The Crown that Lost its Head: A Historical Mystery Thriller (An Agency of the Ancient Lost & Found Mystery Thriller Book 2)

by Jane Thornley

  “My hair’s fine, thank you,” he grumbled. Suddenly he jerked forward, his face registering shock. I’d guessed he’d been kicked under the table, possibly by Peaches’s long legs. “But of course I’ll try whatever you have to offer.”

  “Good idea,” Peaches remarked. “But I don’t expect it’ll do much for me. Still, if it suds up in the shower, it’ll get my vote.”

  “Luckily I have enough for everyone.” I smiled, satisfied that we’d found our communication ruse. “Conditioner, too.”

  With all our dependence on modern communications, here we were back to operating in longhand like captives from another century. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d already passed one note around under the table with a brief warning that we were to await further instructions from Senhor Carvalho. I’d save the more important communication for later.

  Our phones had already been passed back to us with a sticky note from Evan warning that though he believed them safe enough for normal use, we were still to exercise extreme caution. I had no idea what that meant since we couldn’t risk a conversation long enough to find out. Even standing in the middle of the library to whisper as we had done earlier had become too risky apparently. It was to be pen-and-paper notes read and hastily burned in the nearest fire.

  By 8:45 we were back in our respective quarters packing while waiting for details we didn’t have. I planned to pass a note up and down the hall explaining who would be leaving tomorrow and who would be staying behind. Because I figured there’d be some arguments, I was waiting until we had the partial privacy of our rooms to communicate the details.

  After a few minutes, I resolved to explain which three would be actually leaving for Spain in the morning and why. Using the paper found in the desk drawer, I first passed a note to Peaches taped to the travel-size shampoo bottle, saying at the door that after she took some maybe she could give the bottle to Evan next? It was such a limp ruse but the only one I could come up with at short notice. Pathetic how shackled I felt without text and email, let alone conversation.

  After that, I returned to my room to sit at the little desk, waiting. It would only take one lucky glance from an enemy spy or a moment of carelessness to bring the whole thing crashing down. On the other hand, few servants came to our floor lately. Bed-making and the other niceties had been abandoned. We even made our own fires, borrowing wood from the library hearth, which was always well-stocked. It occurred to me that I’d better light mine with the one piece of wood remaining.

  While I was coaxing the log to burn, Peaches knocked on my door and stepped in. “The guys say thanks for the shampoo. They’ve all taken a bit to use later. Not much left. I thought for a minute that Evan and Markus might squabble over the last drop.”

  I stood to take back the bottle, feeling the note taped to the bottom, out of sight in my palm.

  “It smells good,” she said while striding out the door, “but the truth will lay with the foam, won’t it?”

  “Isn’t that always the way?”

  Taking the now-empty bottle into the bathroom, I switched off the lights and peeled off the note to read by the light of my phone.

  Peaches in a penciled scrawl: As her bodyguard, I must go with Phoebe to Spain. I can speak the language, sí? Peach

  Markus using a felt-tipped-pen printed: I must stay here. The crown is not in Spain, IMO. M

  Evan in his classical cursive hand wrote in ink: I am the only one who is fluent in Spanish AND Latin so must go to Spain with Phoebe. Markus, you come with us. No arguments. My apologies, Peach. Evan

  And Rupert in his gorgeous almost calligraphic script wrote: As previously decided, I will remain. The English Patient, Sir Rupert Fox

  I read the note over and over again. Damn. Couldn’t something just be simple for once? Of course Peaches would expect to go with me as my supposed bodyguard, and I had forgotten that Evan was the only one of us fluent in Spanish and Latin, but why was Markus so intent on remaining? He knew damn well that the place was crawling with murderers who would slit his throat in a millisecond. Unless—I stared into the half-light—unless they wouldn’t for some reason. He must know something he’d been keeping from us, which I suspected all along. Shit.

