"Then Godard had his unfortunate accident," Palladini said. "Dottie told us." I looked over at Dottie. She was biting her lip and wouldn't meet my gaze.
"There's this little ray of sunshine. Lara has the hydria. We don't know how she managed it, but she does," Hank said. "Not only that, but she gets it across the border. We figure all we have to do is get it from her, and we keep on trying, but it doesn't work out."
"But there's the final catastrophe," Palladini said, looking accusingly at Massimo Lucca. "The carabinieri got it."
"It wasn't my fault," Lucca said. "I didn't make the anonymous calls, and I didn't arrest that woman."
"And then, of course," Gino said. "It disappeared again."
"Unbelievable," Lucca said, "that it could be stolen right out of the carabinieri station. Heads will roll on this one, I can assure you. I just hope one of them isn't mine. And by the way, I'm not sure I can overlook the fact that you stole it, Ms. McClintoch."
"Oh, come now," Eugenia said. "After all, there was another good thing about its disappearance. We felt badly your friend was in prison," she said, turning to me. "We knew it wasn't her fault. So while we were very disappointed not to get the hydria, we were glad she was released."
"We'd pretty much given up on the whole idea," Hank said. "We figured we'd just get together for the social event this year, and decide what, if anything, we wanted to try to do next year. And then who shows up but you, little lady, with the hydria!"
"So there you have it," Mario said. "We are in your hands really, all of us. I hope you'll understand our intentions were good, if we were occasionally a little heavy-handed."
"Yes, you could lose several of us our jobs," Lucca said.
"She won't," Dottie said. "Will you, sweetie, please? We were planning to donate it. You have to believe us." They all looked at me.
I had felt myself getting more and more furious as these waves of self-serving rationalizations and downright lies washed over me. "Is that it?" I said. I was almost gritting my teeth as I spoke.
"What do you mean?" Eugenia said.
"I believe Ms. McClintoch is referring to the fact that there are lacunae, holes, in this story that even I, as a relative outsider, can see," Lake said.
"I suppose there are one or two details missing," Mauro said.
"We're not talking about one or two minor details," I said.
"We don't know how you got the hydria out of the carabinieri station, if that's what you mean," Lucca said. "As I believe I've already mentioned."
"That's not what I mean," I said. "Your version mentions only one of the three people involved in this farce who are dead, omitting the two that were almost certainly murdered."
"Murdered? What is she talking about?" Hank said. "Nobody was murdered."
"Antonio Balducci was," I said. "So was Pierre Leclerc. Robert Godard may have been."
"Oh no, not Robert Godard! He wasn't!" Dottie said.
"Balducci? He killed himself," Mauro said. "At my farmhouse. Why he would choose that moment and that place I will never know. But he did kill himself."
"No, he didn't," I said.
"He was my best friend," Romano said. "I'd never do anything to hurt him. This is outrageous."
"The papers didn't say anything about him being murdered," Eugenia said. "He killed himself. I must object to this as well. He was one of my actors."
"Please," Lake said. "Enough of these protestations. If, in fact, some of you think that this is impossible, then I'm afraid that makes you the goat. You may object to this term, you may prefer to use Cesar's word committee, but the analogy is yours. You are the ones who have adopted the chimera as your symbol, and quite frankly, you fit it better than you know."
Lucca, I saw, was looking at me with some interest. "I'd like to know who Pierre Leclerc is or was," he said.
"A sleazy art dealer," Mondragon said. "Lake knows him, too. But I didn't know he was dead of any cause, let alone murder."
"He's the man found out by the Tanella," I said to Lucca. "The one you haven't been able to identify yet."
"I've never heard of him," Eugenia said. "What has he got to do with any of this?"
"Perhaps we should begin again, and hear Ms. McClintoch's version of events," Lake said.
"Last night I made three lists, although I think I now prefer Mr. Lake's analogy," I said. "Three lists, three groups, three heads of the chimera. I called the first of mine the charade. This roughly corresponds to the plan you had to get me to Vichy with money for Godard, and yes, Mr. Lake is quite right. Those of you, assuming there are some, who believed this version of events, are indeed the goat. So let's start the story again. Dot-tie?"
"Oh," she said, putting her hand up to her mouth. "I don't think.. ." She took a deep breath, and straightened up. "Okay," she said.
"Don't!" Gino said.
"I've got to," she said. "I can't live with myself otherwise."
"We're all waiting, rather breathlessly, I must say," Lake said.
Dottie opened her mouth a couple of times, but no sound came out. "You went to the chateau in Vichy the morning Robert Godard died," I prompted her.
"That's right," she said at last. "My job was to keep an eye on things in Vichy, but I also wanted to buy a dining suite," she said. "I'm opening a new store in New Orleans soon, and I need inventory. Godard said he'd think about it, and that I should come back the next day. I went into the chateau without knocking. He didn't answer, you see. It would take him too long to get to the door. It was open, though, so I just went in. When I got to that room with all the antiquities, you know that awful one with the bare light bulbs and the birds flying around," she said to me.
I nodded encouragingly.
"The cabinet with the hydria in it was open. I went over and decided I'd just try and buy the thing, or tell him I was a member of the Societa and I'd take it to the group on his behalf or something. All this pretend stuff about Lake seemed silly once I was there.
"I took the hydria out of the case and carried it to Robert Godard's study," she said. "I didn't mean to frighten him. He was just attaching some ropes to a harness and there was a trapdoor open. He saw me standing there with the hydria and he must have thought I was planning to steal it from him, because he started yelling at me and then sort of lunged at it. He fell right into the hole. It was the most horrible sound when he hit the floor down there. There was this crack..."
"His skull, I expect," Lucca said. "Hitting stone."
"Don't, please," Dottie said. "I can't bear to think about it. He looked so horrible lying down there, with the blood oozing out of his head like that. I panicked."
"So where was the hydria then?" I asked her.
"I had it," she said. "I was halfway to town before I realized I was still holding onto it. I swear I didn't mean to take it. And I didn't kill Robert Godard. It was an accident. I didn't touch him. But I know it was my fault." She started to sob.
"If you had it, why didn't you just bring it?" Hank said. "I mean how did Lara get it?"
"When I got back to town, I tried to decide what to do," she said. "I knew I had to report Godard's death. I thought I'd do it anonymously, from a phone booth or something. But then that odious man found me."
"What odious man?" Eugenia said.
"Pierre Leclerc," she said. "He must have been at Godard's, he must have seen what happened, and followed me. He pretended he was being helpful, but I knew he wasn't. He was horrible. He said the police would think I'd pushed Godard into the basement and stolen the hydria, but he, of course, was sure I hadn't. I told him how we were a group of people trying to get the hydria back to Italy for the Rosati Collection. He pretended to be sympathetic. All I had to do was give him the hydria and twenty thousand dollars, and he'd take care of everything."