‘Yes, I know the bank, sir. I don’t know anybody who works there. But I am sure I could manage it. Is that all you want me to do? Just to make a friend of someone who works there?’
‘It is for the present,’ Burke was going to take things step by step, ‘but when you have got to know this young man, could you let me know at once? At once, I say. It is a matter of great importance.’
On his journey back to London Powerscourt was wondering about the Harrison feud. Did that hold the key to the mystery?
As his train drew out of Exeter St David’s station, he thought about going away with Lucy when this case was finished. Two or three times a year he took Lucy on a Journey into the Unknown, as he called them. He would tell her six weeks or more in advance so she could make her plans. But he never told her where they were going. Lady Lucy would use a whole variety of ruses to discover their destination before they departed. ‘Hot or cold, Francis?’ was the most obvious one to which he always gave some sort of an answer in case their holiday was ruined by Lucy having the wrong clothes. ‘Should I be reading Balzac or Dante, do you think, Francis?’ ‘Will we be needing any art history books for the journey?’ ‘I just happen to be going to the milliner’s today, Francis. What sort of hat would be appropriate for the trip?’ And Powerscourt would smile his most enigmatic smile and leave the room.
Eighteen months before, they had gone to Florence. Powerscourt had threatened to blindfold her at the railway stations on the way so she could not read what might be their final destination. He remembered taking her to the cathedral and telling her about the murder.
‘Honestly, Francis,’ she had laughed at him, ‘do you have to bring your occupation away with you on holiday? Could you have solved the murder easily?’
He had led her up to the front of Florence’s cathedral, the inside bigger than a football pitch. ‘Imagine it, Lucy,’ he whispered, taking her arm and holding her tight. ‘It is Sunday, 26th April 1478. It is High Mass, the most sacred point of the week. Up there near the altar are the Archbishop and the priests. The smell of the incense is very thick. The candles are gleaming on the altar. All around us are the Florentines. Imagine they have walked out of the frescoes in the churches of the city and make up the worshippers today, the bent old men, the sober bankers, the dashing young blades, the pious wives. There was trouble brewing in the city, Lucy.’
Bankers, money and murder, he said to himself, the same lethal cocktail that I am investigating today. He told her how the Medici had done something almost unheard of; they had refused the Pope a loan, perhaps because he owed them so much already. A rival Florentine family, the Pazzi, had lent the Pontiff what he wanted. The Pazzi were trying to replace the Medici as the most powerful family in Florence.
‘Nobody knows exactly when the murderers struck. Sometimes they killed people in churches when they bent their heads in prayer, giving a better target for the sword or the knife. On this Sunday some say the attack was triggered by the ringing of the Sanctus bell, others that it was during the Agnus Dei, others again that it was the words Ite missa est. The conspirators stabbed Lorenzo de Medici’s brother Giuliano to death. They tried to make a start on Lorenzo but he jumped over the wooden rail into the choir and made his escape.’
‘How long did it take Francesco di Powerscorto to find the assassins?’ said Lady Lucy, gazing up at her husband.
‘I don’t think Francesco was ever summoned to investigate.’ Powerscourt smiled. ‘By the next day the Pazzi conspirators were hanging from the windows of the Palazzo Vecchio in the main square down the street. They say the crowds were very taken by the red stockings of Archbishop Salviati kicking in the air before he passed on.’
Lady Lucy shuddered. He remembered the two of them drinking coffee on the terrace of their hotel as evening turned into night over Florence. In front of them the muddy waters of the Arno gurgled noisily on their tortuous route to the sea. On the far side the Palazzo Pitti loomed large against the dark sky and San Miniato del Monte sat perfectly still, white and green and ghostly, on its hilltop above the city. Behind, not immediately visible from where they sat, the domes of San Lorenzo and the cathedral kept guard over the treasures beneath them.
Lady Lucy was talking about the two Davids they had seen on their visit.
‘I don’t think there is any comparison, Francis, I really don’t. One is black and one is white – well, it was white when it was created. Donatello’s is life-size in its black marble, Michelangelo’s is huge, a Colossus in marble.
‘Did you look closely at the Donatello, Francis, or were you still thinking about assassins? It was so beautiful, so graceful, so much a tribute to the glory of the male form. If you had leant forward to touch the skin – I almost wanted to stroke it – I’m sure it would have felt warm. Maybe the boy David would have smiled. I’m sure he would have liked people stroking him. And the face, it’s almost the face of a girl, it’s so beautiful.’
‘Do I take it, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, looking solemnly into those blue eyes, ‘that you prefer it to the Michelangelo?’
‘I do, I do.’ Lady Lucy was passionate. ‘Of course the Michelangelo is impressive, it’s so big. But it’s much more about politics than about male beauty, I’m sure. It was commissioned by the city fathers to give glory to their little state. So Michelangelo made them this enormous thing, symbolizing the victory of Republican Florence over her latest batch of enemies, whoever they were at the time. Michelangelo’s David is about the victory of Republican virtue over tyranny. Donatello’s is about the victory of beauty over ugliness, youth over age – that slain Goliath looks about twenty years older, down at the bottom of the statue – maybe even of art over time. Did Donatello think that people would come to look at what he had done four hundred and fifty years later? I don’t know, I just think he wanted to create the most exquisite young man in the world. Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty, four centuries before Keats.’
She stopped. A wandering owl hooted over the rooftops of Florence. The bridges over the river looked mysterious in the dark.
‘But come, Francis,’ said Lucy, rising quickly from her seat. ‘I want to show you something about the Michelangelo. Come along.’
She took them to the Piazza del Duomo, Brunelleschi’s dome towering above them, the green marble of the exterior cold to the touch.
‘Right, Francis. It’s a summer evening in May, 1504 I think. From the workshops of the cathedral here a group of men are pulling something out on to the street. There are about forty of them. Waiting for the something is a very strange contraption indeed, a group of greased beams, with heavy ropes attached to them. It must have been nearly dark when they pulled Michelangelo’s David out of the workshops and hauled it upright and secured it to the beams. Most of the statue was encased in a wooden frame. Only the head was visible at the top.
‘The next morning, I think, they began to pull it on its final journey. Imagine the excitement, Francis. Most of the children in Florence must have come to stare at the Giant in a wooden frame. Maybe it gave them nightmares. The old people who lived round about must have looked out of their windows watching, fascinated, as the statue inched its way forward down the street. The forty men must have been like galley slaves, all pulling together on the cry of the foreman. Maybe Michelangelo himself was there, watching carefully in case it fell over. Maybe he helped to pull it, we don’t know. Strangers to Florence must have been amazed – did these mad people pull huge objects on greased beams inch by painful inch around their city every day?’
Lady Lucy paused. Then she shuffled slowly forward.