Gravely Smythe removed a white handkerchief from his pocket, waved it in the air, and then returned it to its place.
‘The parley is over,’ he said. ‘We don’t seem to be getting anywhere. I am going back to the house; I have work to do. Coming?’
‘I’m beginning to like this place,’ I said. ‘I think I shall stay awhile.’
Smythe walked to the mouth – the door, that is. He turned. Against the sunlight he was a dark paper shape, a silhouetted shadow. I couldn’t see his features, but when he spoke his voice had lost its humorous tone.
‘I admire your bravado, Vicky. But don’t push it too far. There are things that walk in the garden here – and not only by night.’
Which was a nice thought to leave with a girl who was sitting inside a monster’s head.
I fell asleep out there in the monster’s head, lying on a nice soft chaise longue. It was very unusual for me to do that. I never sleep in the daytime. I don’t usually eat lunches like that one either, with almost half a bottle of very potent wine.
Things started to liven up at about four o’clock, when Pietro rose from his nap – if that’s what he was doing up there in his room. As I was to learn, he was usually somnolent and lazy in the morning, but he revived, like a night-blooming cereus, as twilight approached, and by midnight he was going strong.
He was a rather engaging little man. Unlike many blasé millionaires, he really enjoyed life. Not that I’ve known that many millionaires; I base that statement on what I read in magazines. Wine may have contributed to his joie de vivre. He started drinking as soon as he got up, and continued until he collapsed. He drank fairly slowly, just a little bit faster than his body could absorb the stuff, so it took him quite a while to get loaded. He passed through several distinct stages along the way. The first sign of inebriation was a profound intellectuality. He would talk about history and politics and philosophy, using a lot of long words and quotations from Greek philosophers I had never heard of. He invented them, I think.
As the dinner hour approached, sensuality replaced the lure of the intellect. If I was alone with him during that period I had to keep moving, but eating used up most of his libidinous urges, and after dinner he became soft and sentimental. That was when he played old Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald records on his huge hi-fi and tried to do Viennese waltzes.
The belligerent mood succeeded this one, but being a noble Italian, Pietro wanted to fight with swords instead of fists. During these hours he often challenged people to duels. At about midnight he became quite vivacious and told a lot of old jokes and did vaudeville routines. He fancied himself as an amateur magician. He had all the paraphernalia, including one of those trick boxes for sawing a lady in half, but by that time his hands were getting unsteady, and even the housemaids refused to be sawed. Sometime in the early hours of the morning he collapsed and was carried off to bed by his valet and Mr Smythe. I don’t know what he needed a mistress for, unless it was during the pre-dinner hour.
It was during the intellectual stage that first evening that he decided to show me his collections. He warned me that it would take days to study them properly; this was just a quick run-through, to give me a chance to decide what I wanted to concentrate on.
I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things. Museums are my favourite hobby, as well as my profession. But that was a unique experience. The objects he showed me were not museum pieces, they were part of the furniture.
‘But what about thieves?’ I said, midway through the tour. ‘This place is wide open, Pietro; anybody could get in.’
‘But how would they get out? Carrying that . . .’ And he gestured at a greater-than-life-size marble torso of Hercules that stood on a pedestal in the salone. ‘You would need a truck, would you not, and a block and tackle. It is not easy to put such an apparatus into my drawing room.’
‘That’s right, I guess.’ The little man wasn’t as foolish as he looked. ‘But what about the smaller objects?’
‘There are many servants, even when I am not in residence. My housekeeper checks the inventory daily. As for the very small, very valuable objects, naturally I keep them in my safe.’
‘Things like jewellery?’ I said.
‘Ah, you like jewellery?’ Pietro patted my arm, and for a minute I thought the sensual phase was arriving a little early. But he went on, ‘That I keep in the vault. You would care to see it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said, wide-eyed. ‘I just love jewellery.’
‘Ah, women,’ sighed Pietro. ‘You are all alike – even you clever ladies are like all the others where jewels are concerned.’
The safe was a small room, right next to his sitting room upstairs, and he had sense enough to stand between me and the combination lock as he opened it.
‘It is changed yearly,’ he explained, twirling knobs. ‘A little person comes from the bank.’
At his suggestion I sat down on a velvet divan and he brought out boxes, which he piled on a low table in front of me. Then he started opening the boxes.
For half an hour or so I forgot I was a well-educated, cynical specialist, gainfully employed in a museum. I wallowed in jewels.
The pieces that really got to me were the Renaissance jewels. There was a pendant of gold and enamel, with a mermaid made out of a Baroque pearl. Its contours formed the mermaid’s torso; her raised arms and flowing hair were gold. The scales of her fishtail were made of roughly polished emeralds. And there was a necklace two feet long, made of stones as big as the end of a man’s thumb – emeralds and rubies and amethysts and topazes. Another necklace was of square-cut rubies framed in gold, with a cabochon ruby the size of a bantam hen’s egg dangling from the centre. There was a headdress like one I had seen in a Botticelli painting – fine bands of gold supporting a star sapphire with stylized flower petals all around it. A star-shaped brooch set with pearls and rubies and emeralds framed in twisted gold wire. Rings . . .
I tried to look at these jewels with a critical eye, but it wasn’t easy, because Pietro insisted that I try them on. Rings on my fingers, bells on my toes . . . He was getting to the amorous stage. I was absolutely clanking with jewels when the door burst open and Helena stormed in.
Alas, it appeared that we were no longer buddies. She glared at me and burst into impassioned speech.
‘So this is where you are! You give this to her – never have you let me have so much as a miserable little ring, and you shower this – this – ’
What followed was a fascinating excursion into Roman gutter slang. I had never known there were so many different words for a lady of ill repute. Pietro stood it for a while, and then he let out a roar.
‘Silenzio! How dare you come here and use such vulgar language to a lady? A learned lady, who comes to study my collection! She is – she is writing a book, which will make me famous, is that not so, Vicky?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘I surely am. You surely will be.’
Helena started to speak again, but Pietro shouted her down.
‘Go! Go and learn manners. I do not give you so much as a ring, no! These jewels have been in my family for centuries. They belong to the Contessa Caravaggio, not to a – a – ’
‘That’s all right,’ I said, as he glanced apologetically at me. ‘I know what you mean. You had better put the jewels away, Pietro.’
And – I hate to admit it, but I must – as I started to remove the ornaments from my fingers and throat and breast, my hands were stiff and reluctant. That was when I first began to understand the lure of precious jewels – a violent emotion that has prompted a good deal of bloodshed over the centuries.