"The usual story I suppose. I'll never understand why the murder of an innocent child is considered preferable to the shame of an unwanted pregnancy. What is wrong with people's values that they are ready to kill rather than be shamed?"
"Do you find it an Italian crime, Hilary?"
"No, it happens everywhere, but it does seem to me more prevalent in Italy. Perhaps others abandon babies where they can be found, but these are naked, and in rubbish bins, or plastic bags. They are just thrown away."
"Surprising in a country where children are valued so much, and where it is almost impossible to adopt an Italian child."
"It's the Catholic thing, the shame of sex."
"If so, then surely they must realise that God will know," said Ruggero
"The important thing is that their neighbours don't. Isn't it awful? Every time you think that people are getting more enlightened, something like this happens and makes you realise that nothing changes."
"How gloomy you are today, Hilary. Has your friend of a friend made you depressed?"
"I suppose she has in a way. She sees Italy through rose-coloured glasses. I suppose I did once too. You know I wouldn't live any where else, but mine is an informed choice, I don't live here now because I endow the country with virtues it doesn't have."
"She'll find out."
"Find out what, that there is no Garden of Eden, that the snake is everywhere. There was no Golden Age, and there never will be, anywhere?"
"Hilary, you are decidedly gloomy. Let's roast some chestnuts on the fire, and have a glass of vino rosso, surely something left over from the Garden of Eden."
"That's a good idea. I've got some left in the cantina. Why don't you go and see if they're any good, or if the worms have got them all."
There were more than enough good ones. Ruggero tossed the chestnuts up into the air and down again into the special long-handled chestnut pan set over the embers. The smoky perfume of the cooking chestnuts was such a nostalgic scent, that Hilary felt it embodied Italian autumn for her, but then she worried she was getting as romantic as Isabelle, and opened the window a little to let some of the smoke out. A pungent cold wind whipped into the room, and slammed the window wide open.
"I wonder how Isabelle is finding her first night on her mountain top. Rather her than me." She closed the window again, thankful to be in the warm, and not alone like Isabelle in her isolated house.
Isabelle had a terrible night. Some animal was making appalling noises outside the house, a raucous screeching noise, which she was unable to identify. There were rustlings and scrunching noises, and then there was the cold. She had put a huge winter eiderdown on her bed, but later had added a blanket, and was wearing thermal pyjamas, a bed jacket, and socks as well. At what seemed to her to be about dawn, a wood saw began its remorseless whining, and shrieking, which went on and on, until she gave up trying to sleep and staggered down to the kitchen, where the cold seemed even worse. With numbed fingers she turned the thermostat and noted that it clicked on as soon as she moved it. However, she set it for 15 degrees C, knowing full well that it would never turn itself off even at that comparatively low temperature. It was 7.45 a.m! Not that early after all. The workmen would arrive at 8.0 am on the dot, and with horrid predictability, the cement mixer would burst into noisy life, and grind on all bloody day. She looked in the gilded mirror hanging in her sitting room, and was faced with a terrible vision. She was very pale, but myriad veins were snaking brokenly across her cheeks in stark contrast to her general pallor. Mauve bags hung under her eyes, which felt sore and longed to close again.
First things first. She went up to the bathroom trying not to disturb her headache, which worsened with movement. Bravely she turned on the light, and examined her face again, in detail, then washed and creamed it, and applied a thick layer of foundation. The result was quite good. She had added a little masking cream to the mauve circles, and then carefully applied her eye make-up. As she finished, she could hear the car and the Ape arriving. Hurriedly stripping off her night clothes she threw on a pair of very heavy woollen trousers over thick tights and a fisherman's jersey over her thermal vest. A quick brush through her hair, and she now felt that she could face the world, or if not the world, then the workmen. A few minutes later, she opened the front door, and coffee cup in hand saluted the day, and the workmen, with a gay, "Buon giorno". The sun savagely hit her eyes reminding her to look for her dark glasses before venturing out again. Then she closed the door. Appearances had been saved and she settled down to eat breakfast.
