“Gabriel.” Her pen did not cease, but she sounded pleased to see me. “I want to know what you dashed off to command Mr. Denis to do, but later. I must finish these letters. I have fallen behind on my correspondence.”
She could sit up writing all night. I kissed the side of her neck then left her to it.
Bartholomew, transforming himself from bodyguard to valet, caught my clothes as they came off in my chamber, shaking them out, sorting those that were to go into the laundry and hanging up others.
As he opened the elaborately carved wooden clothes press, my eye fell on the leather bag that contained the statue Denis had sent me to obtain from de Luca. On impulse, I took it out an examined it.
It was a heavy piece, a foot wide by a foot long and a foot and a half high. Eros, with his broken wing, sat dejectedly—a metaphor for how love can go wrong?
The stone was alabaster, presumably solid. In the middle of the base, where Eros’s legs folded on top of the mound of grass, was another crack. The creamy gold of the alabaster was darker, as though someone had broken open the entire piece at one time.
Perhaps, I thought with a gleam of excitement, to hide a list of men who provided de Luca with his goods, including the information that Denis sought. I lifted the statue above my head, ready to dash it to the ground and find out.
Chapter19
Sir?” Bartholomew blinked at me, my coat dangling from his big hand. “What are you doing?”
I stilled, gazed at the statue above my head, then lowered my arms, cradling the thing carefully in my hands. “Nothing. My brain is addled, and I am weary.”
Bartholomew let out a breath of relief and turned away to brush the coat. “Were you thinking the conte was killed with something like that?”
The statue had plenty of heft and was a solid weight, but I shook my head. “We know the murder weapon—a marble urn left beside him. This statue is innocent.”
After this cheerful observation, I tucked the Cupid away, finished undressing, pulled on my nightshirt, and went to bed. Bartholomew puttered about for a time, then doused the lights and departed.
I fell asleep to dreams of being chased through the ruins of Pompeii with a man wielding a knife and the alabaster Cupid. Denis stood by and admonished my assailant not to break the statue, as he hadn’t yet paid for it.
I jumped awake to a touch and a warm body sliding into bed beside me. My dreams dissolved, forgotten, and I turned to embrace my wife and demonstrate to her how much I’d missed her in the past weeks.
In the morning,Grenville, who rose as early as I did when he was interested in a problem, breakfasted with me, then we both returned to de Luca’s house, Brewster tramping along behind us.
We reached the abode to find two members of the captain’s police troops guarding the door. I apparently had leave to enter, on the captain’s orders. They tried to detain Grenville and especially Brewster, and I had to argue that I could not do what the captain wished without them. After a debate between the two, they reluctantly stood aside to admit all three of us.
I’d left my wife sleeping soundly, as she usually did in the mornings, but my disposition was more buoyant than it had been all week. Brewster and Grenville grasped why and shot me irritated glances when I grew too ebullient.
The three of us divided up the search, and we each went through a series of rooms, leaving no stone—or precious object—unturned.
The chambers I took on the first floor revealed wonders—small, exquisite miniature paintings, bronzes both ancient and modern, urns from ancient Athens, paintings by Canaletto and one that appeared to be by Raphael, to my amazement. I studied the last, not certain I was correct. I’d have to ask the opinion of Grenville, who carried an art catalog in his head.
I found no ledgers or lists, not even one inventorying the collection. I finished that room, propped the possible Raphael against the wall, and went in search of Grenville.
He was in a chamber above mine, trying to make a desk reveal all its secrets. He liked desks with hidden compartments, and as I watched from the doorway, he busily opened drawers, pushed knobs, and finally lay down on his back to examine the desk’s underside. His body disappeared under the piece of furniture until only his boots showed.
“Anything?”
Grenville must have heard me coming because he didn’t jump. “No.” He sounded morose. “Plenty of crannies in this one, but nothing in them. It’s a beautiful piece.” He slithered out but remained seated on the floor and patted the polished mahogany beside him. “Perhaps Gian will sell it to me.”
“If Gian sells the lot, he’ll be vastly wealthy.” I leaned against the doorframe. “Though I suppose his government will take a part of the proceeds.”
“No idea how inheritance laws work here.” Grenville hoisted himself to his feet and brushed off his trousers. “I know that duties on my estate will be hard for my heirs, but I have plenty of gewgaws they can sell, as long as they go to people who will treasure the things.”
I thrust aside the thought that I ought to sort things out for my heirs and asked Grenville to follow me downstairs.
When I showed Grenville the painting I’d set aside, his eyes widened, then he stepped back and studied it, chin on his fist.
“If that is genuine, and I am fairly certain it is, it should not behere,” Grenville said after a time. “The last person who owned it was the Austrian emperor. It hung in Schönbrunn.” He named the emperor’s summer palace near Vienna.
“Bonaparte himself moved in there for a time after he gave the Austrians a drubbing, didn’t he?” I asked. “He sent the things he stole back to France, I thought. But he stopped in Rome to visit de Luca at some point.”
