“Vandals!” he snarled. “Looters! This is precisely the kind of thing I was talking about!” He ripped the notice to shreds as a dog rips a handkerchief dropped by an enemy, letting the pieces fall where they might. Then he stalked off.
“Good-bye, Gordon, my love!” called Arabella, waving for all she was worth. “Be sure to do everything I wouldn’t do! That was a near thing!” she said to Kendrick. “Where is Pietro? Pietro!” she called down the street. “Pietro!”
“I should not expect to see him again, if I were you,” said Kendrick quietly.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I think you know what I mean. That boy has been of invaluable help in your pigheaded quest for a statue that isn’t actually yours. Has it occurred to you that he may have risked his life in coming to you just now? And you repaid the lad by treating him like a common beggar before your friends!”
If the rector had been a spitting man, Arabella’s shoes would have stood in some danger. He was thinking, perhaps, of how she had tried to dismiss him, too, sending him for butter horns when she wished to run off with Gordon.
“I pay Pietro handsomely for what he does,” she retorted. “In cash. We have no understanding about how he is to be treated in front of my friends.”
Kendrick remained silent. And as Arabella called and called without result, his silence grew in eloquence. At last, she gave up, and turned back toward the hotel.
“Signorina!”
She whirled round expectantly, but the boy who ran toward her from across the street was a stranger. “I have message for you!”
“Where is Pietro?” asked Arabella.
“He cannot come. But I will take you to the house you want. Can you go on Wednesday? At nine o’clock?”
“Of course.”
“And bring a nin . . . nintr . . . someone who speaks Italian, yes?”
“An interpreter?”
“Yes. One of those.”
Chapter 18
SOMETHING FUNNY ABOUT THE COCOA
The redoubtable Mrs. Molyneux, a cook par excellence, understood the importance of details. They mattered, whether one was cooking for the aristocracy, or only for one’s fellow servants while the mistress was from home. Unfortunately, after having saved a set of actual pigeon’s feet to make tracks across the unbaked crust of her pigeon pie, she forgot that Tilda had to be closely watched in everything.
“Wait!” shrieked the cook. Dropping her saucier with a clang, she lunged across the pastry table and grabbed Tilda by the wrists only just in time. “You must first wash zee feets!”
Wonderingly, Tilda turned the bird claws over and saw that the bottoms were thickly coated with muck and feces from the pigeon coop.
“Oh,” she said.
Fielding, the parlor maid–cum-butler-cum–kitchen assistant, was standing at the kitchen sink extension, cutting sippets with a bread knife. Not for that night, of course—who would want sippets with pie? But Mrs. Molyneux would be requiring them for the following day, and insisted that stale ones were best.
“Mrs. Moly!” said Fielding, glancing out the window. “There’s an old peddler woman coming round to the door, with a sack!”
“Well, geeve ’air some food, eef she’s ongry, but send hair away eef she tries to sell you anysing.”
“New cats for old!” croaked a voice outside.
“What was zat she said?” asked the cook.
“Sounded like ‘New hats for old,’” said Fielding. “That doesn’t make any sense, though, does it?”
“Non, indeed! Go see what she wants, Marianne.”
Fielding opened the door to as outrageously an attired pilgrim as the young woman had ever beheld, with a sack of squirming creatures slung over its back.
“Oh,” said the parlor maid. “You’ll be wanting to speak to Cook, I expect. Mrs. Moly! Could you come here a moment? It’s somebody with rabbits or something!”
Mrs. Molyneux duly appeared, wiping her hands on her apron.
“ ’Allo! Yes? What ’ave you thair? Leetle robeets?”
“Kittens,” said the peddler, stooping down with her bag and pouring the contents across the threshold.
“Ah! Well, I’m afraid zat we do not eat keettens at zees ’ouse. You might try down ze road, at Justice Harbuckle’s residonce. I am told zat zee jodge prefairs children, but keettens might make a nice shange. Good day.”