  Dropping the empty shampoo bottle in the trash, I returned to my room, tossed the note into the fire, took a fresh sheet of the house stationery, and returned to the bathroom. This time I penned a message solely for Peaches:

  Peach, I need you here. Evan’s mastery of Latin is critical for going through church documents and other accounts often written at the time of our hunt. Besides, the enemy knows his reputation but they have no idea just how dangerous you are. Plus, you’re the only one I can trust to protect Rupert and the Carvalhos, especially our little princess, Ana Marie. And something’s up with Markus—I just don’t know what exactly. Please say you understand. Also, please be ready to watch my back at 2:00 a.m. I’ll explain later.

  What was I asking her to do: stay here virtually defenseless in this nest of fiends? And, more immediately, help me to commit a criminal offense against art and man? But Senhor Carvalho believed those left behind would probably be the safest and at least she had a gun and could handle a knife like nobody’s business. As for Rupert: “never underestimate Rupert” was my motto. As long as he breathed, he could plot, and I had no doubt that he and Senhor Carvalho were cooking up something.

  Taping the note to a tube of smoothing lotion, I knocked on her door. It flew open in an instant, the full six feet of grandeur draped in a Moroccan kaftan.

  “Smoothing lotion.” I waved the bottle before her eyes. “Hope it works.”

  She whipped it from my fingers and peered at the label, which was plastered over by the note. “Depends on the contents, doesn’t it? The last shampoo had sulfates. You know I detest sulfates. Leaves the cuticles sticking straight up—like I need that.”

  “I didn’t know that you hated sulfates.”

  “Now you do, and if this one has chemicals I’m not going to like it any better.” She peered at the label as if reading it. “Lots of big words here: glycol distearate, isopropyl alcohol, Behentrimonium chloride—are you kidding me?”

  She actually remembered that stuff? “Shea butter,” I said quickly. “I’m sure I read it contains that, too.”

  “Fine. Just remember that black hair requires special care just like the women who grow it.” The door slammed in my face.

  Got it: she wasn’t happy about being left behind. I waited several seconds before striding down the hall to visit Rupert.

  The English patient was tucked into bed emitting occasional moans, laying it on a little too thickly, in my opinion. When I had approached his bed earlier that evening, he only winked and shooed me away with a convincing cough.

  “Rupert, I’m not happy about dragging you out of here tomorrow morning. In fact, given the current restrictions, I doubt they’d even allow you on a plane,” I said.

  “Then I shall just have to recoup at an airport hotel, perish the thought,” he said, coughing. “I trust we can locate one with room service. Where are the private jets when we need them?”

  Where indeed. Our Rome branch did have access to a private jet that we’d used in the past, but when I’d texted Nicolina from London, she had informed me that the pilot, Otty, had been struck by Covid. Things are not good in Italy, she wrote, but everyone strolls around as if we were back to normal. We are not in normal, Phoebe. Stay safe. Nicolina

  “Never mind, Phoebe,” Rupert said, interrupting my thoughts, “I’m sure I shall be much improved tomorrow.”

  As if. That’s when the show would really begin. “Right. I’ll leave you to rest, then.”

  He’d managed to eat all of his soup, I noticed. Stacking his supper dishes onto a tray, I carried them from his room and left them on the hall table along with a mounting assortment of dirty dishes. I saw that Evan’s door was open as he sat at his desk with his back turned, working away at some gizmo.

  Edgier than ever, I h
eaded for my room, stopping by Markus’s open door along the way. “All ready to leave tomorrow?” I asked.

  His head lifted from the diagram spread across the bed but he hesitated before answering. “If I must.”

  “You must,” I said pointedly.

  “Are you ready, then?”

  “Ready,” I said. I had the Glock Evan gave me stuffed into the hidden holster of my jacket, my phone alarm set, and my clothes ready to climb into at 4:30 sharp—actually before. What else was left to do besides wait for Senhor Carvalho’s instructions?

  I continued to Peaches’s room but the sound of the shower running left me to wander back my turret quarters, transfer my collection of notes from my pocket into the embers, and head for the window.

