his work. He would, I had no doubt, be as swift and decorous as possible under the circumstances, but I knew he would prefer not to have an audience for this part. A fullpostmortem examination would require scalpels and scales and all manner of equipment. It would also be impossible to conceal, necessitating a complete cutting open of the deceased in order to survey the internal organs. But a deft and careful investigation of her corpse might reveal some hitherto unknown clue.
While Stoker busied himself with Beatrice’s body, I set to examining Pietro’s things, a new and terrible hypothesis occurring to me. What if Pietro himself were the murderer? It seemed unthinkable that so devoted a husband might have harmed his own beloved wife—and his grief had appeared entirely genuine. But it was quite possible he had struck and missed his target, killing Beatrice instead. And then mightn’t his elaborate show of mourning have comprised as much guilt as grief?
I made a thorough search of the wardrobe and drawers that held the count’s clothes. Nothing of interest to be found in any of them, not even his pockets, which I turned out carefully. His clothes and accessories were of excellent quality, the country tweeds and evening suits all tailored in Manhattan and Savile Row. His shoes were made in Florence, his toilet water in Paris. His reading material was a stack of biographies of great composers with a selection of poetry and a traveller’s guide to the great spas of Europe. I riffled the pages, but nothing came out, and his travelling desk proved just as fruitless. It was filled with memoranda and letters from various friends scattered around the world. I settled onto a hassock and read for some time, skimming the letters from friends and relations, noting the brisk social chatter and exchanges of gossip. I hunted for some clue of dastardly deeds, yet I was destined for disappointment. Pietro was as he appeared, a well-travelled gentleman of means and excellent good taste. But there was not a single hint that he was our murderer.
Frustrated, I moved on to Beatrice’s things. It felt ghoulish to explore the belongings of a woman whose corpse still lay cooling on the bed, but I steeled myself and set to work. Like her husband, Beatricewore exquisite and expensive garments, everything bearing Paris labels from the most exclusive ateliers. Her toilet set was mother-of-pearl and her shoes had a pretty little trunk of their own, each pair shrouded in a bag of soft linen. Her reading material, I was not surprised to find, tended towards the light French romances that Stoker loved so dearly. Apart from one. At the bottom of the stack of books lay the worn little book she had been reading in the garden, its soiled blue cover a marked contrast to the smartly bound French volumes. As I handled the blue book, a frisson shivered my spine. It was not that I had deduced it logically. It was that Iknew, even before I opened the cover.
Scrawled there was an inscription which I read three times before I found my voice and called softly to Stoker.
He looked up in some annoyance. “Veronica, I am trying to—”
“I know what you are trying to do,” I said impatiently. “But you must see this.”
I moved to his side and held up the book, pointing to the frontispiece.
He read the inscription and his eyes widened in astonishment as he worked out the Italian. “But that says—”
“ ‘Property of Beatrice d’Ambrogio.’ ” This was written in a childish scrawl, the letters fat and uneven. Below it, in a handsome, formal copperplate hand, it said,For my Stella, on the occasion of her seventh birthday. From her beloved brother, Lorenzo.
CHAPTER
25
Stoker sat heavily in one of the armchairs by the fire as my mind raced ahead. “Lorenzo d’Ambrogio’s sister. Tiberius mentioned one, but he said her name was Stella,” he said.
I shrugged. “A pet name, no doubt. We have been told Lorenzo was devoted to her and that she was much younger. An indulgent elder brother might well call his sister his ‘Star.’ Tiberius mentioned Lorenzo’s parents were shattered by his death and followed him to the grave the next year. He said he heard the whole family were dead, yet clearly little Stella survived.”
“Beatrice was raised in America,” he pointed out.
“But her Italian was fluent, idiomatic even. And she was raised by her aunt and uncle in New York. It makes perfect sense that once her parents died, Stella would have been shipped off to relations in America. Her mother’s sister was wealthy and the child would have been grieving a tremendous loss. Even if there were family still in Italy to care for her, sending her to America to begin anew under fresh circumstances would have been a kindness.”
“It is possible,” he allowed.
“A thing easily confirmed by Pietro,” I said briskly, moving to the door.
Stoker surged out of his chair and slid his body to block mine. “Where do you think you are going?”
“To speak with Pietro, of course,” I told him. I attempted to edge around, but he stood with his back to the door, arms folded over his chest.
“Not a chance in seven hells,” he said flatly. “For all we know they were working together and he is just as responsible for Kaspar and Alexandre’s deaths as she was. Damnation, he may have undertaken a scheme of revenge upon her behalf without even informing her of the matter.”
I paused, canting my head and giving the possibility all the consideration it deserved. “You astonish me,” I said, smiling.
He relaxed a little, dropping his hands to his sides as I went on.
“You astonish me that after all this time and the variety of experiences you have endured, you still do not understand the first thing about women.” I prodded his chest, but he would not be moved.
“It is possible,” he said through gritted teeth.
