A Rather Curious Engagement (37 page)

“Right!” Jeremy said, instantly on board.

But Kurt was less experienced in following me when I was on the scent. So he said a bit confusedly, “Do you want to look upstairs?”

“Yes,” Jeremy said.

We followed Kurt into a narrow, wood-panelled elevator that took us up two flights. The door opened upon a section of the castle we’d never seen before. I was fairly jumping up and down with impatience behind Kurt’s careful, methodical pace as we proceeded down the corridor. Finally he stopped at the end of the hall.

Kurt nodded toward the last door on the left, which was closed, and he said, “That is Father’s bedroom. We must be quiet, as he usually sleeps at this hour.”

Straight ahead was an open door to the bathroom, where the Count’s silver-backed hairbrushes and comb, toiletry bottles and shaving equipment were all neatly laid out on a three-tiered silver-trimmed table with glass shelving, standing near a large white sink and huge claw-foot tub. There was another door in the bathroom which presumably led to the Count’s bedroom. That left one other door at the end of the hallway, across from the bedroom.

“Closet?” I asked breathlessly. Kurt nodded.

“And every single one of these doors has a brass handle,” Jeremy noted.

“Kurt,” I said, “maybe what your father remembered about stashing the Lion in the closet, in the dead of night—happened here, with
this
closet and
this
corridor?”

Kurt reached out and turned the handle, and the door swung open. It was a substantial closet, with plenty of floor space for suitcases and trunks, which sat there in a neat row. Above were bed linens and towels, just like the closet on the yacht. Kurt reached in and pulled out each suitcase, one by one, and he and Jeremy opened and examined them. All were empty.

“Um. Are there any secret compartments in this closet?” I asked hopefully. Kurt shook his head, but he ran his hand along the cedar panels to make sure. Nothing.

“Who’s out there?” came a voice that was strong enough to indicate that the Count had not been asleep. Kurt opened the door, revealing a large antique bed with thick heavy mahogany posts, and red draperies around it that could be pulled closed to shut out the drafts. The Count, still in his dressing gown, was sitting up in bed, with a book in his hands and his spectacles on his nose. He stared at us inquiringly. “Did you want to ask me something?”

“Sorry to disturb,” Jeremy said. “But we need to be sure . . . that the last time you saw the Lion, it was in a closet where the door was hanging
open
?”

“Yes,” the Count said patiently. “Because the handle was not properly latched. The storm probably made it fly open.”

“Wasn’t there also a storm here at Lake Como, the night you came home from the hospital?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. It makes me tired just to think of how weary I was when I got home after that long, cold, wet, miserable trip from the hospital in Nice,” said the Count. “Yet, I slept very fitfully that night, because the wind kept making the shutters bang. But at least on land you know you won’t drown.”

“Are you certain that when you got up in the middle of the night on the yacht, to check the Lion—?” I reached out and turned the bedroom door handle, “it had a handle like this?”

A thoughtful look crossed the Count’s face. “Yes. But there aren’t any handles like that on the yacht,” he said slowly, catching on. “All the doors on the cabin level are sliders.”

“In that case,” I said excitedly, “if the Lion made it back here with you, instead of being left behind on the boat, then the question is—who took it out of the suitcase in the closet, after you went back to bed?”

There was a long pause. Jeremy said, “Do you think we could speak to your staff?”

“Of course,” said the Count. “Although we have questioned all of them before. But go ahead if you wish. They are all here today. The gardener, the cook, the girl, the butler, and that wretched nurse that Marthe has inflicted on our lives.”

Kurt looked at his watch. “They would be downstairs having their lunch now,” he said. “In the cook’s kitchen.”

All four of us couldn’t fit in that elevator, so Kurt went down first with the Count, wheeling him outside to his garden for his daily breath of fresh air. When the elevator returned, Jeremy and I took it down to the basement, where the doors opened right into the cook’s kitchen.

