The Corpse with the Silver Tongue (9 page)

“Sadly, yes,” replied Beni seriously. “But not just him, many of his comrades died also, very soon afterward.”

“Another battle?”

“No, they died of what the record speaks of as a dysentery type of disease. We now believe it to have been an outbreak of a waterborne disease, maybe cholera.”

“Ugh. Nasty. But surely a coincidence? There must have been lots of outbreaks like that in those days.” I was
not
going to get sucked in. There are no such things as curses—just idiots who believe in them, and then usually make them come true by their own actions . . . or
in
actions.

“This is true. Though the Romans were very particular about their water, they did not understand about such diseases. They knew how to manage it, how to use it, and how to ensure its general cleanliness. In fact, water management is one of the reasons they were so successful in growing, and keeping, their Empire. But, yes, cholera was common.” He pushed on. “As was the custom, all the possessions of the dead soldiers were sent back to their families. Of course, this took some time, but eventually the necklace arrived back in Rome, where the brother decided to keep it hidden, and not allow his wife to wear it, because he was worried by the story of the curse. Then as I said, the family moved here to Cimiez to live and the necklace surfaced in the family archive again as the cause of a feud between the two nephews of the centurion, who discovered the necklace upon their father's death and fought over who should have it.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but as if he had read my mind, Beni added, “The eldest
should
have had it, by the rules of inheritance, but, because the boys were twins, the father had written a will saying that his possessions should be divided between them equally. They could not decide on the value of the necklace, neither of them having seen it before and not knowing anything about its history—they were young men, they had no time for reading family archives—so they fought. One died, one lived. The one who lived gave the necklace to his new wife as a wedding present. Within a year she had died giving birth to a son, who, in turn, stole the necklace from his father to give as a gift to a slave-girl he was in love with. Days later, the slave-girl disappeared, along with two other slaves. Blood was found, a great deal of it, but no bodies. The young man was tried for murder, found guilty and put to death. His father killed himself. The original Roman centurion had no wife or issue, and, with the deaths of his brother and nephew, the entire bloodline had died out. That is all that is spoken of in the archive. Except for one thing that I have not mentioned—there was a description of the necklace. It is said to be a gold collar, that sits flat around the neck, ornamented with oak leaves, mistletoe berries and ancient writing, as well as some Latin inscriptions scratched rather crudely inside it that apparently said ‘True Blood or Spilled Blood,' ‘Before Luentinum,' and ‘Arawn Sees.'”

I waited, but he didn't explain. He just looked pleased with himself. So I asked, just as the coffees arrived, “And what does all that mean to
you
?”

He actually looked over each of his shoulders in turn, waited for the server to leave, then leaned in very close to me (he smelled good) and whispered, “I think I know . . .”

Oh good!
I thought, but just as he was about to share what he thought he knew, we were accosted by a tattooed young man in shorts and a T-shirt, with a Mohican haircut, lots of piercings, and a rather frightening demeanour, who screeched to a halt on his bicycle beside us, jumped off and started talking to Beni, very fast and very loudly, in French.

I managed to understand that there had been some sort of break-in at the museum, and that people had been trying to get hold of Beni on his cell phone. Beni pulled his phone from his pocket and swore at it, explaining he must not have turned it back on that morning. It was clear that lunch was over: Beni turned on his phone, dug around for his credit card, motioned to the waitress to bring the check, and told the young man he would be at the museum as soon as possible. All this as though I didn't exist. Which hurt.

As the young man rode off, and Beni all but threw his credit card at the waitress explaining that he needed his bill
pronto
, he pulled on his jacket, which he'd removed to be better able to relax in the sunshine, and took his seat next to me. He wasn't relaxed anymore!

“Cait, I must go. It is terrible. They have discovered a theft at the museum. We have lost a valuable vase, some small figures, and maybe more. I must go. It happened last night, they think, but it was not discovered until before lunch. I
must
go. I am sorry. We will meet again,” and he reached for my hand, as if to kiss it. Despite this gallantry, I could tell that he was hiding something.

“I'll come with you; I might be able to help,” I said boldly, standing and making sure I'd gathered up all my bits and pieces.

He looked taken aback. He seemed to be struggling with trying to appear to be polite and his need to take charge of the situation. “But I cannot attend to you there. I must give my attention to the situation and the police. Ah, again the police!” He rolled his eyes heavenward and raised his hands as if pleading with the sky. “It will be a difficult situation.”

I suspected he was right, but I wasn't going to be put off.
Something
told me that I should go, so I stuck to my guns—as sweetly as I could, of course. Initially.

“Oh Beni, I don't
know
anyone else in Nice, and I can't just wander the art galleries and museums, not with a possible murder charge hanging over me . . .” Was I batting my eyelashes? I suspected I was, though I've never really been sure what that's supposed to achieve—make someone feel sorry for you because you've got a nasty eye infection?

“But it will be
difficult
 . . .” he sounded feeble.

“Oh come on, Beni.” I thought I'd just go ahead and challenge him. “There's something you're not telling me. What else has been taken?” I was pretty sure I could guess.

He looked defeated.

“I believe they have taken the family archive that tells the story of the necklace. It was stored in that area of the museum. But I cannot imagine why—”

“Oh, come off it, Beni!” The camel's back was well and truly cracked. “Do I really have to spell it out for you? Alistair, who owned the necklace, died at the dinner table last night; the necklace itself disappeared the same day. Now the archive, the only record of its existence, is stolen from a museum that must house things much more valuable than a humble merchant's family history.” How dumb did he think I was? “These are
not
coincidences.”

He nodded his head. “You make good points,” he said, sadly.

Damn right I did. Unfortunately, I'd made them rather loudly, and heads were beginning to turn.

