“I’ve just checked the settings for Internet Explorer, and pretty much everything uses the default values, including the history, which is set for twenty days.”
“So?”
“Despite the default setting, there are no sites at all listed in the program’s history, so somebody must have deleted them. Could Jackie have done that?”
“No,” Mark said firmly. “She would have had no idea how to do it and, in any case, why would she have wanted to?”
“I’ve no idea.”
Back in the kitchen, Mark made coffee while Bronson sat down at the table, the papers in front of him.
“Right, then,” Mark said, carrying two mugs across the room. “What have you found?”
“Apart from the anomaly with the computer, I picked up a shopping list and what looks like a blank piece of paper.”
“That doesn’t sound promising—or even very interesting.”
Bronson shrugged. “It might be nothing, but it’s a bit odd. The shopping list, for example. It’s got the usual kinds of things you’d expect to find on it, like groceries and stuff, but right at the bottom is ‘Latin dictionary.’ There’s a line through the words, so either Jackie changed her mind or she went out and bought one and then crossed out the entry when she’d done so.”
“She bought it,” Mark said. “I saw a Latin-Italian dictionary on the bookshelf in the study. I didn’t bother mentioning it, because it didn’t seem important. But why would she want a Latin dictionary?”
“Maybe because of this,” Bronson said, holding up the blank sheet of paper. “There’s no writing on either side of this sheet, but when I looked at it I saw faint indentations, as if Jackie had written something on another piece of paper on top of this one. There are four letters altogether, printed in block capitals, and they’re reasonably clear. The letters are ‘H,’ ‘I,’ ‘C’ and ‘V.’ Those letters, in that order, are not a part of any word I can think of in English.”
“ ‘CV’ could refer to someone’s curriculum vitae,” Mark suggested.
“But what about the ‘HI’?”
“Apart from the obvious, I’ve no idea.”
“I think the dictionary Jackie bought might be a clue. I studied Latin, believe it or not, and
‘Hic’
is a Latin word. It means ‘here’ or ‘in this place,’ as far as I remember, and the ‘V’ could be the first letter of another word. There’s what looks like a dot between the ‘C’ and the ‘V’ on this page, and I think the Romans sometimes separated words with a symbol like that.”
“Are you serious? Jackie had enough trouble with Italian. Why would she be messing about with Latin?”
“I’m guessing here. Apart from this piece of paper, I’ve seen nothing anywhere in this house that looks like a Latin text, but I suspect Jackie found or was given something that had a Latin phrase written on it. That would certainly explain the dictionary.”
Bronson paused for a few seconds, because what he was about to suggest was less a leap of logic than a quantum leap.
“What is it?” Mark asked, seeing the uncertainty on Bronson’s face.
“I’m trying to make some sense of this. We’ve got a newly bought Latin dictionary, and the impression of what could be a Latin word on a sheet of paper, but no sign of the top sheet. That means somebody’s definitely been into the study, unless Jackie herself removed the top sheet and then destroyed it. But what worries me most of all is the deletion of the browsing history from Internet Explorer.”
“I’m not following you.”
“I don’t want to make too much of this, but suppose Jackie found something, here in the house or maybe in the grounds, something with a Latin expression written on it. She didn’t understand what it meant, so she bought a Latin dictionary. She’d probably have preferred a Latin-English version, but couldn’t find one. She tried to translate the text, but found she couldn’t make sense of it with the Italian dictionary.
“So Jackie did what most people in that situation would do. She logged on to a search engine, found a Latin translation service and input the phrase. Now,” Bronson said, “the next stage is pure conjecture, but it does make sense, to me at least.
“Maybe some organization, somewhere, put a form of Internet-monitoring service in place, watching for any requests to translate certain expressions from ancient languages. Technically, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to set up, as long as the translation service Web sites were willing to cooperate. When Jackie input the Latin phrase into the search engine, it raised a flag, and perhaps even identified the address where the computer that generated the query was located—”
“Hang on a minute,” Mark interrupted. “Why the hell would anyone today have the slightest interest in somebody trying to translate a two-thousand-year-old—or whatever—bit of Latin?”
