Pendergast’s reply, when it came, was slow. “I found a fragment of horsehair at the site of Bullard’s murder. I knew it came from a violin bow. At that point, I recalled the name of Bullard’s boat: the Stormcloud. It all came together: I realized then that this case was merely a sordid attempt at theft through murder and intimidation. My thoughts naturally turned to you—although I’d long been sure the business went beyond Bullard.”
“Clever. I didn’t expect you to put it together so quickly—hence the unseemly rush to kill the old priest. I regret that more than I can say. It was unnecessary, stupid. I had a momentary panic.”
“‘Unnecessary’?” snapped D’Agosta. “‘Stupid’? We’re talking about murdering another human being here.”
“Spare me the moral absolutism.” Fosco sipped his wine, folded a piece of prosciutto onto his fork, ate it, recovered his good humor. He glanced back at Pendergast. “As for me, I knew you were going to be a problem within five minutes of encountering you. Who’d have expected a man like you would go into law enforcement?”
When he didn’t receive an answer, he raised his glass in another toast. “From the very first time I met you, I knew that I would have to kill you. And here we are.”
He took a sip, set down the glass. “I had hoped that idiot Bullard would pull it off. But, of course, he failed.”
“You put him up to that, naturally.”
“Let us just say that, in his frightened condition, he was susceptible to suggestion. And so now it is left to me. But first, don’t you think you should congratulate me on a beautifully executed plan? I extracted the violin from Bullard. And as you know well, Mr. Pendergast, there are no witnesses or physical evidence to connect me to the murders.”
“You have the violin. Bullard once had it. That can be established beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
“It belongs to the Fosco family by legal right. I still have the bill of sale, signed by Antonio Stradivari himself, and the chain of ownership is beyond question. A suitable period will pass following Bullard’s death; then the violin will surface in Rome. I’ve planned it down to the last detail. I will make my claim, pay a small reward to the lucky shopkeeper, and it will come to me free and clear. Bullard told no one why he needed to remove the violin from his laboratory, not even the people at his company. How could he?” Fosco issued a dry chuckle. “So you see, there is nothing, Mr. Pendergast, no evidence at all against me. But then, I have always been a most fortunate man in such matters.” He bit off a piece of bread. “For example, there is an extraordinary coincidence at the very heart of this affair. Do you know what it is?”
“I can guess.”
“On October 31, 1974, in the early afternoon, while on my way out of the Biblioteca Nazionale, I ran into a group of callow American students. You know the type—they throng Florence all year long. It was the afternoon of All Hallows’ Eve—Halloween to them, of course—and they’d been drinking to excess. I was young and callow myself, and I found them so astonishingly vulgar that they amused me. We fell in for the moment. At some point, one of the students—Jeremy Grove to be precise—went on a tear about religion, about God being rubbish for the weak mind, that sort of thing. The sheer arrogance of it annoyed me. I said that I couldn’t speak on the existence of God, but I did know one thing: that the devil existed.”
Fosco laughed silently, his capacious front shaking.
“They all roundly denied the existence of the devil. I said I had friends who dabbled in the occult, who had collected old manuscripts and that sort of thing, and that, in fact, I had an old parchment which contained formulas on how to raise Lucifer himself. We could settle the question that very night. The night was perfect, in fact, being Halloween. Would they like to try it? Oh, yes, they said. What a marvelous idea!”
Another internal disturbance shook Fosco’s person.
“So you put on a show for them.”
“Exactly. I invited them to a midnight séance in my castle, and then rushed back myself to set it all up. It was a great deal of fun. Pinketts helped—and, by the way, he isn’t English at all, but a manservant named Pinchetti who happens to be both a clever linguist and a lover of intrigue. We had only six hours, but we did it up rather well. I’ve always been a tinkerer, a builder of machines and gadgets, and incidentally a designer of fuochi d’artificio—fireworks. There are all sorts of secret passageways, trapdoors, and hidden panels in the cellars here, and we took full advantage of them. That was a night to remember! You should have seen their faces as we recited the incantations, asked the Prince of Darkness to bring them great wealth, offered their souls in return, pricked their fingers and signed contracts in blood—especially when Pinketts activated the theatrics.” He leaned back, pealing with laughter.
“You terrified them. You scared Beckmann so much it ruined his life.”
“It was all in good fun. If it shook up their pathetic little certainties, so much the better. They went their way and I went mine. And here comes the coincidence so marvelous I feel it must be predestination: thirty years later, I discovered to my horror that one of these philistines had acquired the Stormcloud.”