A Rather Curious Engagement

by C. A. Belmond

  Jeremy, sensing more trouble, said, “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  François looked utterly horrified when he saw the condition we were in—disheveled, scratched, clothes torn. “My God, what’s happened to you?” he cried. Jeremy explained, telling as little as possible. Brice got the first-aid kit, so we could clean and patch ourselves up. Claude listened gravely in silence.

  “We must get under way now,” he said warningly.

  There was a shout from the pier. I looked up just in time to see Rollo running toward us. Two thuggy-looking guys were chasing after him. But when he hollered, they glanced apprehensively at the harbormaster’s office, then veered off rapidly in another direction, expertly blending in with the milling crowd from the tourist ferry that was congregating at the harbor.

  As Rollo came barrelling down the quay, a woman with dyed blonde hair, wearing a beige T-shirt and black skirt, carrying a large wicker basket of flowers for sale, reached out for Rollo, and plucked at his sleeve. Hastily, Rollo shook himself loose, and she called out something to him. She followed him, moving nearer to our yacht, close enough so that I could see that she had large, bulging eyes which were pretty but strange and compelling.

  “Jeremy,” I whispered. “The mazzera! Diamanta said so. She was trying to tell Rollo something. I wonder what it was?”

  “Probably on the order of Mind your own business, you bloody fool,” Jeremy said.

  Rollo was charging up the gangway toward us like a snorting bull.

  “Shove off! Let’s go!” Rollo cried, unaware that the men had stopped chasing him, as he catapulted himself onto the deck and collapsed, gasping, leaning against the handrail. The yacht engine rumbled and a moment later we were pulling out of the harbor. But I looked back once more at the flower-lady, who had come right to the edge of the dock, staring with a hypnotic gaze, and, seeing my face, she raised the palm of her hand in what appeared to be a farewell gesture.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  "Mortimer hasn’t got your Lion,” Rollo announced as we cast off from Calvi.

  The moon had already risen in the cobalt-blue sky as we began our return voyage to the Riviera. Rollo, Jeremy and I assembled around the teak table on the aft deck, and François brought us cocktails. Not that Rollo needed any. But by now I sure did, to soothe my ruffled feathers.

  “Say, did you hear me?” Rollo demanded. Jeremy nodded wearily.

  “What happened to you two?” Rollo asked. “You look like the wreck of the Hesperus.”

  Jeremy closed his eyes. “Someone shot at us, thank you very much,” he said. “Why do I imagine that your Mortimer fellow had something to do with it?”

  “Well,” Rollo admitted, “that’s entirely possible, I’m afraid . . .”

  “Rollo,” I said, “the flower-woman. What did she say to you?”

  Rollo said, “Who? Oh, Lord. What a strange creature! Couldn’t say, she was talking something that sounded like tortured French to me.”

  Rollo took a swig of his gin. “As soon as I walked into the bar, I knew Mortimer was somewhere about, I could just smell it,” he said. “So I sat there and played cards with the locals, losing just enough money to get them talking. That bar is the kind of place where information is exchanged on a regular basis and gossip spreads out to the village like wildfire.”

  “So?” I prodded. “How did you find Mortimer?”

  “I didn’t find him, I made him find me,” Rollo said. “The old devil was in a back room with some of the other locals. So I flushed him out of his rabbit-hole,” Rollo reported triumphantly. “I acted quite sozzled—but I had to actually stay somewhat sober to keep my wits about me—and soon enough, he came and sat down with me, and we got to talking. He said he buys and sells antiques, and I said, ‘Well, well, it just so happens I am looking for a very rare item that I’d heard was found and lost in Corsica.’ It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked for it, let me tell you. He sized me up, then he said he didn’t have it, but he thought he knew who did.”

  “So where the hell is it?” Jeremy asked.

  Rollo waved his arm. “The best is yet to come, dear boy. After he drank a few more beers—” Rollo leaned forward keenly, “guess what the old devil admitted?”

  “That he stole it off the boat!” I cried. Rollo grinned.

  “Well? Is he the boat-jacker?” Jeremy demanded, looking ready to go back and find the guy and beat him up.

