D’Agosta glanced at him. “So what’s the family story?”
“It was one of those torrid nineteenth-century affairs one reads about. The stuff of opera. Viola Maskelene’s great-grandmother, a famous Victorian beauty, married the Duke of Cumberland, thirty years her senior and as cold and correct a man as you could find. Toscanelli seduced her only a few months after her marriage, and they carried on a legendary affair. An illegitimate daughter came of the union, and the poor duchess died in childbirth. That child was Lady Maskelene’s grandmother.”
“What did the duke have to say about all that?”
“He may have been cold, but he also seems to have been a rather decent sort. After his wife’s death, he took steps to legally adopt the child. The greater titles and estates were entailed away, but the daughter inherited a lesser title and some land in Cornwall.”
The ferry throbbed beneath their feet, and the island seemed to gain weight and substance as they approached. As they stood silently, Pendergast drew the test tube out of his pocket. He held it up, the melted droplets taken from Vanni’s corpse the night before glittering in the sun. “We haven’t spoken yet about these.”
“Yeah. But I’ve been thinking about them.”
“So have I. Perhaps, Vincent, the time has come at last for each of us to turn over a card.”
“You first.”
Pendergast smiled faintly and held up a finger. “Never. As the officer in charge, I reserve the right to call your hand.”
“Pulling rank on me?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, I’d say those drops came from some device which malfunctioned, spraying molten metal into Vanni and burning him terribly.”
Pendergast nodded. “What kind of device?”
“Some device meant to torch Vanni. Same device that killed the others. But in Vanni’s case, it didn’t seem to work, so he had to be shot afterwards.”
“Bravo.”
“Your theory?”
“I reached the same conclusions. Vanni was an early victim—perhaps a test subject—of a highly specialized killing device. It appears we are dealing with a flesh-and-blood assassin, after all.”
Now the ferry was slipping past surf-scoured volcanic cliffs and into a small harbor. A row of crumbling houses, stuccoed yellow and red, crowded the quay, hillsides rising steeply behind them. The ferry maneuvered into port, and a single car and a scattering of passengers got off. Almost before D’Agosta’s feet were on firm ground, it was backing out again and heading to its next stop, the island of Elba.
“We have four hours before the ferry returns on its homeward swing.” Pendergast pulled out a little piece of paper, scrutinized it. “Lady Viola Maskelene, Via Saracino, 19. Let’s hope we find la signorina at home.”
He set off down the quay toward a bus stop, D’Agosta at his side. Within moments, an old orange bus wheezed into view, struggled to turn around in the lone narrow street, then opened its doors. They boarded; the doors creaked shut; and the bus began groaning and wheezing its way back up the frighteningly steep slope that seemed to rise straight out of the foaming sea.
In five minutes, they were in the village at the far end of the road. The doors creaked open again and they descended. An ancient peach-colored church sat on one side, a tobacconist on the other. Cobbled lanes ran off at odd angles, too narrow to admit a car. A giant, ruined castle, completely overgrown with prickly pears, dominated the headland before them. Behind the village mounted a series of empty, scrub-covered mountains.
“Charming,” said Pendergast. He pointed at a street sign, carved on an old marble plaque and cemented into the wall of a building, reading Via Saracino. “This way, Sergeant.”
They walked down a lane between small whitewashed houses, the numbers mounting slowly. Soon the town ended and the lane turned to dirt, bounded by stone walls enclosing garden plots of small lemon trees and microscopic vineyards. The air carried the scent of citrus. The lane made a sharp curve, and there—at the edge of the cliff, all by itself—stood a neat stone house shaded by bougainvillea, overlooking the blue immensity of the Mediterranean.
Pendergast slipped down the path, entered the patio, and knocked on the door.
Silence.
“C’è nessuno?” he called.
The wind sighed through the rosemary bushes, carrying the fragrance of the sea with it.
D’Agosta looked around. “There’s someone over there,” he said. “A man, digging.” He nodded toward a small, terraced vineyard a hundred yards away, where a figure was turning earth with a spade. The man was wearing a battered straw hat, old canvas pants, and a rough shirt unbuttoned partway down the front. Seeing them, the person straightened up.