The town of Borgo San Cristoforo was abuzz with the story of an abandoned baby. As the refuse bins were on the main road to Lucca, it was reckoned that someone from afar had dropped the bag from a car and then driven off, someone who probably lived miles away. It was unthinkable that anyone from their own area could have done something so ‘contro natura’ so unnatural, and these days, well, unmarried mothers were not ostracised as they once had been. So went the local gossip, everyone knowing full well, that any girl unfortunate enough to get herself pregnant, and coming from one of the families with a more old- fashioned point of view, would have a pretty hard life, unless of course the man responsible could be forced into a shotgun marriage.
Officially little could be done. Hospitals had been alerted in case someone turned up with a post partum haemorrhage, but apart from that, unless a nosy neighbour phoned in, or they got an anonymous tip, they would probably never solve the mystery. The baby was still alive, and had appeared on national television, viewed from a distance, in an incubator. They called her Lucia.
Isabelle asked Marco, in her grotesquely pronounced Italian, if he thought the noises she had heard during the night, might have been some nocturnal bird. As she was unaware that the word 'bird' is Italian slang for 'cock' she was at a loss to understand why he laughed like a drain. He summoned his limited English and said, "Maybe," wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.
By the afternoon, Isabelle felt much better, and had recovered her usual 'joie de vivre' as she called it. She put on her sheepskin jacket and set out to tour her land, something only possible in the winter, as in the summer it became an impenetrable jungle. She had quite a lot of woodland, and thought she would have enough wood for fires for the rest of her life. She walked carefully down the gently sloping terrain. There was a predominance of chestnut trees. Chestnuts had once been the staple food for the people in this area. They could be roasted, or dried and then used to make soup, or ground into flour at one of the then numerous mills set along the little torrents that raged in the winter, and provided sufficient energy to move the huge millstones. The flour was used to make a ‘polenta dolce’, or a sweet chestnut porridge which was excellent with pork, but more often eaten with a little ricotta, cream, or milk. It was also used to make thin pancakes, called necci, cooked between hot stones covered with chestnut leaves and set by the fire. These were occasionally enriched with a little bacon, but usually eaten with ricotta. Nowadays necci were nearly always cooked between two flat iron griddles with long handles, over the embers of a fire. Castagnaccio, a thin cake made wholly from chestnut flour, and decorated with pine nuts, orange rind, and rosemary, was a more festive fare. All these foods, once a staple, were now sold at local "sagre" or fairs, the money going to charity, or for the benefit of some association, usually a football club. Once people had survived on this food, now many said it was too difficult to digest, and was something special, that should not be eaten in quantity.
In the past the chestnut woods had been kept clean, and the chestnuts were picked by hand, an arduous task. Now most people had let their woods to go back to the jungle, and bought their chestnuts at the greengrocers.
Isabelle knew little of this, but she realised that there must be a terrific production of chestnuts in her woods, and looked forward to picking them next autumn. Her own chestnuts! She knew it was stupidly romantic of her to be so enamoured of this country, but she had fallen in love with it, and she was going t
o enjoy the sensations that gave her. It was like being on a high. She felt so alive. All those years of boredom with Roger were as nothing. The last two years, ever since she had bought the house had been a unique experience for her. She felt enriched. In her mind she began to compose a poem,
Noble trees, in an enchanted wood,
What spirits could live here.
I would, that as I stand alone,
They should appear
To me.
Mmm. Not very good. That 'should' was awful. Brood instead of stand perhaps? No perhaps not, sounded like a chicken or something. Still it did express what she was thinking. Perhaps some fairy spirit did inhabit this beautiful wood. She would try something more elaborate this evening.
The afternoon was drawing in, and the air was becoming colder now.
