“Yes, well, humph,” Jeremy said, steering me away from the erotica shelf. (He didn’t, as he told me later, mind me looking at them, but he’d be damned if he’d let the old man watch me looking at them.)
I moved along to the other shelves, admiring the clever ingenuity and design of each metal figure. But as I looked at one big wall of shelves I realized a strange thing about these particular artifacts—so many were lions. Lions here, lions there. Lots and lots of lions.
That left only one display table, right in the center of the room, which appeared to be the seat of honor for a major piece in the collection. But there was nothing inside it.
“What is this for?” I asked.
The Count let out a heartbreaking cry of frustration. “For the greatest Lion of all!” he exclaimed. “The Beethoven Lion!”
I heard Jeremy’s sharp intake of breath. Whereas I hardly dared breathe at all, for fear of breaking the spell. Instead I listened, wide-eyed, as the Count continued fretfully, “He rightfully belonged to my family, centuries ago, but he was stolen away from my ancestors! My grandfather almost got it back, but then those thieves took it away again.”
I glanced at Jeremy, wondering how much of this was real, and how much was, perhaps, a fantasy in the Count’s mind from his childhood.
“Your grandfather?” Jeremy repeated.
“Yes, at the auction in Frankfurt,” the Count said. “Only to have it disappear yet again.”
I perked up. “Recently?” I asked.
“No, no, it was when Grandfather was a young man,” the Count said fretfully. Jeremy sighed lightly at this, but fortunately the Count didn’t hear it.
“All his life, Grandfather kept searching. Yet he never saw it again. But I—I—” the Count held out a hand, palm upward, fingers closed. “I went all the way to that abominable island! I got there first. I had it in the palm of my hand. Yes, I tell you, the Lion was mine!” He opened his fingers apart now, and said dramatically, “Yet, somehow it slipped through my fingers. He would have been the triumph of my family’s collection, restored at last.”
“The Beethoven Lion!” I murmured, entranced.
And then, I nearly jumped out of my skin when a deep voice came out from the darkness behind us, saying, “Father! What are you doing here at this hour of the night?”
There was a figure of a man in the hallway, and he was coming toward us rapidly. The Count looked suddenly like a naughty little boy, caught with his hand in the cookie jar. But as the man moved toward him, the Count tilted his head back and smiled at him affectionately.
“Kurt, I have some new friends today,” he said. “You must come and meet them. This is—” and he paused forgetfully.
“Penny Nichols,” I said quickly. “And Jeremy Laidley.”
“And this is my son, Kurt,” said the Count, then he said, “Good heavens, Kurt, stop scowling there in the dark. Come and say hello.”
Kurt stepped out of the shadows and expertly grabbed the handles of his father’s chair, turning it around to pilot him out of the room. “Pleased to meet you,” Kurt said.
I stared at him. It was the young German guy on the boat. Surely he knew who we were, yet his face did not betray that he’d ever seen us before.
“My boy is quite an adventurer,” the Count said proudly. “He studies the climate all around the world! He climbs high mountains and lives for months and months in the big trees, to make a study. He is very smart. But always he is far away. Except this summer when he has come to visit me.”
Kurt just said, “Let us go back now, Father. It’s too drafty in this room at night.”
Jeremy and I followed them back to the Count’s study, but I managed to mutter into Jeremy’s ear, “That’s the sad-looking German guy I told you about, who came to our cocktail party!” Jeremy had to think a moment to remember, then nodded.
“You must introduce these nice people to your mother,” the Count said happily. Kurt appeared visibly pained by this remark, and it was clear that his father’s condition deeply troubled him.
The Count looked up at me now. “Old age is a shipwreck,” he said plaintively. “Know who said that?” I shook my head.
“General Charles de Gaulle!” the Count said, and then laughed uproariously at a German Count quoting a hero of the French Resistance.
“Your supper awaits you, Papa,” Kurt said, as the butler arrived to wheel him away.
The Count, looking a bit dejected, bid us farewell in a sigh, “Ah, well, adieu!”