Mrs. Molyneux tried to shut the door so as to scoop the cat cubs back out onto the step, but Lady Ribbonhat (for the astute reader will have guessed it was she) quickly stuck out her foot, just as Tilda arrived at the back door.
“Oh!” cried the girl, plumping down on the floor and gathering them into her skirt. “Kittens! Please, may we keep them, Mrs. Moly?”
“We may not,” said the cook. “We ’ave already got zee wan cat, and I don’t know ’ow zee mistress weel take on when she sees zat one! Besides, we ’ave no money to waste on kittens!”
“Oh, but you see, I don’t want any money!” cried Lady Peddler-Ribbon.
“No?” asked the cook, startled. “What do you want, zen?”
“An exchange! If you will let me have your raggedy old ginger tomcat, I shall give you these three adorable black-and-white kittens, instead!” She held one of them up and cuddled it against her cheek. “You see? Their eyes are still blue!”
Mrs. Janks now joined Tilda and Mrs. Moly at the door.
“’Ow did you know we even ’ad a ginger tomcat?” asked the housekeeper, narrowing her eyes. “And what do you want ’im for?”
“Uh . . . well,” said the peddler, “I only require one cat, for my particular line of work.”
“And what might that be?”
“Well . . . I . . . travel about. From one place to another, you understand. And I am chiefly engaged in selling . . . um, various gewgaws and bric-a-brac. I cannot keep three felines with me. I mean, they will get lost, will they not? No, three cats is two cats too many. I merely require one good, reliable mouser!”
“And why should a peddler need a mouser at all?” asked the cook. “Eef she travel all zee time?”
“No,” said Mrs. Janks. “No, thank you. We already have a cat, and we find him quite satisfactory! Come now, Tilda, give the woman back her kittens.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Janks!” cried the scullion tragically. “They’re such cunning little things! And they’ll get lost, she says, if . . .”
“She wants to trade them for Rooney,” explained the housekeeper. “You don’t want them that badly, do you?”
“Rooney?! I could never give him up!”
“So then,” said Mrs. Janks reasonably. “Give the kittens back to Lady Peddler-Hat, here. I dunno why you want a cat that you cared so little for that you had your ostler put it through our window,” she added, leaning in toward the “peddler,” “but I can tell you this, my lady; if you want ’im, that’s reason enough for us to keep ’im.”
And Mrs. Janks shut the door in her face.
“Tilda, when you’ve finished trackin’ that pie, wipe your ’ands an’ go fetch me a pen and some paper. The mistress is not going to believe this!”
Fair mornings generally found Arabella seated on the sunny little balcony, in a cashmere peignoir, fretting over her non-existent post and sorely missing her beloved blue chocolate pot. No one drank chocolate in this part of the world, evidently, so one had to make do with coffee. And in the absence of any correspondence, Arabella read a book, or searched through odd, outdated English papers for news of the family scandal. But she never discovered any mention of it.
“How bad can it possibly be,” she asked Belinda, “if the papers aren’t on to it? So why does no one write and tell me? Have you received any letters, Bunny?”
“No, but then, I have not written any, either. I simply haven’t the mental energy, at present. And if I had, all I should write would be ‘Bergamini, Bergamini, Bergamini.’ I should never tire of that, but I am afraid other people might.”
“They might, in
deed! But I cannot understand this universal silence,” Arabella said, half to herself. “I have written to practically everyone I know.”
“Perhaps the post is not as efficient here as it is at home. Perhaps nothing is getting through.”
“But it is, though. Signor Terranova receives daily postal dispatches from all over the world, and Charles had another demand from his tailor only yesterday! I am exceedingly worried! Mrs. Janks has not even responded to my request for the household expense report, and you know that is just not like her!”
They were sitting in the sun, with coffee again, and Arabella was thinking how comforted she would have felt with a cup of chocolate between her hands.
“Hmm? I am sorry, I wasn’t listening,” said Belinda. “I cannot seem to concentrate on anything anyone says. But speaking of the post, here are two things that came in for you this morning.”
