Robert Barnard: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 805 & 806, September/October 2008

“You’re one to talk,” snapped Sabra Lyle, the athletic swimmer who had dived into the pool as Sigrid was leaving it.

To Sigrid’s surprise, the man behind her was Taylor Williams, an old friend of her mother’s and a professional photographer who had published several well-received coffee-table books on lesser-known artists.

“Sigrid!” he exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing here? How’s your mom? Adjusting to married life nicely, I hope?”

Before they could begin to catch up, Hugh offered a tour of the apartment. Part of Montefugoni’s charm was that no two apartments were alike. Some had frescoed walls, others had allegorical pictures on the ceiling. Some windows opened onto the rather plain courtyard, others overlooked the hills. The first bedroom was Hugh’s, a beautiful large space with a good view. After all that Barbara and Alexa had told her, Sigrid was not surprised to see that the bedroom with only one window and no view belonged to Darryl, who confessed that he hadn’t noticed any mosquitoes on that side. (“They never bite me, anyhow.”) Two steps up from the common room was a smaller sitting area where more steps led to a locked wooden door, behind which were the Severini frescoes that Elliott was to lecture on tomorrow morning.

“They’re marvelous!” Hugh pronounced with proprietary pride, as if he had been extra clever in getting this particular apartment.

Jim Olson frowned. “You’ve already seen them?”

“Of course! I persuaded the girl at the reception desk to unlock them this afternoon and let me peek in. The colors are as fresh as if they’d been painted yesterday instead of in the ’thirties.”

“ ’Twenties,” Olson said, annoyed that Jensen had jumped the gun on the rest of the group. “They were painted in the nineteen-twenties.”

“Whenever.” He dismissed the correction with a wave of his pudgy fingers. “Is it show-and-tell time?”

The others followed him out to the table in the common room and began to unwrap their packages. Several had shopped for masks at the last minute before leaving Venice and this was their first chance to share and compare.

Gene Gallins unwrapped a glistening beauty, a colorful jester with little golden bells that tinkled when he laid it on the table.

Sabra Lyle’s mask was a large leaf enameled in full autumn colors and highlighted with touches of bronze and gold. “I bought these, too,” she said, laying three more leaf masks beside the first one. They were identical in shape, but had been left unpainted. “They’ll be perfect for my office!”

“Sabra’s a landscape designer,” Jim told the two newcomers. “She did the gardens at Wexton Grove.”

Sigrid smiled politely, having no idea where or what Wexton Grove was; but Elliott looked impressed. Sabra Lyle’s suntanned face and sturdy limbs suggested a hands-on gardener, a woman who hefted bags of peat moss or dug up rocks and did whatever else went into designing a garden.

“I’ll find someone to paint them for the other three seasons,” she said.

“Maybe Gallins can do that for you, too,” Hugh Jensen suggested with a knowing leer.

Sabra ignored him, but Sigrid saw Gene Gallins’s face darken briefly.

Hastily, Alexa said, “What’s yours, Darryl?”

“A zanni .” The comical half-mask began with a harlequin’s checkerboard forehead and cheeks and ended in a long pointed nose that stuck straight out at least eight inches. Darryl gave his cousin a sidelong grin full of mischief. “In the classical Commedia dell’arte, he’s the clown that plays tricks on the main clown.”

“How on earth will you get it home without breaking that nose?” someone asked.

“There’s a shipping service in Florence,” said Olson. “They’ll wrap and pack and guarantee safe delivery.”

“Mine will need extra insurance,” Hugh bragged, setting a canvas tote bag on the table. When he reached inside, though, he came up with only a handful of empty bubble wrap. He turned to his cousin in puzzlement. “Darryl? Did you do something with my mask?”

“Nope. Where did you leave it?”

“In my room.” He turned wrathfully to Jim Olson. “Dammit, Jim! You said it was safe to leave the doors unlocked and now it’s gone! My three-hundred euro gilded devil mask.”

“How appropriate,” Alexa murmured in Sigrid’s ear.

“I demand that you question all the maids.”

“There aren’t any maids,” Olson reminded him. “Everything’s self-service, remember? No maids or bellmen wandering through the stairwells and halls. Besides, the office closed at six-thirty.”

“Then all the rooms must be searched at once.”

Jaws began to tighten as the others realized he was accusing one of them of theft.

“Calm down, Hugh,” Olson said. “Maybe you left it on the van. We’ll check when we go to dinner.”

Although Jensen continued to grumble, conversation became more general and Taylor Williams cornered Sigrid to talk about his latest project. She rather liked the man, but he did tend to go on and on. Just as she was beginning to wonder if she could catch Elliott’s eye and signal the need for rescue, Jim Olson stood and tapped his watch. “Time to go, people. Our dinner reservation’s for seven. If you want me to ship your masks, leave them here and I’ll pick them up tomorrow. Okay, Darryl?”

“Fine with me.” He looked at Hugh, who shrugged and said, “We’ll leave the door unlocked, but we’re not responsible if anything else goes missing.”

As everyone drifted toward the stairs, Olson told Buntrock, “Sorry I can’t invite you to join us, but we had to reserve three weeks ago.”

“That’s okay. We’re dining here. We heard that the castle chef cooks a mean risotto con tartufi.”

This was news to Sigrid, but welcome news. After so much chitchat, she was glad to skip an elaborate dinner with the others.

“But stop in for a nightcap later,” Buntrock said. “I’ve picked up a nice Brunello.”

It was ten-thirty before Olson tapped at their half-open door. Sigrid glanced up from the book she was reading and Elliott immediately got up to uncork the wine.

“Sorry to be so late,” said Olson, “but I had to find some sleeping pills for Hugh and persuade Alexa to share some of her Off with him. Maybe if he gets a good night’s sleep, he’ll be in a better mood.”

“I take it his mask wasn’t in the van?” Elliott said sympathetically.

Olson shook his head. “If I’d known he was such a bastard to travel with, I would never have let him come on this trip, but Darryl asked and it never occurred to me that two cousins could be so different.”

As Elliott poured their wine, Sigrid said, “What do they do for a living?”

“Nothing: They were trust-fund kids. Their grandmother Nancy was a Reedy before she married their grandfather.”

“Reedy?” Elliott’s head swung around to peer at him like a curious stork. “As in the Reedy Foundation? Or the Corbett Reedy Investment Group?”

“Corbett Reedy was her father, yes. Even after she set up the Reedy Foundation, there was still enough money to leave her grandsons very generous trust funds. Darryl collects prints and Hugh sits on the boards of various art-related institutions.”

He took a deep swallow of wine. “You know how that works, Elliott. Being a director gives any little prick like Jensen the power to step on a lot of toes. Take Gene Gallins. Granted he’s not another Grant Wood or Andrew Wyeth, but he has talent and he has taste. Yet he didn’t get a show at one of the museums in our area because Hugh convinced them that Gene’s nothing more than a Sunday painter.”

“Gene Gallins and Sabra Lyle,” Sigrid said. “Are they sleeping together?”