She approached a small clearing where a fallen chestnut had been sawn up, leaving a tree trunk. But there was something wrong, something terribly wrong. Oh God! So ghastly! She moved nearer, shaking with horror. Her enchanted wood with this terrible tableau. EVIL! Not an enchanted wood, but an evil one, inhabited by devils, monsters. She felt waves of nausea, and vomited copiously, her body retching as though she would eliminate what she had seen. Tears sprang to her eyes.
Lying across the tree trunk was a man, his face was turned towards her, his eyes wide open in glassy horror, his jaw gaped, his teeth grinned obscenely and dried blood marked his chin. His body was stretched across the wide trunk, his legs dangling on the ground, his trousers round his ankles. From his rectum protruded a red metal broomstick. Blood had coursed down his legs and dried there too. She stood there frozen in horror. This man was dead…some one, a maniac, had killed him. A maniac! She looked round her in fear, and tried to run. Her legs were shaking so much that she tripped and fell to the ground, her knees spiked by the chestnut thorns. She put her hands down to push herself up, and hurt them too. Little drops of blood appearing when she pulled out the thorns. She was talking to herself hysterically, tears streaming down her face, as she ran, ungainly, awkward, and slow. She hadn't realised how far she was from the house. It was late, surely the sun was dimming. She fell again, this time she did not get up. She had fainted.
She opened her eyes to a filtered light, her cheek pressed against something prickly and damp. It was late afternoon, and cold. Consciousness of her whereabouts came slowly, but suddenly she remembered where she was, and what she had seen.
"Oh God!" she gasped, and hurriedly got to her feet, brushing damp leaves and dirt from her trousers. She looked back towards the clearing but in this half light she could discern nothing. Had she really seen that…thing? She must go back, but she was afraid. Trembling and shaken she forced herself to retrace her steps, admonishing herself mentally. "Coward, what are you afraid of? There's nothing there anyway." She prayed there would be nothing, that the half light had played some ghastly trick on her, and her imagination had done the rest, it must be so!
Then she was in front of it, the same vitreous stare, the mouth open as though to scream in pain, to beg for mercy, to cry for help. She now saw that was not a man, it was only a boy, not much more than a child. She avoided looking at what had been done to him, that terrible violation to his young body, the violation that must surely have caused his death. She felt calmer now and reached forward with a hand to touch the boy's cheek." Poor boy," she murmured. He was icy cold, and quite dead. Perhaps he had died early that morning, or even the night before. She was in no danger; whoever had done this was long gone.
Now she must go back and be sensible. She would phone Hilary, her man was in the police or something. Thank God for Hilary! She would know what to do, help her through with this. Now that she had a plan of action, as she mentally called it, she started back, walking resolutely, trudging uphill slowly, as though what she had seen had in some way aged her. She whispered a prayer for the boy, and said, "You won't be alone for long. They'll come and get you soon," as though asking forgiveness for leaving him there alone. The house loomed into view dark against the darkening skyline.
CHAPTER THREE
"Pronto"
"Hilary, it's me. Isabelle" Her voice was shaky.
"Isabelle, what's wrong, are you all right?"
"Something terrible has happened. I don't know what I should do. I need to call the police."
"What's happened? Have you had an accident? Are you hurt?"
"No, no. It's not me. Hilary, it's awful, there's a young boy dead in the woods."
"Dead!"
"Yes, dead, he’s been murdered. It’s terrible. Hilary…please…”Her voice faltered. She took a deep breath. “Please come up as soon as you can. Call the police for me, and then come up and be with me, while they ask me about it. Please. I can't face it alone." She started weeping.
"I'll be there in ten minutes." She put down the phone and went to get her down-filled jacket, and warm boots. She took a torch and a pair of warm gloves, and put them in the pockets. She scribbled a note for Ruggero, who had gone to Florence and would not be back until late. Only then did she call the police, and tell them briefly what had happened and that she was on her way to assist them by translating for Isabelle who couldn't speak Italian.
Isabelle heard her car and opened the door, peering out in the darkness,
"Hilary?" she called."
"Yes. It's me." She joined Isabelle who clasped her and started weeping again.
