The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

from their table and coffee and liqueurs were about to be served, von Igelfeld had seen a familiar figure enter the restaurant. It was the Duke of Johannesburg. The Duke, who was in the company of an elegantly attired monsignor, had not seen him, and von Igelfeld had been able to make a quiet enquiry of his host.
    The Cardinal had turned his head discreetly and glanced at the ducal table.
    ‘The cleric,’ he said, ‘is none other than Monsignor Ernesto Pricolo. He is the head of an office here which deals with relations with our dear misguided Orthodox brethren. Personally, I find his activities to be distasteful.’
    Von Igelfeld shivered. ‘Distasteful?’
    ‘Yes,’ said the Cardinal. ‘He involves himself in their schisms. In fact, I believe he is currently attempting to destabilise the Patriarchy of Alexandria.’
    ‘The Patriarch Angelos Evangelis?’ asked von Igelfeld. ‘A tall patriarch with a beard?’
    ‘They all look like that,’ said the Cardinal. ‘I can never tell them apart. But, yes, that’s the one. He has terrible schism problems and our friend Pricolo does nothing to help. Personally, I can’t see what possible advantage there is for Rome in it all, but there we are. We are, I suppose, a state and we must do all the things that states do.’
    Von Igelfeld succeeded in leaving the restaurant without being seen by the Duke of Johannesburg, but he felt that a cloud had come over the day. If the Duke of Johannesburg was on the side of the schismatics, then he must have deceived the Patriarch into thinking he was really a supporter of his. And if that were the case, then the Duke probably knew, or suspected at least, that the Patriarch had given the reliquary to him, and the schismatics would themselves know that. Which meant that even as he and the Prinzels went about their innocent business in Rome, they could be being observed by the scheming schismatics who would, he assumed, stop at little to retrieve the bones of Father Christmas.
    The Prinzels listened carefully to von Igelfeld’s account of the lunch.
    ‘This is very serious,’ said Prinzel at last. ‘We shall have to redouble our vigilance.’
    ‘I suggest that we transfer the reliquary to my cupboard,’ said Ophelia. ‘They may know that Moritz-Maria has the bones, but they will not suspect us. After all, the Duke of Johannesburg never saw you or me, did he, Florianus?’
    It was agreed that the reliquary would be transferred to the Prinzels’ room and hidden in a locked suitcase within their locked wardrobe. This was done, and the evening came to a close. Never had von Igelfeld experienced a more dramatic day: he had met the Pope and over lunch he had witnessed high-level ecclesiastical plotting taking place before his very eyes. In a curious way he was beginning to acquire a taste for this. He imagined that the life of a diplomat, or even a schismatic if it came to it, could be almost as fulfilling as that of a professor of Romance philology. Almost, but not quite.
    For the next two weeks, von Igelfeld worked every day at the Vatican Library, only taking off the occasional afternoon to spend with the Prinzels in their architectural explorations. They had intended to visit, and annotate, every important Baroque church in Rome, allowing several days for the study of each church. It was a major undertaking, and already their notebooks were bulging with observations.
    Von Igelfeld’s own work progressed well. He had unearthed several previously unknown manuscripts, thanks to the efforts of the Prefect, who had obviously been informed by the Pope that von Igelfeld was to receive special consideration. And indeed the Pope occasionally sent down a messenger with a small present for von Igelfeld, usually an Italian delicacy –
panforte di Siena
or
amarettini
di Sarona
– to eat with his morning coffee.
    Then, one evening after von Igelfeld had returned to the Garibaldi, he had found a telegram awaiting him. He opened it with some