“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.
Bronson turned back to the foreman. “We’re certain no other builders have been in here,” he said, “but you obviously know what stage you’d reached in the renovations. Tell me, when you removed the plaster, did you find anything unusual about the wall, apart from the crack in the lintel?”
The foreman shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, “apart from the inscribed stone, but that was just a curiosity.”
Bronson looked at Mark with a kind of triumph. “I think we’ve just traced what Jackie found,” he said, explaining what the builder had told him. And without waiting for Mark to respond, he switched back to Italian.
“Strip it,” he ordered, pointing at the wall. “Strip the new plaster off that wall right now.”
The builder looked puzzled, but issued instructions. Two of his men seized club hammers and broad-bladed masonry chisels, dragged a couple of stepladders over to the fireplace and set to work.
Thirty minutes later, the builders left in their old van, again promising to return early on Monday morning. Bronson and Mark walked back into the living room and stared at the Latin inscription on the wall. Bronson took several pictures of it with his digital camera.
“The first four letters are the same as those I found impressed on that piece of paper in the study,” Bronson said. “And it is a Latin inscription. I don’t know what it means, but that dictionary Jackie bought should help me decipher it.”
“You think she was searching for a translation of that—of those three words—on the Internet, and that was enough to get her killed? That’s just bloody ridiculous.”
“I don’t know it got her killed, Mark, or not deliberately, anyway. But this is the only scenario that makes sense. The builders exposed the inscription on Monday. Jackie wrote down the words—that’s confirmed by the paper in the study—and bought a Latin dictionary, probably on Tuesday, and if she did do a search on the Internet, she most likely did it that day. Whatever happened, somebody broke into the house—my guess is late on Tuesday night—and on Wednesday morning Jackie was found dead in the hall.
“Now, I know it probably seems stupid that anyone would care enough about a three-word Latin inscription carved into a stone, maybe two thousand years ago, to risk a burglary, far less a charge of manslaughter or murder, but the fact remains that somebody did. Those three words are vitally important to someone, somewhere, and I’m going to find out who and why.
“But I’m not,” he added, “going to use the Internet to do it.”
II
Alberti and Rogan reached the town early that evening, following telephoned instructions—this time from Gregori Mandino—to enter the property for the third—and what they both hoped would be the last—time. They cruised slowly past the house as soon as they arrived in Monti Sabini and saw lights shining from windows on both floors. That complicated things, because they had hoped to be able to get inside and complete their search for the missing section of the stone without detection. But, ultimately, it wouldn’t matter, because this time Mandino’s instructions gave them far more latitude than before.
“Looks like the husband’s home,” Alberti said, as Rogan accelerated away down the road. “So do we wait, or what?”
“We wait for a couple of hours,” his partner confirmed. “Maybe he’ll be asleep by then.”
Just more than two and a half hours later, Rogan drove their car up the lane that ran beside and behind the house, and continued climbing the hill until they were out of sight of the building. Then he turned the car around, pointed it down the slope and extinguished the headlights. He waited a couple of minutes for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, then allowed the vehicle to roll gently down the gradient, using only the parking lights to see his way, until they reached a section of the grass verge that offered a good view of the back and side of their target. There he eased the car to the side of the road and switched off the lights and engine. As a precaution, Rogan turned off the interior light, so that it wouldn’t come on when they opened the doors.
A light was still burning in one of the downstairs rooms of the old house, so they settled down to wait.
III
Chris Bronson closed the dictionary with a snap and sat back in the kitchen chair, rubbing his tired eyes.
“I think that’s the best translation,” he said. “ ‘Here are lying the liars,’ or the short version: ‘Here lie the liars.’ ”
“Wonderful.” Mark sounded anything but impressed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve not the slightest idea,” Bronson confessed, “but it must be important to somebody. Look, we’re not getting anywhere with this, so let’s call it a night. You go on up. I’ll check the doors and windows.”
Mark stood up and stretched. “Good idea,” he murmured. “Your subconscious might have a flash of inspiration while you sleep. Good night—I’ll see you in the morning.”
As Mark left the kitchen, Bronson took one of the upright chairs and wedged it under the handle of the back door, then walked out of the room and switched off the light.
He checked that the front door was locked and bolted, and that all the ground-floor windows were closed and the outside shutters secured, then went up to his bedroom.
In the car parked on the hill road behind the house, Alberti nudged Rogan awake and pointed down the slope.