Street of the Five Moons (13 page)

“He could also hurt me,” said Smythe indignantly. “After all, I didn’t start this nonsense.”

Pietro ran at him, roaring. He slid neatly to one side, and the point of the sword punctured the back of the chair in which he had been sitting. Pietro tugged at it, cursing luridly, and Smythe moved discreetly back a few feet. He looked at his sword and then at Pietro’s plump posterior, temptingly tilted as he tried to free his sword from the sofa.

“Don’t do it,” I said. “You’ll just make him mad.”

“He’s mad already,” was the reply. “Stark, staring mad. Why don’t you soothe him? Say something calming.”

I glanced at Helena, thinking she might try to control her outraged lover, but she was giggling happily as she watched. Two men were dueling over her; what more could a girl ask of life? I looked at the footman, and realized I wasn’t going to get any help from that quarter. Before I could think what to say, Pietro had tugged his sword free, bringing a little cloud of stuffing with it, and had turned back to his secretary. He took a wild swipe at Smythe, who brought his blade up just in time. Steel rang on steel, and I sat up a little straighter. Pietro was beside himself. That blow would have split Smythe’s skull if it had connected.

The duel with the umbrellas had been pure farce, but only because the weapons were harmless. Pietro hadn’t pulled his punches that time, and he wasn’t doing it now; I couldn’t tell whether he was so drunk he did not realize he was holding a sharp blade, or whether he didn’t care. There was a streak of violence in that little fat man after all. And he knew how to fence. Luckily Smythe seemed to have had some experience too. Pietro was no Olympic gold medalist, but Smythe’s defense was complicated by the fact that he didn’t want to injure his infuriated employer, or even allow him to injure himself. Smythe had to defend two people, and refrain from attacking. He wasn’t smiling as he retreated, with careful consideration for the rugs scattered hither and yon on the dangerously slippery polished floor. Once Pietro tripped on a fringe; if Smythe’s blade hadn’t knocked his aside, he would have stabbed himself in the calf.

I decided the affair had gone on long enough. If Pietro didn’t cut somebody, he would have a stroke; he was purple in the face and streaming with perspiration. I slid in behind him, and as his arm went forward I grabbed his biceps with both hands, and squeezed.

That hurts. Pietro shrieked. The sword dropped clattering to the floor, digging a long gouge in the parquetry.

Smythe stepped back and lowered his point. I could see that he was about to make some rude remark, so I dropped to my knees and wound my arms around Pietro’s legs. It made a pretty picture, I must say, and it also kept Pietro from falling over.

“I couldn’t let you kill him,” I choked. “Pietro — it would be murder! Your skill is too great. It would be like fighting an unarmed man.”

Pietro’s fiery color subsided.

“Yes,” he said grudgingly. “Yes, you are right. It would not be honorable.”

He was still angry, though. He turned on Helena, whose face mirrored her disappointment at the tame ending. She had wanted to see some blood.

“No thanks to you that my honor is not tarnished,” he snarled. “You hoped I would be killed, eh? Then you and your lover would steal away with my jewels. Give them to me!”

Clutching the brooch, Helena backed away. Pietro followed her, waving his arms, and elaborating on his theme. Smythe sat down. He had collected both swords and was holding them firmly.

“Leave them alone,” he said, as I started after Pietro and Helena. “He’ll pass out soon, and then we can all go to bed.”

Pietro did not pass out. The exercise had used up some of the alcohol he had consumed, and he was quite lively and looking for trouble. He pursued Helena in their ludicrous game of tag, and she retreated. The French doors onto the terrace were wide open, and I wondered why she didn’t go out; she could get clean away from him in the gardens. But she avoided the windows, and finally he got her backed into a corner. I didn’t see exactly what happened, only a scuffle of flailing arms and agitated movements. Then Pietro toppled over and hit the floor.

“The winner and new champion,” Smythe chanted. “A knockout in the first round.”

Helena tugged her dress back into decency.

“He was trying to strangle me,” she muttered. “I had to hit him. Do you think he is—”

“Out like a light,” said Smythe, bending over his employer. “We had better carry him to bed. I wouldn’t go near him tonight, Helena. He will have cooled off by morning, but…”

“I don’t go near him again,” snapped Helena. “He is a beast, a monster. I leave him.”

