Arabella told herself that perhaps the man did not mean to be rude.
“As a matter of fact, signor,” said she, “I am a courtesan, not a whore.”
“There is a difference?”
“Indeed there is.”
“And what is that, may I ask?”
“Self-respect.”
He chuckled. “Most interesting! And just how do you justify this profession, whatever it may please you to call it, to God?”
“There is no need for justification,” she said. “All creatures fornicate, with God’s complete approval. The Divine Injunction bids us go forth and multiply, is it not so, Mr. Terranova? And humans must earn their bread. Thus, I earn my bread like a human being, by fornicating like one of God’s creatures. How can He possibly object to that? How can you object to it?”
“But I do not object to it,” he said, smiling. “Your profession gives my profession the means of earning its bread, also. Until a short time ago, the church even conceded the necessity of brothels. After all, in Italy there are many whores, and every one of them contributes to the church collection basket!”
“While your ignorance is perhaps understandable,” said she, “it is also insulting. There is as vast a difference between a whore and a courtesan as there is between a novice monk and an archbishop. Although the difference between the examples themselves is perhaps not so great.”
Confound the man! He actually had the temerity to laugh!
“That was well said!” he cried. “And I do beg your pardon for insulting you, my dear . . . lady. Is that an insult, too?”
Arabella shook her head.
“You see,” he explained, “as a courtesan from a Protestant country, you probably think the Church is your enemy. But consider: The same system that made you an outcast has also made you wealthy, and as your excellent friend, Mr. Kendrick, informed me at dinner, you generously provided the funding for the roof repairs to the Effing church. Do you see? All things are connected, and every part works together.”
This man was either very wonderful, or very terrible.
“You must be a Jesuit,” said Arabella. “I have heard about your order. It is said to combine the best and worst features of all the others.”
“That is true,” he said pleasantly. “And here you see before you the best and worst, combined in one man. You should have heard me swear when our carriage lost a wheel at Messina! But we could debate the Church’s position on whoredom for the next sixty years, quoting contradictory passages of the Bible at one another. The Bible is designed that way intentionally, you know. The exercise might even prove interesting: You are probably cleverer than I am, but I undoubtedly know the Bible better than you do. Nevertheless, after dinner I would rather eat dessert than quote Scripture. Will you allow me to fetch you one of those little cakes?”
“Thank you, signor. I would rather chuse for myself. But I should like to know why you have come all this distance in the off-season. Are you attending a Church conference here?”
What some might have called a beatific smile spread itself across his features. Others would have pronounced it smug, perhaps. In any case, the entire room was listening when he said, “I am here on a sacred mission, to baptize the ancient dead of Ercolano. And when I have completed the task, I intend to perform the same service for the poor, pagan souls of Pompeii.”
The three monks sat back in their chairs with little smirks of satisfaction, as they awaited the expected exclamations of wonder and delight from the English tourists. But they were destined to be disappointed.
Kendrick, teetering on a small gilt chair with one dangerously slanting leg, had been on the point of sleep only a moment before, but the priest’s pronouncement startled him awake.
“Indeed!” said the rector. “I had not realized such a thing was possible!”
“Normally, it would not be,” Terranova replied. “But as the dead of Pompeii and Herculaneum, or ‘the Pompulaneans,’ as I call them . . .” (Here, his followers smiled again, in a superior sort of way) “ . . . were all Romans, we feel that they should be considered Catholic by association. All that remains is for someone—myself, for example—to sprinkle holy water on the site and say the litany, and it is done.”
“Wonderful!” exclaimed Belinda, who had to pass behind them on her way to the coffee pot. “Now all those poor little unchristened dead babies can finally be sent to heaven! I hope that you will see to them first, Father!”
The priest appeared discomfited.
“I wish I could, signorina,” he said, “but modern infants come under a different jurisdiction. The mass baptism which I have in contemplation will not affect them.”
