The Shores of Spain (7 page)

With the limited number of guards they’d brought, they’d known they would be stretched thin. Oriana shook her head. “It probably doesn’t matter, Lieutenant. Why would the thief not just go back out the way he came?”

Duilio had crossed to the open desk and now stood holding a small piece of metal between his thumb and index finger. “They broke the lock using a knife, but a piece of the blade snapped off. I’m sorry, Oriana, your mother’s journal is gone, along with the book I was reading and my personal journal. It wasn’t Costa who did this, Captain.”

“How do you know?” the captain asked stiffly.

“If you walk carefully around the edge of the room, you’ll see,” Duilio said.

The captain’s eyes narrowed as she plotted a way around the room where she wouldn’t mar the pollen. Oriana followed, trying to step only where the captain did. They stopped at one side of Duilio’s desk and followed his pointing finger.

The thief had been insufficiently cautious in the unlit room and misplaced one foot. There on the stone floor was a single yellow-stained footprint, one far too small to be Costa’s.

Duilio made a scoffing sound and shook his head. “We were robbed by a child.”

*   *   *

D
uilio pinched the bridge of his nose as Lieutenant Benites escorted the last of the servants away. They’d adopted this front courtyard as their temporary chancery, a place for local trade representatives and the occasional Portuguese ship captain to visit with them, something humans couldn’t do on Quitos. The afternoon sun in the courtyard warmed his bare shoulders. The splashing of the central fountain, normally soothing, served only to remind him that time was passing and the trail was already growing cold.

He set his papers aside, rose from the chair he’d occupied for the
last few hours, and swung his arms about before striding quickly to one archway and back to the other. Oriana watched him with sympathetic eyes.

She’d done exceptionally well, for the most part asking the questions he would have. He’d written out everything he wanted followed up, and she or Lieutenant Benites could interview those servants again later. It was frustrating, knowing what he wanted to ask, yet not able to question the women himself. Such a break in custom would signal panic, so he’d complied with the rules and held his tongue.

Lieutenant Benites returned to the courtyard then, her eyes darting between Oriana and him before settling on Oriana. “Madam, that’s the last of them. And Captain Vas Neves has just returned with Lady Monteiro.”

Oriana’s grandmother had taken the captain to talk to some of her neighbors on the beach, hoping to determine whether they’d seen anything unusual. Duilio leaned back against the table he’d been using and crossed his ankles, bangles shifting against each other. He didn’t want to sit again for a time, not now that he no longer had to play secretary.

No one had seen Lieutenant Costa since he left his duty post that morning. They’d searched the house top to bottom looking for the missing journal, but also hunting him. The lieutenant hadn’t slept in his bed, and his bag and remaining clothes were still in his quarters. How Costa was involved in the theft, Duilio was unsure, but logic insisted that the man’s disappearance
had
to be related. His gift, however, was ambiguous when Duilio asked about Costa’s guilt, as if the man were involved, but unwittingly. For now they’d left all mention of him out of the discussions with the other guards, hoping they could smooth over his absence when they found him. Only Vas Neves and Benites knew for certain that the lieutenant had abandoned his post.

“It seems clear that the child was in the embassy’s luggage,” Duilio said. Someone had rifled through Costa’s bag, removing most of his garments. That last servant they’d questioned had carried it to Costa’s room, but claimed it was very light when she picked it up, despite being a comparatively large bag. Yet the other servant who helped with the unloading—she’d carried the bag from the wagon into the entry hallway of the house—had thought it heavy for its size.

“I agree, sir,” Benites said. “Since no one has found Costa’s missing uniform pieces, it’s unlikely they were removed from the bag in this house.”

“The only time the embassy’s baggage was out of your sight was while you were on the ferry,” Oriana said. “Is that right?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Then couldn’t his baggage have been emptied there?”

Benites stood at ease, her hands folded behind her back. “We were assured by the ferry’s captain that no one was allowed in the hold once the ferry was under way, madam, so I don’t think that’s the case. I also went down into the hold to watch the porters carry up the bags. I didn’t notice any loose uniform pieces lying around.”

Duilio had an idea about that. “I think someone else carried Costa’s clothes away in
their
luggage.”

