Bianchi, after all. Thinks the Corbizzis haven’t noticed that the world has changed. Funny thing is, from what she said, the prof prob’ly would’ve agreed with her.”
“So, Marco,” I said mischievously, “you’re a Grenoble, not a Corbizzi or a Bianchi. How did that happen?”
He got up and waved his hand. “Don’t ask.”
III
WHEN I GOT TO WICKLOW POINT the estate gate was blocked by a panel van with BRADLEY SUMMERHILL & SON, AUCTIONEERS painted on the side. Brad Summerhill, the son, was heaving his bulk from the driver’s seat. I pulled my motorcycle around the van and activated the remote.
“Follow me,” I said, and steered through the opening gate.
Brad backed the van up to the coach house door. I helped him lug the table into the shop.
Brad handed me a clipboard. “Sign here,” he said in his usual barely civilized manner.
I initialled the hand-printed form and passed the clipboard back.
“Your father was lucky,” Brad remarked.
“Oh?”
“He should never have gotten the table so cheap.”
Brad always seemed as if he’d sucked half a dozen lemons before he began his day.
“He bought it at auction, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Your auction.”
“So?”
“So how does an auction work? Remind me.”
“Forget it,” Brad growled. He squeezed himself behind the wheel and drove off.
“YOU’LL TAKE SOME refreshment before you begin your work,” Mrs. Stoppini informed me.
“Love to.”
“Tea?”
“I guess it’s too late for a cappuccino,” I said, “even for an uncivilized guy like me.”
Mrs. Stoppini checked the kitchen clock. “Most assuredly not.”
She went to the coffee machine and began to froth the milk. Over her shoulder and in a voice that suggested a major crime had occurred, she protested, “Your friend left without saying hello.”
“Brad was delivering a table my father bought. It needs to be refinished. Brad was in a hurry. He’s not a friend, really. More of a business, er…”
“Associate?”
“Right. More that than friend. He’s a little abrupt at times.”
“Then he has missed out on a homemade brioche.”
“Serves him right.”
Mrs. Stoppini made the espresso in a wide cup, then poured the foamy milk on top and set the cup on the table.
“May I enquire how your work is progressing?” she asked, sitting down and pushing the plate of pastries toward me.
“Well,” I said after swallowing a piece of bread roll as light as a fairy’s wing, “as you know, the repairs, the painting, and the mantel are finished. I’ve made an inventory of the furniture and everything else that isn’t a book, including the items in the, er… well, as I said, everything. Raphaella has worked out an efficient way of cataloguing the books. Which reminds me, I’ll need to know which ones you want noted in detail.”
“There are a number of volumes that he valued more than the others. They are all to be found in the alcove,” Mrs. Stoppini replied.
I should have known. “Okay” was all I said.
“Splendid progress, Mr. Havelock.”
“I have work to do in the shop this morning-the table I mentioned-then I’ll put in a few hours with the books.”
“Excellent. And I do think your young lady will prove to be an asset.”
I left the house smiling, picturing the look on Raphaella’s face when I informed her that she was not only a young lady but an asset.
Nourished by the cappuccino and brioches, I crossed the yard to the shop and began to inspect the table-a plain, functional piece of pine furniture, still sound but showing its age through scratches, dents, flaking paint, cigarette burns, and one wobbly leg. Dad wanted it refinished as original, which meant seeing to the leg and then stripping off the old finish and sanding the table before repainting it.
I set to work, and after a few hours the piece stood clean and ready for sanding. I hung up my apron, washed my hands, and went to the house. I wanted to acquaint myself with the books in the alcove before Raphaella and I began to catalogue them in detail. On the day we had worked out the professor’s method of organizing his collection and Raphaella had stuck her labels on the “columns,” we had avoided that part of the room.
I entered the library and shut the doors behind me. I felt as if I had closed myself off from the world. Since the first day I had come through those pocket doors with their lion’s-head knobs the alcove had seemed like a sinister space all its own, a special niche that was physically part of the larger room but at the same time a separate area. Most of the books scattered across the hardwood and rugs had been found in or around the alcove, and the table there had been knocked over, as if the professor’s final struggle had begun there. But it was more than that. The room’s menacing atmosphere intensified as I neared the alcove. The occasional whiff of smoke I often detected in the library was stronger there. My discovery of the keys and the secret cupboard with its weird contents seemed to intensify the mystery and malevolence.
Once again I wondered if I was letting my imagination carry me away. Could the whole mystery surrounding the professor’s death and the fire be explained by a simple break-in gone wrong? Had someone known about the cross, the vellum manuscripts, the medal-all worth who knew how many thousands or millions of dollars-and entered the house bent on theft? Could a violent struggle with a burglar explain the condition of the room the night the professor died-even the death itself, and the fire?
The theory was attractive. It explained things logically, in a real-world way, and it pushed thoughts of the supernatural and of sinister presences back into the land of superstition, where they belonged.
But it didn’t account for my dreams, which I
So I stood there in the alcove, leaning back on the table, and let my eye wander at random over some of the titles.
The prof had been a scholar of Renaissance Italy, which I knew-after I looked it up-was the period from 1300 CE to 1600 CE. But that was all I knew, besides the fact that I couldn’t have found Florence on a map. I went to the reference shelves behind the escritoire and took down an atlas, looked up the city’s name in the index. Florence was in Tuscany, a region in central Italy, just like Marco had said.
My cell trilled. A city number I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Garnet Havelock?”
“That’s me.”
“Hello, this is Marshall Northrop.”
My parents’ friend, the professor from the classical studies department at York University.
