Chapter 3: The Burned Account Page

The next morning, Gianna woke early. The sentence on the attached note had turned through her mind all night, every word still sharp. After washing up, she changed into a cream-colored two-piece suit, twisted her long hair up, and stood before the mirror for a moment before pushing open the door and going downstairs.

The butler was waiting for her at the dining-room door, a tray in his hands. On it lay a set of brass keys and a folded note.

"The lady's instructions." The butler handed her the note. "The study is free today. As the new bride, your dowry inventories and the old books that came with you are all stacked in there. You may go in and sort through them whenever you like. Only, the row of cabinets against the west wall is locked, and that key is not on this set."

Gianna took the keys and smiled. "My second day in this house, and my mother-in-law is already letting me into the study. She is not afraid of me, then."

"The lady said: anyone who can read a ledger will end up in that room sooner or later. Better to let you see what is in plain sight than to have you standing outside guessing."

"What is in plain sight." Gianna repeated the phrase, twirling the key ring between her fingers. "That is a practical thing to say. If you would not mind showing me the way."

The study was on the east side of the second floor. The door swung open and the first thing that reached her was the mingled scent of old paper and wood wax. A wide desk stood by the window, with several open albums weighted at its corners; the north wall was lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves, holding mostly hardcover old editions; the row of cabinets against the west wall was different. Their doors were dark solid wood, no glass, the keyholes polished to a shine, and along the base of the cabinets on the floor there was a faint drag mark, as though one of them had been pulled aside and then pushed back into place.

Gianna did not rush to the west wall. First she walked slowly around the study, opened the several book trunks that had come with her dowry, inventoried the old books and documents inside, then had the butler fetch the registry ledger and recorded each item one by one. Her pen moved unhurriedly, but her questions came one after another.

"Who usually cleans this room?"

"Old Marta. She has been in the house for over twenty years — she sweeps and dusts the tables, but she never touches the cabinets."

"Where are the ledgers kept?"

The butler tilted his chin toward the west wall. "The paper ledgers are locked in that row of cabinets, sorted by year. The recent working drafts are not in this room; they are in the small account office upstairs, kept by the accountant. Beyond that, I would not know where to point you."

"Who holds the keys to the cabinets?"

"One is with the lady, one with the young master." The butler spoke carefully. "The old servants only carry messages; no one dares open the cabinets on his own. If something needs to be taken out, the reason must first be written in the registry, and the lady or the young master must sign it before the accountant will lay a hand on anything."

Gianna nodded, as though it were idle chat. "So much bother. If the old ledgers got damp, would you still wait for a signature?"

"It happened the year before last." The butler lowered his voice. "During the rainy season, damp crept up from the cabinet feet, and the cover of the bottom box bloomed with mould. The accountant reported it upward, and they waited a full two days for the young master to come back from New York and open the cabinet. The lady flew into a rage over it — said rules are dead things, but people die too."

"Were you there for that opening?"

"I was. The young master counted everything himself; the lady watched from the side. Not a page was turned more than it should have been."

Gianna filed that away, only smiling on the surface as she bent back to the registry. One of the old books she had brought had come loose in its binding; she asked the butler to fetch some cotton thread, and while she stood at the desk arranging the albums, she took another quiet look around the room. The desk drawers were unlocked, holding only ordinary stationery; a small mantel clock sat on the windowsill, its pendulum ticking with even, unhurried strokes. Everything that truly mattered was behind that row of locked cabinets, and in this entire house, only two people could open them.

Late in the morning, Old Marta came in with a tray of tea. Her hair was entirely white, her apron starched crisp; when she set the tray down, her hands were so steady there was not a sound.

Gianna lifted her cup and asked, as casually as she could manage: "Marta, I hear everyone in this house trusts you. After the study is locked at night, does anyone still come in?"

The old woman shook her head. "Locked at eleven, keys returned to the lady's room. Before dawn, no one gets in."

"What about Luca? If he needs to look at papers at night, he cannot come in either?"

"The young master has his own study, at the far end of the west wing," Old Marta said. "When he reads at night, he never comes this way. This side belongs to the lady — the young master has kept to that rule since he was a small boy."

Gianna's pen paused on the ledger. The far end of the west wing. Luca's own study. She held the words under her tongue and asked no further, only complimenting Old Marta on the way she brewed her tea and asking her to bring the dowry inventories up to the bedroom in the afternoon.

At midday, Luca returned from outside and paused for a moment at the doorway of the study. He had changed into a charcoal-black suit; the silver buttons on his cuffs caught the light and flashed briefly. His gaze swept from the ledger on her side of the desk to the cabinet door on the west wall, then drew back.

"How's the sorting coming?" he asked.

"The book chestes are cleared. The dowry inventory isn't reconciled yet." Gianna closed the ledger. "Your mother is very generous; she lets me come and go as I please. It's that row of cabinets, though—locked tighter than a bank vault."

"A tight lock saves a lot of eyes on it." Luca stepped inside and cracked the window a sliver for her. Sea wind, heavy with dampness, rushed in. "Do you want to see what's in there?"

"I'm an accountant. When I see a locked ledger, my palms get itchy." She looked at him squarely. "But I know how it works. Without your signature, I don't touch it."

Luca studied her for two seconds. "Remember that. Things in this house that look easy to flip through are usually the ones you mustn't touch at all."

"You said something like that last night, too." Gianna tucked her fountain pen back into her collar. "Relax. Today I only moved my own books. What about you—did you sleep well? I woke up once in the middle of the night. I heard footsteps over in the west wing."

