by Mary Malloy
Rose was the first to speak. “Did you know this was going to be a confession to a murder?” Rose asked. “Because I think you might have warned us.” She put a hand protectively on her father’s arm.
Lizzie apologized. “I don’t know what I was expecting,” she said. “I thought it might tell us something about the mummy, and I knew she had been murdered, but I was stupid not to put it together. I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t expecting what we just heard.”
“You thought it was Greta, though,” Martin said, “and it was.”
“Did you ever know her?” Lizzie asked Tony, thinking how terrible it would be for him to have learned of her death in this way if he had.
The old man shook his head. “No. I don’t remember ever meeting or even seeing her. But Archie and Patrizio, I remember them well.”
“Again, I’m sorry, Tony,” Lizzie said, wishing she had thought more carefully about what might be on the recording before she asked him to translate it.
“It’s a terrible thing of course,” he said. “But I also knew Gianna and saw their terrible grief when she died.” He made a gesture, lifting his palms up to show there was nothing to be done now. “I understand Archie completely,” he said. “He thought this woman had given information that led to Gianna’s torture and execution.”
“I can’t imagine that this really resolved anything for him though,” Martin added.
“What happened to him after this?” Rose asked.
Tony only vaguely remembered that Archie had died young. “Of tuberculosis, I think. He was in his thirties.”
“But no one ever linked either of these guys to the murder?” Jackie said, having been uncharacteristically quiet through the whole of the evening. “I wonder if anyone ever even knew she had disappeared?”
“Maggie Gonzaga was certainly waiting for her,” Lizzie said. “Tony, do you mind if we listen to the rest of the tape? I’m hesitant to ask because I didn’t prepare any of you very well for what we just heard and I think that there is likely to be some grisly stuff to come. These two men almost certainly mummified the corpse of Greta Hoffman.”
“I think we can’t stop here,” Tony said, and everyone agreed.
Patrick’s voice was agitated as he described an argument with Archie about what to do to Greta’s body. Archie had a hatchet in the trunk of the car and had planned to dismember her and scatter her body parts, with the expectation that animals would consume her.
“But what if someone found some part of her?” Patrick had argued. “There would have to be an investigation, and mother would be sure to be suspicious.”
Archie agreed, but only because he feared being found out by Maggie. Patrick made it clear that Archie feared neither the law nor death, only his mother-in-law. She would disown him if she knew he had murdered Greta, and that was a fate that Archie could not bear even to consider.
“We will have to tell her that she simply wasn’t on the train,” he said to Patrick. “I will dump her trunk in the canal.”
It was Patrick who suggested that they mummify the corpse and hide it in the sarcophagus, and once he got it into his head to do so, he proceeded to make a methodical plan. He sent Archie to fetch four fifty-pound bags of salt, and while his companion was away, Patrick lovingly laid Greta out on the stony floor at the back of the cave. He undressed her in as chaste a manner as he could, covering her breasts and genitals with her clothing while he eviscerated her with the knife he carried.
When Archie returned, they covered her with salt. Over the next few days they returned with tools from the collection and Patrick washed the corpse and instructed Archie how to remove the brain and the eyeballs while he stood at the mouth of the cave, breathing deeply.
Patrick came back again and again to be sure that no people or animals disturbed the sacred site, and after forty days, the period proscribed by Egyptian tradition, they secretly moved the body to the basement of the Gonzaga house and finished the process. Where he had been unable to get the original ingredients, Patrick made clever substitutions and he applied himself thoroughly and systematically to the process, thinking that by preparing Greta’s corpse so perfectly for the afterlife he could establish a relationship with her that had not existed in life. Through all this, Maggie wondered about Greta’s absence, but Archie maintained the lie of a calm countenance, and Patrick was finally working enthusiastically on a project—though she did not know the details—and so she allowed herself to be persuaded that Greta could not, after all, face the family of the friend her husband had murdered.
Chapter 31
The knowledge that Arcangelo Cussetti had murdered Greta Hoffman and that Patrizio Gonzaga had mummified her could not be kept a secret, though Lizzie was not sure whom she should tell.
Tony ventured that she shouldn’t disclose what they now knew. “It was an action of wartime,” he said.
Martin argued that it was a crime of passion, of revenge. “The war had been over for a decade,” he said. “While we might sympathize with Archie over his loss, this was a cold-blooded murder.”
“And I’m not even convinced that Greta was guilty of what he thought,” Jackie added. “Maggie seemed pretty certain that Greta was also a victim of the violence of her husband.”
They were all moved by Patrick’s description of her at the end. “She seemed so vulnerable, even pathetic,” Lizzie said, and Rose said almost the same thing at the same time. “But I’m not sure what to do now,” Lizzie continued. “Patrick Gonzaga is certainly in no condition to stand trial. He can’t be questioned; he’s a senile old man. Even to question him would be cruel, and I’m not sure he would remember any of this.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Martin interjected. “I think he may remember the details of this business better than anything else that ever happened in his life.”
