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He opens the box and takes a bite of the third cake. It will be three hours before his stomach starts to cramp unbearably and the vomiting and diarrhea begin. When he is completely dehydrated and his consciousness is failing, he will be admitted to a hospital in Rome under the care of a physician who will never think to test for thallium. If he had, he would have prescribed doses of activated charcoal and Prussian blue to stop the cramping and hair loss. But since he does not, the bishop will grow progressively sicker for three weeks, until his heart gives out and he dies. The press release, phoned in from a source that is not the Vatican, will list the cause of death as pancreatic cancer. The doctor who treats him understands the meaning of the mysterious deposit into his bank account. He simply signs the death certificate and asks no questions. He never corrects the press release, and neither does the Vatican. It will be another two years before the collapse of an Italian bank reveals the extent of the corruption within the finances of the Holy See, and whispers of money laundering will continue for decades to come. But a certain bishop’s scheme to sell arms to a brutal Southeast Asian regime under the cover of missionary supplies will end, and an energized rebellion will succeed in establishing a fledgling democracy for the first time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It took the better part of the first day to get Benscombe in fit state for habitation. It was grim to see what had become of the place. The gardens were a tangled mess, the house was so damp that wallpaper was falling off in sheets, and the less said about the plumbing the better. We stowed our gear in the house, divvying up the smaller bedrooms upstairs. Nobody even suggested taking Constance Halliday’s room. The pill bottles from her last illness were still on the bedside table along with the book she’d been reading when she died—Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales. We doubled up in the smaller bedrooms, brushing aside the worst of the cobwebs and throwing open the windows to the cold winter air.
After Minka and Akiko arrived, we made a trip into Poole to Marks & Spencer, Boots, and half a dozen other places to get supplies to make the house livable. Food, firewood, wine, office supplies, extra sweaters and socks—we piled the back ofthe cars as full as we dared. We swept the dead beetles and mummified mice out of the kitchen and mopped the floor until our feet stopped sticking to it. Helen had unearthed a few rolls of clearance holiday wrapping paper in the back of a pound store and we thumbtacked long sheets of it over the crumbling wallpaper, giving us a clean surface to write on. Natalie heated up the chicken and leek pies we’d bought while Mary Alice made a salad, and the six of us ate, more to fuel ourselves than out of any real enjoyment. After Minka headed off to play a video game and Akiko went upstairs with Kevin—still hungover from his travel tranquilizers—Helen opened a set of markers also from the pound store. They were Barbie knock-offs in violent, sparkling rainbow shades. She made neat lists under each of our names detailing what we were responsible for researching or securing, reading aloud as she wrote.
“Akiko and Minka, maintaining home base and comms,” she said, ticking offhome base and commsfrom the list. Nat and Mary Alice scooped ice cream for our dessert.
“Are you writing things down just to check them off?” I asked.
She shrugged. “We can’t leave anything to chance. Besides, it makes me feel productive to cross things off. After Kenneth died, there were days I wroteget out of bedin my planner just to be able to feel like I’d accomplished something.”
She stepped back and we surveyed her work. Mary Alice and Nat left the ice cream and came to join us. The entire plan was there in shimmering hot pink ink.
“It looks like a My Little Pony murder plot,” Mary Alice said. “Jesus, is thatglitter?”
“I like it,” Natalie said loyally.
“I find it hard to take us seriously as agents of vengeance when our plan looks like a kindergarten craft project.”
Helen capped the marker and held it out. “If you would like to take over, Mary Alice, be my guest,” she said.
“We’re tired and jet-lagged,” I said, taking the marker from Helen. “We’re going to sit and eat ice cream and drink wine and see if we can find any holes in this,” I said, pointing to the notes under Günther Paar’s name. It was thick with detail, while the section under the headingthierry carapazwas less comprehensive. Under Vance Gilchrist’s name there was a wide expanse of white.
“What’s that?” Mary Alice asked, peering at the emptiness.
“That blank space represents what we don’t know yet. We’ll get there.”
The ice cream helped settle everybody’s mood, but the wine did the heavy lifting. By the time we’d finished off two bottles of extremely bad Rioja, we were feeling much chummier.
“God, this wine is terrible,” Helen said, pouring out the last of it. She upended the bottle, looking for any stray drops.
“It’s getting the job done,” I told her.
Natalie took the bottle and looked at the label. “Monos Muertos. What does that mean?”
“Dead Monkeys,” I answered, pushing my glass away. “We’ve been drinking dead monkey wine.”
Natalie shrieked and dropped the bottle.
“It’s notmadefrom dead monkeys,” Mary Alice said. “It’s a marketing gimmick.”
“It’s nasty,” Natalie answered.
“Not as nasty as that bathroom upstairs,” I said. “We’ll need to get that sorted out so we can at least shower without worrying about tetanus or Lyme or rabies.”
“None of which they have in the British Isles,” Helen said. She sighed. “I know the house is a shambles and it’s freezing and I’m ninety percent sure there’s a dead rat under my bed upstairs, but I am still glad we came back. I’ve missed this place.”
We looked around the kitchen. When Natalie had been looking for plates, she’d found a stash of jam jars and stuck candles in a dozen of them. She’d clustered them on the mantelpiece, next to an aggressively ugly cuckoo clock, a china shepherdess with most of her fingers broken off so she was flipping the bird, and a basket of dingy wool balls stuck with a pair of vicious-looking knitting needles. But the candlelight had softened the cracked walls and the dirty windows and the fire Mary Alice had kindled in the fireplace had warmed the room and made it seem almost cozy.
Draining the last of her wine, Helen grabbed a fresh marker from the pack—a juicy green that smelled like watermelon—and went back to the wall.problems, she lettered neatly.
We worked through the night, going over the plan and back again. Günther, blessedly, was a creature of habit. He always did a post-holiday detox at his favorite health spa. A few clicks around their website and we had all the information we needed, including a map of the property and asmiling photo of the spa staff in plain black scrubs—austere and businesslike.
By the time dawn worked its grey light through the kitchen windows, we were finished. The details had been plotted out on the murder wall, as Natalie had taken to calling it. We stepped back and surveyed it, plugging various holes and running the plan backwards and forwards until it was smooth as butter in a Texas summer.
“Holy shit,” Mary Alice said, eyes skimming the wall. “I think it’s going to work.”
