Carla Neggers - The Angel

“My wife and I are busy, Detective,” Jay Augustine said behind her. “We had no warning—we’re dealing with our shock as best we can. I could take the time to show you around, but I don’t see what point it would serve.”

At that point, neither did Abigail. Augustine ducked past her, and she and Bob followed him back out to the hall.

“What do you and your wife do now?” Bob asked.

Jay seemed surprised by the question. “Now? Oh, you mean with this house and Victor’s collections. He left a will, thank heaven. Charlotte is meeting with the attorney tomorrow.”

Bob bent over slightly and peered at a parade of statues of giraffes on a console. “Guess he collected giraffes, huh? Is your wife his sole next of kin?”

“Yes. Victor never married.”

“Did he keep good records of what he owned?”

“Not particularly.”

“He have anything a museum might want?”

Augustine inhaled through his nose, as if to rein in his impatience. “Potentially a considerable amount of what Victor collected would interest a museum—and Charlotte and me, too, if that’s what you’re going to ask next.”

Bob didn’t respond. Abigail knew he didn’t care if he was getting on Augustine’s nerves. “Did your brother-in-law spell out what he wanted done with his collections?”

“He left those decisions to my wife. To be quite frank, I’m saddened but not surprised that Victor died the way he did. He was very absentminded. He often lost track of where he was and what he was doing. You’re wasting your time, Detective Browning. I’m sure the citizens of Boston have more urgent things for you to do than to investigate an accidental drowning.”

“Again, I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.

“No, you’re not,” he snapped, walking briskly up the hall.

As they came to the foyer, Abigail noticed that the pocket doors to a room on her right had popped open a few inches. Just inside was a bronze statue with horns, bulging eyes and a forked tongue.

It was a five-foot-tall statue of the devil.

“Mind if we take a peek in here?” she asked mildly.

Jay regarded her impassively. “As you wish, Detective.”

Using two fingers, Bob slid open the pocket doors and gave a low whistle as he and Abigail entered the wood-paneled room. The devil statue was frightening, but it wasn’t alone. The walls and the furnishings—large oak library-style tables, smaller side tables, open and glass-fronted bookcases—were jam-packed with items that all appeared to involve, in some way, the devil.

“Ol’ Scratch lives,” Bob said.

“Victor was a gifted amateur scholar and independent thinker,” Jay Augustine said, not defensively.

Abigail noted a stack of books on a small table that all appeared to be about hell, damnation, devils or evil. “Where did he get this stuff?” she asked.

“Various places,” Jay said. “Victor was obsessive once he sunk his teeth into something. About three years go he developed an interest in evil, hell and the devil. He considered it no more unusual than someone else’s interest in goblins and trolls.”

“I like flowers myself,” Abigail said.

“Not everything in here is an original.” Jay nodded toward a disturbing painting on the front wall of naked men suffering in a fiery hell. “That Bosch, for instance, is a copy. You know Bosch, don’t you?”

“I don’t,” Bob said blandly.

“Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch painter in the Middle Ages known for his vivid depictions of hell and damnation. He had a fervent belief in the fundamental evil of man. In his world—depicted brilliantly in his work—man was redeemable only by faith in God.”

“Doesn’t look as if anyone got redeemed in this painting,” Abigail said.

“It’s called Hell. Appropriate, don’t you think? It’s one in a series of four paintings Bosch did in the late fifteenth century. The others are Ascent of the Blessed, Terrestrial Paradise and The Fall of the Damned.”

“Sounds as if you know something about this collection yourself,” Abigail said.

Augustine shrugged. “Charlotte and I saw the originals on a trip to Italy last summer. We helped Victor find a painter to do this copy.”

This obviously struck a nerve with Bob. “What for?”

“He wanted it.”

Bob moved closer to the painting. “Kind of looks like Mordor in the Lord of the Rings movies, doesn’t it? I haven’t read the books. My daughters have—I got through The Hobbit, and that was it for me.”

By habit and conviction, Abigail knew, he never used the names of any of his three daughters—Fiona, Madeleine and Jayne. At nineteen, Fiona was the eldest and more or less on her own, but Madeleine and Jayne were just fourteen and eleven. They lived with their mother in Lexington, close enough to visit their father regularly. They were good kids and got along with him, not always an easy task.

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