Chapter Twenty-one
"I hope you will join me for bit of cold supper,” Kurt said in the easy way of a man accustomed to luxury in all its incarnations, both formal and relaxed. He led us down the dramatic wood staircase, across a brief landing, to a large, bright room on the right side of the castle, which he called “the master’s kitchen.”
“The cook will send it up from her kitchen,” Kurt continued. “I thought we’d be more comfortable here, rather than the dining hall, which is very big and very dark and a bit gloomy for a small party.”
“What do you think he wants from us?” I mumbled to Jeremy.
“The boat,” Jeremy mumbled back, as we followed him.
This master’s kitchen was really an informal family dining room, with a polished terracotta floor, sparkling white cabinets, a metal sink, a simple stove, and a narrow refrigerator. A big dining table took up most of the room, its surface made of individual squares of tile, each being a replica of a page from an antique botanical book, with colorful illustrations of fruits and flowers, all labelled with their Latin names.
A young servant girl in her early twenties, with a flat, round cheerful face and two long braids tightly plaited down her back, dressed in a blue-and-white-checked uniform and a spotless white apron, was taking plates and cutlery from the cabinets and laying them out on the table for us. The “cook’s kitchen”—where the real food preparation was done—was apparently downstairs in the basement, because very soon we heard a rumbling sound behind one of the cupboards, and when the servant opened the cupboard I saw that it had a dumbwaiter inside. The girl reached in and lifted a large platter with a silver dome. She staggered under the weight of the platter as she placed it on a sideboard, took off the cover, and carried the tray around to each of us. She served the men first.
“You were on the boat the night of our party,” Jeremy said. Kurt nodded without the slightest trace of guilt on his face.
“Ja, it’s true,” he said cheerfully. “I wanted to make sure that my father hadn’t left his little trinket behind on the boat. Night and day he asks me where it is, I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I went to take a look.”
“Why didn’t you introduce yourself and just ask us about it?” I said.
“I saw that you had your family and friends there,” Kurt said. “I did not wish to intrude on a family party.” He sighed. “My foolish sister should have checked before she sold the boat,” he said, sounding irritated. “She has taken over the family finances ever since father had his stroke; she’s like his secretary. Too efficient and too quick. She convinced him it was best to sell it, to help pay for his nurse and the medical expenses, which have been considerable. But father did not remember to tell my sister that he left his dearest treasure behind. If she’d known, of course, she would not have included it in the sale. Just a sentimental trinket, you understand, but—” Kurt sighed in a melancholy way, “he is so fond of it.”
When the girl with the tray came to my side, I nodded toward what I wanted from the platter of cold meats, sausages, and cheese as she held a serving spoon and fork expertly in one hand and made the selections for me, while still balancing the platter in her other arm. After she served us, the girl went back out and then returned with a tray of glass steins of beer for each of us. A little sandy-haired boy toddled in, carrying a basket of bread which he very seriously offered to each of us. I had to smile at him, but when I said, “Thank you very much,” he looked suddenly shy, and quickly bowed and
hurried out of the room.
“He is the cook’s grandchild,” Kurt said tolerantly. “She cares for him when the mother is working in town. They are Polish, but the boy’s father is English. The young girl is his sister. They are very hardworking people.” We ate in silence for a moment. Then Kurt looked inquiringly at Jeremy, giving him an opening to broach the subject on everyone’s minds.
“Are you aware that someone stole the boat the night of our party, and ransacked it?” Jeremy demanded, watching Kurt’s face for his reaction.
Kurt was still unperturbed by the implication. “The marine gendarmes told me about it,” he said, calmly but sympathetically. “Well, they have to question everybody, don’t they? It’s the law. But of course, we had nothing to do with this, I assure you. I had planned to return and ask your permission to search the boat for the aquamanile.”
Hmm, I realized distractedly. Aquamanil-ia was the plural, meaning a bunch of them, as a general category; whereas aquamanil-e is for just one of them. “What are these things, actually?” I asked. “Bronze sculptures? From what period and country?”