“This is why we have laws and courts,” Rose said determinedly. “So that none of us has to decide how to handle the information.”
“Do you think I have to turn the recording over to someone?” Lizzie asked.
Rose, Martin and Jackie immediately said, “Yes.”
Tony said, “No.”
“Gawd, I hate to think of giving it to Cosimo Gonzaga. He would use it to put Patrizio away for good, but would keep the details from going public,” Lizzie said. “And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
Jackie asked if Greta Hoffman had a family that might want to know what happened to her.
“No children,” Lizzie answered, “and any siblings would probably be in their nineties if they survive at all.”
“She might have surviving nieces or nephews,” Rose said.
“And do you think that it would give them any kind of satisfaction to know that their aunt was murdered and mummified?” Lizzie picked up the phone from the table and put it in her purse. “Thank you Tony,” she said, embracing the old man and kissing him on the cheek. “I know that this evening can’t have been easy for you.”
He took her face in his hands and gave her a deep determined look, then nodded and let go.
As the company broke up, Jackie asked Lizzie what she was going to do in the morning.
“Tell Father O’Toole,” Lizzie said. “And probably Cosimo Gonzaga, and maybe Ann Crandall, though I may give her the details without the names. She can’t do anything about it, but she said something about the victim deserving to have her story known, and we can do that, even if only in a small circle.”
Jackie asked what sort of impact this might have on the opening of her exhibit and Lizzie answered defensively that any intention to keep the story from coming out now was not because of that. “The sensational nature of Greta’s fate will make her a spectacle on the Internet, and I’m not sure that is a very respectful thing to do.”
“It could also bring some aspects of what happened during the war to light.”
“Ma
ybe, but I am going to leave it to the morning to decide.”
No decision was made during the night and when she went to Father O’Toole’s office the next morning it was like a penitent going to confession. There really was no reason why she should feel guilty, she told herself, and yet she did. She thought the priest might relieve her of some of the burden she was carrying, and he did, for he was also a pragmatic businessman, and his concern over the reputation of St. Patrick’s College seemed equal to any ethical quandary related to bringing a murderer—or a mummifier—to justice.
“You say you have all this on tape?” he asked Lizzie after she explained what she knew about the woman whose mummy was now in the custody of the Boston Coroner. “Can I hear it?”
“It’s in Italian,” she said, turning on her phone and handing it to him.
“I think if I press this button I would erase it,” he said, then smiled at her. “Don’t worry, I won’t do it, but it would be easy enough to have an accident and lose the evidence. You say this is Cosimo Gonzaga’s uncle speaking?”
Lizzie nodded as the priest held the phone up to his ear and listened to the first several minutes of the recording. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to talk to the College’s legal counsel about this, but I’m inclined to think we should let Cosimo hear it. His uncle clearly isn’t the killer, and from what you’ve told me the old man is never going to be able to stand trial for hiding the body, anyway, so we might as well let him deal with it in Italy.”
“Can I keep my phone?” Lizzie asked.
“Do you mind if I say no, at least for a day or so?”
She had to agree and as she left Father O’Toole said, “Now you can return to your exhibit work full time without any distractions.”
Lizzie gave him a very small smile and walked across campus to the workspace where the Gonzaga collection was being prepared. Jimmy and Roscoe were working with the designer on preparing the labels and placing them next to each object.
“’U’u club,” she read. “Collected on the 1595 expedition of Alvaro de Mendaña, this is the oldest artifact known to exist from the Marquesas Islands…”
The beautiful dark wood of the object glowed under the artificial lights, its abstract face stared up from the table on which it lay. Lizzie put her hand on it, breaking her own rule of never touching any part of the collection without gloves. The wood felt warm, smooth. How many hands had touched it over the last four hundred years? Certainly Patrizio Gonzaga had held it in the same hands that had eviscerated and mummified Greta Winkler Hoffman.
And before that, what generations of Gonzaga men and women had held it in their hands, touched the wood as she was doing now? Four hundred years ago a Spanish explorer had taken it from the hands of a Marquesan man to stow on his ship for the long voyage home, and before that some carver had rubbed it with his hands to smooth it. Each person through whose hands the club had passed had a story, each had lived a life full of drama, emotion, love, violence. Lizzie wondered if Patrick had ever put it into the hands of Greta Winkler when he was a young man and she was a young woman to impress. Perhaps those hands, now desiccated and wrapped in resin-soaked linen, had held this club when they were warm and soft and Patrick desired to hold them in his own and put them to his lips.
Lizzie walked quietly around the room, lost in her own thoughts. Jimmy and Roscoe held back, despite the list of questions they had been saving to ask her. She looked again at the alligator, the narwhal tusk and all the other artifacts that had now become a part of her story as well.
When Cosimo Gonzaga came into the room, she asked her assistants to leave, which they did quickly and quietly.
“Father O’Toole played me the tape,” he said. “I had never heard any part of that story before.”
“Had you heard of Greta Winkler?”