  “Indirectly, but it was a botched job,” Rollo explained. “He was hanging about the pier the night of your cocktail party, and he saw Kurt go aboard, so Mortimer realized what he must be looking for. Old Mortimer knew he’d have to work fast, so he hired a few bad fellows to go search for the Lion aboard your boat that very night. But when those idiots who ransacked the boat couldn’t find the Lion aboard, they got frustrated, knowing they would not be paid for the night’s work if they showed up without it.

  “So the imbeciles couldn’t decide what to steal off the boat, until one of them came up with the brilliant idea of stealing the entire boat to get money from the sort of person who would pay for a hot yacht,” Rollo explained. “Only, not being professionals, they failed to notice that the boat hadn’t even been refueled yet. They certainly couldn’t even make it to Corsica, let alone Malta or Tunisia! So they lost their nerve, ditched in Villefranche, and cut their losses.”

  “Did you get all this recorded on your funny pen?” I asked.

  Rollo looked uneasy. “I think I did,” he said. “Can’t say for sure.”

  “Well, let’s hear it!” I cried.

  Rollo looked embarrassed. “I turned it on and had it running the whole time,” he said defensively. “Only, I suppose the conversation ran a little longer than the mechanism could handle. I was all set to go, shook hands with him and everything, when I bent to tie my shoe . . . and then the damned pen fell out of my pocket right smack on the floor and began saying out loud Testing one-two-three for all and sundry to hear.”

  “Good God,” Jeremy said, disgusted.

  “Afraid I had to hightail it out of there without looking back, sans pen. So there you have it,” Rollo admitted.

  “There we don’t have it,” Jeremy corrected. “No pen, no proof, no Lion.”

  “Where does Mortimer think it is?” I asked.

  “He thinks you’ve got it!” Rollo chortled. “Thinks you took it off the boat the minute you bought it.”

  “Well, if Mortimer hasn’t got it,” I said, “and we know we don’t have it, then who—?”

  “Maybe the dotty old Count has it,” Rollo said. “Unless the sly fox or his family sold it to someone.”

  “Hmm. I wonder how much the Count knows about the true origin of the Beethoven Lion,” I said. “I mean, why didn’t he tell us he had a family connection to it?”

  “In any case,” Jeremy said, “we should make one last search of this fine old boat. And if it doesn’t turn up aboard, then it’s back to Como.”

  As he spoke, a little wave literally leaped out of the Mediterranean Sea just like a dolphin, and catapulted over the handrail and splashed on deck. We all got wet, and laughed. At the sound of the cook’s bell, giving us the twenty-minute heads-up for dinner, we went inside.

  Jeremy and Rollo searched the main salon again. I went below to the master cabin. The closets and drawers had a nice fragrance of wood and lavender. I checked them again, but turned up nothing new. François had laid out two terrycloth bathrobes on the bed. They were white with the boat’s name stitched in gold script on the pockets. On a bedroom chair just outside the bathroom door was a pile of navy-blue towels that matched the bed’s counterpane. I picked up a nice big one and went into the triangular-shaped shower, which I’d stocked with my favorite Provençal soap and shampoo. It was fun, showering in the doll-sized toy shower. I was relieved to wash off all the dust and dirt of the day.

  Then I went inside the dining salon for our light supper. Afterwards, we adjourned to the main salon, where Jeremy and Rollo opened
up the box of chess pieces whittled by a sailor. They set up the board on that lovely round table with its terrestrial map. I put some music on the Victrola, and I curled up on the sofa with my pad and pen.

  I wanted to record all the startling information we’d gotten in Corsica. You might say that family trees are my specialty. Pretty soon I had worked some of it out:

  While mulling this over, I idly glanced at the chess pieces.

  “You know,” I said slowly, “this whole back-and-forth with the Lion, is kind of like a chess game being played between the two families. I mean, first Paolo brings the Lion to Corsica. Then his son, Aldo, buys it and takes it back to Germany, where it gets stolen by Aldo’s stepbrother, Rolf; but Aldo steals it back, and takes it to Corsica. Then, decades later, Aldo’s twin grandsons take it to auction in Germany, but one of them dies so the other twin panics and brings the Lion home again. That brings us to modern times, when the Lion is stolen from Diamanta’s family. And the Count gets hold of it, so the von Norberts have it again,” I concluded. “But not for long, because supposedly it was then stolen off this boat. The question is, by whom?”

