The woman responded crisply, “Il piacere è mio.” Then she continued in accented English. “Obviously, you are not here to take a room.”
“No,” said Pendergast. He removed his ID, offered it to her.
“You are policemen.”
“Yes.”
“What is it that you want? My time is limited.” The voice was sharp and intimidating.
“In the fall of 1974, I believe, several American students stayed here. Here is a picture of them.” Pendergast took out Beckmann’s photo.
She did not look at it. “Do you have the names?”
“Yes.”
“Then come with me.” And she turned and walked around the transom, through a back door, and into a much larger room. D’Agosta saw it was an old library of sorts, with bound books, manuscripts, and vellum documents filling shelves from floor to ceiling. It smelled of parchment and dry rot, old leather and wax. The ceiling was coffered and had once been elaborately gilded. Now it was crumbling with age, the wood riddled with holes.
“The archives of the family,” she said. “They go back eight centuries.”
“You keep good records.”
“I keep excellent records, thank you.” She made a beeline to a low shelf at the far end of the room, selected a massive register, carried it to a center table. She opened the register, revealing page after page of accounts, payments, names, and dates, written in a fanatical, tiny hand.
“Names?”
“Bullard, Cutforth, Beckmann, and Grove.”
She began flipping pages, scanning each with tremendous rapidity, each flip sending up a faint cloud of dust. Suddenly, she stopped.
“There. Grove.” A bony finger, burdened with a huge diamond ring, pointed to the name. Then it slid down the rest of the page.
“Beckmann . . . Cutforth . . . Bullard. Yes, they were all here in October.”
Pendergast peered at the register, but even he was clearly having trouble deciphering the minuscule hand.
“Did their visits overlap?”
“Yes.” A pause. “According to this, one night only, that of October 31.”
She closed the book with a snap. “Anything else, signore?”
“Yes, signora. Will you do me the courtesy of looking at this photograph?”
“Surely you don’t expect me to remember some slovenly American students from thirty years ago? I am ninety-two, sir. I have earned the privilege of forgetting.”
“I beg your indulgence.”
Sighing with impatience, she took the photograph, looked at it—and visibly started. She stared a long time, what little color there was in her face slowly disappearing. Then she handed the photograph back to Pendergast.
“As it happens,” she said in a low tone, “I do remember. That one.” She pointed to Beckmann. “Let me see. Something terrible happened. He and some other boys, probably those others in the photograph, went off somewhere together. They were gone all night. He came back and was terribly upset. I had to get a priest for him . . .”
She paused, her voice trailing off. Gone was the crisp confidence, the unshakable sense of self.
“It was the night before All Saints’ Day. He came back from a night of carousing, and he was in a bad state. I took him to church.”
“What church?”
“The one right here, Santo Spirito. I remember him panicked and begging to go to confession. It was long ago, yet it was such a strange occurrence it stuck in my mind. That, and the expression on the poor boy’s face. He was begging for a priest as if his life depended on it.”
“And?”
“He went to confession and right afterwards he packed up his belongings and left.”
“And the other American students?”
“I don’t recall. Every year they celebrate All Saints’ Day, or rather the day before, which I believe you call Halloween. It’s an excuse to drink.”
“Do you know where they went that evening, or who they might have encountered?”
“I know nothing more than what I have told you.”
The ring of a bell came from the front office. “I have guests to attend to,” she said.
“One last question, signora, if you please,” Pendergast said. “The priest who heard the confession—is he still alive?”
“That would have been Father Zenobi. Yes, Father Zenobi. He is now living with the monks of La Verna.”
She turned, then paused and slowly glanced back. “But if you think you can persuade him to break the sacred seal of the confessional, sir, you are sadly mistaken.”
{ 65 }
D’Agosta assumed that, upon leaving the palazzo, they would return directly to their hotel. But instead, Pendergast lingered in the piazza: strolling, hands in his pockets, eyes glancing first left, then right. After a few minutes, he turned to D’Agosta.
“Gelato? Some of the best in Florence, if I am not mistaken, can be found right here at Café Ricchi.”
“I’ve given up on ice cream.”
“I haven’t. Indulge me.”
They entered the café and approached the bar. Pendergast ordered his cone—tiramisu and crème anglaise—while D’Agosta asked for an espresso.