Just One Evil Act

by Elizabeth George

  Workmen were crawling about the ancient farmhouse that was part of the property, some of them unloading tiles clearly meant for the roof, others of them carrying heavy boards into the structure, still others banging about inside the building with their hammers ringing in the air. At the winery, a young man was within, offering tastes of Lorenzo’s Chianti to five individuals whose bicycles and discarded rucksacks indicated a spring cycling tour through the verdant district. Lorenzo stood at the fence of a paddock not far beyond the tall hedge that separated the old villa from the business end of the fattoria. He was speaking there to a bearded, middle-aged man, and as Lynley approached them, he saw this individual take a white envelope from the back pocket of his jeans and pass it over to Lorenzo Mura.

  They exchanged a few more words before the man nodded and walked to a pickup truck that was parked in front of the wrought-iron gates giving access to the driveway up to the villa. He got in this truck and in a moment had made a quick turn around and was heading out of the place. Lynley observed him as he passed. He’d put on dark glasses and the kind of wide-brimmed straw hat that shades one’s face from the sun. It was, thus, impossible to see any particulars of what he looked like aside from his beard, which was dark and thick.

  Lynley approached Lorenzo. Within the paddock, he saw, five donkeys stood, a male, two females, and two foals. They were grazing beneath an enormous mulberry tree, their tails swishing to ward off flies, feasting on the fresh, sweet growth of springtime grasses. They were handsome animals, all five of them. They looked well cared for.

  Without preamble, Lorenzo told him that raising donkeys for sale was another way that he supported life at Fattoria di Santa Zita. The man who had just left the property had come to purchase one of the foals. A donkey, he said, was always useful to those who lived and made their money off the land.

  Lynley didn’t think that the sale of one or two or twenty baby animals was going to go far in supporting everything about this particular fattoria that needed supporting, but instead of mentioning this, he asked about the old farmhouse and the work going on in, on, and around it.

  This, Lorenzo told him, was being turned into rooms for letting to tourists who wished to experience life in the countryside by staying at one of Italy’s many agriturismi. Eventually, he added, they would have a swimming pool, terraces for sunbathing, and a tennis court.

  “Big plans, then,” Lynley noted pleasantly. Big plans, of course, required big money.

  Sì, there would always be plans for the fattoria, Lorenzo told him. And then he shifted gears entirely, saying to Lynley in English, “You must talk to her, Ispettore. Please, you must tell her to allow me to take her to the doctor in Lucca now.”

  Lynley frowned. He switched to Italian, asking Mura, “Is Angelina ill?”

  “Venga” was Lorenzo’s response, to which he added that Lynley could see for himself up at the villa. “All the day yesterday she has this sickness,” he said. “She keeps nothing inside. Not soup, not bread, not tea, not milk. She tells me not to worry because this is the pregnancy. She reminds me she has not been well from the first day of it. She says to me that this will pass. She says I worry because this is my first child but it is not her first child and I must be patient because she will be well soon enough. But how can I be patient when I see she is ill, when I believe she must visit a doctor, and when she believes she is not ill at all?”

  They were walking up the sweeping loop of the villa’s formal drive as Lorenzo spoke. Lynley thought of his late wife’s pregnancy. She, too, had been ill for the first part of it. He, too, had been concerned. He told Lorenzo this, but the Italian man remained unconvinced.

  Angelina was on the loggia. She was lying on a chaise longue with a blanket covering her. Next to her, a mosaic-topped metal table held a transparent jug of what appeared to be blood orange juice. A drinking glass stood next to this, but nothing had been poured into it. A plate sat near to this glass, its offering of a circle of biscuits, meat, fruit, and cheese all disregarded save for one very large strawberry out of which a single bite had been taken.

  Lynley could understand why the Italian man was worried. Angelina looked weak. She smiled wanly as they crossed the loggia to her. “Inspector Lynley,” she murmured, as she struggled to sit upright. “You’ve caught me napping.” She searched his face. “Has there been word of something?”