“I’ve not the slightest idea, but nothing else seems to make sense. If I’m right, whoever put the monitoring service in place then came here, to this house, to search for whatever Jackie had found. It was
that
important to them. They obviously recovered the object, sanitized the computer so there would be no record of Jackie’s searches, and took away anything they could find that referred to the Latin text.
“And, in the process,” Bronson finished sadly, “I think Jackie just got in their way.”
III
Pierro reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a brown envelope. He looked around the cafe’, checking that nobody else was in earshot—a superfluous precaution with Gregori Mandino’s two men acting as watchdogs—and placed several photographs on the table in front of Vertutti.
He recognized the images immediately: they were close-up views of the inscribed stone.
“When I’d concluded that there was no secret message hidden in the inscription,” Pierro went on, “I started looking at the stone itself, and there are two obvious clues in its shape. First, look at the four edges of the slab.”
Vertutti bent forward over the table and stared at two of the pictures, side by side, but saw nothing he hadn’t previously noticed. He shook his head.
“The edges,” Pierro prompted gently. He took a short ruler out of his pocket, placed it on one of the photographs and aligned it with the top of the stone. He repeated the process with the left and right sides of the image.
“You see now?” he asked. “The top edge and both sides of the slab are absolutely straight. But now do the same to the bottom of the stone.”
Vertutti took the ruler and positioned it carefully. And then he saw what the academic was driving at: with the ruler in place, it was obvious that the bottom edge of the stone was very slightly out of true.
“That’s the first point,” Pierro said. “If the Romans—or whoever prepared this slab—could get three of the edges straight, why couldn’t they do the same with the fourth? And the second clue is related to the first. Look closely at the position of the carving. If you study it, you’ll see that the words are centered on the stone from left to right, but not from top to bottom.”
Vertutti peered at the photograph in front of him and nodded. The gap between the letters and the top of the stone was much larger than that at the bottom. Now that Pierro had pointed it out, the discrepancy was quite obvious. A classic case, he mused, of not being able to see the wood for the trees.
“And that means what?” he asked.
“The most obvious conclusion is that this stone”—Pierro tapped the photograph with his finger for emphasis—“was originally part of a larger slab, and at some point the lower section was removed.”
“Can you be certain of that?”
Pierro shook his head. “Not without examining the stone for myself, but these photographs are fairly clear. In one of them are what look to me like marks made by a chisel, which would have been the obvious tool to split the slab in two. I think this stone was made as a kind of pointer, a device that would lead to the ‘Tomb of Christianity,’ which is how I believe Pope Vitalian described it in the Codex.”
Vertutti glanced angrily at Mandino as Pierro confirmed the depth of his knowledge of the secret Codex.
“I believe the lower half of the slab almost certainly had a map or directions of some sort carved on it,” Pierro finished.
“So what are you suggesting?” Vertutti demanded. “Where is the missing section? And how do we find it?”
Pierro shrugged. “That’s not my problem,” he said, “but it seems logical that whoever decided to split the stone would not have discarded the lower half. If this stone had been incorporated in the wall of the house purely as a decoration, why didn’t they keep it intact? Why go to the trouble of cutting it in two? The only scenario that makes sense is that this section of the stone was placed in the wall for a purpose, as a definite pointer for somebody who knew what they were looking for. Unless you know the identity of the ‘liars,’ this stone is merely a curiosity. And that means—”
“That means,” Mandino interrupted him, “that the other half of the stone is probably concealed somewhere in the property, so I’m going to have to send my men back to the house to find it.”
9
I
Bronson walked across the hall to the front door and pulled it open. Standing on the doorstep was a short, dark-haired man dressed in grubby white overalls. Behind him was an old white van, the diesel engine clattering noisily, with three other men sitting in the cab.
