by Mark McCrum
They were a strange, uneasy house party that evening. The police posse had departed, telling none of them anything. Tales of what had been asked in this interview or that had been exchanged, one to one, here and there. But none of the gossip was general.
They all turned out for drinks at seven fifteen. But despite some false bonhomie from Mel and Belle, it was an awkward, muted affair. Sir Duncan and Fiona had also tried to go for a walk and been turned back. Everyone agreed that it was outrageous that they were penned in like this. Gerry had been briefed on this decision by Moretti. He had ‘of course’ protested. ‘But to no avail, I’m afraid. The prosecutor insists.’
‘We’re basically living in the Big Brother house now,’ said Liam. But no one laughed. It was too close to the truth for comfort. Granted there were no cameras, but everyone was, discreetly or not so discreetly, watching everyone else.
Duncan, Fiona, Roz, Liam, Diana, Zoe, Tony, Mel, Belle, Angela, Gerry, Stephanie. All currently on the pasta course, tonight a delicious spaghetti alla puttanesca: anchovies, olives, capers, chillis, in a rich garlicky sauce clearly made with fresh tomatoes. Forks rose and fell. Glasses of white or ruby red wine were sipped at or gulped. Conversation was made. One to one, one to two, spreading out into chat among three or four. There was even laughter.
‘You didn’t. I don’t believe it …’
‘It was a long time ago …’
‘We had no idea then, of course …’
‘I’ve never been one for that sort of thing …’
But none of them could escape the fact that one of those pairs of hands, now toying elegantly or not so elegantly with the long strands of crimson-coated pasta, had barely twelve hours before taken a scarf and twisted it round the soft-skinned, young neck of poor Sasha.
This thought stayed with Francis as he strolled through the grounds again before he went up to bed in Masaccio. The moon was no longer full, but still big and round, casting its eerie light down the long valley. As he turned from his favourite vantage point by the tennis court, where the shadows of the wire netting made a pattern of parallelograms on the mown grass, and walked back up towards the villa, he saw the figure of a man coming out through the stone arch from the walled garden, then hurrying down the gravel footpath to the potting shed at the bottom. It was Gerry, looking round nervously as he walked. As Francis watched, the door of the outhouse swung open. There was a flash of familiar white teeth in the moonlight, then an elegant hand, rings glinting silver, had pulled him in. He could only imagine what Benedetta’s lovely features might look like, close up, in the shadows.
TWELVE
Monday 1 October
Mrs Barbara White-Moloney arrived by taxi from Bologna Airport in the middle of the afternoon. Having been informed by the police of her daughter’s death, she had gone straight to the airport and got on the first flight out of Portland to Northern Italy. Now here she was, a surprisingly small, neat, skinny woman in her forties with long dark hair emerging from the back of the taxi and looking round the ochre-pink courtyard with wide eyes, like someone caught in a bad dream.
‘Villa Giulia?’ she asked Diana, who was sitting reading on the upright bench just outside the front door. The wind of the night had dropped, and the sun shone again from a clear blue sky.
‘Yes, this is Villa Giulia. You must be …’ Even Diana was temporarily lost for words.
‘Barbara White-Moloney. Sasha’s mother,’ she replied.
‘Of course, yes.’ Diana looked at her wide-eyed, like a fan meeting a celebrity, and Francis, watching from a deck chair at the side of the courtyard, felt nervous on her behalf as he wondered how she would handle this awkward situation.
Diana shook her head slowly from side to side, then took Barbara’s hands between hers. ‘We’re all so shocked,’ she said. ‘Sasha was … was … such a lovely, talented young woman.’
Barbara White-Moloney stood rooted to the gravel. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Fortunately the taxi driver provided a distraction. He had unloaded a big black shell suitcase from the boot and a smaller leather carrying bag. Now he stood to one side on the gravel, waiting for payment.
‘Excuse me,’ Barbara said to Diana. She went to him, took out her wallet and handed over the requisite notes.