She went puffing out of the room, her long skirts swinging. Her fingers were still clamped over the brooch.

Smythe and the footman carried Pietro upstairs. My room was beyond his, Helena’s was on the other side. Her door was closed when I passed it, but I thought I heard the sounds of agitated activity within. It sounded as if she were moving the furniture.

I got ready for bed, although I wasn’t tired. When I had put on a robe and slippers, I went out onto the balcony.

No capering comedian waved at me from the terrace tonight. The grounds were dark and still, with only a few pinpoints of light visible from the cottages of the employees who lived on the estate. To the left the lights of the town of Tivoli made a bright splash on the dark horizon.

It looked very quiet and peaceful down there. I thought of getting dressed and doing some exploring, but somehow the idea didn’t arouse my girlish enthusiasm. I tried to find rational reasons for my reluctance, and had no difficulty in doing so; it was early yet by Italian standards, many of the workers would still be awake, and I had no particular goal in mind, since nothing I had seen had suggested the need for further investigation. There was no sense in wandering around in the dark through unfamiliar terrain. But that wasn’t the real reason why I hesitated. I didn’t like the look of that dark garden.

I had been thinking of the Caravaggios as a comic family, something out of a TV serial, or one of those silly French farces. Now I realized that there were undercurrents of tragedy and unhappiness among them. A man may smile and smile and be a villain. He may make a damn fool of himself and be a villain too.

However, I didn’t think Pietro was the master criminal I was after. It was possible that he was a victim instead of a crook. Smythe was certainly one of the conspirators, he had admitted as much. He had only come to work for Pietro recently. I had suspected that from the fact that the tidbits I found in the antique shop had barely been touched. Pietro was one of the names in that new file in the shop. If these men, all wealthy collectors, were the potential prey of the swindlers, then Smythe was the means by which the gang gained entry to the houses they meant to rob. He probably had impeccable credentials. They are much easier to forge than antique jewelry. Using such references, he could gain entry to the villas of his victims as a secretary, or even as a guest. He could use one victim as a reference to the next sucker in line, since the substitutions would never be suspected.

Yet one thing didn’t fit this theory. I had been kidnapped and imprisoned in the Caravaggio palace. Smythe had not been responsible for that job — or so he claimed. This implied some member of the family was involved in the plot.

The unknown I was looking for was the master criminal, the chief crook, and somehow I couldn’t believe that any of the people I had met fit that role. They weren’t smart enough. Luigi was a mixed-up, unhappy boy whose relations with his father were bad; he might explode and act in anger, but he didn’t have the experience to invent a plot as complicated as this one. The dowager was a possibility. I had known several sweet white-haired old ladies who wouldn’t balk at a spot of larceny, and although she was physically frail, there was an intelligent sparkle in her eyes.

I couldn’t see Smythe as the mastermind either. He was smart enough, but he lacked something — energy, perhaps. Yet I couldn’t eliminate him. The kidnapping might have been a trick to frighten me off. All that talk about a fate worse than death, all the implications of torture and mayhem — an act, to make me think I was in deadly danger, from which he had rescued me. A combination of gratitude and fear might have persuaded some women to give up the case. And Smythe had never intended me to identify the palazzo; only luck and my own expertise had given me that bit of information.

A soft breeze from the garden lifted my hair. It was perfumed with a nameless flower scent, infinitely seductive. It was interfering with my thinking. I went back into my room and climbed into bed with a book.

The book was one of a selection that had been thoughtfully placed on my bedside table, along with a bottle of Perrier water and a few crackers. I had no doubt that Pietro had selected the books. I chose
Tom Jones
because it was the most innocent of the lot. I had never read it before. It was rather interesting, but there were long dull sections between the sexy passages. I was plowing through one of these parts, not paying much attention, when I heard a sound in the corridor. It was the sound of a door softly opening and closing. Then there was a muffled thud.

I couldn’t ignore that. Pietro was out cold, so the nocturnal wanderer had to be Helena or Smythe. Luigi’s room was farther along the corridor, and the dowager’s suite was in another wing. Each room had its own bath, so there was no reason for anyone to leave his room for that purpose.