“Rot!” muttered Arabella. Aloud, she asked how he proposed to sprinkle holy water over an entire city.
“That is simply done,” he replied. “I need only stand on a high place, as His Holiness, the Blessed Pope, does, to perform the rite over the entire area at once.”
She had a sudden intuition. “Which high place do you mean?”
But Terranova became extremely absorbed in stirring his coffee just then, and the voice of one of the monks was now heard for the first time.
“I am certain the signorina cannot object. The balcony of your suite, she afford-a the pear-fect . . .”
“I am sorry to have to correct you,” said Arabella, “but the signorina certainly can object. And she does.”
In order to signal the matter closed, our heroine rose at once and crossed to the dessert table, where Osvaldo found the opportunity to join her. He had taken out his quizzing glass again, and seemed to be committing every detail of her physiognomy to memory. Arabella never minded admiring scrutiny from prospective clients, but she had a notion that this particular noodle was seeking imperfections with which to regale his mother and aunt later on. Accordingly, she turned away from him, as if to better assess the sweets on offer.
Mr. Kendrick, meanwhile, had taken a more comfortable seat, and was now chatting somewhat uncomfortably with Miss Rinaldo, who had wedged herself next to him in a chair wide enough for exactly one and a half persons. Initially, she had attempted to have a conversation with Charles, but he had looked right through her, as though she were a ghost interposed between himself and the gaming room.
“Upon my word!” Kendrick was heard to exclaim. “What a magnificent pianoforte! Do you not think so, Signorina Rinaldo?”
“Yes,” she replied simply. “I wonder whether you would accompany me on it, Mr. Kendrick, in the event that I should feel like singing?”
“Renilde often feels like singing,” said Osvaldo helpfully. “Unfortunately, we do not-a often feel like listening.”
Undaunted by the fair prospect of Arabella’s back, he had simply gone round to the front and come right up to her, where he continued his invasive examination at the closest possible range. She might have reached out and touched him without fully extending her arm. In fact, she decided that she would touch him, for this puppy badly wanted its ears pulled. Accordingly, Arabella dunked her thumb into the sauce boat and smeared a glob of warm, sticky syrup of peaches across the lens of his inspection device.
“Oh,” she said tonelessly. “I am so sorry. Am I in your way?”
And she swept through the room with all the affronted majesty of a powerful pagan empress.
“Miss Beaumont!” cried the rector. “Surely you do not mean to leave us so soon!” He struggled desperately to rise from his seat.
“I am afraid I must, Mr. Kendrick. I have some letters to write.”
But after she had left, Arabella also, paradoxically, lingered behind, for Mr. Kendrick’s mind was full of her, and Signorina Rinaldo was thinking about her, too.
“Have you known Miss Beaumont long, Mr. Kendrick?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied, smiling. “Ever since we were children. I spent nearly every school holiday with her family.”
“I see. You are old friends, then. And now you have come to this place with your old friends on
holiday. But why so late in the season?”
“We are searching for a statue which Miss Beaumont recently bought from this part of the world. It’s gone missing, and . . . well, it was stolen, actually.”
“But Italy is full of statues! Surely your friend might have chosen another, or had one made, without coming all this way?”
“Quite. But this is an old statue. Very, very old, in fact—it was discovered in Ercolano, and there is not another like it in the entire world.”
“Is that so?” Renilde affected surprise, and then, placing a hand on the rector’s leg, as if to steady her nerves, she said, “Would this be connected to the art theft and murder that happened here last month?”
Kendrick jumped at her touch, and attempted to ease his leg from under her hand without giving offense.
“Yes,” he said.
“I know quite a bit about that. You see, the matter involves my family.”
“Your family? Oh, I say!”
“Yoo-hoo! Mr. Kendrick!” Belinda called from across the room, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Father Terranova has asked me to sing. Would you be good enough to provide accompaniment on the pianoforte?”
He rose to oblige her, inclining his head toward Renilde. “I should be most interested in hearing your story, Miss Rinaldo!”