There was a giant black potbellied stove roaring away, a narrow wooden table, and a big pantry off the staircase with a swinging door, out of which came the cook, busily carrying a great big bowl of bread-dough. When the pantry door swung open, I could see rows and rows of shelves with canned and dry goods, boxed and bagged. The plump old cook went straight over to her work-table, where she set out busily thumping and kneading the dough. We nodded to her when we came in, and Jeremy told her that we were meeting Kurt down here. She glanced at us with polite interest, but then she went right back to her work, as if she had decided that we were none of her business and that she, therefore, was none of ours.

Seated in an alcove around the corner, at a larger, utilitarian wooden table, was the staff—the gardener, nurse, butler and the servant girl. They were having their lunch of cold meat and cheese with pickles and mustard, all set on plain sturdy cookware, with a small dark raisin cake in the center of the table, to have with their tea. A few minutes later Kurt joined us.

As gently as we could, we asked each of them to recall what they remembered of the night the Count returned from his long stay at the hospital. At first they defensively said that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred that night. The gardener, a cheerful, burly man, remembered the bad weather, and how he’d struggled up the stairs with the suitcases.

“Who unpacked them that night?” I asked.

The English butler, a thin old man, looked up with a slightly guilty expression. “Normally I would have unpacked everything for him,” he said, appearing a bit ashamed. “But it was quite late, and we were so very worried about the Count. He was terribly exhausted, and the nurse said he should get into bed. We did not want to make him wait for me to unpack every suitcase and put things away in his dresser drawers. I had already laid out a fresh pair of pajamas for him. And, since I did not want to keep him awake by thumping about with trunks in the hall, I asked his permission to let the unpacking wait until morning. Which he gave me.”

Jeremy turned to the young servant girl. She said, “I was busy helping the nurse get settled into her room. It was her first day with us. The rain came down in sheets!”

The nurse nodded vigorously. “I made certain that the Count took his medicine. After he went to bed, I, too, retired, and heard nothing till morning.”

They all looked innocent, yet uneasy, because Jeremy and Kurt were watching them so closely. I reached into my bag, and unrolled my drawing of the Lion. I placed it on the table and they all bent over it intently. While they were deeply engrossed, Pepi came bounding in, then stopped in his tracks, shocked by the sight of guests in the cook’s kitchen. Only the cook glanced at him, and told him that he could have a cookie. He sidled over to a cookie jar, took one, and then drew nearer to us to see what we were all looking at.

Pepi peered curiously at the drawing, studying it closely. Seeing what it was, he smiled delightedly, and growled like a lion and said,
“Ah-wumph!”
and pretended to chomp on his sister’s arm. The men reacted with mild amusement and strained patience, as men do when they are preoccupied, and a child has intruded on their thoughts.

“Leonhard!” he said.

“Pepi, go in your room and play quietly,” his sister said absently.

He now saw that I was watching him intently. His smile quickly faded, and his face went red. Then he turned and bolted from the room.

Jeremy and Kurt were still questioning the servants about what happened the next morning. The butler vehemently denied ever seeing any Lion in the suitcase. He could not remember if the closet door had been ajar. But one by one, each said absolutely that they had never seen the Lion.

By now, however, I was hardly listening to them anymore. My thoughts had followed little Pepi, and I wanted to know where he had gone. So I slipped out of the kitchen in the same direction. Ahead, there was only a flight of cement steps leading upward and outdoors. But to the right was a small room off the kitchen with a swinging door that was still swinging. I peered in the door’s little round window, then went in. In the old days, this had probably been where the cook slept. Now it was a kind of playroom and nap room, because there was a little cot, covered with a bedspread that had funny-faced clowns printed on it. There was a pajama case that was shaped like the head of a floppy-eared dog. Pepi was sitting, scrunched into a guilty little ball on the bed, nervously petting the head of his pajama-dog.

“What a nice room!” I said, in a light, encouraging voice that seemed to make him relax a bit. I glanced around. “You have some great toys here. Want to show me?”

Warily at first, he pointed out that he had some story books, and some balls, and some puppets, on a shelf near the bed. He was very pleased as I marvelled over each one, and this calmed him more.

Finally I said, “Pepi, what’s your most special toy?” There was a long pause.

“Leonhard?” I whispered conspiratorially.