When she turned back, Diana was waiting for her. ‘Come on in, I’ll call for Gerry or Stephanie. Our hosts,’ she explained. ‘I’d expect you’d like a coffee or tea after your journey. Or perhaps something stronger.’
‘Actually a cup of coffee would be great.’
‘We have our own machine,’ Francis heard Diana say as she led Barbara into the side room. Shortly after that Gerry scurried out through the front door to claim the shell suitcase. Were they going to put her in Botticello? Francis wondered. Or was that still a crime scene? He had been tempted to leap to his feet and get involved, but then again he wasn’t the host here, and presumably the poor woman didn’t want to be swamped with either sympathy or welcome at this stage.
Half an hour after she’d arrived, she was off again in Gerry’s car. He, at least, was allowed to leave the premises. They’d gone to Castiglione dell’Umbria, Stephanie explained, to identify Sasha. If the police were involved with this procedure, they didn’t keep Barbara, because she was back well in time for dinner. Not that Francis thought that any of them would see her at the formal meal. She would, he imagined, be more likely to have a sandwich in her room, especially after her long flight. But no, here she was, dressed up in a smart black polo neck jersey and skirt and looking remarkably poised. Perhaps she was still in shock, acting on automatic. Perhaps it was easier, being in company, than sitting alone in your room with your thoughts. As Stephanie brought her into the side room where the regular gang were already standing drinking, she smiled politely, if a little guardedly, as she was introduced to each in turn. Was she thinking, One of you killed my daughter, so I’d like to get a good look at you all individually? If she was, it didn’t show.
Stephanie stayed beside her, though, and when the bell rang and they all went through for dinner, she placed Barbara between herself and Duncan, with Gerry and Fiona opposite.
Then: ‘Francis,’ his hostess called. ‘Do come and sit with us.’
He apologized to Zoe, whom he’d been standing next to prior to sitting down, and moved on up to sit on the other side of Fiona.
Nothing was said about Sasha initially. Duncan was the model of old-world courtesy, asking Barbara about her flight, which had been, she told them, with KLM, thirteen hours, with a two-hour wait at Schiphol. Then there was more polite chat about Portland, Oregon, where Barbara lived, and Sasha had lived and studied too. The mention of her daughter brought respectful silence from the little group. None of them was obviously going to ask Barbara more than she wanted to volunteer. None of them even approached the question they all clearly wanted the answer to: was there a Mr White-Moloney? If so, was he likely to be joining her?
When he thought about it the next morning, Francis couldn’t quite remember how they had got on to the subject of Poppy, and then, from there, inevitably, on to the murder enquiry. But once they had, the stilted chit-chat was replaced with something altogether more urgent. Duncan and Fiona were explaining about the various options available to them, flying Poppy’s body home as against getting it buried out here, outlining other stuff that had to be done: the death certificate, the cancelling of the passport and so on.
Barbara nodded and listened but asked no questions. She was flying Sasha home, she said eventually, when whatever formalities that needed to be done in this country had been done. She wanted her relatives and friends to be able to say goodbye to her.
Duncan and Fiona didn’t comment; Poppy wasn’t going home, Francis knew that.
‘So how are the police getting on?’ Barbara asked. ‘With the enquiry?’ Enk-wherry. ‘Do they have any idea at all what’s happened here?’
‘You haven’t met them yet?’ Fiona queried.
‘No.’
>
‘I thought they might have been present at … when …’
‘I went to see Sasha? No. It’s not necessary here, apparently. I just had to hand in her passport.’
Again, Francis was surprised by her composure. You might have expected, in the circumstances, that she would be close to breaking down, but her speech barely faltered. He was surprised too that neither Gerry nor Stephanie seemed to have briefed her on the police activity. Perhaps they had, and what she wanted now was Duncan and Fiona’s take on things. OK, so that was probably the story, because Gerry wasn’t commenting and neither was Stephanie as Fiona launched in, quite urgently, with her perspective: that, as far as she could see, the police had no idea what was going on. They were totally at sea; they had put her and more importantly her father through unnecessarily intense, borderline offensive, questioning.
‘That would be standard, though, wouldn’t it?’ said Barbara. ‘Aren’t close relatives always in the frame?’