“No. I had heard something once from Pat that a friend of Gianna’s had informed on her to the Nazis and that’s how she was captured, but my grandmother gave him a smack when he said it and told him never to mention anything about it ever again.”
He picked up the Marquesan club and Lizzie didn’t say anything. His was another pair of hands upon it, another link in the chain.
“And so the mysteries are all solved,” he said, giving her a slight bow. “Grazie.”
Lizzie took the club from him and laid it back on the table.
“I still have some questions, if you don’t mind answering them,” she said.
Cosimo raised an eyebrow and nodded.
“What happened to the Dutch paintings that used to hang in the Yellow Salon?” she asked.
“They are in my house,” he said without emotion. “Everything in the palazzo on Galvani Plaza legally belongs to me and I have moved some things out of it. By a quirk of my grandfather’s will, his wife, and any of her children living with her could stay there for their lifetimes. Nobody ever expected Patrick to stay there for sixty-plus years after her death. My father wanted the house, which he inherited, and I want it too.”
It occurred to her that he might have the Michelangelo angel. “Do you have it?” she asked.
He said that he didn’t. “I have never seen it,” he said. “My grandmother told me it was stolen during the war and never returned.”
“Did you ever try to find it through one of the lost art registries?”
He shook his head. “There was something strange in the circumstances of its loss. My grandmother would not allow it to be pursued, and I don’t have any good evidence to show that my family owned it.”
“It is on the altar in the chapel in that sketch you sent me,” Lizzie said.
“But it isn’t recognizable there, and it isn’t in the catalog of artworks made after.” He put his hand on her arm and looked carefully at her. “Did you find evidence of it in the work you’ve done?”
“Your grandmother wrote that she moved it into her bedroom during the war, that she didn’t want to hide it with the rest of the valuables because it meant so much to her.”
“Where did she write this?”
“In a letter to her brother that is in the library collection here at the college.”
Cosimo leaned against the table on which a number of valuable artifacts were laid. “Can you find it?” he asked.
“The letter?” she said. “Of course, I can show you a copy right now on my computer.”
“No, the statue,” Cosimo said earnestly. “Can you find the Michelangelo?”
“How?” Lizzie said, her surprise at the request evident in her tone. “Are you willing to put out a request through the stolen art channels?”
“Again, I have no real evidence, no image of the thing.”
Lizzie told him that she thought it might be a pair with the Michelangelo angel on St. Dominic’s tomb. She moved down the table to the dell’Arca angel and told him her theory. “I think there may have been two pairs of angels, one pair by each artist, and that somehow they got split between the church and the Gonzaga family.”
“I’m impressed. You know a lot more than I thought,” Cosimo said. “In fact, you know a lot more about some of my family matters than I do. I don’t suppose you can tell me why my grandmother did not want to pursue this after the war?”
“Patrick said that she knew who stole it.”
Cosimo was silenced by that bit of information and did not speak again for almost a minute. “Did he say who it was?” he asked finally.
Lizzie shook her head. “Is it possible it is still in the possession of someone in your family?” she asked.
“If it was stolen by someone in my family, it was likely to be either one of my uncles or my father. My uncle Adino was feuding with his mother during the war and considered the house and all its contents to be his personal property. I never met him, but he was described to me by my father as a grasping schemer.”
“And he was killed during t
he war,” Lizzie added, “so if he took the statue out of the house it would be very difficult to trace it. There is an impressive catalog raisonne of Michelangelo’s work in public and private collections and there is nothing in it to suggest that anyone knows of another angel with a candlestick like the one on St. Dominic’s tomb.”
“If my uncle took it to Rome though, for instance, it could just be in some collection where the current owners don’t even know what it is. There is an embarrassment of riches there when it comes to Renaissance statuary.”
“What about your own father? Is there any chance that he could have taken it and you wouldn’t know?”
“My father wasn’t in Italy during most of the war. He didn’t want to be conscripted by any of the various parties and he didn’t have as much reverence for the resistance as my grandmother. He thought that Gianna was foolish to get involved.”
“Well I am pretty sure it wasn’t Patrick. Why would he hide it when he has lived his whole life in the house? And he is the one who told me it was stolen.”
Cosimo put his hand on the head of the dell’Arca angel and mused. “This is really quite beautiful,” he said. “It was a generous gift from my grandfather.”
“I have thought that the gift of the angel and the painting must have been an acknowledgment of how deeply he loved Maggie Kelliher.”
“Perhaps.” He nodded. “If you can find the Michelangelo angel, or good documentation of it belonging to my family, there will be a handsome reward in it for you.” He once again caught Lizzie’s eye and gave her a very serious look.
She repeated her earlier comment that she didn’t see how it could be done without using public sources, but said she would keep it in mind.
“What will happen to Patrick now?” she asked. “Will he be going back to the house on the Piazza Galvani?”
Cosimo made it clear that he wouldn’t. “He really can’t live on his own anymore, as I think you will agree. He’s comfortable at the St. Columba Hospital and will stay there.”
She couldn’t argue and it wasn’t really her business anyway.
