The Raven (The Florentine #1)(13)
Author: Sylvain Reynard

Batelli looked at her with curiosity. “What’s the lowest form of humanity, in your view?”

“Child abusers.”

Both Batelli and Savola appeared taken aback by her remark, but they quickly regained their composure.

Batelli picked up her identification card, her passport, and her other documents. He looked at them closely before holding them out to her.

She reached for them, and for a moment he kept hold of the items, trapping her.

“You’re free to go, after we fingerprint you. It’s simply an effort to confirm your identity, since your appearance doesn’t match your identification. An officer will drive you back to the Uffizi.

“But I should warn you, Signorina Wood, we will want to interview you again. I would strongly urge you to stay in Florence. A note will be made with immigration, should you try to leave the country.”

His eyes flickered to Savola’s and back again. “For your own sake, I suggest you see a doctor.”

Raven took her belongings from his hand and bolted from the room, leaving the door open behind her.

Chapter Six

When Raven finally arrived at the Uffizi, she had to submit to a scan of her fingerprints in order for security to admit her to the building. After that humiliating experience, she went to the office she shared with a number of different researchers. She greeted her colleagues with a tense wave before trudging to her desk, which was in a far corner.

She sank into her chair and looked around the windowless room. The office hummed with conversations and the occasional ringing of a telephone, while her colleagues stared. More than a few of her coworkers stopped by her desk, wondering who she was and demanding to see her identification. She had to summon security and ask them to vouch for her identity. Afterward, her colleagues continued to glance in her direction with expressions that ranged from surprised to censorious.

Her skin crawled under the scrutiny.

A number of messages sat on her desk, including a recent one from Patrick, asking her to text him when she arrived. She ignored them and placed her head in her hands.

She was in trouble.

Were it not for the fact that she felt pain when she pinched herself, she would have thought she was in a nightmare. There were too many incredible and inexplicable events. First, there was the sudden and spontaneous healing of her disability. Second, there was her loss of weight and radical change in physical appearance. Finally, there was her disappearance and lack of memory.

There was also the possibility that her personality had undergone a slight sharpening. Raven couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so angry or rude. She’d always prided herself in being polite and controlled. But at the police station . . .

Raven’s gaze alighted on a leaflet that she’d placed on her desk months before. The flyer included information about the Botticelli illustrations and had been distributed by the gallery to visitors.

She picked it up, glancing at the text.

Wordlessly, she stored her backpack in one of the desk drawers and locked it, looping her identification card, which was hung on a cord, over her head. She picked up her cell phone, which she’d barely been able to charge, clutching it in the same hand as the leaflet. Silently, she bemoaned the fact she was wearing yoga pants, which, although they made her derrière extremely attractive, lacked pockets.

She was supposed to report to the restoration lab for work, but instead she walked in the opposite direction, to where the illustrations had been on display. The exhibition hall was cordoned off, the corridor empty.

The hall boasted walls painted a bright blue in order to display the pen and ink illustrations to better effect. Inside the room was a series of cases, in which the artwork had been kept safe from exposure and human touch.

Raven scanned the now empty cases, noting that each of them, along with the walls and even the floors, had been dusted for fingerprints. Scaffolding stood in one corner, rising to the high ceiling. From the looks of it, someone had dusted the white ceiling as well. Sections of it were smudged with gray and black.

She began reading the description of the exhibit, which was printed on the leaflet. As Ispettor Batelli had mentioned, the illustrations were copies. Botticelli had prepared one hundred drawings of Dante’s Divine Comedy for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, who died in 1503. Unfortunately, eight of them had been lost. The Vatican owned a few of the originals and the rest were owned by the Staatliche Museen in Berlin.

The Emersons’ collection was complete. Yes, they were only copies, but the Emersons owned the full one hundred of the original complement. This fact alone made the collection priceless.

Certainly the Uffizi was more than pleased to exhibit them. It charged extra for visitors to view the exhibition, using the funds to finance some of the restoration projects in the gallery, including the work that Raven and Professor Urbano’s team were doing.

The illustrations had been on loan to the Uffizi for two years, since the summer of 2011. Raven remembered the announcement well, as she’d been researching her dissertation and doing work at the Opificio at the time.

Prior to the announcement, no one knew about the Emersons’ collection. Raven had done some amateur investigation on the subject, but found nothing. For such important works of art, the lack of images or information was surprising.

Dottor Vitali had prepared an account of the illustrations’ provenance, which was reproduced on the leaflet, but his information must have come from the Emersons themselves, for Raven hadn’t found any independent confirmation of the facts presented.

She found this fact curious.

According to the leaflet, the illustrations had been prepared in the sixteenth century, probably by a student of Botticelli. Somehow they’d come to a Swiss family in the nineteenth century. They’d sold the illustrations to Professor Emerson in a private sale a number of years back.

The whereabouts of the illustrations from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries were a complete mystery. Certainly neither the Swiss family nor Professor Emerson had been in a hurry to disclose the existence of the illustrations to the public. It was said that Mrs. Emerson had finally convinced her husband to share the artwork with the world.

And now they’re gone, thought Raven. She looked at the empty display cases and felt tears well up in her eyes.

She was about to report to the restoration lab, when her phone chimed with a text. It was from Patrick.

Where r u?

She quickly typed her reply.

Exhibition hall

She waited for Patrick’s response, but none came.