'To a certain extent.' Fosco broke out into a high-pitched, upper-class drawl that was startling in its realism. 'My friends! You're not going already? Why, it's just midnight! Come, let's toast our reconciliation and bid good riddance to my years of misguided pride. I have an excellent port that you must try, Fosco-and he plucked my sleeve-a Graham's Tawny, 1972 vintage.' Fosco gave a sniff. 'I was almost tempted to stay when I heard that.'
'Did you all leave together?'
'More or less. We said our good-byes and straggled out across the lawn.'
'And that was when? I'd like to know as precisely as possible, if you please.'
'Twelve twenty-five.' He looked at Pendergast for a moment and then said, 'Mr. Pendergast, forgive me if I observe that, among all these questions, you haven't asked the most important one of all.'
'And what question would that be, Count Fosco?'
'Why did Jeremy Grove ask us, his four mortal enemies, to be with him on the final night of his life?'
For a long time, Pendergast did not answer. He was carefully considering both the question and the man who had just posed it. Finally he said simply, 'A good question. Consider it posed.'
'It was the very question Grove himself asked when he gathered us around his table at the beginning of the dinner party. He repeated what his invitation said: that he invited us to his house that night because we were the four people he had most wronged. He wished to make amends.'
'Do you have a copy of the invitation?'
With a smile, Fosco removed it from his shirt pocket and handed it over-a short, handwritten note.
'And he'd already begun to make amends. As with his reappraisal of Vilnius's work.'
'A splendid review, don't you think? I understand Vilnius has just landed Gallery 10 to show his work, and they've doubled his prices.'
'And Lady Milbanke? Jonathan Frederick? How did he make amends to them?'
'While Grove couldn't put Lady Milbanke's marriage back together, he did give her something in compensation. He passed her an exquisite emerald necklace across the table, more than enough to replace that dried-up old husk of a baron she lost. Forty carats of flawless Sri Lankan emeralds, worth a million dollars if a penny. She practically swooned. And Frederick? He was a long shot for the position of president of the Edsel Foundation, but Grove arranged the job for him.'
'Extraordinary. And what did he do for you?'
'Surely you already know the answer to that.'
Pendergast nodded. 'The article he was writing for Burlington Magazine. 'A Reappraisal of Georges de la Tour’s The Education of the Virgin .''
'Precisely. Proclaiming himself in error, making appropriately abject apologies, beating his breast and affirming the glorious authenticity of the painting. He read the article aloud to us over the dinner table.'
'It remained beside his computer. Unsigned and unmailed.'
'Only too true, Mr. Pendergast. Of the four of us, I was the only one cheated by his death.' He spread his hands. 'If the murderer had waited a day, I would be forty million richer.'
'Forty million? I thought it had been put up for sale at fifteen.'
'That was Sotheby's estimate twenty years ago. That painting would go for at least forty million today. But with Grove on record that it's one of the Delobre fakes . ' Fosco shrugged. 'An unsigned article beside a dead man's computer means nothing. There is one good thing: I'll have the lovely painting to look at for the rest of my life. I know it's real, and you know it's real, even if no one else does.'
'Yes,' Pendergast said. 'Ultimately that's all that matters.'
'Well put.'
'And the Vermeer that hangs beside it?'
'Real.'
'Indeed?'
'It has been dated to 1671, between the period of Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid and The Allegory of Faith '
'Where did it come from?'
'It's been in my family for several hundred years. The counts of Fosco never felt the need to trumpet their possessions.'
'I'm truly astonished.'
The count smiled, bowed. 'Do you have time to see the rest of my collection?'
Pendergast hesitated for only a second. 'As a matter of fact, I do.'
The count rose and went to the door. Just before they exited, he turned to the mechanical cockatoo, still on his perch.
'Keep an eye on the place, Bucephalus, my pretty.'
The bird gave a digitized squawk in reply.