‘Fair enough if they were actually here at the time of … of … of …’ Fiona stuttered. ‘The death,’ she managed finally. ‘But I was in London when my stepmother died. And your daughter was a total stranger to me. What on earth was my motive supposed to be?’
There was a pause. Barbara didn’t answer this bizarrely tactless question. Instead, she looked sideways at Stephanie.
‘Francis,’ said Stephanie, picking up the embarrassment baton, ‘what’s your view? In addition to being a brilliant teacher,’ she explained to Barbara, ‘Francis is also a crime writer of considerable distinction.’
‘I’m not sure about that …’ Francis demurred.
‘Looks like you’ve come to the right place,’ said Barbara.
‘I’m certainly learning something,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know how things are in the US, but the system out here is very different to what we have at home in the UK.’ He explained about the lack of a coroner and how the procuratore worked closely with the police, before moving on to describe Marta and her team.
Sadly Barbara hadn’t seen either Spiral or The Killing, so comparisons to Chief Inspector Laure Berthaud and Detective Inspector Sarah Lund didn’t work. As for police procedure in the US, Barbara wasn’t an expert, she said. But she thought they did have coroners, in some states anyway. ‘I know we do in Portland, because there’s a fine old house that’s the County Coroner’s Office, which I often drive past.’
The truth was, Francis went on, that none of them knew what the police and the procuratore might do next. They had interviewed everybody three times but didn’t appear to be close to solving the case.
‘I guess it feels a little odd,’ Barbara said, ‘being far away from home, in the hands of a strange authority. Or rather, a strange set of authorities.’
‘Exactly,’ Fiona agreed. ‘I’d never have thought I’d say that I would have preferred my stepmother to die at home. But it would have been, if not easier, a bit more comforting, if that’s the right word.’
When the secondo was over, Barbara suddenly made her apologies and went up to bed. It had been lovely, she said, to have something to eat and drink, but it had been a long day and she needed her sleep. Stephanie offered to walk her up to her room, but she told her not to be silly, she could easily find her way, it was just across the courtyard.
‘What a very charming woman,’ Duncan said after she’d left.
‘To be so together,’ said Gerry, ‘after flying out from America overnight and then viewing the body of your dead daughter, all in one day. Remarkable.’
‘She’s clearly in shock,’ said Stephanie. ‘She’s at the stage where things are all a bit of a dream and you’re just coping, if you know what I mean.’
‘I do know what you mean,’ Duncan said. ‘I’m still there myself.’
‘I didn’t mean …’
‘No, you’re right. Things do still feel a bit unreal. Don’t you think, Fiona?’
‘Not particularly,’ his daughter replied crisply. ‘It all feels pretty real to me. My main concern is what are they going to do now?’
‘The police?’ asked Gerry.
‘Yes. How long are we going to be trapped here in this, excuse my French, effing villa? I mean, do you think they have any kind of answers at all? Are they moving forward? Or are they just floundering? Have they said anything to you, Gerry?’
‘No.’ He looked round at Stephanie. ‘They consulted us, at the start, and then when they’ve needed something, but as to what they’re thinking, they’ve kept their cards very close to their chests.’
‘Francis?’ asked Fiona. ‘What about you?’
‘They’re not sharing much with me, that’s for sure.’
‘But you were there, sitting in, for a while. What was all that about?’
‘Search me. They had me in. I watched a couple of interviews. Then they kicked me out.’
‘Mine,’ said Duncan. ‘I was glad you were there. To witness Ms Moretti’s climbdown.’
‘Climbdown?’ asked Stephanie, with wide eyes.
‘Moretti was pushing it a bit with her questions. At one point she virtually accused me of murdering my wife. She had no evidence. Just, as it happens, an erroneous understanding of Poppy’s father’s will. I wasn’t impressed. Were you, Francis?’
Francis shrugged. ‘I’m afraid, until you told us about Minty inheriting Framley, we were all rather thinking the same thing.’
‘Jumping to hurried conclusions. And how does poor Sasha fit in?’