  Jeremy, without even looking up from the chess game, said, “Well, following that logic, then, it’s the Corsicans’ turn to get it back.”

  Rollo nodded sagely and dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “I wonder—if the Lion never got off this boat with the Count—then perhaps someone else aboard Penelope’s Dream took it that night the Count came back from Corsica.”

  “Someone aboard it?” I asked. “Like who?”

  “Like who?” he said. “Like your crew.”

  “What??” I said. “Like Claude or François? You must be joking. The police checked them out.”

  “Nevertheless,” Rollo said, “when we land in Nice you might want to dig up the family connections of the people who worked on this boat the night the Lion disappeared.”

  “What a terribly suspicious thing to do,” I grumbled.

  Rollo shrugged. “You seem to be in the suspicion business, Penny dear,” he said, as he rose to stretch his legs. François came up to ask if we required anything more. When we shook our heads, he and Brice cleared up the dishes. Rollo waggled his eyebrows at me and jerked his head significantly in their direction, and I frowned at him.

  Even so, whenever Brice nodded to me or François smiled, I couldn’t help momentarily second-guessing these sweet, agreeable people who had been gently looking after us the whole time. I found myself wondering if either of them, or Claude, could be one of Paolo’s disgruntled descendants. It couldn’t be . . . could it? Those warm smiles were genuine . . . weren’t they?

  At that moment my thoughts were interrupted when, totally without warning, there was a sudden rude bump against the yacht, as if a whale had slapped up against us. A moment later, the little curios in the cupboard started to rattle ominously, and some of the chess pieces keeled over. We all exchanged wary glances. Then Claude did something he’d never done before—he talked to us over the emergency loud-speaker, saying that we were heading into some unexpected rough weather, and might wish to go below to our cabins.

  I got up and peered out the porthole at the sky. It was as if all the stars had been birthday candles but a big, impetuous child had blown them all out in one big breath. Now there was nothing but the darkness of the sea blending in with the darkness of the sky. And land-ho was still very, very far away.

  Chapter Forty

  Well, I’m guessing that Neptune himself was somehow displeased that night. I can’t say for sure how it happened, but it was as if the wind had just hurled an insult at the sea, and the sea rose up to spit back at it. And suddenly, our big brave boat seemed very tiny indeed, as frail as the humans who made it, in the face of more powerful forces. I thought of the ancient Greeks, bravely setting out across the Med, making up stories about all the tough spots they passed through. Treacherous shallows, and rocky wind tunnels, and foggy shores and odd little islands, which in mythology became kingdoms ruled by giant bird-monsters or snaky-haired witches or fishy temptresses or one-eyed giants who had to be placated or tricked into letting Odysseus and his crew pass.

  Now, I never thought of myself as a landlubber. But as the boat began to pitch and roll, this way and that, suddenly my stomach began to develop a curious rhythm of its own. And it wasn’t a good melody. No, sir. That passed, but then I felt as if strange gravitational forces were pulling on my face, my shoulders, my knees, and that I was losing track of which end was up and which was down. I felt a sudden new profound urge to plant my two feet on dry land. Now.

  “Penny?” Jeremy said, peering at me. I tried to speak but made only a strange little squawk. A second later I couldn’t seem to see straight, as if I were looking through a photographer’s lens that had been deliberately smeared with petroleum jelly, when they want to make everything blurry and surreal.

  I heard Rollo’s voice say, “Afraid she’s had it. Better put her to bed.”

  Jeremy tried to help me walk but now my knees buckled as if they’d gone on strike. He actually had to carry me down to the master cabin, which wasn’t so easy on the boat’s narrow stairwell. I remember thinking that this could have been a wonderful romantic moment between us, if only I didn’t feel so desperately like jumping out the porthole and swimming to shore.

  “Don’t worry, it will be all right,” Jeremy’s voice said above me as he tucked me into the bed. And there I was and there I stayed, for hours, buried under the nice blue counterpane.

