“Go on,” said Pendergast gently.
“The family who owned the Stormcloud was very powerful. They were related by blood to some of the royal families of Europe. Even so, they couldn’t catch my great-grandfather. They pursued him from one end of Europe to the other. The chase finally ended in the small village of Siusi in the South Tyrol. There, under the peaks of the Dolomites, they cornered him. He was betrayed by a woman, naturally. He escaped out the back of a small albergo and fled into the high mountains with nothing but the violin and the clothes on his back. He ascended the great Sciliar. Do you know it?”
“No,” said Pendergast.
“It’s a high Alpine plateau wedged between the peaks of the Dolomites, cut by ravines and sheer cliffs. They say it’s where the witches once held their black masses. In the summer, a few hardy shepherds graze their flocks there. But this was fall and the Sciliar was deserted. That night it snowed heavily. The next day they found his body, frozen to death, in one of the deserted shepherd’s huts. The Stormcloud was gone. There were no tracks in the snow around the hut, no clues. They concluded that on the way up the Sciliar, in the grip of madness, he had flung the violin into the Falls of the Sciliar.”
“Is this what you believe?”
“Reluctantly, yes.”
Pendergast leaned forward. His normally calm, almost honeyed southern tones had taken on an unusual intensity. “Lady Maskelene, I am here to tell you that the Stormcloud exists.”
Her eyes gazed at him steadily. “I’ve heard that before.”
“I will prove it to you.”
She continued looking at him with a grave, steady face. Finally she gave a wan smile and shook her head sadly. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“I will get it back. And I will place it in your hands myself.”
D’Agosta listened with surprise. He might be wrong, but he was pretty sure Pendergast’s aim in coming here wasn’t to inform this woman of the violin’s existence. Fact was, he felt surprised Pendergast even mentioned it.
She shook her head more vigorously. “There are hundreds of Stormcloud fakes and copies out there. They were churned out by the gross in the late nineteenth century, sold for nine pounds apiece.”
“When I bring you the violin, Lady Maskelene—”
“Enough of this ‘Lady Maskelene’ business. Every time you say that, I think my mother must have stepped into the room. Call me Viola.”
“Certainly. Viola.”
“That sounds better. And I’ll call you Aloysius.”
“Of course.”
“What an unusual funny name, though. Did your mother read a lot of Russian novels?”
“Unusual names are a tradition in my family.”
Viola laughed. “Just as musical names were in mine. Now tell me about the Stormcloud. Where in the world did you find it? If you did really find it, that is.”
“I’ll tell you the whole story when I bring it to you. You’ll play it—and then you’ll know.”
“It is too much to hope for. Still, I should love to hear it before I die.”
“It would also clear your family name.”
Maskelene laughed, waved her hand. “What rot. I hate being called Lady Maskelene, if you want to know the truth. Titles, family honor—that’s nineteenth-century rubbish.”
“Honor is never out of date.”
She looked at Pendergast curiously. “You’re a rather old-fashioned sort, aren’t you?”
“I don’t pay much attention to current fashions, if that’s what you mean.”
She looked his black suit up and down with an amused smile. “No, I suppose you don’t. I rather like that.”
Again Pendergast looked nonplussed.
“Well”—she stood up, her brown eyes catching the light off the water, a smile dimpling her face—“whether you find the violin or not, come back anyway and tell me about it. Will you?”
“Nothing would please me more.”
“Good. That’s settled.”
Pendergast looked at her gravely. “Which brings me to the point of my visit.”
“The big question. Ah.” She smiled. “Go ahead.”
“What is the name of that powerful family that once owned the Stormcloud?”
“I can do better than give you a mere answer.” She reached into her pocket, removed an envelope, and laid it before Pendergast. In a lovely copperplate hand was written, Dr. Aloysius X. L. Pendergast.
Pendergast looked at it, his face draining of color. “Where did you get this?”
“Yesterday, the current Count Fosco—for that was the family that once owned the violin—paid me a surprise visit. Surprise is hardly the word—I was bowled over. He said you’d be coming, that you were friends, and that he wanted me to give you this.”
Pendergast reached down and slowly picked up the envelope. D’Agosta watched as he slid his finger under the flap, tore it open, and pulled out a card, on which was written in the same generous, flowing hand:
Isidor Ottavio Baldassare Fosco,
Count of the Holy Roman Empire,
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Quincunx,