She held up an envelope, together with a packet, and Arabella fairly snatched them from her. Then she groaned.
“These aren’t from home! They were delivered by hand.”
“Well? Maybe they’re clews, then, or a death threat, with a packet of poison powder. Post is post, Bell, wherever it comes from . . . where does it come from?”
“The University of Naples,” she said, reading the envelope.
“Oh!” cried Belinda, scrambling up from her chair and coming round to Arabella’s side of the table. “That is Bergamini’s university! What does it say?!”
Arabella tore open the envelope and unfolded the note.
“It is from Bergamini,” she said. “It is a response to the note I wrote to him yesterday. Here, I’ll read it to you:
Dearest Madam,
I am ready to act as your interpreter and escort you to the home of this smuggler person whenever you should like to go. In the meantime, and mindful of the incompatibility of my country’s cuisine with your brother’s stomach, I am taking the liberty of sending him, through you, a supply of English cocoa. I hope this may help to mitigate Signor Beaumont’s indisposition insofar as some of it may be caused by homesickness.
I remain your obedient servant, and please communicate my regards to your charming sister, Belinda.
“Ah!” cried Belinda, half-swooning with delight. “Read that last part to me, again!”
“Please communicate my regards to your charming sister, Belinda.”
“Again!”
“No,” said Arabella. “Here, take the note.” And she handed it over. “Now you can read it to yourself as much as you will. Just . . .”
“Please communicate . . .”
“ . . . read it to yourself, please.”
“Oh, but I want to hear it, Bell!”
“Fine,” said Arabella, rising from her chair. “Then I shall visit the kitchen, and learn how to cook like an Italian.”
On the following morning, Professor Bergamini called at the hotel at ten minutes to 9:00. Belinda flew across the room when he entered, and clung onto him like a mussel on a piling. For his part, though he still displayed his usual manner of gentle solicitude toward her, Bergamini’s movements seemed charged with a new vitality. It would have been sweet to see them thus enthralled, the one with the other, were it not so strange. When they sat cozily together in the carriage they looked for all the world like a dear, doting old gentleman and his granddaughter, but for their little fingers linked upon the carriage seat. Yet who was there to disapprove? Arabella had seen all manner of queer things in her time. Charles would have made fun, probably, but he had not been included in the party. And Kendrick, too, had elected to remain behind. He seemed to be avoiding Arabella’s company since her rudeness toward Pietro.
It was nearly winter now, but one would scarcely guess this. The countryside at harvest time gladdened the eye in its magnificent abundance. But if the carriage seemed to bear them through the center of a lovely picture, the farm at which they eventually turned in was a veritable portrait of neglect. Weeds proliferated. The plow lay upturned in a puddle of rank water, corroded with rust. A few scrawny chickens picked despondently through the stones and trash in front of the house, as though they didn’t actually expect to find anything, but felt the need to keep up appearances. Yet the house itself was practically new, and a fine riding horse stood saddled and ready in the drive.
“Clearly,” Arabella murmured, as they climbed from the carriage, “the owner makes a comfortable living by some means other than farming!”
The man himself came out to meet them, and Arabella was alarmed by his appearance. He was a surly, swarthy fellow, with a curling mustache and one hard, brown eye that squinted. The other eye, which was blue and wide open, seemed to be fixed on something that stood next to and slightly behind him. He neither invited the visitors inside, nor brought them out chairs, so that they were obliged to remain standing during the whole of the interview. But in any case, their stay would not be a long one.
“Ask him, please, Professor,” said Arabella, “whether he has any information about the art theft.”
“It can scarcely be called a theft, I think,” said Bergamini. “Those pieces did not belong to the person who was murdered. In fact, I think we had better leave the term ‘theft’ out of this, since technically, you yourself are a potential—”
“Oh, very well,” she interrupted. “Ask him what he remembers of the murder, and whether he knows the statue’s current whereabouts.”