  “Poor baby. Want me to stay with you?” he asked.

  “ ’Druther you didn’t see me like this,” I said, still vain enough to care.

  “Call me if you need anything, then,” he said tenderly, pushing aside my damp hair from my face, looking worried. “You may have a bit of a fever. I hope you weren’t bitten by anything.” I moaned as he got up and made the bed bounce.

  “No. I just need to be on something that’s not moving,” I said in a small voice.

  “Soon,” he promised, but I knew he was lying. We were still hours from port. I just had to wait it out. So, as Jeremy told me later, he had to kiss my little green face and leave me there.

  With all the money rolling around the world, they still haven’t really cured seasickness. I tried to tell myself that it was all in my mind. But trust me, it was all in my body. I didn’t actually get sick, which in a way was worse. I simply felt too crummy to be sick. I just rolled around trying to make myself fall asleep, yet couldn’t seem to, not really. I would doze off and then get yanked awake and be very sorry that I’d woken up. I told myself that soon I’d be sitting on the shore, looking back at this day and laughing at it. Someday. Not yet, though. I lay there, listening to the boat making creaking sounds, like a tree in a storm, or a haunted house.

  And then, I must have slept, because I had a weird dream. Napoleon was marching up and down the coast of the Riviera, saying that someone had stolen his boat. Only he looked like Rollo. And Beethoven was conducting a symphony on the deck of the yacht, which I couldn’t quite hear, except every now and then I heard the crash of cymbals. Loud. And Diamanta’s blind grandmother was sitting on a chair by the side of the bed, shelling peas and speaking in that foreign tongue that I could not understand. Then she turned into the flower-lady mazzera, as she reached out to me with her gnarled hands clutching my arm, warning me in a strange, melodic voice, that The heart of the Lion must not be destroyed.

  I woke with a start and sat up in bed, sweating and gasping. But now I saw something beautiful—the first pale light of dawn, peering through the porthole. And nothing was moving, rattling or shaking. Everything was calm and quiet.

  Jeremy came down for one of his periodic visits to peer at me. As soon as he saw my alert face, he smiled. “We’re about a half-hour from Nice,” he reported. “You look a lot better. Last night you looked like a sick cat.”

  “I had a cat once,” I said, more talkative now. “She hated being in the car, because the motion upset her litt
le cat-gyroscope. She wouldn’t stay put in her carrier cage, and she’d bust loose and scramble from one side of the back seat to the other, trying to adjust to every curve in the road. And boy, did she wail!”

  “Is that how it was for you?” Jeremy said sympathetically.

  I nodded. “I must be better, though,” I said, still feeling tentative. “I no longer feel like I should be writing out my last will and testament.”

  “Feel well enough to come up on deck?” Jeremy asked. “The air might do you good. But don’t push, if you’re not up to it.”

  I threw back the covers and slung my legs over the side of the bed, and I wriggled into my little slippers. I tested my legs to see if they held when I stood up. They did. Then I noticed an indentation on the pillow next to me.

  “Hey, were you here?” I asked. “Sleeping beside me?”

  “Yep. For a bit, once you nodded off. I hung around awhile, just to keep an eye on you,” Jeremy said. “You might want to change clothes, and put on a jacket. It’s a little windy.”

  “Thanks. I’ll meet you up on deck,” I said, determined to make myself get my sea legs again.

  When I climbed upstairs I saw that Rollo and Jeremy had been playing cards most of the night, waiting for me to get better. Rollo was alone, and said that Jeremy had gone to the kitchen to see if François would make some tea for me.

  “Jeremy’s been popping up and down like a jack-in-a-box to check on you all night,” Rollo said. “I got to look at his cards any number of times. Couldn’t get him to put money on it, though.” He changed his tone when Jeremy reappeared. “Hullo, look who’s here,” Rollo announced, jerking his head in my direction.

  Jeremy smiled at me. “François says herb tea with lemon will cure you,” he said. “Are you warm enough?” I nodded, and Jeremy took a seat. Rollo began dealing a new hand of cards.

  “Hey,” I said suddenly. “It’s a bum deal.”

  Jeremy said, “What is?”