“And this was faithfully carried out last night?”
“It was.”
“So when were the jewels discovered missing?”
“About mid-morning,” replied Glenbuchat.
“In what circumstances?”
It was the Cardinal who answered.
“I arose early and Iain helped me to dress so that I could go to the church to attend the early morning Angelus and mass. As I left my chamber, I locked the door behind me, as was my custom. When I returned I opened the chamber door so that Iain could clean my bedchamber and prepare the bed.”
“You were in the chamber when this was being done?”
The Cardinal shook his head.
“I was sitting here with Lord Glenbuchat on matters of business. I dictated some letters, for his lordship acts in the position of my secretary as well as chancellor.” The old man smiled wanly. “Thus have the Kings of England and Scotland in exile fallen on hard times.”
“It was the secret report from our agent which prompted me to open the safe,” added Glenbuchat. “I saw the jewellery box was gone. We questioned the household first. His Majesty was reluctant to send for outside assistance in case the news was spread abroad. But I hope we have your assurance of discretion.”
If it was an implied question, Volpe chose to ignore it.
“So, what you are saying is that the theft must have occurred in the hours when His Eminence left the bedchamber and went to attend early morning mass and the time when he returned to this apartment, there being no other opportunity for anyone to enter the chamber and remove the jewels?”
Glenbuchat shrugged helplessly.
“It would seem so. But His Majesty had taken both keys. Iain was here, as was I, awaiting the return of His Majesty. O’Sullivan had accompanied His Majesty to the mass as bodyguard. So we would have surely heard if anyone had forced an entry and remember that there were no signs of a forced entry.”
“No, whoever took the jewels had a key,” agreed Volpe.
“And we have been assured that there was no other key. Neither key to the safe nor to the bedchamber.”
“With your permission, Eminence, I would like a word with your servant, Iain, and also with Colonel O’Sullivan,” Volpe said rising.
“They can tell you nothing more than what my lord Glenbuchat and myself have furnished you with,” the old Cardinal pointed out.
Volpe smiled softly.
“In such an investigation as this, Eminence, it is always best to confirm things at first hand. A word here, a gesture there, may tell one far more… And, with your permission, I would like to see them alone, in their own quarters.”
He questioned the manservant Iain, a lad whose great-grandfather had come from Scotland to serve the House of Stuart, but whose connection with that country was solely his name. He was a young, excitable man with a Roman accent and a fast way of speaking, uttering half a dozen words in one breath, pausing and uttering half a dozen more. To Volpe, he seemed rather naïve. At first, Volpe thought he might be somewhat simple but then realized it was due to the youth’s unworldly attitude. He confirmed everything that the Cardinal and Glenbuchat had said. During the morning he had not stirred outside the apartments, as his task was to clean and maintain them for the Cardinal’s entire household. He was in and out of the main chamber, where the Marquess of Glenbuchat was working on some papers, within sight of the locked bedchamber door, until the return of Cardinal York and Colonel O’Sullivan.
Count Volpe then went to see Colonel O’Sullivan.
O’Sullivan was a tall man with a mane of golden-red hair, flushed fair features and a ready smile. Unlike the others of the Cardinal’s household who were descended from exiles, O’Sullivan was an Irishman born but had spent ten years in Dillon’s Regiment of the Irish Brigade in French service until the French Revolution had caused the Brigade to be disbanded in 1792. Too many Irish families, in service with the Irish Brigade of France, had risen to be ennobled in the French aristocracy. The new National Assembly of the French Republic did not trust the loyalty of the Irish regiments as many of their commanders had declared themselves as royalists.
Colonel O’Sullivan had made for Rome and offered his service to the Stuart household. He was too bombastic for Volpe’s liking. A man quick to temper and equally quick to humour. He was of too ephemeral a nature.
Volpe interviewed him in the colonel’s small, rudely furnished bedchamber in which there was room for scarcely anything other than a camp bed, a canvas campaign chair and a travelling chest. Volpe perched himself on the chest and motioned the big man to be seated. O’Sullivan dropped to the bed with a grin.
“Well, it seems as if this is the last throw of the dice for the Stuarts. After this I scarce imagine His so-called Majesty will be able to employ the likes of me.”
Volpe’s brows drew together. There seemed a certain amount of disrespect in O’Sullivan’s tone for one whom, so Volpe presumed, he regarded as his rightful king.
Catching sight of his expression, O’Sullivan slapped his hand on his knee and let out a laugh.
“Lord bless you, but I am a pragmatist. Sure, the Stuarts have provided me with an income after the French disbanded my regiment. But I am not the fool to forget that they never did my poor benighted country any good. Wasn’t it the Stuart king who sent the English and Scottish colonists pouring into Ireland and driving the likes of me to their deaths by the thousands? Thousands more of us had to escape to France, Spain or Austria. I serve the money, not the man.”
Volpe’s eyes widened.
“You are either an honest fellow or a fool,” he observed. “You have just provided me with a reason why I should suspect you of this theft.”
O’Sullivan grinned.
“You are at liberty to search my room. What you see is all I have. But as for stealing these jewels… why, I might have done had I known of their whereabouts. I didn’t know until this morning of the cunning hiding hole in the wall. Then that plumped-up jackanapes, Glenbuchat, started his ranting and raving. The old man was a closed mouth. As for Iain, God help him, he knows his station and will not depart from it. If he had found the Crown Jewels in a dark alley he would have come obediently to his master and handed them over without thought of recompense.”
“Are you saying that you did not know of their existence?”
“Sure, my Italian is not fluent but I think I made myself clear,” chided the other. “I knew of their existence. I knew the Cardinal had them but I did not know where he had hid them until this morning when I was told they had gone.”
“So you were told after you returned with His… His Eminence from mass this morning?”
“Lord, but you are a sharp one,” chuckled the big man.
“And during the preceding night you and Iain, the servant, took turns to stay outside the door of the Cardinal’s bedchamber.”
“That we did. The Cardinal returned to bed early, so Iain took the early part of the evening. I took my turn on watch when it lacked an hour until midnight. I did a four hour watch and then Iain relieved me and, of course, his watch was relatively short being but two hours before he had to rouse the old… the Cardinal to get him up for the Angelus and Mass.”
“And you were not disturbed during this time?”
“Not I. No, I had a candle and good reading to occupy me. A countryman had sent me Mister Tone’s Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland… a fascinating little book the like of which I wish I had come across sooner. It put me in mind of returning home and offering my sword arm to these United Irishmen to strike for the liberty of my own country. I’d be better occupied than with a lost cause like…”
He nodded towards the door.
“Nevertheless, you are paid to be a bodyguard to His Eminence,” pointed out Volpe.