“Can I help you?” Bronson asked in Italian.
“We would like to speak with Signor Hampton. We need to know about the work.”
Bronson guessed they were the builders who’d been employed to do the renovations on the property.
“Come in,” he offered, and led the four men through to the kitchen.
Mark greeted them in halting Italian.
Bronson immediately took over, explaining that he was a family friend and offering wine—an offer that was gratefully accepted. Once Bronson had opened a couple of bottles and filled glasses, he asked what the men wanted.
“We had a small job to do on Wednesday morning and so we arrived here in the afternoon,” the foreman said, “but when we drove up we found that the police were here. They said there’d been an accident, and told us to go away and not come back for at least two days. Later we heard that the
signora
had died. Please accept our sincere condolences for your loss, Signor Hampton.”
Bronson translated, and Mark nodded his understanding.
“What we need to know,” the foreman continued, turning back to look at Bronson, “is whether or not Signor Hampton wants us to continue with the work. We have other clients waiting for us if he doesn’t, so it’s not a problem. We just need to know.”
Bronson relayed the question to Mark, who immediately nodded his head in agreement. The renovations weren’t even half finished, and whether he decided to keep the house or sell it, the work would obviously have to be completed. That response generated broad smiles all around, and Bronson wondered briefly just how many “other clients” the builders had.
Ten minutes later, having each drunk a second glass of red wine, the four builders were ready to leave. They would, the foreman promised, be back at the house first thing on Monday morning, ready to continue their labors.
Bronson led the way back to the hall, but as the procession passed the door to the living room—which was standing wide open—one of the builders glanced inside and came to an abrupt halt. He said something to his companion, which Bronson didn’t hear clearly, then stepped inside the room.
“What is it?” Bronson asked.
The foreman turned to face him. His former good humor seemed to have vanished. “I know Signor Hampton has had a dreadful shock, but we do not appreciate him trying to take advantage of us.”
Bronson hadn’t the slightest idea what the man was talking about. “What? You need to explain what you mean,” he said.
“I mean, Signor Bronson, that he’s obviously employed another builder to do some work here since last Tuesday, and that builder has probably been using our tools and materials.”
Bronson shook his head. “As far as I know, nobody else has done any work here. Signora Hampton died sometime on Tuesday night or early on Wednesday morning. The police were probably here for most of Wednesday, and we arrived late last night, so when could . . . ?” His voice died away as a possible explanation occurred to him. “What work has been done?” he demanded.
The foreman swung around and pointed at the fireplace. “There,” he said. “There’s new plaster on the wall, but none of us put it there. We couldn’t have, because we were waiting for Signora Hampton”—he made the sign of the cross on his chest—“to decide about the lintel.”
Bronson felt the conversation slipping away from him.
“Wait there,” he said, and walked quickly back to the kitchen. “Mark, I need your input here.”
Back in the living room, Bronson asked the foreman to explain exactly what he meant.
“On Monday afternoon,” the Italian said, “we were stripping the old plaster off the wall here above the fireplace. When we exposed the lintel, we called Signora Hampton, because the stone had a big crack in it, just about here.” He sketched a diagonal line directly above one side of the fireplace. “It had a steel plate underneath it, so it was safe enough, but it wasn’t very attractive. The
signora
had wanted the lintel exposed, as a feature, but when she saw it was broken she couldn’t decide what to do. She asked us to wait, and just carry on stripping the old plaster, which we did. But now, as you can see, that whole area has fresh plaster on it. Somebody else has been working in here.”
Bronson glanced at Mark. “Do you know anything about that?”
His friend shook his head. “Nothing. As far as I know, Jackie was perfectly happy with these builders. If she wasn’t, I can guarantee she’d have told them so. She was always very forthright.”
That, Bronson thought, was an understatement. Jackie had never, to use an old expression, been backward in coming forward. It was one of the many things he’d found attractive about her. She always said exactly what she thought, politely but firmly.