Chapter 5 - The Man With Broken Hands
Leon Pryce refused to speak to police.
He did speak to Adeline.
Only after his lawyer was present.
Only after Enzo stayed outside the hospital room.
That detail mattered.
Adeline sat beside the bed while Leon's hands rested in casts.
He looked younger than she expected.
Thirty, maybe.
Terrified.
"Camilla hired you," Adeline said.
Leon stared at the ceiling.
"Ashford Events hired me."
"To search my room."
Silence.
"You took the key."
His eyes moved to her.
"I was told it opened a box with stolen family jewelry."
Adeline almost laughed.
"Did you believe that?"
"I needed the money."
"That wasn't my question."
Leon swallowed.
"No."
"Who broke your hands?"
Fear moved across his face.
"I don't know."
"You do."
"I never saw him before."
"What did he want?"
Leon closed his eyes.
"The key."
"Did you give it to him?"
"Yes."
"Who sent him?"
"He said Mr. V sent him."
Adeline's skin went cold.
Mr. V.
Vittorio?
Impossible if he truly disappeared nine years earlier.
Or not.
Leon continued.
"He told me Camilla was stupid for making a scene. Said the old men had waited fifteen years and she almost ruined it over pride."
"What old men?"
"I don't know."
Adeline leaned closer.
"Did he say where the key was going?"
Leon looked at his casts.
"He said, 'Back to the bell.'"
The bell.
Not the blue saint.
Adeline remembered her mother's clue differently.
The blue saint keeps what men forget. Third bell after midnight.
She had assumed "third bell" meant time.
What if it meant an actual bell?
The Marchetti chapel had no bell tower.
But the mansion once had a servants' call system - brass bells wired from formal rooms to the basement corridor.
Teresa confirmed it.
"Three bells still hang downstairs. We kept them after renovation."
The third bell was labeled BLUE ROOM.
The Blue Room had been Carlo's private sitting room.
Locked for years after his death.
Enzo opened it with a master key.
Dust.
Blue silk wallpaper.
A dead fireplace.
Three paintings.
Nothing obvious.
Then Adeline found the old call wire disappearing behind the wall.
They removed the brass bell plate.
Behind it was a narrow cavity.
Inside sat a black plastic case.
Empty.
Again.
But this time there was something else.
A Polaroid photograph.
Gabriel Vescari sitting at a table in Warehouse 9.
Alive.
Date stamped November 8, 2009.
Two days after Enzo's order.
Beside Gabriel stood Vittorio Marchetti.
And behind them, half visible, was Arthur Ashford.
On the back, Miriam had written:
CARLO CAME TOO LATE.
Adeline's hands shook.
Enzo read the words twice.
"Too late for what?"
Teresa whispered, "Maybe to stop them."
Adeline looked at Enzo.
"Or to help them."
Nobody could prove either.
Then Marco's security team recovered a recent fingerprint from inside the cavity.
Not Camilla's.
Not Leon's.
The print matched an old Illinois arrest record.
Vittorio Marchetti.
Enzo stared at the result.
His uncle was not in Sicily.
Vittorio had been inside the mansion recently.
And someone had been hiding that from Enzo for years.
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