“Not much,” said Jean. “It’s a fresco—painted on wet plaster directly on the wall. Pegronini was an extremely minor late Renaissance painter, flourishing around 1550. It’s possible he didn’t even paint this. According to Romano’s book, the attribution came much later. Other than that, there’s not much to say. It’s a fairly standard image of the Adoration of the Magi with typical iconography—the three Magi representing both the three ages of man and the three races descended from Noah. Here is Balthazar, with his myrrh—Pegronini portrays him as a dark-skinned African or Indian, which is typical of the time period. Mary is dressed in her traditional blue, though I have to say both her gown and Melchior’s purple robe are not quite the right shade. I couldn’t see that in the photograph in Romano’s book, but whoever did the restoration was no expert in Renaissance colors.”

“What do you mean ‘whoever did the restoration’?” said Patton.

“According to Romano,” said Jean, “the fresco was damaged by leaks in the wall. By the early twentieth century, it was in pretty bad shape. Romano says it was restored in the 1940s.”

“During the war?” said Patton.

“He didn’t say,” said Jean.

“But if so, wouldn’t that be strange? To undertake a restoration project in the middle of a world war?” said Patton

“I suppose,” said Jean.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” said Nemo.

“If you had something you wanted to get out of German territory late in the war,” said Patton, “the Brenner Pass was an obvious way out.”

“And this is one of the first places you get once you leave Austria,” said Nemo.

“Which was German territory at the time,” said Patton. “Maybe it’s not the secret of alchemy hiding in this chapel.”

“Maybe it’s the actual gold,” said Nemo with a smile.

“There’s no place here to store any significant amount of gold,” said Jean. “There’s no crypt. Where else could it be?”

“Let’s just say for the sake of argument that the fresco was restored toward the end of the war. The wall behind it would have to be rebuilt to prevent leaking, right?”

“I suppose,” said Jean.

“So what if that wall is built out of gold?” said Nemo.

“That’s preposterous,” said Jean.

“I don’t know,” said Ruthie. “It seems like a reasonable hypothesis to me.”

“But there’s no way to test it,” said Jean.

“Sure there is,” said Nemo. “We scrape the painting off the wall.”

“You can’t, you can’t possibly do that,” said Jean. “You can’t just destroy a fresco because of some cockamamie theory. That’s a priceless work of Renaissance art.”

“A minute ago, you said the artist was extremely minor,” said Nemo. “Now suddenly it’s priceless?”