by Lyn Hamilton
Maire led me up dark stairs. "Are you sure you want to see her?" she said at the top. "You may regret it."
"That may be," I said, "but it's the only route open to me at the present time."
The woman shrugged her shoulders. "Well, then, come in."
The room she led me into was so dark, it took me a minute to adjust to the light. It was rather chilly, too.
"Are you the one who brought me the roses?" a voice said, and I peered into the gloom to see a woman in a rather pretty blue dress and pink fuzzy bedroom slippers sitting in a chair in the darkest part of the room. She was wearing sunglasses. The roses were in a crystal vase on a small table beside her.
"Yes," I said. "I hope you like them."
"They are my favorites," she said. "Do I know you?"
"No," I said. "I'm rather desperately trying to get in touch with your brother."
"Rhys?" she said.
"No, Crawford." Rhys was dead, didn't she know that? My heart sank.
She arched her head back in a grimace. She had bad teeth, discolored, and an eyetooth was missing. I was horrified. Was she being kept prisoner here against her will, suffering pain from her teeth? What was going on here?
"He killed him," she said. I was about to say who killed whom, but I suddenly knew the answer.
"Taso," I said. "You think Crawford killed Taso."
"I don't think, I know. I just don't know how he did it. Perhaps you could find that out for me."
"Now, Brandy," Maire said. "You shouldn't talk like that about your brother. You know he's very generous, sending money every month."
"He's buying my silence. Crawford can't stand not to get his own way. He was always like that, even when we were little," she said. "If someone crosses him, he gets rid of them. He was such a beautiful boy. They wouldn't let me see him. I expect they thought I wasn't strong enough. But I am strong," she said. "Look at me. I would have to be, wouldn't I? I think Crawford forbade them to let me see him."
"Do you know where Crawford is?"
"No, do you?" she said. "I wish I knew where he was. It's nice to have a visitor. Would you like some tea?"
"No, thank you," I said. The place was giving me the creeps.
"I'd like some," she said. "Would you get me some, Maire?"
Maire looked at me for a moment and then nodded. "I'll be right back," she said. I couldn't decide whether her comment was reassurance for Brandy or for me.
"Now she's gone," Brandy whispered. "I think you can help me."
"What would you like me to do?" I whispered back.
"I've been watching that fly on the ceiling," she said, pointing upward. It was too dark for me to see if there was a fly there or not. I wasn't even sure there were flies on the Aran Islands. "And I think I know how it's done."
"How what's done?"
"Walking upside down on the ceiling, of course."
"Oh," I said. "I see."
"Yes," she said. "Now, if you'll help me to get up there—you could give me a boost up on to the dresser or perhaps even the top of the cupboard door—I think I could do it. Will you help?"
"Uh ..." I heard Maire's steps on the stairs.
"Shush." Brandy said. "Don't tell her, will you? You come back sometime when she's not here. She shops every Monday morning. Come back then."
"Okay."
"Do you think I'm pretty?" Brandy said, as Maire pushed open the door and set down a silver tea service, which she placed on a table near Brandy.
"Now, dear," Maire said. "Of course she thinks you're pretty. Here's your tea. I've brought you some nice biscuits to have with it. Are you cool enough?"
Cool enough? I was getting the shivers. I didn't know whether it was the room temperature or the general atmosphere.
"Are you the one who brought me the flowers?" Brandy said again, cupping her hands around one of the blooms.
"Yes," I said. "I hope you like them."
"Perhaps you should leave," Maire said.
"Yes," I said.
"Can we go out today, Maire?" Brandy said.
"No, dear," Maire said. "The sun is shining."
"Oh well," Brandy said, in a philosophical tone. "Perhaps it will be foggy tomorrow."
"I'm sure it will," Maire said. "We'll go for a little walk tonight, maybe. I'm going to show this nice lady out, all right?"
"All right," she said.
"Do you know where her brother is?" I asked as we descended the stairs.
"No," Maire said.
"But he sends money every month."
"Yes. Bank transfer from Switzerland. It doesn't help you. I'm sorry. It's part of the arrangement, you see. Her brother is very generous in his support, but that is all. I don't know where he is. I should never have let you come. I felt perhaps I'd been too abrupt with you, when you came here this morning and were so evidently distressed. And she seemed better earlier. She was so excited about the roses."
"What's the matter with her?" I asked.
Maire looked at me for a minute. "Porphyria," she said at last.
"Isn't that... ?" I bit my tongue.
"Vampire's disease? Is that what you were going to say?"
"Yes. I'm sorry." That explained, though, the sunglasses all those years, and the bad teeth. People with the disease often had a terrible sensitivity to light.
"Promise you won't tell anyone. If you tell people, they'll harass her. It's a horrible disease, and people do not understand it. It frightens them. They think they'll catch it, or worse, that she's out at night sinking her fangs into animals or people. They always tried to keep it a secret. Their father had it, too. It's like a terrible curse on the family. This is one of the few places she can be comfortable. It's cool most of the year, and it rains a lot. If we had to leave, I don't know where we'd go."
