Donna Leon - The Jewels of Paradise

As she did that, she saw the floor of the trunk begin to move upward. It rose steadily until the knife handle met the wall. The bottom had come loose in the corner, and she managed to slip her fingernails, and then her fingers, under it. Slowly, she pulled at it until, as easily as if she were opening a box of cigars, the entire bottom panel slid up. As it reached the top of the trunk, they could both see that the board was slightly beveled on all four sides. This would allow it to slip down easily and fit tightly into place. It could be pried up only by inserting a narrow, curved point into the hole in the side.

Caterina took the bottom, which was surprisingly thin—barely half a centimeter—from the trunk and leaned it against the wall. Both of the women leaned into the trunk, and Roseanna shined her light on the bottom.

They saw a piece of thick-woven cloth, perhaps a towel or something used to cover a small table. Linen, unstained with age, it rested on the bottom. Caterina reached inside with both hands, took it at two corners, and peeled it back. Below it, resting in what seemed to be a thick nest of the same cloth, were six flat leather bags, the old-fashioned type with drawstring tops. Each was about the size of a human hand. A piece of paper lay atop them.

Caterina, her scholar’s habits asserting themselves, picked it up with both hands and lifted it carefully from the trunk. Still kneeling, she rested it on the angle of the top of the trunk to examine it.

She recognized the back-leaning handwriting. “Knowing my death to be near, I, Bishop Agostino Steffani, set pen to paper to make disposition of my possessions in a manner just and fitting in the eyes of God.”

She tore her eyes from the text and looked to the bottom. The document was dated 1 February 1728, less than two weeks before his death.

“What is it?” Roseanna demanded.

“Steffani’s will.”

“ODDIO,” ROSEANNA SAID. “AFTER ALL THIS TIME.”

Caterina hadn’t looked at the document closely, but she had noticed no witness signatures, though their presence or absence was rendered moot by the passing of three centuries. She looked across at the other woman. “I think we have to call them.”

“Who?”

“Dottor Moretti and the cousins,” Caterina answered.

“Call Dottor Moretti first,” Roseanna said, then added, “Unless he’s here, there’s no way to control them when they see those bags.”

Roseanna was right, and Caterina knew it. She had his number in her phone, and she dialed it. “Ah, Caterina,” he said by way of salutation. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

She worked at keeping her voice friendly. “I’ve found something I think you and the cousins should see.”

“What is that?”

“I’ve found a statement of testamentary dispositions,” she couldn’t stop herself from saying.

“Steffani’s?” he asked, voice alert and louder than it had been.

“Yes,” she said, then added, “and something else.”

“Tell me.”

“There was a false bottom in the second trunk, and there were six leather bags hidden there. Along with the paper, signed by him.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve seen other documents he wrote, and the handwriting looks the same.”

“Have you called the cousins?”

“No, we thought that should be left to you.”

“We?”

“Signora Salvi was with me when I found them.”

“I thought you said you needed to be alone when you read the papers.” An edge had come into his voice, one she had not heard before.

“I asked her to help me move the trunks.”

“You should have asked me,” he said, and she heard how hard he had to work to keep his voice level.

“I didn’t know what I was going to find,” she said calmly. “If I had known, I surely would have called.”

She let the silence after that grow for a while before she said, “Could you call them? And come here?”

“Certainly. I’ll do it now.” He paused and then added, voice very calm, “I’d prefer you not to look in the bags you said you found.”

“I was hired to read papers, not look in bags,” she answered. She wondered if he heard the snap.

“I’ll call them and call you back,” he said.

When Caterina switched off her phone, Roseanna said, sounding surprised “You didn’t sound very friendly.”

“Dottor Moretti is only my employer.”

“I thought the cousins were.”

“Well, he’s working for them, and they’ve asked him to oversee my work, so in that sense he’s my employer.”

Roseanna started to speak, stopped, then began again. “I’m not so sure he is,” she finally said.

“Not sure who is what?” Caterina asked.

“That he’s your employer, or even what he’s up to,” Roseanna said.

“How else could he be involved?”

Roseanna shrugged. “I have no idea, but I heard them talking in the corridor outside my office the day the trunks were delivered.”

“All three of them?”

“Excuse me?”

“Was it all three of them you heard talking?”

“No, only the cousins.”

“Talking about what?”

“They insisted on coming, the cousins. From what I could understand of what they said when we were upstairs, he had already convinced them to hire a researcher.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because that was the justification they used to be present when the trunks came. They said they wanted to see if there was enough room for the researcher to work in.” Roseanna gave an angry huff. “As if they cared a fig about that, or would even know how much room a person would need. Or what a researcher is.” Freed of her anger at the cousins, Roseanna said more calmly, “At any rate, that’s the excuse they gave for coming. But I don’t believe it for an instant.”

“Then why do you think they came?”

“To look at the trunks, maybe even to touch them, the way people do with magic things, or the way they look in the newspaper every day to see what their stocks are worth.”

Failing to stifle her impatience, Caterina said, “What did you hear them say?”

Roseanna bowed her head and pulled her lips together, as if to acknowledge her own long-windedness. “They were leaving, all three of them, but Dottor Moretti had trouble with the lock to the door to the stairs, and the two of them came past my office while he was still back there.” She waited after she said this, but Caterina did not prod.

“Stievani said something about not liking Dottor Moretti, and the other one said something like it wasn’t every day people got a lawyer like Dottor Moretti, and they should be glad that he was sent to them.”

“What does that mean?”

Shrug-smile. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure that’s exactly what they said. They were walking past the door, and I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Caterina wondered who would send Dottor Moretti to work for the cousins? It would be child’s play to persuade the cousins to accept the services of a lawyer; if an undertaker offered them his services, they’d probably commit suicide to be able to make use of the free offer.

Her phone rang. It was Dottor Moretti, saying he had contacted both cousins and that they would be there in an hour. She thanked him, hung up, and relayed the message to Roseanna.

“Time for a coffee, I’d say,” Roseanna declared.

“I think we can leave it,” Caterina said, waving a hand around the room and recalling the time she had failed to close up the papers and lock the room.

“ Va a remengo, questo ,” Roseanna said, consigning the trunks and the papers to hell or unimportance, or both. They went and had a coffee, and when they returned, they waited in Roseanna’s office for the three men to arrive.