  Lorenzo strode to the table and inspected its rejected offerings. He said, “Cara, devi mangiare e bere.” He poured orange juice into the glass and pressed it upon her.

  “I did try, Renzo.” She indicated the single strawberry with its marking of a minuscule bite taken. “You’re worrying far too much. I’ll be fine with a little bit of rest.” And to Lynley, “Inspector, if there’s something—”

  “She must to see a doctor,” Lorenzo said to Lynley. “She will not listen.”

  Lynley said, “May I . . . ?” and indicated a wicker chair nearby.

  “Of course,” she said. “Please.” And to Lorenzo, “Darling, stop being foolish. I’m not a buttercup. And I’m also not what matters just now. So do be quiet about doctors or leave us to talk because”—she took a breath to steady what she had to say, which she directed to Lynley—“you have word of something, I expect. Please tell me.”

  Lynley glanced at Lorenzo, who’d flushed. He had not sat and now he walked to the rear of the loggia, where he stood behind the chaise longue with his arms crossed and his birthmark darkening noticeably.

  Briefly, Lynley told Angelina of Carlo Casparia, of the “confession” extricated from the man by the public minister, and of Chief Inspector Lo Bianco’s doubts regarding this confession. He related the details of the search ongoing at the stables. He mentioned a possible sighting that had taken place in the Apuan Alps. He did not speak of a red convertible or of the exact nature of the sighting: a man leading a little girl into the woods. The first was something that needed to be held back from everyone. The second would only result in the woman’s terrified panic.

  “The police are looking into this,” he told her in reference to the Alps. “In the meantime, the tabloids . . .” He showed her the front page of Prima Voce. He discovered they had not seen the paper that day as neither of them had been into town to purchase a newspaper and none were delivered to the fattoria. “It’s best, I daresay, to disregard all this. They have only limited information.”

  Angelina was silent for a long moment during which the hammer blows from the old farmhouse sounded faintly. She finally said, “What does Hari think?” and behind her Lorenzo let out an exasperated breath. She said to him, “Renzo, please . . .”

  “Sì, sì,” Mura said.

  “He doesn’t know any of this yet,” Lynley told her, “unless he’s picked up the tabloid somewhere. He was already gone from the pensione when I came down to breakfast.”

  “Gone?” This incredulously from Lorenzo.

  “I expect he’s still putting up the missing-child handbills. It’s difficult for him—and for all of you, I know—just to be idle and have to wait for information.”

  “Inutile,” Lorenzo said.

  “Perhaps,” Lynley said. “But I’ve found that sometimes even an act that seems useless turns out to be the single action that breaks a case.”

  “He won’t return to London till she’s found.” Angelina looked out at the lawn, although there was nothing on it to hold her attention. She quietly said, “I do so regret what I did. I just wanted to be free of him, but I knew . . . I’m sorry about everything.”

  That desire to be free of other people, of life’s complexities, of the past that often clung to one like a ragtag group of mendicant children . . . This led people into the commission of acts that paved the way to remorse. But on the pathway to regret, the corpses of other people’s dreams often lay rotting. It was this that Lynley wished to talk about. But he wished to talk about it to Angelina alone, and not in the prese
nce of her lover.

  He said to Lorenzo, “I’d like a few minutes alone with Angelina, if you don’t mind, Signor Mura.”

  Mura apparently did mind. He said, “We have no secrets from each other, Angelina and I. What you say to her can be said to me.”

  “I understand that,” Lynley said. “But because of our previous conversation—yours and mine . . . ?” Let the man think that what he had to say to Angelina Upman involved her health and getting her to town to see a doctor, Lynley thought. Anything to have the Italian man remove himself for a few minutes of conversation that, he suspected, would only be entirely honest if Mura absented himself from it.

