Clemm, who had served as Wesley’s butler for over twenty-five years, began unloading the luggage from the back of the Chrysler. Moses had had the good sense to stay indoors.
‘Careful with that one, Hubert,’ Wesley said, watching closely as Clemm unloaded the custom-made black fibreglass case from the car. Theoretically, it was indestructible, but he worried nonetheless. Anyone would, considering what was inside. The oblong box, just under four feet long and secured with steel locks, looked for all the world like the kind of case a serious classical guitarist would use to protect a cherished instrument in transit.
Except that Wesley Holland had never picked up a guitar in his life.
‘Did you have a good trip, Mr Holland?’ Coleman asked, leading his employer towards the house.
‘Thank you, Coleman. Actually, it could have gone better.’ Wesley was still feeling quite downcast from this latest encounter with yet another bunch of so-called experts unable to get their cynical, closed little minds around the incredible truth that was right there in front of them. This time it had been the history eggheads at the University of Buffalo. Wesley sometimes feared he was beginning to run out of options — though nothing could completely extinguish the excitement of knowing what he’d found. It was the genuine article and he shouldn’t give a damn what the academics thought. They’d wake up one day. He really believed that.
‘How have things been here?’ he asked Coleman. The billionaire trusted his assistant completely. Coleman watched over the mansion and grounds like a pit bull and even kept a monstrous. 700 Nitro Express double- barrelled rifle in his room, ‘just in case’. Wesley had often chided him about ‘that damned elephant gun’.
‘Uneventful,’ Coleman told him as they walked into the hallway. Suits of medieval armour flanked the stairs. Originals, not reproductions — the same went for the displays of ancient weaponry that glittered against the panelling. ‘I’ve left the mail on your desk as usual,’ Coleman went on. ‘The curator of the Wallace Collection in London called three times while you were away.’
‘Was it about the Cromwell pieces?’
‘He didn’t say. I told him you’d contact him when you got back.’
‘I’ll do that. Oh, Hubert, you can take all the bags upstairs except the black case. Leave that one in the salon. I’ll put it away myself.’
‘Yes, Mr Holland.’
‘By the way,’ Coleman said, ‘Abigail prepared your favourite veal escalopes for dinner tonight.’
‘With cream?’ Wesley felt his mouth water. He’d been through innumerable cooks before he’d found Abigail. The woman was a gem. Nothing would cheer him up like a fine meal. He needed it. Quite aside from the disappointment in Buffalo, the revelations about Fabrice Lalique were still hanging over him like a pall. Wesley had been as shocked as anyone to learn of the priest’s paedophilia.
He left the black case with its precious cargo on the rug in the salon where Hubert had laid it carefully down, and trotted upstairs to his study, nimble and light on his feet for a man of his vintage. The study walls were lined with rich green velvet and displayed just a fractional part of his gleaming collection of ancient weaponry. He pointed a remote control at the sound system and the room filled with his favourite Soler sonata for harpsichord. The desk on which Coleman had neatly piled the mail had once belonged to General Robert E. Lee. There was no trace of a computer in the study, or, for that matter, anywhere in the house. The telephone was the only concession Wesley Holland allowed to be made to modern telecommunications technology under his roof, despite Coleman’s constant bitching about the disadvantages of having no internet connection or email access. As far as Wesley was concerned, if you wanted to write to someone, it ought to be the proper way: by hand, on paper, mailed in an envelope. He sealed his own handwritten letters with red wax. Okay, so he was a dinosaur. The dinosaurs had ruled the earth far longer than mankind ever would.
He spent a few minutes browsing through his mail — nothing especially interesting or pressing there — then looked at his watch. London would still be fast asleep at this time. Brian Cameron at the Wallace Collection had almost certainly been calling about the English Civil War-period armour pieces that the museum had been begging for months to have on loan. Holland wasn’t sure he could bring himself to part with them. His collections were his passion. He might phone the Englishman back in the morning, or he might let him stew a while before he made his decision.
One thing that wouldn’t wait was veal escalopes in cream sauce.
