A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell #4)(51)

“I will know it when I see it,” I pronounced.

He grinned. “You don’t know, do you?”

I pulled a face. “I am not mechanically minded,” I admitted. “Have you any suggestion?”

He came forward, standing very close behind as he reached over my shoulder to point. “The likeliest way to accomplish a trick like this is to fashion a clockwork mechanism to create the effect of an instrument playing itself. It would have to be housed just here,” he added, his arm brushing mine as he reached.

I peered closely into the lacquered cabinet of the harpsichord, but I saw nothing amiss, no devices or contraption that might have accounted for the instrument playing by itself.

I stepped back, frustrated. “How could it have been done, then?”

Stoker shrugged. “It cannot. Not with this instrument. Someone had to actually touch the keys in order to make the music.” He trailed his forefinger along the edge. “A handsome piece,” he said, “and an expensive one, if a little gaudy for my taste.”

He was not wrong. Each panel of the instrument’s case was painted with a different allegorical scene of passion—Venus and Adonis, Jupiter and Europa. They had sprung from the brush of a master, I realized, rendered with uncommon skill and delicacy.

“The artist has put in little jokes,” I told him. I bent to show him a goat with a wreath of laurel tipped drunkenly over one horn, a puppy stealing a beribboned slipper.

“Clever,” he murmured, peering closely. “He has managed to give the animals almost human expressions.” His shoulder was pressed companionably to mine, and if I turned my head, even the slightest, my mouth would brush his cheek. I straightened at once, brushing in my haste against the rack above the keyboard, sending sheets of music tumbling to the floor, a single harsh note ringing out in the silence.

“How clumsy of me!” I exclaimed, diving beneath the harpsichord to retrieve the sheets.

As I went to replace them, I noticed another picture I had not yet seen, one that had been concealed behind the display of sheet music and positioned just where a musician might see it when playing by heart. Situated above the keyboard, this image was the most beautiful of all, an exquisite depiction of Jupiter and Leda. The god was in the midst of his transformation from swan to man, his form beautifully sculpted and entirely human, but his arms still broad and powerful wings, stretching to embrace his beloved. She was crowned in roses, her face turned into the strong column of Jupiter’s neck. He was in profile, but something about his posture caught my eye. I leant near, holding the candle close to the painted face. It was small, the entire figure of the god no bigger than my finger, and I had to stand quite near to see it clearly.

“How lovely!” I breathed. I pointed and Stoker came to stand behind me, looking at the god and his ladylove in the throes of their erotic embrace.

“Rather gives one ideas,” he murmured. I swallowed hard and darted a glance at him, but he did not look at me. Rather, his gaze was fixed upon the little painting. He bent swiftly and gave a sudden exclamation.

“You unspeakable bastard,” he muttered. He turned to me. “Look.”

“I did. It’s lovely,” I began.

“No,” he instructed, taking my shoulders firmly in his grasp and forcing me to bend closer to the painting. “Look.”

For a moment I was conscious only of his hands gripping me through the thin fabric of my nightdress. I could feel the warm clasp of each finger just at my collarbones, and the thumbs, pressing either side of my spine, stroking gently as he pushed me. I bit back an involuntary moan as my eyes fell upon the image of the god and I saw for myself what he meant.

“But—”

“Exactly,” he said with grim satisfaction.

“But that means—”

“Not now,” he cautioned. “We can discuss it when we have finished here. For now, we ought to conclude our investigation in this room and make good our escape before we are discovered.”

“I meant only to search the instrument,” I told him truthfully. “What else should we examine?”

He thought a moment, his eyes gleaming in the low light.

“Unless Helen actually conjured the dead—a possibility I refuse to countenance,” he said resolutely, “or a clockwork mechanism which we have not discovered was used, then some human took the opportunity to play the specter, picking out that melody on the harpsichord.”

“Impossible,” I told him. “How could anyone elude us so swiftly? There had been a matter of mere seconds between the playing of the last note and our arrival into the empty room, insufficient time for anyone to have escaped past us and down the corridor without notice.”

He gave me a coolly superior look. “I cannot fault your logic, Veronica, but you fail to take it to its natural conclusion. Obviously, the phantom must have found another means of egress.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but there was no point. He was right, and I chafed at my own shoddy logic. I could not account for it—the conclusion was so patently obvious—but I was deeply aware of a certain mental confusion stemming from my disordered feelings for Stoker.

A whole minute never passed that he did not touch me in some fashion—putting a hand to steady himself when he squatted to examine the base of the linenfold paneling or brushing my arm as he reached for a candle. I moved away with a decisive gesture, putting several feet between us. He gave me a quizzical look, but I ignored him until he stretched up to feel a panel some distance above his head, his shirt pulling high over his taut, muscular belly. His trousers slid a little, revealing a sharply cut iliac furrow which my fingers twitched to explore.