"Isabelle, let's go in, and wait for the police in the house. They'll be here any minute."
"Oh Hilary, it's so awful."
"Calm down and tell me about it. Where is he?"
"Down in the woods. I was walking in the woods and I found him there, in a clearing, where they sawed up a chestnut tree. He was lying across the trunk."
"What on earth were you doing in the woods in the dark?"
"Oh, but it wasn't dark when I started out, it was still pretty light, and I thought there was just time for a quick look round. Anyway, after I found him, I'm afraid, well I threw up, and then I fainted. Silly I suppose, but you know, the shock." She was trembling.
"I'll make you a cup of tea. Is the heating on? It feels pretty cold in here."
"Yes it is on, but it takes a while to warm the place up."
"I'll light the fire. Let me put a kettle on first." She went through to the kitchen and prepared everything for two mugs of tea, then went back into the sitting room, and lit the fire, which Isabelle had laid that morning.
"Hilary, he must have had a horrible death. He was sodomised with a stick, a broomstick or something."
"Oh my God! Oh Isabelle!"
"That's what was so terrible. His eyes were open, you know, he must have suffered so much. It's unbearable." She wept into a paper handkerchief, threw it on the fire, and then took another.
"Drink this," Hilary commanded thrusting the mug into her hands.
They were sipping their tea, warming their hands round the warm mugs, and gazing at the flames, when they heard the cars arrive. Hilary got up to let them in, and was pleased to see Maresciallo Biagioni, who she knew well, with two younger policemen.
"Buona sera, Signora, he held out his hand, and shook hers.”Now, what's been happening here?" he looked at Isabelle as though suspecting her of some illegality.
"La Signora Smith was walking in the woods, when she came across the dead body of a young man."
"Have you seen the body yourself?"
"No. It's dark, and we were waiting for you. Is there someone local reported missing?"
"Yes, a boy's mother phoned in this morning, but, well you know, lads will be lads, and we reckoned he'd turn up. This boy is sixteen. Would that tally?"
"I think so."
"Well, if the Signora feels up to it, we'd like to see the body straight away please."
"Of course. Isabelle, get your jacket, we have to take them to see the body," she translated.
"Right. Of course." She got up quickly and went to the coat rack, got her sheepskin coat, and put it on. "Ha
ve they got torches?"
"Of course. Do you think you can find it in the dark? The clearing I mean?"
"I think so. I hope so, or we're all going to look bloody silly combing the woods all night. I've got a torch of my own; shall I lead the way then?"
They set out, the policemen walking behind Isabelle, who was having trouble finding the little path she had set off along at the start of her afternoon walk. When she finally found it, Hilary breathed a sigh of relief. It was a tiny track, barely visible, and was probably only used by hunters, though as Hilary reflected, someone must have sawn up the chestnut tree. How many people would know about it? Did the killer know, or just use the tree trunk as the first thing that came to hand? The Maresciallo, tugged at her sleeve,
"Did she say if he had been shot or something?" he asked quietly.
"Yes, he was murdered horribly." She paused, "She thinks he must have been sodomised with something, and that he died from that."
"Madre di Dio!" He said nothing else.
"Hilary!" called Isabelle, "Will you tell them I'm not sure about the next bit. I know I left the path, and went down here somewhere, and then connected to a lower level footpath, but I'm not sure where." Hilary translated, and the two young policemen went off to find the lower path. The three of them remained huddled on the narrow footpath waiting in silence. A triumphant shout and then the breathless appearance of one of the men announcing, "The footpath's down here sir, Rossi has gone on ahead, I’ve come back to guide you down."
They followed him now, a ridiculous single file procession, their little lights bobbing along. Then they reached the new footpath, and walked along slowly, waiting for the shout they knew would announce the discovery of the body.
"Sir, I've found it." It was not a shout, more a horrified murmur. "It's about twenty yards ahead. Perhaps the two women would prefer to wait here?"
The Tuscan Mystery Trilogy Page 50