We entered a courtyard and Cipriano made for the far end marked by a castle tower, which I figured was the armory. There were more salutes and we were taken inside, guided by a Swiss Guard in gray battle dress. The vast room was low-ceilinged with several brick archways dividing the chamber. Rows of rifles were arranged alongside suits of armor, long swords, halberds, and crossbows. Machine guns shared space with pikes and medieval helmets. It looked like the guards hadn’t thrown anything out in five hundred years.
“There,” Cipriano said, pointing to a rack of knives, all long and thin. “Stilettos, rondels, misericorde. Yes, this is the one that was missing.” He tapped his finger on the pommel and spoke to the guard.
“May I?” I asked, my hand hovering over the knife.
“Yes, but hold it carefully. I doubt there will be fingerprints, but just in case. The guard says the armory is locked but there is no sentry. Anyone with a key and access to the barracks could have gotten in.”
I held the knife by the hilt, bringing it up to the light. Cipriano was right; if someone went to the trouble to replace the knife, he certainly would have wiped it down. This one looked spotless, like the others displayed on the rack. I ran my fingers over them, and the faintest trace of dust showed on the upright hilts. Not so with this one, which was clean as a whistle. I licked a fingertip and rubbed it in the groove where the blade met hilt and grip. Tiny reddish flakes stuck to my skin. Soletto’s blood.
“This is from the sixteenth century,” Cipriano said as he took the knife from me, wrapping it in a handkerchief. I looked at him, wondering what that had to do with anything.
“It has killed enough,” he said, sounding sad that this piece of old, cold steel had once again been plunged into flesh. “It has no purpose other than death. Perhaps it feels at home in this century, eh?”
“How many people have a key to the armory?” Kaz asked. Cipriano kept staring at the knife, as if it might speak to him.
“Not many,” he finally said. “It should be simple to find who could have gotten in.”
“Well, that might not amount to a hill of beans,” Abe said, strolling back to our group. I hadn’t noticed him wander off. “That door is probably as old as that pig-sticker. It’s got a warded lock, looks like original hardware.”
“Beans? Pig-sticker?” Cipriano asked. Kaz gave him the basics in Italian, and then nodded for Abe to continue.
“You got a primitive lock there, one of the oldest. There’s things inside called wards. They get in the way unless you got a key with notches that match. One of them old-style keys, you know?”
“Well, it’s an old place,” I said. “What’s the problem?”
“The problem is the key. You see, what unlocks the wards is what ain’t there. The gaps in the key, ya know? So to make a skeleton key, or passkey, all you need to do is to file away most of the warded center. It’ll open any simple warded lock.”
“Impossible,” huffed Cipriano. “If that were true, half the doors in Rome could be opened with such a passkey.”
“Remember, Inspector, this door has its original hardware,” Abe said, sounding like he was correcting an overenthusiastic student. “Warded locks did get more complex, with added security. But this one ain’t never replaced. It belongs in a museum.”
“What makes you so expert?” Cipriano asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“I was a locksmith before the war,” Abe said. “Back in the States, you might find a lock like this on an old cabinet or the like, but not where you want to stash anything really valuable.”
“So what are the chances someone could get his hands on a skeleton key around here?” I asked.
“Do you have any idea of how many locked doors there are within Vatican City?” Cipriano said. “How many sets of keys for each, and where they are all stored?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Nor do I,” he said. “The only thieves we have are pickpockets. We lock our doors to protect areas from the curious and the lost. Not to protect against a murderer stealing weapons. If a resident of the Holy See has access to keys, he is trusted.”
Inspector Cipriano shot off a series of instructions to his cops and the Swiss Guard. He handed one of the gendarmes the knife and they scurried off to do his bidding. He told us to follow him, and we did, me at the tail end, watching Abe to make sure he wasn’t tempted by any ancient locks.
Cipriano was a cop after my own heart. His next stop was the Swiss Guard mess hall, where the cooks served up what tasted like real coffee.
“I sent my men to look for keys at headquarters,” he said. “And told the Guard to find who keeps the keys for the barracks.”
“You must have keys for every building,” I said.
“Yes, duplicates of all keys are kept at headquarters. But no one checks them routinely. As I said, we have little need for them.”
I drank my coffee, and decided to take a chance with Cipriano, who seemed like he might be a decent guy. “Inspector,” I said, “what do you know about the Regina Coeli?”
“To stay away from it,” he said.
“What’s the Regina Coeli?” Abe asked.
“It means Queen of Heaven,” Kaz said, which satisfied Abe for the moment. Kaz understood where I was going with this, and wisely didn’t want to worry our light-fingered pal.
“I mean who runs it? The Gestapo?”
“No, although they make use of it. It is an Italian state prison, built about a half century ago. Very modern at the time. Why?”
“Do you know anything about the prisoners there, how they’re treated?”
“I know it is very crowded. People can be taken in for minor offenses or for treason. If treason, they do not live long. If they violate curfew or are missing identity papers, they may come out soon. The Organizzazione per la Vigilanza e la Repressione dell’Antifascismo, OVRA, runs it now. Many OVRA men went north with Mussolini, but some stayed here to work with the Nazis. So it depends on how the prisoners were picked up. If by the Germans in a roundup, there may be a chance. If by OVRA, then less.”
“Do you know Pietro Koch?”
“The worst creature in Italy. Do not cross paths with him unless you plan to put a bullet in his head.”
“I’ve heard he wants all the nuns held at Regina Coeli released into his custody.”
“Are you certain of this?”
“I have good reason to believe the person who told me.”
“I will look into it. If it is true, I will inform Cardinal Maglione.”
“The secretary of state,” Kaz said. “I hope they will listen to him.”
As we debated the usefulness of a Vatican diplomatic protest, both a Swiss Guard and a gendarme showed up and handed keys to Cipriano.
“Look,” Cipriano said to Abe, laying them out on the table. They were all the old-fashioned style of key, some tarnished and some polished. “These are the passkeys found here in the barracks and at headquarters. Could any of them open the armory door?”
Abe picked them up one by one. Most of the ends had been cut down to a nub. “These four,” he said. “Any of ’em would do the trick.”
“Three of them are from the barracks office, one from Gendarmerie headquarters,” Cipriano said with a sigh.
“I’d bet there’s others,” I said. “The porter at the Medieval Palace had a bunch of keys hanging in plain sight.”
“Sadly, you are right, Father Boyle,” Cipriano said as Abe put the keys back in the pile. “We have a murder weapon, but are no closer to the murderer.”
“We know he has access to a passkey and is someone who would not evoke suspicion in the barracks. We know he is smart, to use this knife and hide it in plain sight.”
“Yes,” Kaz said. “In a peaceful place like the Vatican, it would be unusual to have a knife outside of a kitchen. This is one way to obtain a killing tool and not have to worry about hiding or disposing of it.”
“Yes, yes,” Cipriano said. “He is a genius. Thank you, gentleman. I will let you know as soon as I hear anything, from the commission or about Koch.”