"I promise you I won't tell anyone. Is that what has affected her mind?"
"Perhaps," she said. "It could. I've always rather thought it was the death of her lover, though. She was wild about him."
"It can't be much of a life for you, either," I said. "Do you ever get away from the house?"
"Her brother pays me well, although," she said looking across the bleak landscape, "there's nothing much here to spend it on. If rocks were worth something, we'd be the richest people in the world, wouldn't we? Anyway, you've seen her, the state she's in. How could I leave her when she's like that? My mother worked for the family, the O'Reillys. We're joined somehow, my family and hers. And do I get away sometimes? I do. A friend comes to visit from time to time to give me a bit of a holiday, when she can get out. It's just she does it less and less. So I'll say good-bye. It's been grand having a bit of company, but I don't think there's any point in your coming back here, do you?" "No," I said. "But thank you." "I hope your friend comes through all right." I turned to go, but then thought of one more question. "It's hereditary, isn't it? Porphyria? Does her brother have it, too?"
"Yes," she said. "I'm afraid he does." I thought of the man I knew as Crawford Lake, that first and only time I'd seen him in person, tanned and standing in a beam of sunlight in the apartment in Rome. Oh shit, I thought.
ELEVEN
ROME
SO THE MAN I KNEW AS CRAWFORD Lake, wasn't. There was no other possible interpretation of what I had learned. To say that one fact put a different spin on the situation was merely facile. It was much more fundamental than that. Three people were dead, two of them, at least, at the hands of someone else. Another innocent was in jail.
It was a very long trip back to Italy, not just in the hours spent traveling but in the mental ground I had to cover. The most generous interpretation of what had happened was that Lake, given his medical condition, had asked someone to stand in for him in his discussions with me. In this rather halcyon version of events, Lake really had chosen me to find him the Bellerophon, the whole affair was perfectly legitimate, and the deaths a horrible coincidence. It was a scenario I found I could not cling to for long, and I soon sank into gloomy self-pity and bla
me. Why had I ever thought that someone like Crawford Lake would ask me to do anything? I wouldn't get to carry out the garbage of someone like that, let alone buy him a bronze horse. Was it vanity that had made me so vulnerable? I didn't play in Crawford Lake's league. I just liked to think I could.
Still, I'd been skeptical, hadn't I? I'd asked him why he'd called on me. His reply had been that he had been looking for someone no one had ever heard of. Surely that was not an appeal to my vanity. On the other hand, he'd praised my ability to do research and get things done. Was that so terrible?
The point was that it didn't matter why I'd done it, why I'd believed him. What counted was that it happened at all. Was it a hoax, a practical joke gone terribly wrong? Then who was the joker? I couldn't think of anyone who'd do anything that elaborate, nor could I think of anyone who'd stoop to murder to protect the hoax.
Was it worse than a joke? Was it a deliberate attempt to discredit me in some way? Why bother? I co-owned a nice little shop in Toronto, had my regular customers, got occasional mention in the design and antique magazines. Why did that make me a target? Thinking that someone would go to such trouble for poor little me was perhaps even more vain than I'd been in the first instance, when I'd accepted the assignment.
So, what to do? The sensible choice would be to simply go home. I hadn't been accused of anything, no one knew, really, about my involvement in the sorry affair. I could get on a plane at any time, be in my usual spot in the little office off the main showroom in the shop within twenty-four hours. I would feel chastened for awhile, but I'd get over it. Life would go on.
But pictures kept floating across my consciousness: Antonio rescuing me from robbers in Paris and then practicing his English over a bottle of wine, Lola sitting on the edge of my bed eating cheese and telling me about her love life and her search for Lars Porsena's tomb. And then, more sadly, Lola in prison and Antonio, his lovely smile stilled for all time, swaying ever so slightly in the breeze.
Suddenly, I was no longer feeling sorry for myself. I was really, really angry. Someone had made a fool out of me, but much worse, had used me in a horrible plot. And I was damned if I was going to slink home, tail between my legs, leaving Lola starving to death in prison and Antonio swinging, figuratively now, from a hook on a Tuscan farmhouse, no matter how lovely the view! To be a friend was a joy, but it was also a responsibility, Antonio had said. He was right.
Yes, I would have to be careful. I would have to get used to the idea that any event, no matter how innocuous it seemed, carried the potential for menace. And I was going to have to go back over a lot of ground. I would reinterpret every event since the first moment I walked into that apartment in Rome from this different vantage point, hoping a pattern would emerge. I would have to try to reconnect with all the people I'd come in contact with, however peripherally, in the last several days, to try to find out how it all fit together: Boucher and Leclerc; Dottie and Kyle; Signore Mauro, the owner of the farmhouse; Palladini, the owner of the apartment; Cesar Rosati, the nice man at the restaurant in Volterra, just because he was there. But first and foremost, I could somehow track down the man who had passed himself off as Crawford Lake and force him to tell me who'd talked him into doing it. I had no idea how I was going to find him, of course, but I was just going to have to do it.
