Lady Viola Maskelene[]
Viola Maskelene is an English Woman, she is an Egyptologist and philologist. Described as being stunningly beautiful, tall, athletic, and slender, with spirited hazel eyes, Dark Hair, high cheekbones, skin tanned and freckled from the sun. She Plays the Violin, makes her own wine and olive oil. She lives a Decadent life, travelling all over, spending Fall in Rome, December in Luxor, Spring in Cornwall, England, and summer on the island of Capraia.
We first meet Viola in Brimstone, Aloysius Pendergast and Vincent D'Agosta go to meet her on her island to get more information on a violin called Stormcloud, that is very valuable and was once owned by her Great-Grandfather. When Pendergast and Viola meet, they seem to have an instant connection. After "Pendergasts" death, D'Agosta visits Viola, and returns the violin to her, and informs her of his death
In Dance of Death, Viola is sent a letter, informing her that Pendergast is still alive, and she is lured to New York city under the false pretense of a weekend away with Pendergast. Diogenes Pendergast sent the letter, and captures her when she lands, bringing her to a safe house where he plans to eventually kill her. When Diogenes' plans are foiled by Pendergast and D'Agosta, Pendergast trades a diamond Diogenes wants for Viola, saving her from him. Pendergast tells her to leave NYC and to hide, so that Diogenes does not try to capture her again.
In The Book of the Dead Diogenes, under the guise of Hugo Menzies, asks for Viola to come to the New York Museum of Natural History to assist Nora Kelly opening a new exhibit. She becomes one of many that is eventually trapped in the exhibit, which ends up being a trap planned by Diogenes. The book ends with Viola, Pendergast and Constance Greene back on her island, discussing the future.
Viola returns briefly in Two Graves
The story of her Great-Grandfather[]
Her Great-grandfather, Luciano Toscaneli was an incredible violinist, who was loaned a masterful violin called the "Stormcloud", The best Stradivarius violin ever made. He got syphilis, It eventually progressed to the tertiary stage, where the spirochetes attack the brain. His playing changed. It grew bizarre. He gave a concert in Florence where he was pelted by the audience. The family who owned the violin demanded it back. He wouldn't give it up. He fled to escape them and their agents, travelling from city to city, driven by a rising insanity and aided by countless women. The family's agents and private detectives pursued him doggedly-but quietly, because keeping the family name secret was of the utmost importance. He Continued to play the violin, in his hotel rooms at night: insane, shocking, even terrifying renderings of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, executed-so the story goes-with enormous technical virtuosity but cold, strange, all wrong. Those who heard him say it was as if the devil himself had taken up the violin.
The family who owned the Stormcloud was very powerful. They were related by blood to some of the royal families of Europe. Even so, they couldn't catch him. They pursued him from one end of Europe to the other. The chase finally ended in the small village of Siusi in the South Tyrol. There, under the peaks of the Dolomites, they cornered him. He was betrayed by a woman. He escaped, out the back of a smal albergo and fled into the high mountains with nothing but the violin and the clothes on his back. He ascended the great Sciliar. That night it snowed heavily. The next day they found his body, frozen to death, in one of the deserted shepherd's huts. The Stormcloud was gone. There were no tracks in the snow around the hut, no clues. They concluded that on the way up the Sciliar, in the grip of madness, he had flung the violin into the Falls of the Sciliar.