Oriana’s brows drew together. “So they went into the hold, took out some of Costa’s clothes, and the child climbed into his luggage? Wouldn’t someone have noticed that if the hold was supposed to be closed?”

“I suspect the child was
in
another passenger’s luggage to begin with. When the hold was closed he climbed out, picked a piece of embassy baggage—the largest, which was Costa’s—emptied out some of the clothes, and placed them in his original hiding place.”

“That means the child had an accomplice,” Oriana said.

“Who would have been a passenger on the ferry with the advance guard,” Benites added.

“Yes, or one of the crew,” Duilio said. “It would help if we could question the crew of the ferry to see if any of them noticed anything.”

Oriana crossed her arms over her chest. “It should be back to Quitos by this time of day. We can try tomorrow.”

That was the best he could hope for. “Could we see the hallway where the bags were left? Then I’d like to look at Costa’s bag.”

“I’ll take you there, sir,” Benites said.

They followed the lieutenant out of the sunny courtyard and along the white-plastered hallways of the house. Small tapestries hung at intervals, most depicting scenes of a hunt, old enough to show bows and arrows rather than guns. Not too different from other fine tapestries he’d seen, save that the colors were brighter and, of course, the hunters were sereia—females in pursuit rather than males. At the intersection between the front half of the house and the back half, Oriana caught the eye of a passing servant and asked her to fetch the luggage in question from Costa’s quarters. Then they proceeded to the wide entryway of the house with its stone flags. A heavy bronze lamp hung from a chain above their heads, but a rectangular stained-glass window above the dark doors let in enough light that the lamp wasn’t needed during daylight hours. Benites opened a door to one side, letting them into a large anteroom that was bare save for a series of shelves that wrapped around its sides.

“So the servants carried the baggage in here first,” Duilio said, “and then later to the appropriate rooms?”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said.

“And how long did the luggage sit here?”

Benites’ lips pursed as she mulled that over. “Two hours at most, sir. The head of staff walked through the assigned quarters with the captain, and then we spoke with Lady Monteiro about the expectations for the males.”

That would have taken a while
. Duilio went to the threshold of
the room and peered along the hallway down which they’d come. He didn’t see any servants coming or going in either direction at the moment. He crossed to the main doors, a massive pair made out of a dark wood and bearing carvings that depicted ibexes—the local mountain goats. He’d seen the theme throughout the house, part of the Monteiro family crest. The doors’ brass lock could easily be defeated, but the heavy metal bar that swung down to barricade the door provided more security. He glanced toward Oriana, who waited at the anteroom’s threshold. “Would your grandmother’s servants have locked this?”

“Probably,” she said. “I’ll ask the head of staff. What are you thinking?”

“The boy would have stayed in the bag until he didn’t hear any movement, then climbed out, and hid somewhere in the house. He could have gone outside, but it would have been broad daylight and this side of the house can been seen from the road. Why go outside anyway, when he was already here? I suspect he hid in one of the courtyards or on the roof until the house was quiet, and then slipped to the shore side of the house and broke back in through our window.”

“You keep assuming it was a boy,” Oriana noted dryly.

“It likely was, madam,” Captain Vas Neves interjected. The captain had come along a different hallway from the back of the house. “A member of the household at the other end of the beach—the first house encountered when coming from the harbor, I mean—reported seeing a woman waiting at the edge of the road late last night. Early this morning, she saw a young boy walk along the road and the woman met him there. They went toward the harbor together.”

“And you think that was our thief?” Duilio asked.

“For a young boy to walk alone is unusual,” Oriana said.

Duilio signed that she was correct. He’d forgotten that boys would be protected here.

“The witness, Lady Guerra, was quite specific,” the captain went on. “She noticed the woman because she was wearing a neck clap.”

Oriana’s nose wrinkled. “Here? On Amado? That
is
odd enough to cause comment.”

