Donna Leon - The Jewels of Paradise

It was a bit more than an hour before they got there. Caterina was surprised that the three of them came together. She had foreseen the separate arrival of one, or each, of the cousins, whom she was sure would say he could be trusted to wait upstairs in the office for the others. Dottor Moretti must have imagined the same possibility and arranged to meet them somewhere else, or perhaps he had not told them why he wanted to see them, had merely told them it was imperative to meet. She found that she didn’t care any longer which it was or what he had done.

Stievani looked eager; Scapinelli looked unwell, like a man who had had bad news and feared hearing worse—perhaps his son had called him; she hoped so. Dottor Moretti looked the same as ever, even to the gloss on his shoes and the all but invisible striping in his dark blue suit. He nodded at Roseanna and smiled amiably at Caterina. He was indeed a prudent man.

They all shook hands, but before Caterina could say a word, Scapinelli said, “Let’s go upstairs.”

So Moretti had told them, Caterina realized. Saying nothing, she led the way up the stairs and down the corridor to the director’s office. She went in first, Moretti followed, then the cousins, and then Roseanna.

They all remained by the door, though it was clear that the attention of the men was directed across the room, as if on laser beams, to the open trunk that stood to the left of the cupboard. None of them, however, moved toward it, as though they all needed the support of the others to break the spell that had fallen upon them.

Caterina decided the time of politesse was ended. “Would you like to see the document?” she asked, not bothering to direct the question at any one of them in particular.

Like men released from an enchantment, they started toward the trunk at the same instant, only to draw up short of it, as if again zapped by some magic force. Caterina walked through them, the maga who had the power to unravel the secret signs. She picked up the document from where she had left it on top of the open trunk and held it out to Dottor Moretti.

He took it eagerly, and the cousins crowded to his side, looking down at the paper. Stievani tried to move Moretti’s arm higher, as if to bring the paper closer to his own eyes, and Scapinelli took out a plastic box and extracted a pair of reading glasses.

As she watched, Moretti’s lips began to move, as Italians’ often did when they read. After only a few seconds, he moved his right shoulder in a gesture that reminded Caterina of the way a chicken fluffed out a wing to win it more space. Stievani moved a half step away, and Scapinelli used the opportunity to move even closer.

Moretti, unable to disguise his exasperation, handed the paper to Caterina and said, “Perhaps it would be better if you read it, Dottoressa.” He had slipped back into the formal lei, which suited her just fine.

She took the paper from him, saw the way the four cousin eyes followed it hungrily. And these men believed that the other would abide by their agreement to let the winner take all?

“‘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.’” After reading that, Caterina looked at the three men to see how they’d take to the idea of God’s being mixed up in this. The cousins seemed uninterested; Moretti now resembled a hunting dog that had heard the first call of his master’s voice.

“‘My life has been devoted to service, to both my temporal and my Divine masters, and I have tried to give them my loyalty in all my endeavors. I have also served my other master, Music, though with less attention and less loyalty.

“‘I have sought, and squandered, worldly gain, and I have done things no man can be proud of. But no man can be proud of the act that set me on my path in life.

“‘I leave little behind me save my music, and these treasures, which are of much greater value than any notes of music that could be written or imagined. I leave the music to the air and the treasures . . .’” Here Caterina looked up from the paper and studied the faces of the men in thrall to her voice.

She did not like what she saw and returned to the page. “‘. . . and the treasures I leave to my cousins, Giacomo Antonio Stievani and Antonio Scapinelli, in equal portions.

“‘To eliminate all suspicions about my having accumulated such wealth as to allow me to purchase these Jewels,’” he wrote, and Caterina wondered if he had capitalized the word while writing in Italian because of the Germanic influence on his language for all those decades, and he automatically capitalized all nouns, “‘I declare that the money was given to me by a friend who became a Judas, not only to me but to an innocent man. Judas-like, he regretted his betrayal and came to me to be shriven of his sin, forgetting that to forgive sins is not in my power, as it was not in his.’”

She looked at Roseanna, then at the men, and saw the same confusion on her face and on Stievani’s and Scapinelli’s. Moretti, however, seemed to be following everything, the bastard.

“‘The money came to me at his death, and I could think of no finer, no nobler, use for it than to purchase the Jewels of Paradise, which I leave here to the edification and enrichment of my dear cousins in just return for the generosity with which they have treated me.’”

There followed the signature and the date, and that was all.

“So they’re ours?” Scapinelli asked when it was evident that Caterina had finished reading the document. He took a step toward the trunk and leaned over to look inside. His cousin moved quickly to stand beside him. Had the clear disposition of the will put an end to the idea that winner would take all?

To Caterina, it seemed like the moment of stupor in a Rossini opera, just before the ensemble that brought the act to a rousing finale. Would their voices join in one by one? What duets would be formed? Tercets? Would she sing a duet with Roseanna? She scorned the tenor.

“Dottoressa,” Moretti said, who also had moved to the side of the trunk, “I think it would be right for you to see to opening these bags.”

There was a long silence while the cousins considered the statement. Stievani nodded, and Scapinelli said, very reluctantly, “ Va bene .”

Caterina walked over to the desk and set the document, facedown, on the surface, then went back to the trunk. She leaned inside and, two by two, carried the bags over and placed them at the other end of the table.

“You’re sure you want me to open them, Dottore?” she asked Moretti, also using the formal lei . The three men had another silent conference, and when no objection was proposed she picked up the first bag. The leather was dry and hard, unpleasant to her hand. With some difficulty Caterina untied the stiff knot that held the leather strings together and used the backs of her fingers to pry open the mouth of the bag.

She was suddenly overwhelmed by a reluctance to know what was in the bag and an even stronger repugnance to touch whatever it was. She handed the bag to Moretti. He reached inside, and his fingers delicately removed a slip of paper with a few words written on it in faded ink. He looked at the paper and, gasping, stood rooted to the spot.

Scapinelli, immune to presentiments or surprise, grabbed the bag from him and stuffed his fingers inside. A second later his fingers emerged holding a long, thin sliver that Caterina at first thought might be a decorative silver pin of some sort, tarnished with age.

Scapinelli put it into the palm of his other hand and studied it. “What the hell is this?” he demanded, quite as if everyone else in the room were agreed to keep the information from him.