He held out his arm toward me. “You are involved, you should come. We will take a taxi. Come, walk with me to the Promenade des Anglais, it is the nearest place to find one.” He grabbed my hand. Under any other circumstances I'd have been in seventh heaven. He had lovely soft, strong hands and nicely manicured fingernails, with no rough skin, just a firm grip, but all I could do was hope that my palm wasn't sweaty and rush to keep up with his long strides over the cobblestones. I was glad I'd worn pants and flats. It wasn't long before a taxi was whisking us up the hill toward the Roman Museum in Cimiez.

BENI WAS OBVIOUSLY DISTRACTED AS
we sat in the taxi. Such a state of mind is useful to the person who wants to winkle information out of someone who might not otherwise divulge it. I didn't want to lose what might be my last chance for a while to speak to him alone.

“Beni—how did you get on with Alistair? Did you like him?”

He thought for a moment, looking out at the scenery passing us by, and then he turned to me and, again, took my hand. This time it seemed that this was a contrived action. I was on full alert as he started to speak; I was pretty sure that as soon as those beautiful lips began to move, they'd start to lie.

“I liked Alistair. He had a real love for life. He lived well. Everyone found him good company. He was a very generous host—as you saw last night: he spared no expense for his guests.”

While it was true that Alistair
had
served us Dom Perignon and the very best sausage and olives, and there was no shortage of fine crystal and bone china at the table, his manner hadn't been generous, nor had it ever been, to my knowledge.

“He'd changed a lot since the days when I worked for him,” I responded bluntly. “Back then he was a ruthless, unpleasant man, who'd use everyone and everything to his own advantage, never thinking about, or certainly not caring about, the consequences for others.”

Beni cleared his throat with embarrassment and looked for an escape. There was none. We were still winding our laborious way up the lower levels of the hill, and in heavy mid-afternoon traffic at that. I wondered if he was used to mixing with people who were incapable of being honest, like Alastair.

“I do not wish to speak badly of a man who has just died. I knew him well. He will be missed,” was Beni's politically correct reply. His body language, however, spoke of such inner turmoil that I felt it was my duty to address it.

“Beni—I understand that maybe you spent many hours, or even days, in Alistair's company, and that he might well have shone the beam of his bonhomie upon you for most of that time—he was good like that. Always was. But you strike me as the sort of man who can sum up the character of another. You have intelligence and insight—” I think it's always best to flatter someone into telling you the truth, rather than bully them, “so you must have known that there was another, darker side to Alistair. I'm not saying that he had anything on you, personally, but to be honest, his stock in trade had always been to get people to tell him their secrets, then use that knowledge against them. Surely you saw
that
Alistair, too?” I'd opened the door as wide as I could. I hoped that Doctor Benigno Brunetti would walk through.

“Cait—I know that the death of Alistair is important. He was a man. He was alive. Now he is dead. But I must also consider his connection to the necklace. Cursed or not, it might have led to Alistair's tragic end. And I might be responsible, in part. I did not take it. I did not kill Alistair. How I felt about him is not important, though I can tell you that he was hated by most of the people sitting at his table last night. We cannot bring him back to life, but we can maybe find the missing necklace. This must be our focus. I think that this way we will find who killed Alistair.”

“You think it
was
murder?”

“You said yourself that it does not take a genius to link these events. I have to agree with you. Alistair was killed so the thief could steal the necklace. Maybe the same person has now stolen the record of the necklace. This means that this person is not only a thief and a murderer, but they also have a very valuable item that they can sell, with some provenance.”

“Would it be easy to sell?” I asked. I honestly had no idea.

“Yes, it would be easy to sell. There is a huge increase in modern-day Druidic-type societies. Even a knowledgeable collector of Roman antiquities would pay handsomely for it. There are no known pictures or photographs of the piece. There is only the description in the archive. And now that is gone.”

My mind was whirring. “Could a clever operator make several pieces that were all similar and sell them to different people at the same time?” I'd heard of schemes like this before, but would it work in this case?

Beni considered for a moment, then replied thoughtfully, “No, I do not think this would work. If a person wanted to buy the necklace, they would also want to buy the archive—the provenance. It might be possible to reproduce a gold collar, if you spent enough money doing it, but it would be much more difficult to produce a fake Roman family archive that would stand up to expert scrutiny. I think that anyone buying this piece would certainly seek authentication of the archive.”

“Who might they call upon to do that?”

“The greatest expert on such documents is me. But, obviously, they would have to find someone else.”

“What about students of yours? People you know in the business? If you gave it some thought, I bet you could put together a list of everyone in the world who might be able to do that. A potential buyer would have to ask one of them. You could tell the police. That might help.” It seems I can never stop my natural tendency toward problem solving.

Even as I was saying the words, I realized that Beni himself was as much of a suspect as anyone else at that table last night. If Alistair had been murdered, and by this time I was pretty convinced he must have been,
and
I was leaning toward poison as a method—though which one I had no idea—then Beni could have waited for the poison to work, and then taken the opportunity to steal the necklace while we were all distracted.

On reflection, I was pretty sure he'd been the one who'd led Madelaine Schiafino out onto the balcony after Alistair's death, and he'd certainly been with her when she collapsed, so he'd been in my sight the whole time since he'd arrived at the apartment. Well, except for the time when he'd popped to the loo, and when he'd gone outside onto the balcony to take that phone-call. Okay, there were two chances there for him to have—well,
that
was the question, of course. For him to have
what
?

Another question occurred to me. “Did you visit the Townsends' apartment yesterday, before dinner, at all?”

Beni seemed to be in a world of his own. Possibly he was thinking through a list of Roman scholars, or maybe he was just trying to make sure that he was looking suitably distressed.