Kurt turned his full attention to me in a charmingly accommodating way, as if delighted to have piqued my curiosity. “Oh, they date back to ancient times! They were made all through the Roman empire and the Dark Ages, too. Many of the later ones are of Germanic origin.”
“Aqua is water,” I mused aloud, “and manile—?”
“From the word for ’hands,’ ” Kurt said. “To wash your hands with. Or, to pour oil. They were used for religious rituals as well as for hand-washing at the table. You see, they are not mere sculptures. They are actually hollow metal vessels, with a spout—usually in the animal’s mouth—for pouring it out, and another hidden little hatch on top—usually in the animal’s head—to fill it with water or oil.”
“How amazing!” I said, at the thought that those finely detailed figures of fanciful and mythological animal shapes were actually functional objects, like a teakettle.
He added proudly that German workshops were important in the making of aquamanilia, because of their proximity to the mines that provided the copper alloy needed to create them, in a very complex process that involved many stages, not unlike an alchemist.
Jeremy had been patiently taking this all in, but now he spoke boldly. “What about the Beethoven Lion?” he asked. “That’s what your father is looking for, right?”
Kurt looked momentarily thrown, but he recovered. “Have you seen it?” he inquired. “Is it true the damned thing really exists, and that Father was not just—er—dreaming about it?”
“I don’t know,” Jeremy said. “We saw nothing like these objects on the yacht.”
“What’s it got to do with Beethoven?” I asked, intrigued.
“Why, because it looked like the great composer himself,” Kurt said, as if it were the most obvious reason in the world. “Or so they say! The Lion’s head, with that great mane and its ferocious scowl, you know—” Kurt screwed his face into a frown—“supposedly resembled Beethoven’s fierce face and all that wild hair of his.”
“Your father said something about an auction,” Jeremy prompted.
Kurt sighed an existential kind of sigh. “Oh, that old chestnut is a legend in my family by now! Papa says the Lion was stolen from our family hundreds of years ago, and my grandfather sought to retrieve it when he thought he came across it—only to have it disappear yet again.”
“And now your father says the same thing,” I said. A shadow crossed Kurt’s face. I realized I might have inadvertently suggested that craziness ran in his family.
“Is this object very valuable?” Jeremy asked.
Kurt shrugged, “To my family, of course, for sentimental reasons. Perhaps to music fans, because of the possible Beethoven connection—which is questionable.”
“I’d love to see it!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, well, so would Father,” Kurt said ruefully, as the servant girl came in again, opened the dumbwaiter and pulled out another platter, this time with a silver coffee service and a pot of whipped cream.
“Is that why there are so many lions in his collection?” I asked.
Kurt, looking embarrassed, said, “Obviously this is not the first time that my father has gone out on a wild chase, thinking he’d found it. Come, see for yourself.”
He led us back into the smoking room, and he marched right up to that bookcase with those tall skinny things that looked like books, but which I’d suspected were hiding-boxes. When Kurt pulled down one box and opened it, revealing that there were large envelopes hidden in them, I smirked triumphantly at Jeremy.
“Take a look,” Kurt said, opening the envelopes and spreading their contents out on the table. These were X-rays of several lion aquamanilia. He held them up to the light, so that we actually could see the interiors of the animal figures, and their clever construction, with holes where gas escaped as the molten metal was poured; and you could also see the iron rods inside that held the figure of a knight upright on one of them.
“It is a way of verifying the authenticity, I suppose. Father hired so-called experts to track down his lost treasure, and whenever they thought they’d found it, he authorized them to buy it for him. But not one of these turned out to be the Beethoven Lion,” Kurt said dolefully. “My father even went so far as to install his own X-ray machine upstairs which his nurse knows how to use. I wish I could make him give this up.”
“What happened to your father when he went out on the yacht?” Jeremy asked.
