“One of his abandoned carvings,” Grenville exclaimed. “How astonishing.” He hefted the stone to study the chiseled beauty of the partial face. “Michelangelo had several commissions going when he was instructed to drop everything and begin work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.” He admired the half sculpture a moment longer before he carefully set it down. “This should be in Florence, I think,” he murmured.
“Shall we call it a day?” I asked when Grenville straightened up. “It is growing late, and Signor Baldini will want his supper.”
Baldini glanced at me in surprise, as though food was the furthest thing from his thoughts. “I do not mind staying. The dark does not bother me.”
“Perhaps, but I do not want the police marching in and arresting you,” I said. “We will begin again in the morning.”
Baldini reluctantly set aside his pen and stoppered the ink bottle he’d left on a nearby table. “What will happen to all this?” He waved a hand at the cache.
“Truthfully, I do not know,” I answered. “We will have to decide who it all belongs to, I suppose, and whether de Luca purchased it rightly.”
“If he didn’t, everything will return to its original owners?” Baldini inquired.
Grenville answered, “Only fair, isn’t it? If I found one of my artworks in this pile, I’d certainly want it back.”
Baldini gazed at him with an expression of disappointment. “It would be better that these pieces remain together, I think. To be put into a museum and studied by scholars.”
“Not our decision to make,” Grenville said mildly, brows lifting.
“No.” Baldini’s scowl darkened his face. “Conte Trevisan and men like him will send the items back to those who will hide them away from all but a few privileged pairs of eyes. They have no idea what these things would mean to scholars who’d truly treasure them—they will be no better than those who have robbed Herculaneum down to its bedrock.”
I broke in. “So, you would shovel these treasures into someplace like the Louvre, as Napoleon wished to with his spoils of war?”
“No,” Baldini snapped. “He was wrong to loot all he did. But Conte Trevisan is equally wrong. He is—”
He stopped abruptly, as though he’d said more than he meant. He’d obviously changed his opinion about the benevolence of his sponsor. I wondered if the two men had quarreled, and about what? Gisella? Or about Trevisan’s interest in de Luca’s collection.
“Quite,” Grenville said. “Shall we, gentlemen?”
Once Baldini realized we’d stand over him until he left the house, he conceded to depart with us. We exited through the courtyard, and one of the patrollers locked the door and then the gate behind us.
Baldini he left us with a subdued goodnight, walking north while we made our way south through darkness to Grenville’s home and a meal. Brewster carried the box under his good arm and steadied it with the other hand, still bandaged.
Donata had gone out, Bartholomew told me when we arrived, to the opera with ladies she’d met the previous evening. Donata was a social butterfly, and she’d enjoy herself.
For myself, I itched to begin with the contents of the trunk. Grenville did as well, and after we shoveled down our meal, we each took an armful of papers and retired to separate rooms so we could pore over them in silence.
Bartholomew brought me coffee and set it gently on the writing table as I spread out the first sheets.
“I spoke this afternoon to the Conte de Luca’s neighbors, as you suggested, Captain,” he said.
I looked up from the first sheet covered in illegible handwriting. Bartholomew stood with his usual confidence, his blue eyes clear.
“Thank you, Bartholomew,” I said in sincerity. “What did you discover?”
“They were happy to talk to me,” Bartholomew said. “Found me intriguing, I think. The neighbors say Conte de Luca was a generous man, always giving people coin for assisting him or tossing it to beggars on the street. He went in and out quite a lot and traveled to the ends of the earth—so they said. Never had many visitors, though. Kept himself to himself. Even bought up the properties around him so his house would be more quiet.”
“Did he, now?” A man who owned the houses adjacent to his—say the ones that backed onto it—could build private rooms and take large artworks in through those abodes. Probably another secret door connected the long room with the house behind him, and who knew what would be found inthosehouses? I made a mental note to gain entry and see what we could discover.
“Mirela Floris is the name of the maid,” Bartholomew continued. “His neighbors gave me the name of her street, so I went ’round to her lodgings. They’re across the river and a bit south, kind of a warren there. I told her—and her very large husband—that I had a lady friend looking for work, and I heard she charred for a conte who paid well. Now that the conte was dead, would his heir hire more maids? Mirela and her husband were congenial to me, but said they didn’t know. Mirela only went in one day a week to sweep floors and tidy. One week’s worth of dust would be on all the things, which were never moved and never looked at as far as she knew. She wasn’t allowed up past the third floor, so she had no idea what was up in the attics. New things did come in, she said, but she never saw them arrive. They were just there to be dusted the next week.”
Intriguing. “What did she think of the conte himself?”
Bartholomew shrugged broad shoulders. “She didn’t see much of him but said he was kind enough. Never any sordid goings-on that she saw. If he had a mistress, he kept it quiet, and said mistress never came to the house. He gave Mirela a decent wage, and she asked no questions. She’s sorry he’s dead, and hopes his cousin keeps her on in the house.”
She had not told him much that we did not already know, but a confirmation was helpful. “Thank you, Bartholomew. Your assistance is always valuable.”
“I keep my eyes open, Captain,” Bartholomew replied modestly. He straightened the coffee pot on the tray. “Will that be all, sir?”
