Chapter 12
Miss Wheeler blithely skipped over the puddle in the gutter and joined us on the pavement opposite the hotel.
“Good evening, gentlemen. Do stop staring and lets get on with it.” Dressed in the same clothes she’d worn the night before, she cut an alluring figure.
While tall and slim, there was no mistaking her womanliness thanks to the trousers accentuating her curves.
I’d not been aware that I was staring at her until she pointed it out. I mumbled an apology and fell into step with her and Oscar.
Oscar apologized, too. “It’s not often I see a beautiful woman in man’s clothes. I quite forgot myself.”
“Not often?” she echoed. “So you have seen women other than me in trousers?”
“Oh yes. Usually she wears buckskin, but not always.”
I smiled at the image of Willie, so different to Miss Wheeler and yet with a similar energy. I’d wager Oscar had never been as captivated by Willie as he had by Miss Wheeler. I certainly hadn’t.
We took the promenade along the shore. The mist had lifted, the rain stopped, but clouds still blocked out the stars and moon.
The lake on our right was a black void stretching into the distance.
The darkness of the night made it difficult to make out obstacles.
I stepped in a puddle which Miss Wheeler and Oscar somehow managed to see in time.
“Are you really leaving Monteoro the day after tomorrow?” Oscar asked. “Or was that Defoe’s attempt to force us to make a deal with him?”
“Tomorrow,” I corrected him. “It’s past midnight.”
“I’m not at liberty to divulge my employer’s plans,” Miss Wheeler said.
Oscar scoffed. “After all we’ve been through together, are we not partners now?”
“Do you pay my wages?”
He sighed. “Point taken.”
“I think what Oscar means,” I said, “is that if you do leave tomorrow, we only have today left in which to solve the murder. That is, after all, why you’re coming on this rather mad expedition tonight, isn’t it?”
“Also a good point,” Oscar said, a hint of smugness in his voice.
“I don’t think one day is long enough to solve the murder.
If Defoe does need to leave tomorrow, you should ask him to let you stay longer.
I’m sure you can think of a way to phrase it to make it seem as though you’re close to finding out the location of the tattoo spell book. ”
“Thank you for your advice, Mr. Barratt, but I have every confidence that the murder will be solved today. Perhaps even this very night. But only if you concentrate more on trying not to be caught, and less on telling me how to handle my employer.” Her words may have sounded as though she were annoyed with him, but her tone was light.
Flirtatious, even. “If we are caught, I’m confident Mr. Defoe would ensure I was freed, but I doubt he’d pay the bribe to see you released.
I like Professor Nash too much to see him go to prison. ”
Oscar chuckled. “I’ll focus on the task at hand, but only after I tell you that I believe you want to delay your departure so you can spend more time with us.”
“More time with an arrogant man such as yourself, Mr. Barratt? How desperate for company do you think I am?”
Oscar didn’t respond. I suspected he was quite pleased that it wasn’t a flat denial.
We fell into complete silence when we reached the villa estate.
The gate across the main entrance was unguarded but also locked.
I led them along the road I’d taken earlier to the driveway that led to the stables and other outbuildings.
We avoided the gravel and walked on the wet and rather slippery grass.
The air was cool after the rain and the wind had stopped. The silence was as deep as the lake. Not even the leaves rustled. I became aware of the throb of blood through my veins and the thundering beat of my heart. My body was desperately trying to warn me to leave, to not enter the villa.
I ignored it. I couldn’t let Oscar and Miss Wheeler enter alone. Our search would be quicker with three.
We lit the portable lanterns we’d each brought then Miss Wheeler used her hairpin to pick the lock.
Collecting her lantern, she held it high as she stood.
Her dark eyes gleamed like polished stones in the light.
She nodded. Oscar and I nodded in return.
We removed our shoes to prevent traipsing mud inside and to allow us to creep about more quietly.
Oscar led the way in then signaled that it was safe for us to follow.
As expected, we found ourselves in the service area.
We didn’t bother to check the kitchen, scullery, or storerooms. What we were looking for wouldn’t even be in the majordomo’s office.
A bill of sale for the books was most likely in Signore Scala’s study.
As for evidence linking him to the man we’d seen talking to De Angelis, and possibly the murder of the boatbuilder, that was going to be harder to find.
We didn’t know what we were looking for.
Oscar’s and my priority were the books, however, and where they were now.
We’d agreed to search the study while Miss Wheeler checked the reception rooms, looking for a photograph of Scala with the dandy or private correspondence.
Even though we’d discussed our individual roles earlier, Oscar still hesitated when it came time to split up.
He glanced over his shoulder to the retreating figure of Miss Wheeler, entering the drawing room where we’d been received by Signore Scala.
I tapped his shoulder to get his attention then jerked my head to the other side of the entrance hall. With a nod, he led the way to the library. I followed, only to stop in the doorway.
The room should have been wonderful, its shelves brimming with knowledge and imagination.
Instead, it was a carcass, a skeleton stripped of the life force that had once graced it.
The shelves were almost bare aside from a small collection behind the large desk.