“Ah, that’s the question!” Kurt exclaimed. “Did he really get his hands on the Beethoven Lion? Father insists he did, and believes he left it on the boat; which is why I’d like to see for myself if perhaps he hid it in an odd place, or if he was merely—dreaming again. Sure, it would be marvellous if we found it, but even so, it would probably turn out to be just another mistake,” he said, gesturing at the X-rays as he put them away again. He really did look dubious. “However, if I find no lion at all on the yacht, at least I can tell Father that I searched with my own eyes and it simply is not there. Maybe then he will stop asking me over and over about it.”
“But whoever took the yacht may have already stolen it,” Jeremy said.
Kurt said, “Of course, that’s entirely possible.”
Jeremy had been sharply sizing up the situation. Now he said, very neutrally, “We will be happy to search the yacht with you, to see if it was somehow overlooked. If the Lion turns up, then of course we’ll make some arrangement. But you do understand that the yacht was sold to us with its contents, so everything else on that boat must stay on it. Agreed?”
“Yes, certainly.” Kurt made a small, polite bow, and Jeremy told him when to meet us at the yacht in Nice. Then Kurt walked us to the front door, and we went out into the cool, mysterious night.
“Boy, you were pretty tough,” I observed as we got into the car.
“I wanted to make sure that he doesn’t show up and try to claim half the stuff on that yacht,” Jeremy said in his lawyerly way.
“He won’t.”
“Well,” Jeremy said as he started the car and we headed out into the cool, dark night, “these guys must know more than they’re telling us.”
“You don’t trust the Count?” I asked incredulously.
“Did it ever occur to you that your nice little Count might just be the mastermind behind ‘Le Boat-Jacking’?” he inquired.
“Oh, please,” I scoffed. “That sweet old bean? He’s barely got all his marbles in place.”
“Those are the ones,” Jeremy said darkly. “A father-and-son team of con artists.”
“You don’t really believe that,” I observed, “or you wouldn’t have agreed to this. You know as well as I do that there’s no Lion on that boat.”
“Says who?” Jeremy demanded.
“I say,” I said. “I can just feel it isn’t.”
Jeremy groaned. “Then why didn’t you ‘feel’ that the boat was going to be stolen?�
� he said. “That would have been useful.”
“I didn’t say I was a soothsayer,” I said huffily. “I merely said I could tell that the thing isn’t on the yacht. But of course, we should look.”
“Exactly. I’ll call Claude and make damned sure he doesn’t let anybody near that boat until we get there,” Jeremy said.
“Maybe we should also ask Louis to keep an eye on everybody down there,” I pointed out in a rare burst of pragmatism. “Louis did a great job protecting our interests with the French part of Great-Aunt Penelope’s estate. After all, Claude may still be loyal to the Count. And even Thierry and those gendarmes like the Count. So I say, let’s put a man of ours on the case.”
“What?” Jeremy said with mock surprise. “You mean to say you don’t trust your little French cop boyfriend?” He had been regularly teasing me about Thierry, saying that the guy had a crush on me, and implying that it was somewhat mutual (it wasn’t) or that at the very least, I was enjoying it (I was) and therefore possibly encouraging it (I wasn’t. Well. Not really.)
“Ho, ho,” I replied. Then I said more soberly, “Oh, Jeremy. I hope neither one of us ends up like the poor Count. ‘Shipwrecked,’ as he said. Isn’t life so sad in the end?”
“Well, if I go a bit senile someday, just park me in the corner like him,” Jeremy said, “but be sure to hire somebody to fire off the cannon every evening for the cocktail hour.”
When we returned to our room at the Grand Hotel, and Jeremy put the gold-tasseled key into the lock, we found that the maids had made up our room again with fresh towels, and had laid white linen squares on the floor along each side of the bed, atop the rug, so that, if we got up in the middle of the night and couldn’t find our little terrycloth slippers, we could step on something clean and gentle. On each pillow were little wrapped candies and chocolates (that actually were worth unwrapping), and our bathrobes had been hung up; but my half-filled bottle of water and its glass remained on the nightstand, politely unmolested. Jeremy flung open the window and we gazed out at the beautiful mysterious lake, and inhaled the night scent of flowers as the moon sent its shimmering glow across the water.
A Rather Curious Engagement Page 15