“Yes? Well, I shall tell you about it another time,” she replied in a low voice. “But we must talk privately, for I am not supposed to discuss this with anyone. Now you had better go, for my cousin wants a song, it seems, and where his pleasures are concerned, he is a very impatient man.”
Chapter 12
POSSIBLE SUSPECTS
Dear Mrs. Janks,
The weather in Resina is all one might wish at this time of year, and we are very comfortably accommodated in a good sort of hotel, where the food, though not a patch on Mrs. Moly’s cooking, is fresh, plain and substantial enough to keep us from hunger and stomach complaints.
There is no news of the statue yet, as we have only just arrived, but I did go down to view the scene of the dastardly crime. Herculaneum, or “Ercolano,” as the natives call it, is “hauntingly beautiful” by daylight, and plain “haunting” after the sun goes down. Only think of all the ghosts that must be bound to this city, where their human forms perished centuries ago, all within moments of one another!
Now I wonder, Mrs. Janks, whether you can have heard any news pertaining to the “family scandal”? Do people still talk of it? Are we still ostracized and reviled? Or have things begun to settle down, at last? My mind misgives me upon the subject. I have already written several letters to friends and relatives, but have heard nothing as yet. We cannot come home until the whole sordid mess is forgotten. Please write as soon as you can, either to relieve my anxieties . . . or to confirm them.
With warmest regards to you and all the Lustings staff,
A.B.
Arabella blotted and folded her letter, carefully placing it between the pages of The Decameron for safekeeping until she should have occasion to go upstairs, for she was presently sitting in the hotel parlor, away from the annoyances of the coffee room. She would infinitely have preferred to be both downstairs and alone, but she had been obliged to compromise, for the dour landlady was in here, polishing her Venetian goblet collection. Fortunately, Signora Fiorello was not the garrulous sort, as persons with a limited command of one’s own language so often are, and Arabella respected the fact that her landlady was a fellow collector. There were no presumptuous priests here, or invasive, pear-headed morons to shatter the tranquility, and reopening The Decameron to the page where she had lately left off reading, Arabella began to relax.
But there is no rest for the wicked: She had just nestled into the cushions, having come to the part where the nuns are enjoying the services of the well-endowed deaf-mute handyman, when she was distracted by the hotel cat, drinking lustily from its water bowl in the corner.
“Signora Fiorello,” said she, “you would greatly oblige me by removing that animal from my presence.”
The landlady stooped to pick up the bowl with one hand, puss with the other.
“Don’t-a you like-a cats?” she asked fiercely, cradling the animal against her well-upholstered shoulder. In Signora Fiorello’s world there were only two types of people: those who loved felines and those destined for a special hell all their own.
“I concede their usefulness as vermin catchers,” said Arabella, “but I dislike listening to their love songs whilst I am trying to sleep. Nor, as now, do I enjoy the sound of a lapping tongue in my near vicinity that may lately have lapped the blood of some disease-ridden rodent.”
“So. You don’t-a like the cats,” said Mrs. Fiorello, in a tone that placed Arabella squarely in the camp of the damned. And she strode from the room, her head high, and her cat’s somewhat lower.
Arabella could probably have had the room to herself for as long as she wanted it now, but rather than remain there and risk another unwelcome interaction with her fellow creatures, she decided that the fates were impelling her upstairs, and upstairs she accordingly went.
“Mrs. Janks,” said Fielding, “don’t it seem odd that we’ve had no word from the missus, tellin’ us as to when she’s coming home?”
“No, Marianne, it don’t seem odd a bit! I’ll tell you, I shouldn’t want to come back at this time o’ year if I was in Italy!”
A storm was at that moment battering Lustings’s outer walls and hammering against the drawing room windows, where the staff reclined in sated bliss after an enormous evening meal.