‘The most likely scenario would be that she saw or found out something that incriminates the murderer. There’s no other obvious link.’
Duncan was drumming his fingers impatiently on the table. ‘They basically have nothing to go on. Whoever fiddled with the sauna door was careful to leave no fingerprints.’
That was an interesting observation, Francis thought. ‘How do we know someone fiddled with the sauna door?’ he asked.
‘They must have done,’ Duncan replied brusquely. ‘How else was poor Poppy trapped in there? The police have explained that the inside handle fell off. Was that an accident? It seems a little convenient, don’t you think?’
‘I thought she was poisoned.’
‘That’s what I mean. It seems a little convenient that the door handle fell off shortly after she was poisoned.’ He paused. ‘A particularly nasty element of her death was that with the poison in her system she couldn’t get out to get help. Prints of her fists were on the glass door. But as far as I can see from everything they’ve said to me, every question they’ve asked me, the police have as little idea as anyone else who was responsible for this monstrous form of murder. Tantamount to torture, in my opinion. Can you imagine.’
Perhaps the ambassador had drunk too much red wine, but this was the first time Francis had seen him lose his composure and reveal some passion about his wife’s death. Either he was a very good actor, playing a deeply devious game of misdirection, or he really had had nothing to do with it.
The others went to their rooms after supper. All except Roz, who joined Francis for a grappa on the sofa in the library. With the fire lit in the heavy, cast-iron stove, the room had a cosy, autumnal feel, the orange light flickering on the rows of books on the shelves.
‘Can’t quite bring myself to go to bed at nine fifteen,’ Roz said.
‘No,’ Francis agreed. Everyone needs time off from their lover, he thought, then wondered if perhaps the pair had fallen out in some way.
‘So come on then,’ she said, ‘how was she? Sasha’s mum? What’s the story? We were all trying to make her out down the suspects’ end of the table.’
‘The suspects’ end,’ Francis repeated, chuckling.
‘That’s what we are, isn’t it? Hosts and victims in one group, suspects in another.’
‘Is that what you feel like?’
‘I do. Personally. Don’t know about the others.’
‘Does your distinction work anyway? Because Duncan and Fiona are surely prime suspects.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘In that he isn’t going to inherit the big house.’ She pronounced it, for some reason, with a mock-cockney accent, the big arse. ‘So his motive’s rather gone up in smoke.’ She gave him a twinkly, amused look. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’
‘How d’you know that?’
‘Fiona told me. She said she was sick of people looking at them as if they were a pair of murderers.’
‘And who else knows about this?’
‘Everybody. Pretty much. What else d’you think we talk about? Down in coach.’
‘I didn’t realize,’ Francis said. ‘I thought people were keeping off the subject.’
‘It’s tricky, though, isn’t it? One of us has done it, and here are the rest of us, gossiping away and speculating, making that one person who has done it doubtless extremely uneasy.’
‘Do you really think it’s one of the group?’
‘It seems unlikely, doesn’t it, looking round. A perfectly civilized collection of well-to-do people, with only a couple mildly unhinged. And yet, one of us has poisoned an old lady in a sauna, and then apparently quite cold-bloodedly strangled a young woman in her bed. But who else could have done it? There’s been no one coming in. No Russians spotted in the neighbourhood.’
‘Fabio?’ said Francis.
‘Yes, he is pretty strange. If you lined us all up in a parade anyone would pick him out as the most likely to do something as horrible as locking someone in a sauna. But what’s his motive? A long-standing hatred of snobbish old English ladies? I don’t see it, really.’
Francis nodded. ‘So who d’you see as “unhinged”?’
‘Zoe’s pretty crackers, wouldn’t you say? Diana, in her way. Angela – have you spoken to her?’
‘I’ve never got the chance. The ambient noise is always too loud. We grin at each other across the table.’
‘You should sit and talk to her. Terribly sane on the surface. Rather nice with it. Extremely posh, in a quiet way. And then you suddenly realize she’s mad as the proverbial hatter. Or perhaps it’s just the tension of being here that’s driving them all quietly nuts.’