Pepi flushed again. He glanced toward the kitchen worriedly.

“It’s okay,” I said gently. “I’ll tell them you were a good boy and showed it to me when I asked you to.”

Well, a kid knows when the jig is up. So he got on his knees and reached under his bed, and he pulled out a wide wooden toy chest. And I watched, rooted to the spot, as he threw back the lid of the chest and pulled out a shiny metal object.

“Ahh!” I said softly. “Can I see?” He nodded, and gave it to me.

I took it gently into my hands, almost afraid it might vanish at my touch. But it was heavier than I expected. A shiny copper figure, about nine inches tall, and ten inches long, and four inches wide. It possessed a strange natural authority, in the way the Lion stood proudly on all four legs, his head fiercely alert, with glittering, jeweled eyes; his back straight, his tail aloft and curving over the back to form the handle. A bona fide aquamanile, all right.

I looked straight into the face of the Lion. It was so remarkable that I caught my breath; for it had the characteristics of both the king of the beasts, and the great genius of music, in its regal, wild mane and intense, ferocious scowl. Yet somehow its creator had also managed to capture, in the lines of the face, Beethoven’s intelligent humanity, vulnerability, and passionately generous heart. Then, I studied the tiny metal figure clamped in the mouth. Oh, yes, indeed. That little monkey’s face bore a startling resemblance to a certain audacious, visionary French emperor, trapped in the jaws of his own destiny.

Remembering what I’d heard of its construction, I ran my finger over the stopper at the top of the Lion’s head. It was sealed shut. It took all my effort to keep my voice calm, so that I would not spook the kid.

“The Count will be so happy that you found it!” I said. “Let’s go tell him together, what a good boy you were, to find his Lion for him.”

After that, it wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks. Of course, we had to promise the kid that, as long as he returned the Lion, he wouldn’t get in trouble with his father, who would be very angry if he thought his son had stolen anything from the Count.

We found the Count sitting in his wheelchair outdoors, in the side-garden, watching birds darting around the bird feeder he’d placed in his trees. I marched right up to him, and plunked the Lion in his lap. Startled at first, his face broke into a wide grin, and the years seemed to melt away.

“But—wherever did you find it?” he cried, grasping it with both hands and holding it aloft as if even he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“Father,” Kurt said wearily, “it appears that the Lion has been in the castle, all along!”

“Well,” said the Count triumphantly, “I told you I had found it!”

Pepi’s sister shoved the child forward, to tearfully apologize for the theft. The Count was very gracious, as the girl explained that Pepi had been up and about, ahead of the entire household, on that morning after the Count returned from the hospital, because Pepi’s mother had dropped him off quite early that day, since she had to work on an early shift. Pepi was told to play quietly, because the Count was back home. The Count sometimes brought Pepi a little present from his travels, and gave it to him at Christmastime. So Pepi ran upstairs to see if the Count was awake yet, but found only an open suitcase with a toy that surely had been bought for a child. As there were no other children in the house, naturally it must be for Pepi.

And, with the logic of a kid, Pepi decided that, since the Lion was meant for him, they’d probably just forgotten to give it to him at Christmas, when the Count had been away. So he solved this easily, and took it downstairs in his room to play with. And when it was time for his lunch, he put it away in his toy chest, as he’d been taught to do with his favorite toys. (Besides, he had the funny feeling that if he left it lying about, somebody might take it away from him.)

It was many weeks later when another hubbub ensued, once the Count recalled that he had bought the Lion, but lost it. They turned the house upside down, to no avail. But Pepi was not around when this happened; he was away visiting his cousins. So he never really knew how important the Lion was. And everyone assumed that the Count had left the Lion on the yacht . . . if indeed he’d ever had it at all.

“Well,” Jeremy said, after we’d pieced this together, “we’ve found the Lion. But, the question remains—is it the Beethoven Lion?”

The Count had been sitting quietly listening the whole time. When he saw his nurse coming purposefully toward him with a blood-pressure measurer in her hand, and a stethoscope around her neck, he said to her, very firmly, “You must take this Lion upstairs and X-ray it. Right away.”