Wesley shut the study and made his way back downstairs. His stomach rumbled in anticipation of his late dinner as he crossed the marble-floored hallway towards the kitchen. He liked to eat his meals at the simple table there, rather than have Hubert go to the trouble of preparing the vaulted dining hall. As Wesley polished off the delicious meal, feeding tiny titbits to Moses under the table, Abigail would be pottering about the kitchen making his dessert. He enjoyed her company: more than he could have said for any of his four wives, each one more grasping and mercenary than her predecessor. Wesley had been fifty-seven when he’d divorced the last of them and sworn that was an end to it.
The kitchen door seemed to be jammed by some obstruction. ‘Abi?’ No reply. Wesley pushed harder and it opened a few inches. He could smell burning from inside. ‘Abi?’ he repeated.
At Wesley’s last medical check-up, his doctor had told him he had the heart of a forty-five-year-old. But it gave a terrifying leap and almost stopped beating permanently at the sight in the kitchen. He cried out in horror.
Moses the cat was lapping nonchalantly at a thick blood trail that gleamed under the lights. It led from near the cooking range to the door, where Abigail had managed to drag herself before she died. She’d been shot twice in the chest with a large-calibre weapon. She was still clutching the spatula that she’d been using to stir the cream sauce, now simmered to a black mess on the stove, the extractor fans sucking away the smoke.
‘Coleman!’ Wesley shouted in panic. ‘Coleman!’ He darted back across the hallway and into the main salon.
Hubert Clemm’s body lay twisted in the middle of the vast Persian rug with his arms outflung and his face turned towards the door. There was a large bullet hole in his forehead, a spray of blood up the upholstery of the couch behind him.
‘Coleman!’ Wesley screamed.
He heard a sound behind him and whipped round. Before he could react, he was being propelled backwards into the salon and the muzzles of two silenced pistols were looming large in his face. He fell heavily into an armchair and stared helplessly up at the pair of gunmen standing over him. One of them was tall, well over six feet. The long brown coat he wore was made of heavy, full-grained tan leather, like horsehide. The other was wearing a quilted jacket. Both had on black ski masks that hid their faces.
Robbers. Wesley’s heart pounded horribly. He could see Hubert’s corpse out of the corner of his eye, and it was more than he could bear. ‘I keep over a million dollars in cash in a safe upstairs,’ he gasped. ‘And jewels. I’ll open it for you myself. Take what you want and go. Please, just go.’
The masked men exchanged glances. The prospect of making off with a million-plus in cash was appealing, but their orders had been strict and precise. ‘The sword,’ the big one in the leather coat said tersely. ‘Let’s have it.’ He talked with an English accent. A Londoner, maybe.
Wesley balked. His brain churned faster than it had ever churned before. ‘I don’t know what sword you mean!’ he protested. But he did know, very well. If he and his associates were right about it — and almost three years of tireless efforts had persuaded him beyond a doubt that they were — it was a treasure of incalculable value. What he couldn’t understand was how these men could possibly be aware of its very existence. Virtually nobody was, outside of the group. Who could have given away the sworn secret? Hillel Zada? Surely not him. He didn’t know enough.
The worst thing for Wesley was that the sword was so nearby. He tried desperately hard not to let his eyes flick across to the black fibreglass container, just a few yards away across the room. ‘That’s it there,’ he said, instead pointing through the open door at the giant two-handed Landsknecht weapon that dominated the display in the hallway. From tip to pommel it stood taller than a tall man, and it was almost four centuries old.
Much too big. Much too new. Totally wrong. A wild bluff, based on the fact that these thugs could hardly be expert enough to know one sword from another. ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It’s worth a fortune.’ That part was quite true.
The gunmen gave the monster blade a cursory over-the-shoulder glance. The one in the brown leather coat shook his head. ‘Don’t fuck with us.’ The one in the quilted jacket pressed his gun muzzle hard into Wesley’s cheekbone. ‘You’d better start talking, old man.’ Another Brit. Who were these men?