  The garden lights were off; in fact, they had never been switched back on following the attempted kidnapping. The house now slumbered in that tense, watchful stillness that I imagined descends upon houses during a siege. Whether that threat be in the form of a sickness or something physical, it must feel the same. I turned away into the darkened room.

  The dying fire cast a low glow. For the past day, I’d only left the bathroom light on in case the room was under surveillance, doing every task in the shadows with the lights off, including packing.

  I’d take a bath and pretend to get ready for bed, which would kill at least an hour. I shut my door and was heading toward the bathroom when my gaze caught something white under the desk. I would never have noticed if I didn’t automatically check Ana Marie’s secret hatch since discovering it existed. I swept up the paper and strode into the bathroom with my clothes in my arms.

  Once inside with the lights off and using my phone, I read the note, which was scrawled in an ornate loopy hand on monogrammed stationery:

  Proceed as planned. All secured for three.

  The monogram above read: Senhor Silvio de Carvalho

  While my bath ran, I slipped back into the room and burned the message in the last of the embers.

  16

  I didn’t expect to get much sleep that night. The fact that I managed to squeeze even three hours before 2:00 a.m. was a bonus. My alarm pitched me out of bed at the appointed time, heart pounding like I’d been dragged from bed by my feet. Fully dressed, I only had to grab my jacket and my phone to feel ready for anything.

  When I crept into the hall, Peaches was leaning against the wall, arms crossed.

  “What are we doing?” she whispered.

  I waited until we were farther down the corridor before answering. “Committing a crime against art.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Shhh!”

  We padded past all the bedrooms, every light off, every door closed. At the bottom of the stairs, I hesitated. The house’s deep watchful silence didn’t fool me. Somewhere in this acreage of a house, some faction was busy plotting, and they weren’t the only ones.

  Finger to my lips, I led us down the hall toward the library, keeping against the walls and checking every passageway crossing. Once we reached the library, I tried the door, startled when the brass handle didn’t budge. “Locked—seriously?”

  “Did you bring your pickers?” Peaches whispered.

  “In my room,” I said.

  She nudged me aside and took out a foldout packet from her pocket, selected a pick, and got to work. “Hold the light,” she ordered. I aimed my phone at the ornate lock while she expertly fiddled until it clicked. In minutes we were inside, shutting the door behind us and shoving the brass bolt home.

  Why had we been locked out? Probably another sign that we were persona non grata in this occupied regime.

  “Watch my back,” I whispered, leading Peaches before Titian’s Isabella portrait. “Wait here.”

  She stood stone-still, a gun in one hand, while I slipped around the perimeter of the room to the conservator’s closet. What I was about to do was the single most audacious act in my art career and I didn’t do it lightly.

  I swept my phone light around the six-by-six-foot closet, crammed as it was by easels, jars, a standing light, what looked to be a mobile air purifier, a box of plastic gloves, goggles, and a broom and dustpan. It must have originally served as a storage area for cleaning supplies, fitting enough since its most recent use concerned cleaning of another kind. I studied the bottles and jars neatly lined on the shelf, searching for the necessary solvent.

  Art conservation was a painstakingly exacting science that involved removing centuries of woodsmoke, varnish, and grime from priceless artworks without damaging the original. One mistake, one wrong stroke, and the masterpiece was ruined, sometimes irrevocably. As I learned in my student days, it was as much an art as a science and took years of specialized study.

  I had but one course taken nearly a decade ago.

  Using my phone light, I scanned the labels on every box. Next I pulled on a pair of vinyl gloves, took a pair of goggles, a brush, a tiny palette knife, and a pocketful of cotton swabs and peered again at the solvents.

  They marched in a row on the top shelf, all carefully labeled with many jars near-empty. I selected the last one in the row, a distilled turpentine labeled in English pushed into the very corner. It had never been opened. Perhaps the strongest and the riskiest were relegated to the end of the line? I doubted a conservationist would ever want to use something so potent if it could be avoided. A conservator with time on her hands would use a gentler option but I didn’t have that luxury. I took the turps.