I turned out the light before I opened my door. There were dim bulbs set in silver wall sconces along the hall, with long stretches of gloom between them. As I stood there peering out through the slit in the door, a figure came out of a dark area into the light, with an eerie effect of materializing out of thin air. It was Helena.

She had not gotten far from her room, because she was towing two enormous suitcases. It wasn’t difficult to understand what she was doing. She must have realized that she and Pietro were just about through, so she was making her getaway, with the brooch. But she was so greedy she couldn’t bear to abandon any of her clothes.

I watched her for a while. She couldn’t carry both suitcases; she dragged one for a few feet and then went back for the other one. She was panting so hard I could hear her from where I stood, twenty feet away. I found the sight mildly amusing, till I saw her face.

I had never realized how strong an emotion greed can be. It was tough enough to overcome even the fear that distorted her face.

I stepped out into the hall. She would have screamed if she had had breath enough. She made a strained squawking sound and dropped to her knees — clutching the suitcases.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

“
Dio mio
! Is it you? You have frightened me! I think I am having a heart attack.”

“No wonder, carrying those heavy bags. Why sneak out in the middle of the night?”

I knew the answer, but I was curious to hear what she would say.

“I must leave here,” she whispered, rolling her eyes. “I am afraid. There is something wrong, can’t you feel it?”

“But why not wait till morning?”

She hesitated, trying to think of some convincing lie. The expression on her sly, stupid little face annoyed me, and I went on, deliberately cruel. “What about the ghost? I thought you were afraid to go out at night.”

“You said it would not come in the house! I have called the garage, the chauffeur is waiting with the car….”

Her face was shining wet with perspiration. It was not a warm night. I still didn’t like her much, but her unmasked terror and her plump little hands, clutching at my skirts made me feel guilty.

“I was joking,” I muttered. “Would you like me to help you? You can’t carry those suitcases alone.”

“Would you? Would you help? I am so afraid, and yet it is worse to stay than to go…. If I wait, Pietro will convince me to stay. I am never so afraid in the daylight,” she added naïvely.

I lifted one of the suitcases, and staggered. Helena giggled feebly. I gave her a hard stare. That suitcase was too heavy. I wondered if she had some silverware in there, as well as the brooch.

I started down the hall. Helena puffed after me, half dragging, half pushing the other suitcase. We reached the top of the grand staircase, and by a combination of muscle and persistence I managed to get one suitcase down to the hall. Then I went back to help Helena.

“Hurry, hurry,” she muttered. “We are too slow.”

It
had
taken us a long time to traverse that long corridor. We had made a certain amount of noise, too, banging the suitcases around. But I couldn’t understand why I felt so edgy, unless the girl’s terror had infected me. The household was sound asleep. No one would bother us. She said she had called the garage, so presumably the car was waiting outside even now.

The entrance hall was a ghostly place, lighted by a single lamp suspended on a long chain. It swayed slightly on an unseen, unfelt current of air, and shadows slid across the painted ceiling so that the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus seemed to shift naked limbs and wink as they looked down on us struggling mortals.

The swaying of the lamp should have alerted me. Air doesn’t move in an enclosed space unless something displaces it. But my back was toward the library door, and it was not until I saw Helena’s face freeze that I realized something was wrong. Her mouth was wide open, but she was too petrified to scream.

I whirled around. If I hadn’t heard her description, I probably would not have made out details at first; it stood in the dark doorway, blending with the shadows. Yet I sensed its shape — the trailing folds of the long robe, the hands hidden in full sleeves, the cowled head. Then it glided out into the hall, under the light of the lamp.

Helena got her breath back and let out a scream that sounded like an air-raid siren. It hurt my ears, but it didn’t faze the phantom, who took another step toward us. Helen’s scream faded out. She collapsed into an ungainly heap, half over the suitcases.

The light fell on the austere bone within the cowl. The fleshless skull shone, not with the pale glimmer of ivory, but with a wild glitter. It had an odd, incredible beauty; but its immobility was more terrifying than any menacing gesture might have been. Then someone started pounding on the door. The cloaked figure turned. With the shining skull face hidden, it became a thing of darkness that seemed to melt into the shadows and disappear.