"Handled a few letters." His answer was curt. He turned to go, then stopped at the door. "Dinner is in the small dining room. Mother asked you to come early."

The door clicked shut gently. Gianna stared at the row of cabinets and slowly placed the keyring back into the tray. She had found what she'd come to probe: the old accounts were locked on the west wall, the keys held by only two people, and pulling even a single page required a signature. But that last remark from Luca had stuck like a fine thorn, tightening something in her chest. What kind of letters was he handling in the dead of night, evading everyone, lighting the study in the west wing until past midnight alone?

For the rest of the day, she kept to herself with unusual discipline. At the dinner table, she exchanged a little small talk with Camilla—asked about the lemon trees in the garden and their harvest—and returned to her bedroom early. She didn't sleep. Leaning against the headboard, she leafed through an old book, her ears tuned to every sound in the corridor.

After eleven, the house gradually fell silent. First came the soft steps of the servants retiring to their rooms, then the dull thud of the great front door being locked downstairs. Just as Gianna was closing the book on her lap and reaching to turn off the lamp, a faint sound of a door closing echoed from the far end of the corridor. It was followed immediately by the tap of leather shoes on hardwood, deliberately softened, step by step, heading toward the west wing.

She waited until the footsteps were far away before slipping on her dressing gown and pushing open her door barefoot. Only two wall sconces lit the corridor, their glow a dim yellow. She moved along the wall. Beneath the door of the study at the far end of the west wing, a thin line of orange-red light seeped through, accompanied by the faint, acrid scent of burning paper.

Gianna's hand hovered over the doorknob. She held it there for two breaths, then pushed the door open gently.

Luca stood before the fireplace. He wasn't wearing his coat; the cuffs of his white shirt were rolled up to his forearms. In his hand he held a thin sheet of paper, its lower corner already at the flame. Licks of fire raced up the edge, fast. He was burning it with such focus that he hadn't even noticed the door opening.

"What are you burning?" Gianna spoke as she moved toward the hearth.

Luca's hand froze, but he didn't pull the paper back. "Nothing that concerns you. Go back to your room."

"If it doesn't concern you, why are you burning it at midnight?" She stepped closer and saw the dense columns of numbers and items on the page. Her breath hitched. "Put it down, Luca. Let me see."

"Take one look, and you'll never be able to wash your hands of it." His wrist dropped. The paper plunged halfway into the flames.

Gianna lunged forward, snatched up the brass pincers from the side of the fireplace, and clamped the unburned corner of the page. She yanked it outward with a sharp tug. Sparks flew and landed on the back of her hand, hot enough to make her fingers jerk, but she didn't let go. She dragged the scorched half-page onto the stone slab of the hearth. It still puffed thin wisps of smoke; the edges were black and curled, but most of the writing in the center had survived.

"You're out of your mind," Luca reached for it.

"No, you are." Gianna backed up a half-step and held the fragment up under the sconce light. Her hand shook violently, but her eyes were locked on the paper. "Anyone who burns an account book in the middle of the night has a ghost on their conscience. Let me read it. After I'm done, I'll decide whether I keep the secret for you."

Luca's hand stopped in midair. He didn't move it forward again.

The ink on the fragment had already begun to brown, but the strokes were still distinct. Gianna's gaze fell first on the reference number, then on the figures in the first line of the body text, and her whole body went rigid.

She knew this handwriting.

The way that string of numbers was written was one she had seen hundreds upon hundreds of times. The first two letters were the abbreviation for the family name, the string in the middle was the entry number, and the month was appended at the end. Whenever he finished writing the last digit of the month, he always curved it back slightly, like a tiny hook. Marco had devised the rules for this numbering system himself. He had said that if the accounts were recorded this way, anyone who tried to alter even a single entry would throw off the entire string of numbers. Whenever he wrote a “7,” he pressed the horizontal stroke low, and after the descending hook, he would sink it a little farther toward the lower right, leaving an impression that showed through to the back of the paper. The “7” on the fragment had a low horizontal stroke and a deeply sunk hook. The impression on the back of the paper pressed against her fingertip. It was an exact match.

Gianna’s voice had gone hoarse. “This is Marco’s handwriting.”

Luca said nothing.

“The numbering was his rule, and the handwriting is his.” She brought the fragment closer again. Inside the charred edge, half a line of the header remained, with a double horizontal line beneath it. Her fingers brushed over the double line, and she suddenly remembered something Marco had told her once in New York, when he was drunk. Pointing to the header of an account book, he had said that among the Moretti family’s numbered ledgers, only one had a double line beneath its header—that was their Number Two Ledger, a book outsiders could not even glimpse the cover of.

She slowly raised her head and looked at her husband standing in the firelight.

“The last account my brother handled before he died was recorded on a page like this.” Her voice grew softer with each sentence, yet steadier with each word. “This page came from your Moretti family’s Number Two Ledger. And you, my husband, just burned half of it with your own hands.”

The fire in the hearth continued to burn, consuming the ashes of the half-page. The ashes curled upward, then fell back down. Luca stood where he was, a little black soot clinging to his shirt cuff. He stared at the fragment in her hand for a long time. There was no anger on his face, nor any panic, only a nearly serene exhaustion.

Gianna pressed the fragment against her chest. “You owe me an answer.”

Luca turned to look at her and said calmly, “You shouldn’t have seen this.”