  Back in the library, Peaches watched me approach, her eyes wide.

  “Solvents,” I whispered, lifting the bottle.

  I signaled for her to help me drag over a chair and in seconds I was standing face-to-face with Queen Isabella, my phone light roaming over the background with no time to pay proper homage to either masterpiece or queen. This close I could scrutinize every inch, yet I aimed straight for the square in the lower left-hand corner just above where the conservator’s efforts had stopped.

  The sfumato here was so leadened and heavy that even considering the application of varnish applied over the centuries, it looked wrong, all wrong. No master of blending would create something that muddy even after years of grime. My guess is that it had been overpainted, maybe multiple times.

  Peaches beamed her phone light on the area as I dabbed the cotton tip into the turpentine and proceeded to gently stroke the wad across the canvas.

  It was sacrilege. It was a wanton act of desperation prompting me to send silent apologies to Tiziano Vecellio for the crimes I was committing against him that night. If I wasn’t so convinced that others had gone before me in this travesty, I would never have continued. There was evidence that the painting had already been tampered with at least once.

  As it was, I swabbed the surface; it felt as though every movement raked my gut. The cotton began removing layers of smoky resin, the varnish being the revered preservation medium of almost every age.

  Dropping the used swab to the hearth, I pulled out another and this time soaked up more solvent and applied it even more aggressively. My goal was to wipe off layers of actual paint, knowing as I did that I might penetrate down to the original brushwork and possibly ruin a piece of priceless art. This swab came away a sooty black. Dropping that cotton tip, I took another.

  “Someone’s in the hall!” Peaches hissed.

  We switched off our phones and I froze, me standing still in the dark as she padded across to the door to listen, her gun cocked. Fumes from the turps were so strong I wouldn’t have been surprised if it rode the air beyond that door.

  Nerves strung tight, we listened to voices low and urgent outside, followed by a patter of footsteps and then total silence. I allowed myself to exhale the moment Peaches flicked on her phone light.

  I got back to work, removing swab after swab of thick dark paint. Finally something began to emerge from the background: a bit of green followed by a touch of red. Moments later, a leaf came into view followed by a fallen flower, exquisitely portrayed as
if someone had plucked the bloom from the queen’s fingers to lay it dying at her feet. Peaches stretched up for a closer look. “It’s a carnation. Why’s that important enough to hide?”

  “Don’t know but it’s symbolic of something. Isabella was known as the Empress of the Carnation but why hide it?” I whispered, staring at the flower. It had been masterfully painted but not in the style of Titian. The artist didn’t even try to emulate his brushstrokes.

  I dropped that used cotton tip and took another, this time aiming my efforts on the rocky outcrop to the right of the queen’s head. Here it wasn’t the shadows that bothered me but the brushstrokes themselves. With Titian you barely saw signs of a brush anywhere; the artist so masterfully blended his elements that they seemed to emerge lifelike from the canvas. This paint had been applied heavily, using a technique out of sync with the rest of the work, even with the carnation. In fact, it appeared to have no technique at all.

  I applied the solvent thickly, allowing it to soften the paint before scraping the green off with the knife. Layers of green sludge came off like solidified butter, revealing a slightly different shape to the mountainous terrain beneath and a peaked hexagonal watchtower.

  I glanced at Peaches, who stood with her mouth open. “Where’s that?"

  “Dunno,” I said.

  “Weird,” Peaches whispered.

  “Isn’t it?” Though I’d like nothing better than to dig deeper, those were the two main abnormalities.

  “It’s almost 3:30,” Peaches said.

  “Right.” I took pictures of the two revealed areas with my phone and one of the entire painting before climbing down. While Peaches gathered the discarded swabs, I returned the tools to the closet and picked up a brush and two tubes of paint, one dark green and one smoky brown, both tubes of Winsor & Newton. I squeezed a small amount onto a palette and diluted it massively with thinner.