Duilio shared Oriana’s surprise. A neck clap was a leather collar, sometimes placed around the neck of a sereia to place pressure on the gills. It kept them from
calling
, but was reportedly highly uncomfortable. Given the sensitivity of Oriana’s gill slits, he didn’t doubt that. The only sereia who wore them were local employees of the various embassies—the household staffs. They’d decided not to require them of workers at the Portuguese embassy, one more attempt to show that the Portuguese saw the inhabitants of the islands as equals. Either way, none of the embassies had presences here on Amado, which raised the question of why the woman was still wearing one. If she’d been on the ferry and had worn one there, the crew
would
remember her.

“Could she describe the woman?” Duilio asked.

“Quite clearly,” the captain said. “And the boy as well.”

Good news
. He smiled. “Any idea how old he was?”

“Lady Guerra guessed seven or eight. From what Lady Monteiro said, he should be comparatively easy to find. He was dressed like a local child, but didn’t have gills or webbing.”

“He was webless?” Oriana asked, brow furrowing again. “But not human?”

“That was the term Lady Guerra used,” the captain said with a nod.
“Webless.”

That could be an insulting term here on the islands, a way of describing someone as too human. Oriana hadn’t used the term that way, though. The simpler connotation indicated the person so named literally had no webbing between the fingers. As it was common for males born of a human father and a sereia mother to lack both gills and webbing, their young thief
must
be half human. The boy would still bear the fishlike markings of a sereia on his lower
body, so he couldn’t pass for human either, not while wearing a
pareu
.

“Can I assume Costa wasn’t with the woman and boy?” Duilio asked the captain.

“He was not, sir.”

“If the woman and the boy were that remarkable, we should be able to trace them.”

“If they took a ferry back to Quitos,” the captain said, “we’ve lost them anyway. We don’t have the resources to question people on the main island.”

True
. The only reason the captain received the cooperation of the neighbors here was that Oriana’s grandmother had accompanied her. On Quitos, no one would answer the captain’s questions at all. Nor could they go to the police there, not when the item stolen was most likely stolen by the Ministry of Intelligence itself.

Duilio looked at the captain and lieutenant, and then at Oriana with her clenched jaw. She had one fist pressed to her lips, her eyes distracted. She blamed herself for the journal’s loss, although it was just as much his fault.

There was one thing he could try, a remote chance. “Captain, first thing in the morning, I’d like you to take a letter to the American embassy.”

“Would I not be of more use here, sir?” the captain asked with a frown. “I can question the ferry’s crew when they arrive.”

“Let’s let Benites do that, Captain. I want the Americans to know I’m serious, which is why I prefer to send the head of our military attachment.”

The captain inclined her head gravely. “Madam Ambassador, does that meet with your approval?”

Duilio didn’t protest the captain’s request. She
did
answer to Oriana first.

“What do you mean to do?” Oriana asked him.

In his younger life, he’d studied crime with different police forces
across Europe. While in London he’d rescued a boy who’d been taken and held for ransom, not for money but for stakes in a political matter between two countries—the son of an American ambassador. The incident had never been reported by the newspapers or written up by the police, but Duilio hoped his help wasn’t forgotten. “I intend to remind the American Foreign Office that they owe me a favor.”

CHAPTER 6

                   M
ONDAY
,
20
A
PRIL
1903
;
THE
G
OLDEN
C
ITY                   

N
ormally Joaquim Tavares would have gone directly to his office at the Massarelos Police Station, but this morning he’d gone to the Ferreira household. It wasn’t for the lovely pastry studded with almonds that the cook pressed on him, nor for the friendly chat with the butler. He’d come to see Lady Ferreira’s maid instead.

In the back of the house, the modest kitchen was always warm thanks to the large cast-iron stove from which the heavenly scent of baking bread currently drifted. The kitchen maid worked at the far end, preparing fish for luncheon, Joaquim guessed from the grating sound of a scaling knife. Mrs. Cardoza, a large and imposing woman with an equally large heart, rose from the oak servants’ table to supervise the girl, leaving Joaquim alone there. Not for long, though, as Miss Felis, Lady Ferreira’s elderly maid, came down the steps into the warm kitchen. Her thin frame was draped in black as always, the only hint of color about her being the pale peach threads in her finely embroidered white collar. Joaquim rose to embrace her, worrying over the frail feel of her shoulders. He didn’t dare say anything, though, because Felis believed she was made of steel and hated to be seen as infirm.