  He did so, although with marked reluctance. He bent to Angelina first, and he kissed the top of her head. He said, “Cara,” quietly and then he left the loggia. He headed in the direction of the gates to the drive and the work that was going on beyond the tall hedge that marked off the old villa’s immediate grounds from the rest of the fattoria.

  Angelina turned her head to him by rolling it his way on the headrest of the chaise longue. She said, “What is it, Inspector Lynley? Is it about Hari? I know you can see . . . Renzo has no reason to be jealous of him. I give him no reason, and he has no reason. But the fact that Hari and I have a child . . . It’s created a bond where he’d prefer there be none.”

  “I daresay that’s normal,” Lynley said. “He’s uneasy, unsure of where he stands with you.”

  “I try to make it clear to him. He’s the one. He’s the . . . the endgame for me. But culturally . . . my past with other men . . . I think that’s what makes it difficult.”

  “I have to ask this,” Lynley said, moving his wicker chair closer to her. “I hope you understand. Every avenue regarding Hadiyyah’s disappearance has to be explored, and this is one of them.”

  She looked alarmed when she said, “What is it?”

  “Your other lovers.”

  “What other lovers?”

  “Here, in Italy.”

  “There are no—”

  “Forgive me. It’s a question of the past being a form of prologue, if you understand. My concern is that if you were involved with Esteban Castro while you were also seeing Lorenzo and still living with Azhar . . . I hope you can see how that leads to the assumption that there might be others that you’ve been unwilling to mention in front of Lorenzo.”

  Her cheeks flushed with the first colour he’d seen upon them since mounting the steps to the loggia. “What’s this to do with Hadiyyah, Inspector?”

  “I think it has more to do with how a man might act to wound you if he discovered he wasn’t your only lover. And that has everything to do with Hadiyyah.”

  She met his gaze for a moment so that, he assumed, he could read her face as she spoke. “There are no other lovers, Inspector Lynley. And if you want me to swear to it, I’m happy to do so. There is only Lorenzo.”

  He evaluated her statements: the words themselves and the way she spoke them. Her body language suggested she was telling the truth, but a woman accomplished at balancing relationships with three men at once would have to be a skilled actress to do so. That in addition to the fact that when a horse had spots, it was generally impossible to get rid of them, prompted him to say, “What would have changed you, if I may ask?”

  “I don’t really know,” she said. “A desire not to repeat the past? A step into adulthood?” She looked down at the blanket that covered her, fingering the well-worn satin that edged it. She said, “Before, I was always searching for something that was out of my reach. Now, I think my reach and my grasp have become the same.”

  “What were you reaching for?”

  She considered this, her delicate eyebrows drawn together. “A way to be my own person. And I kept expecting this distinct form of me to arrive in the hands of a man. When it didn’t—for how could it possibly?—I found another man. And then another. Two before Hari. Then Hari himself, along with Esteban, and, yes, even Renzo.” She looked at him. “I’ve hurt many people through the years, especially Hari. It’s not something I’m proud of. But it’s who I was.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m making a life with Renzo. We’re becoming a family. He wants to marry and I want that as well. I wasn’t sure at first, but now I am.”

  Lynley considered this: Angelina’s initial uncertainty about Mura and what that uncertainty could have meant to the man and what the man might have done to alter things. He said, “At what point did you become sure of him?”

  “I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

  “I suppose I mean: Was there a single moment when everything altered for you, when it became clear to you that what you have with Signor Mura was, perhaps, more important than seeking out other men to build—as you’ve said—an identity for you?”

  She shook her head slowly, but when she spoke, Lynley saw that she was adept at connecting the dots among his questions. She said, “Renzo loves Hadiyyah and he loves me. And you can’t sit there thinking that he might have arranged something . . . something horrible like this so that he could prove to me . . . or make me certain about him . . . And that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it, Inspector? How could you think it? How could you begin to believe that he would do something to devastate me like this?”

  Because it was possible and it was his job, Lynley thought. But more than that, because it would so obviously work to engage her entirely in Mura’s life if Hadiyyah should end up permanently absent.

