her voice further, Michaela added, ‘We recently had the most awful news about one of his colleagues … well, more of a close acquaintance, in the south of France.’
Ben winced sympathetically. ‘Illness?’
‘Suicide.’ Michaela only mouthed the unmentionable word, drawing a straight finger like a knife across her throat for emphasis.
Now Ben understood why Simeon looked so uncharacteristically gaunt. Before he could muster a reply, the vicar was returning from the drinks cabinet holding two generously filled whisky glasses. He pressed one into Ben’s hand and clinked his own against it.
‘Here’s to old friends,’ said Simeon Arundel. ‘Welcome to our home, Ben.’
Chapter Five
The snow was spiralling down out of the night sky and lying thickly on the private road that led to Wesley Holland’s sprawling country residence, the Whitworth Mansion, two miles from the shores of Lake Ontario. Anyone who followed the sixty-seven-year-old billionaire philanthropist’s exploits in the media might have been surprised to see him driving alone in a seven-year-old Chrysler, but the fact was that despite his almost uncountable wealth, Wesley Holland was a man of relatively modest tastes. Even in his youth, when he’d inherited his gigantic fortune from his father, he’d had relatively little truck with the conventional trappings of wealth; just as he had little to do with the modern world, of which he disapproved more with each passing year.
Yet every man has his weaknesses, and Wesley Holland’s weakness for over five decades, despite his pacifist tendencies and abhorrence of cruelty, had been his all-consuming passion for antique instruments of war, weaponry and armour. If it hadn’t been for the vast, unique collection his riches had allowed him to accumulate, he’d have had no need whatsoever for such an enormous house. He sometimes thought he’d be perfectly content living in a one-bedroom apartment. It was just him, after all, apart from the live-in staff and Moses, his old tortoiseshell cat.
Wesley parked the car in front of the mansion and stepped out to be greeted by two of his staff. His longtime personal assistant, Coleman Nash, sheltered him from the falling snow with an umbrella while the other, Hubert Clemm, who had served as Wesley’s butler for over twenty-five years, began unloading the luggage from the back of the Chrysler. Moses had had the good sense to stay indoors.
‘Careful with that one, Hubert,’ Wesley said, watching closely as Clemm unloaded the custom-made black fibreglass case from the car. Theoretically, it was indestructible, but he worried nonetheless. Anyone would, considering what was inside. The oblong box, just under four feet long and secured with steel locks, looked for all the world like the kind of case a serious classical guitarist would use to protect a cherished instrument in transit.
Except that Wesley Holland had never picked up a guitar in his life.
‘Did you have a good trip, Mr Holland?’ Coleman asked, leading his employer towards the house.
‘Thank you, Coleman. Actually, it could have gone better.’ Wesley was still feeling quite downcast from this latest encounter with yet another bunch of so-called experts unable to get their cynical, closed little minds around the incredible truth that was right there in front of them. This time it had been the history eggheads at the University of Buffalo. Wesley sometimes feared he was beginning to run out of options – though nothing could completely extinguish the excitement of knowing what he’d found. It was the genuine article and he shouldn’t give a damn what the academics thought. They’d wake up one day. He really believed that.
‘How have things been here?’ he asked Coleman. The billionaire trusted his assistant completely. Coleman watched over the mansion and grounds like a pit bull and even kept a monstrous .700 Nitro Express double-barrelled rifle in his room, ‘just in case’. Wesley had often chided him about ‘that damned elephant gun’.
‘Uneventful,’ Coleman told him as they walked into the hallway. Suits of medieval armour flanked the stairs. Originals, not reproductions – the same went for the displays of ancient weaponry that glittered against the panelling. ‘I’ve left the mail on your desk as usual,’ Coleman went on. ‘The curator of the Wallace Collection in London called three times while you were away.’
‘Was it about the Cromwell pieces?’
‘He didn’t say. I told him you’d contact him when you got back.’
‘I’ll do that. Oh, Hubert, you can take all the bags upstairs except the black case. Leave that one in the salon. I’ll put it away myself.’
‘Yes, Mr Holland.’
‘By the way,’ Coleman said, ‘Abigail prepared your favourite veal escalopes for dinner tonight.’
‘With cream?’ Wesley felt his mouth water. He’d been through innumerable cooks before he’d found Abigail. The woman was a gem. Nothing would cheer him up like a fine meal. He needed it. Quite aside from the disappointment in Buffalo, the revelations about Fabrice Lalique were still hanging over him like a pall. Wesley had been as shocked as anyone to learn of the priest’s paedophilia.
He left the black case with its precious cargo on the rug in the salon where Hubert had laid it carefully down, and trotted upstairs to his study, nimble and light on his feet for a man of his vintage. The study walls were lined with rich green velvet and displayed just a fractional part of his gleaming collection of ancient weaponry. He pointed a remote control at the sound system and the room filled with his favourite Soler sonata for harpsichord. The desk on which Coleman had neatly piled the mail had once belonged to General Robert E. Lee. There was no trace of a computer in the study, or, for that matter, anywhere in the house. The telephone was the only concession Wesley Holland allowed to be made to modern telecommunications technology under his roof, despite Coleman’s constant bitching about the disadvantages of having no internet connection or email access. As far as Wesley was concerned, if you wanted to write to someone, it ought to be the proper way: by hand, on paper, mailed in an envelope. He sealed his own handwritten letters with red wax. Okay, so he was a dinosaur. The dinosaurs had ruled the earth far longer than mankind ever would.
He spent a few minutes browsing through his mail – nothing especially interesting or pressing there – then looked at his watch. London would still be fast asleep at this time. Brian Cameron at the Wallace Collection had almost certainly been calling about the English Civil War-period armour pieces that the museum had been begging for months to have on loan. Holland wasn’t sure he could bring himself to part with them. His collections were his passion. He might phone the Englishman back in the morning, or he might let him stew a while before he made his decision.
One thing that wouldn’t wait was veal escalopes in cream sauce.
Wesley shut the study and made his way back downstairs. His stomach rumbled in anticipation of his late dinner as he crossed the marble-floored hallway towards the kitchen. He liked to eat his meals at the simple table there, rather than have Hubert go to the trouble of preparing the vaulted dining hall. As Wesley polished off the delicious meal, feeding tiny titbits to Moses under the table, Abigail would be pottering about the kitchen making his dessert. He enjoyed her company: more than he could have said for any of his four wives, each one more grasping and mercenary than her predecessor. Wesley had been fifty-seven when he’d divorced the last of them and sworn that was an end to it.
The kitchen door seemed to be jammed by some obstruction. ‘Abi?’ No reply. Wesley pushed harder and it opened a few inches. He could smell burning from inside. ‘Abi?’ he repeated.
At
