Property of Blood by Magdalen Nabb

I’d say. He also seems to be ill.’
    ‘It’s nothing. I mean he’s not what you could really call ill. It’s migraine. He gets it when he’s under stress. He can’t stand light or noise so it’s no use trying to talk to him. I can tell you everything you need to know.’
    He noticed that she made no apology for having disappeared from his office when he’d asked her to wait. Perhaps she hadn’t understood and, in any case, though not reduced to a rag like her brother, it must be remembered that she must be equally upset. No doubt she had a stronger personality. She was certainly coping better.
    ‘Surely there’s something your brother could take for the pain?’
    ‘There is but it’s a really strong cocktail of painkillers and the doctor comes to inject him with it. The trouble is it knocks him out completely for about fifteen hours and so he won’t do it. He won’t leave the phone. He wants to stay awake, which is ridiculous since I’m here.’
    ‘Yes. But try and persuade him. There’s no point in either of you sitting by the phone. Nobody will contact you here because of your phone’s being tapped.’
    ‘The phone’s tapped? Already?’ Round and round went the diamonds, flashing bright as her feverish eyes.
    ‘I’d say it will be before the day’s out and, for all the kidnappers know, it could have been done days ago. That’s a very elegant desk set. Was it your father’s?’
    “Yes, and my grandfather’s before that. My father left it to me. You might expect he’d have left it to Leonardo but I was his particular favourite. All the furniture in here was my father’s. This was his room.’
    The Marshal could well imagine that the wife wouldn’t want it after what he’d put her through, but the daughter, according to Giorgio, had a sense of family duty. Now he knew why the whiteness of the drawing room was odd. A room in a Renaissance palazzo should look like this one, with furniture of the period. The other was clean-lined and very modern looking. Among the many expedients for her own survival as well as that of her two children, no doubt the sale of antique furniture had played a part. Poor woman, it must have been a long time before she could afford all that modern white stuff.
    ‘Signorina, it is most likely that your mother’s captors will make contact with you and your brother by having your mother write to you. The letter will almost certainly be sent to a close family friend—This man Patrick …?’
    ‘Hines. He’s flying in from London tomorrow evening. I’m picking him up from the airport.’
    ‘Yes. But would he normally be arriving now? Would your mother expect him to be here?’
    ‘No. He wasn’t to come over for the Milan show because there’s so much to do over there for the New York fashion week.’
    ‘She won’t write to him then. Her closest woman friend?’
    ‘I don’t know. She had a lot of friends but I was always telling her she never gave them any time because of being so taken up with her work. They invited her to lunches and on outings all the time but she never was very sociable. She practically wore a furrow between her office and the workrooms downstairs. I felt it couldn’t be good for her health to drive herself so hard. I don’t know which one she’d write to—and what if whoever it is gives the letter to Leonardo instead of me? Then we won’t know what’s going on.’
    ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I hope to have talked him round by then. In the meantime, there are two things you and he must do together—when he’s well enough: Think of three questions to which only your mother can know the answer. You’ll understand, I’m sure, that we have to know your mother is alive.’
    ‘She could be dead already, couldn’t she? That’s what you mean.’
    ‘Don’t distress yourself. It’s very unlikely. They know they have to furnish this proof so it’s in their interest to keep her alive and well at this stage.’
    In