You are shocked, are you not, to find servants in the drawing room? Admittedly, it is a trifle unusual. But before she left, Arabella told the housekeeper that the staff might treat her home as their own whilst she was away. Except for Tilda, of course, who had a tendency to break things, and had to be watched for that reason.
“Is Italy nice, then?” asked Doyle. She had the happy ginger tomcat on her lap, and was rubbing his chin.
“Oh, yes; it’s ever so warm and pleasant there. Tsk! I wish my lady’s clients would learn to follow the seams, ’stead o’ just ripping away in the middle like they does!” (Mrs. Janks was mending one of Arabella’s delicate nightdresses, which a prominent parliamentarian had torn practically in half with his teeth.) “Italy’s where they grow the grapes, you know,” she added.
“Grapes!” cried Fielding.
“And oranges. Grapes and oranges grow wild all along the boulevards, which aren’t proper streets, but rivers. That’s all they have there—rivers. All the buildings are on islands that bob about ever so, till a body feels right sick. But it’s sunny and warm, with monkeys and parrots in all the grape trees, and the Pope himself going up and down in a giant shell boat, pulled by dolphins.”
Mrs. Molyneux was French by birth, and had once been to Italy. But she quietly attended to her mending, and allowed Mrs. Janks’s pronouncements to stand unchallenged, because, reader, Mrs. Moly had worked in other establishments, including Lady Ribbonhat’s, and had learned to prize a peaceful household above high wages and titled employers. She also understood the importance of cherished beliefs, and would never destroy the inner visions of anyone she liked, no matter how silly or inaccurate.
“Sometimes,” Mrs. Janks continued, “the buildings come loose from all the bobbing and lean way over, so that to get into one you have to pass underneath it and be pulled up through a window. What’s wrong, my dear? Are you all right?”
“I zhust . . . have somesing in my eye,” said Mrs. Molyneux, bending over her lap and hiding her face in her apron. “Zere!” she said, sitting up straight. “I am quite all right again!”
The cat was now smiling to itself on Fielding’s lap, and purring loudly.
“We shall have to get rid of this fellow before the missus gets home, ” said the housekeeper.
“Oh, but Rooney’s such a nice cat, Mrs. Janks,” Tilda protested. “Maybe Madam will fall in love with him and keep him for always.”
&n
bsp; “Rooney? Is that what you call him? Whatever for?”
“I named him Rooney,” said Doyle. “Because he is so noble. He is called after a boy I knew in Tipperary once, who had just the same red hair and princely manners.”
“You don’t say so! Well, I must admit he does have the nicest manners as ever I saw in a cat,” said the housekeeper, patting his tail. “But we shall have to wait and see what the missus says when she gets back . . . if she ever does get back, that is. ”
Long after Arabella had left the others, Belinda staggered through the door to the Beaumont party’s private parlor, and dropped onto a chair next the desk.
“I must remonstrate with you, Bell!” she cried faintly. “After you left, I was made to sing all the English ballads the world has ever known!”
“How could that be my fault?” Arabella asked, busily writing the aforementioned description of her fellow guests.
“Because, if you had only been there, you might have had half of them. It was very ill-mannered to leave us so abruptly.”
“Ill-mannered? I was ill-mannered? What about the others?”
“I fully understand your exasperation with that horrid Osvaldo fellow,” said Belinda, “but I fail to see why you cannot be more amenable towards Father Terranova. After all, he only wants to throw some water off your balcony and mutter a few meaningless words. What is that to you?”
“All words are meaningless, in and of themselves, Bunny. We make them mean something by the intention that impels their utterance.” Arabella shut the notebook. “And I do not care for that man’s meaning. I disliked him the moment I saw him. He wants to intrude himself into our rooms and leave his noxious stamp upon them, like some . . . randy tomcat. I do not want him in here, I do not want him on my balcony, and I particularly do not want him baptizing the helpless dead, who are in no position to object.”
Death Among the Ruins (Arabella Beaumont Mystery) Page 8