  VILLA RIVELLI

  TUSCANY

  Sister Domenica Giustina allowed Carina into the giardino. The day was hotter than normal, and the fountains in the garden were enticing to the child. Had she not embraced God’s punishment for her sin of fornication, Sister Domenica Giustina might even have joined the little girl. For with her green cotton trousers rolled up to her knees, Carina was thoroughly enjoying herself. She waded in the largest of the pools, dodged laughing beneath the spray from its fountain, and splashed water in the air to form rainbows all round them. She called out to Sister Domenica Giustina, “Venga! Fa troppo caldo oggi.” But although the day was too hot, Sister Domenica Giustina knew that her suffering could not be lessened even for five minutes in the cool, pleasant water.

  Forty days of punishment were necessary for what she and her cousin Roberto had done. During this period she would wear the same garments—rank though they were with the smell of him, of her, and of their mating—and she would remove them only to add thorns to the swaddling in which she wrapped her body. Nightly she would examine the wounds, for they had begun to suppurate. But this was good as the leaking pus said that her reparation was acceptable to God. God would inform her when she had done enough, and until He did so through the means of the pus’s disappearance, she must continue on the path she’d chosen to illustrate the depth of her sorrow for her sins against Him.

  “Suor Domenica!” the little girl cried, falling to her knees in the water so that it rose up to her waist. “Deve venire! Possiamo pescare. Vuole pescare? Le piace pescare? Venga!”

  There were no fish in the water of this fountain, and she was being far too loud. Sister Domenica Giustina recognised this, but she could hardly bear to stifle the child’s pleasure. Still, she understood it was necessary so she said, “Carina, fai troppo rumore,” and held a finger to her lips. She looked towards the great villa to the east of the sunken giardino and this look was to tell the little girl that her noise must not reach the villa’s inhabitants. There were dangers everywhere.

  She’d been told from the first to keep the child inside the great stone barn, and she’d disobeyed. When she’d taken him to the villa’s cellar to see the little girl, he’d smiled and spoken kindly to Carina, but Sister Domenica Giustina knew him better than he knew himself and she could see round his eyes that he hadn’t been pleased.

  He’d made this clear to her before he left. “What stupid game ar
e you playing at?” he’d hissed. “Keep her inside till I tell you otherwise. Can you get that into your thick skull, Domenica?” And he’d poked at her head sharply to indicate just how thick her skull was. He’d added, “God’s grace, after what you’ve done to me, I would think . . . Cristo, I should leave you to rot.”

  She’d tried to explain. The sun and the air were good for children. Carina needed to be out of the damp, dank rooms above the barn, and had she been told to stay inside, she wouldn’t have done so. No child would. Besides, there was no one about in this remote place and even if there had been someone, wasn’t it time they told the world that Carina was theirs?

  “Sciocca, sciocca!” had been his reply. He cupped her chin in his hand. His fingers increased the pressure till her whole jaw ached, and finally he threw her to one side. “She stays inside. Do you understand me? No vegetable garden, no cellar, no fish pond, no lawn. She stays inside.”

  Domenica said that she understood. But the day was hot and the fountains at the villa were so inviting and the child was so young. It could not hurt, Sister Domenica Giustina decided, to give her an hour to enjoy herself.

  Still, she looked about nervously. She decided it would be best to stand guard from above at the edge of the peschiera, so she climbed the stone steps from the sunken garden to the fish pond and she made certain that she and Carina were still alone.

  She walked to the spot from which the hillside fell to expose through the trees and the shrubbery the road that twisted into the hills from the valley below. Thus, she saw him. As before he raced up the road in his bright red car. She could hear, even at this distance, the roar from its engine as he changed down gears. He was going too fast, as he always did. There was a distant squeal from his tyres as he took one of the hairpin turns too sharply. He needed to slow, but he never would. He liked the speed.