The existence of the desk confirmed the room doubled as Signore Scala’s study.
Finding it so quickly gave me no joy, however.
“Scala is definitely having financial problems,” Oscar whispered. He ran a hand along one of the empty shelves. “Faint magic in the wood. It may have been placed here some time ago. What’s that over by the chair near you?”
“Clothes.” Although the jacket was placed neatly over the back of the chair, the shirts and trousers had been discarded on the floor in crumpled heaps. Two men had undressed in a hurry.
More evidence of their eagerness was on the desk.
The leather-bound ledger sat open as if Signore Scala had been looking through it when he was interrupted.
I imagined his lover had come up behind him, circling his arms around Scala, kissed the top of his head, demanding attention.
They’d moved from the desk to the chair where they’d discarded their clothes.
Either they didn’t care if the live-in servants overheard them, or their servants lived outside the villa.
Oscar scanned the open pages of the ledger then pointed at the total at the bottom. “This is for his factory in Milan. It’s losing more than it’s making.” He flipped back through the pages. “And has been for months. Production slowed dramatically late last year, at the same time wages dropped.”
“Strikes?” I suggested.
“Probably.”
If his factory employees were going on strike, Signore Scala would not have any fondness for the anarchists who were known to encourage industrial action among workers.
I glanced at the pile of clothes again. It boggled my mind why two people would want to be affectionate on an armchair when there was a perfectly good bed upstairs.
I frowned as I lowered the lantern to inspect the clothes again.
There were two waistcoats yet neither were scarlet.
There were also two ties, no cravats. The dandy I’d followed to the villa had worn a cravat with a distinctive pearl pin.
That didn’t mean Signore Scala’s lover was someone else.
The dandy could have changed for dinner.
I picked up the ties to inspect them for a pin, but it was the shoes they’d been partially covering that caught my attention.
Neither pair was the black and white two-tone ones worn by the man I’d followed earlier, but one pair was familiar.
More specifically, I recognized the buckle.
It was such an unusual adornment on men’s shoes these days that I knew instantly where I’d seen them before.
I’d not taken much notice of the fellow’s face at the time, which was why my recollection of him was vague, but I had noticed the distinctive buckle on his shoes as he lounged against a lamp post in Milan.
The sun had glinted off the silver moments before the bomb’s explosion rattled the windowpanes.
It couldn’t be a coincidence that the man near the bomb site had worn these very same distinctive shoes.
I’d presumed then that he was merely a bystander, like us.
But now, my mind reeled with other possibilities.
Surely it was no coincidence that someone in the vicinity of a bomb set off by anarchists had later been seen in discussion with two suspected anarchists here in Monteoro.
Were they one and the same man? I still couldn’t be absolutely certain that the shoes belonged to the dandy I’d followed, whose face had been vaguely familiar. I needed to see him again to be sure.
I glanced up at the ceiling.
“Nothing,” Oscar whispered as he closed the bottom drawer on the desk.
“No bills of sale for the books, no letters from an antique bookseller.” He looked around at the shelves.
“There could be a hidden wall safe where he keeps important documents. Usually, a safe is hidden behind a painting but it could be behind a shelf or panel. Help me look, Gavin.”
A moment of madness overcame me. That was the only explanation for the foolish thing I did next. “I’m going to help Miss Wheeler,” I told him. “She has more rooms to cover than us.”
I left him pressing on the backs of the bookshelves. Across the entrance hall, Miss Wheeler’s lantern light glowed softly. She made no sound as she searched the drawing room. I headed up the grand staircase, thankful it was made of marble not wood and didn’t creak underfoot.
At the top, I could go left or right. I chose left. The right-hand wing was directly over the kitchen. If I were the owner of the villa, I wouldn’t want cooking smells wafting up to my bedroom.
All the doors along the corridor were closed. With my heart in my throat, I tried the first one. Unlocked. I peeped through the gap then closed the door again. The room had been completely empty. It didn’t contain one piece of furniture.
I moved to the next door and again questioned my own sanity. But curiosity won out. I opened the door. Oddly, I didn’t even feel anxious about what I was doing. The drive for an answer to the question burning inside me overrode all else.
I peered inside. The large canopied bed, dressing table, stools and clothing stands were good indicators this was the main bedroom. The two bodies in the bed confirmed it.
I needed a closer look at their faces, however, and dared to take a few steps inside. One. Two. No floorboards creaked. My footsteps were utterly silent. The only breathing came from the two men. Mine seemed to have stopped altogether.
They both faced me, so I was able to stay near the door and use the faint light from my lantern to see.
They looked like they’d just tumbled into bed.
One of the men was bald and it took me a moment to realize it was Signore Scala without his wig.
He lay behind the other man, his arm slung over his lover’s waist. It wasn’t a warm night, but they didn’t need the bedcover and had pushed it down.
Seeing two men entwined like that was shocking. I’d never seen anything like it, nor had I ever expected to. I should avert my eyes.
I did not. I did manage to drag my gaze up from the bare skin of their thighs to the face of the lover.
He stared back at me. Then he smiled.