Finding Dottie, however, was easy. Or to be more accurate, she found me. "Lara!" she trilled, and I turned to see her ensconced at a table in the cafe in the piazza near my hotel. "Over here! Isn't this just amazing, the way we keep running into each other?" It certainly was, just way too amazing, despite the fact I'd known her for years, and it is, as they say, a small world. She got up and hugged me, holding me for a second or two longer than really necessary, as if she really was glad to see me. "Here," she said, pushing some newspapers aside. "Come and sit with me. This is Angelo, by the way. My new beau."
Angelo was almost as good-looking as Kyle and, if anything, even younger. "Why don't you go and buy yourself that lovely suit you liked, sweetheart," she added, getting some rather large bills out of her wallet. "So Lara and I can have a little gab, just us two girls." Angelo pouted, as if he couldn't bear to be away from her for even a few minutes, but then got up and swaggered off.
"I'm so happy to see you," she said. "And glad you're okay."
"Why wouldn't I be, Dottie?" I said, looking at her suspiciously.
"Oh, I don't know," she said. "The last time I saw you, you'd just found that poor man Godard. You didn't look too good that night." There was no arguing with that, but taking a closer look at Dottie now, on this occasion, she was the one who didn't look so hot. She had lost weight, and there were dark circles under her eyes that her makeup, which looked as if it had been applied with a trowel, couldn't hide.
"What happened to Kyle?" I said.
"I got bored with him and sent him packing," she said. "Anyway, when in Rome, take up with a Roman, isn't that what they say? Angelo is such a darling," she rattled on. "I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying Italy. I'm really glad you mentioned it when we saw you in Nice. I don't think I would have come here, otherwise. Now I'm wondering why I spent all those years just going to France. My business, of course. I'm thinking of adding some Italian antiques. Just try out a few, and see how it goes. Where have you been since I saw you last?"
"I've been a few places," I said, with what I thought was considerable understatement. "Tuscany, primarily, as I told you." Maybe she knew exactly where I'd been. That was the trouble now. Everyone was a suspect in my mind.
"Isn't Tuscany wonderful? Florence: absolutely fabulous. Siena: if anything, even lovelier. Now Rome. I thought I was just going to hate it. I'd heard it was so noisy and dirty and that the Roman men were all old lechers. Instead, I just adore it. I've already extended my European trip by a couple of weeks, and I may keep right on going. Until I get tired of Angelo, anyway. He's an actor," she added.
"Where do you find all these younger men?" I said. I was just making conversation and didn't expect an answer, but I got one anyway.
"An escort agency," she replied. "They call it an agency for actors. I know that's not a good idea, but I was kind of lonely after Kyle and I busted up, and I didn't feel like going home just yet, so I called one of those places. I really just wanted someone to have dinner with, but it has kind of worked out, if you know what I mean."
I suddenly felt grateful to Dottie because she had given me an idea. Antonio had told me he was an actor, at least a wannabe, and he'd mentioned an agency. If Antonio had been hired from this agency, then why not the other one, the Lake impersonator, too?
I was quite pleased with myself for having thought of that, until I caught a glimpse of a headline on the newspaper on the table.
"Would you mind if I had a look at that newspaper?" I asked.
"Go ahead. I can't read it. It's in Italian. Angelo got it."
"I haven't seen an Italian newspaper for a few days," I said. "I'm feeling a little out of touch."
"Feel free," she said. "It's pleasant just to sit here and read, isn't it? You read that, I'll look at Italian Vogue. I can't read a word of it either, but the photos are spectacular."
The article I was interested in was right on the front page and was written by a reporter by the name of Gianni Veri, a name I thought I'd heard before, although I couldn't imagine where. It had caught my eye because of a rather nice photograph of an Etruscan hydria, almost certainly the same one, in fact, that I'd had in my possession more than once. Veri was on something of a rampage, journalistically speaking.
NATIONAL DISGRACE!
Authorities fiddle while Italian patrimony looted.
Members of the Commando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimono Artistico are sitting idly by as hundreds if not thousands of Etruscan artifacts are stolen, looted, and then smuggled out of the country. This reporter has seen with his own eyes the exquisite Etruscan hydria pictured here, a hydria touched by the hands of none other than the Micali painter from ancient Vulci, and knows
for a fact that it was on its way to Switzerland when the local police force apprehended an American woman who had it in her possession. The woman is part of a smuggling ring, headed by a foreign businessman, that systematically moves priceless pieces of our Italian heritage to foreign countries where they are sold illegally to collectors worldwide, where they are destined to remain hidden in the private collections of those with no scruples, never to be seen by Italian eyes again. While the woman remains in police custody, the ringleader moves about the country, indeed the world, without fear of prosecution. One has to ask whether it is incompetence on the part of Italian officials that permits this to happen, or worse yet, complicity. Or, perhaps worst of all, that the police are being directed by the most corrupt of politicians.