As the professor spoke to him in Italian, the smuggler stiffened, and his nostrils dilated with fear or with rage or possibly something else. Bergamini spoke quietly, but menacingly—to Arabella’s mind, at least—like a Spanish inquisitor. Eventually, the man found his voice and replied at length, in a high-pitched, defensive chatter.
“He says,” said the professor, “that he is a farmer. He knows nothing about any murder.”
“What else?”
“I do not understand, signorina.”
“He has been talking for the last minute or more. What else did he say?”
“Oh, you know these peasants . . . so superstitious! Just some nonsense about . . . a curse. He says he will be killed if he helps you.”
It was now quite plain to see that the man was frightened. He would tell them nothing, not even when Arabella produced a wad of lire from her reticule, and riffled the edges enticingly with her thumb. At last she was obliged to give it up as a bad job. But after they had re-entered the carriage, the fellow’s wife, who had hidden herself on the other side of it so as to escape detection from the house, reached her arm through the window, and caught Bergamini by the sleeve. She began to talk, low and rapidly.
“The artworks were wrapped in burlap and canvas,” the professor translated. “They were brought here in her husband’s little donkey cart, and the next evening they were taken away again, in a larger oxcart, which contained more canvas and burlap-covered items.”
“Where was the oxcart going?”
“Napoli,” the woman replied.
Arabella thanked her, and handed over the money.
“Naples,” she repeated gloomily as the carriage proceeded down the road. “From Naples, it might have been loaded onto a ship and gone anywhere.”
“No,” said Bergamini with sudden animation. “I think I know exactly where it went! A few days ago I was speaking with the curator of the Naples Museum, when he excused himself to talk to a workman waiting in the hall outside. I heard the man complaining about a lot of junk that had suddenly turned up in the storeroom where he kept his tools. He didn’t know what they were, he said. But there were a lot of them. And they were all wrapped up in canvas and burlap!”
“Professor,” said Arabella. “How long would it take to arrange accommodation for us in Naples?”
That evening, the hotel kitchen staff prepared cocoa for all the guests, which, considering that they had never made it before, was a noble effort. Arabella had overseen its preparation, but forgot to mention that cocoa is usually served in cups, and the landlady had given orders for wine
glasses to be set out upon a clever contrivance that rotated like a spinning platter.
The advent of cocoa cheered the Beaumonts no end. Charles actually smiled—something he rarely did away from his gambling hells—and Belinda kept explaining to everyone that the cocoa had been a gift from Professor Bergamini. Instead of being put off by the unusual wineglass presentation, Arabella had entered at once into the spirit of the occasion, which was reminiscent for her of long-ago nursery celebrations, and in a correspondingly childlike frame of mind, she believed that the excitement generated by the cocoa somehow related to her own extraordinary qualities as a person of note. For that reason, she disdained to use an ordinary glass, and instead appropriated—without asking—an expensive Venetian goblet from the cabinet.
Mr. Kendrick was subdued in the presence of Renilde, whom he had not seen since the night she had tried to seduce him. (She had been taking all her meals in her room, and these days only came downstairs to collect the post.) Besides, the two parties had barely been on speaking terms after the unlawful breaking-and-entering episode. But the cocoa actually went a little way toward effecting a thaw.
“Well, now,” said Terranova. “We have cocoa, and a roomful of people who must have encountered interesting stories, either true or untrue, in the course of their lives. Who’ll give us a tale?”
“I know a story,” Mr. Kendrick volunteered.
“That is good of you, Reverend, and of course we all remember your last one! But perhaps we had better have the ladies start us off.”
In the end, and to no one’s very great surprise, the honor devolved on Arabella.
“Once upon a time,” she began, “there lived a garden slug, who was typical of his kind in every way but one: He wished to be a person of consequence.
“ ‘No one will ever notice me down here in the cabbages,’ he sniveled. ‘And I have such gifts! Such talents! Such brilliance to share with the world!’”
Death Among the Ruins (Arabella Beaumont Mystery) Page 15
