“No, but we don’t know when she died, so maybe when I came in it was all over.” Lapo’s breathing sounded wheezy. “Teo, did you see her?”
“Yes,” said Teo shortly.
The policeman coughed and said, “Dottor Dragonetti would prefer you not to talk about the manner of your mother’s death.”
“Oh would he,” said Lapo. “Don’t you think we have the right to know how she died?”
“Of course. He will be the one to decide when.”
“I don’t understand all this secrecy. Was there something strange about her death? Was it some kind of sadistic satanic ritual or something?” Lapo asked facetiously.
Teo had a ghastly flashback of his mother’s terrible blue eye hanging from its socket and lying on her pulped face. He shot to his feet, his hand over his mouth. He brushed the policeman aside and ran along the corridor to the lavatory.
Lapo’s breathing got worse and he reached for his spray. Marianna said, “From Teo’s reaction it can’t have been very pleasant.”
“Teo throws up at the slightest thing, he always has done.” Lapo puffed the spray into his mouth and inhaled with difficulty.
Guido watched them all in horror. “None of you seem really upset about poor Ursula.”
“No, Guido, that’s why Teo’s throwing up and I’m wheezing. We’re totally unaffected. Did you think you’re the only one who’s touched by her death, though of course we all realise her death affects you in a more, shall we say, tangible way. What a shame you didn’t manage to get her to the altar before… all this.”
“The Town Hall.” corrected Marianna.
“She was never going to marry you anyway. What was that monumental row about yesterday? Had she finally seen through you and realised what a little piece of scum you are?” spat Lapo.
Guido appealed to the policeman, “Can’t I wait somewhere else? You can see how unpleasant they’re being and I don’t deserve it.” His voice was petulant.
“I bet you were so pissed off with her that you came back and did it. You knew she’d never marry you so you went mad and killed her.”
“I didn’t!”
“Well, it wasn’t one of us.”
Teo came back into the room. He looked paler than ever. “How long have we got to stay shut up here for?”
As he spoke the door opened and Dragonetti came in. He looked at them and said, “Ursula von Bachmann’s body has been removed from the house. Your rooms have been searched and certain items of clothing have been taken away. I will need a detailed statement from each of you regarding your movements last night, and after that your fingerprints will be taken. Then you are free to leave this room, but not this house, for the moment, with the exception of Signor della Rocca.”
“Good, I don’t want to stay here.”
“And we don’t want him here. I don’t understand why you had to bring this murdering scumbag into our house,” said Lapo.
Guido gasped, “You little shit. How dare you.”
“He won’t be staying here,” said Dragonetti firmly.
“May we know how our mother died?” asked Lapo.
“Not until I have the results of the autopsy.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“No. It isn’t possible at the moment to say which of her injuries was the cause of death.”
“Oh my God!, What kind of a state was she in?”
Teo whimpered and put his hand to his mouth.
“There were several injuries.”
“It must have been a madman,” said Guido, as though that exempted him.
“Possibly.”
“Or someone who’d gone mad because mother had thrown him out. Eh Guido, did you decide to get your revenge?” Lapo wheezed.
Guido’s mouth fell open.
Teo said, “I hope the police make a thorough investigation into you, your life, your means of employment and your movements last night. You’re a filthy piece of work and if you killed our mother, you’ll pay for it.”
Guido stood up and looked at them, “Why do you all hate me so much? What did I ever do to you?”
“Signor della Rocca, if you would like to come with me, I’ll take your statement and then you’ll be accompanied to your hotel where my men will search your belongings and take anything they need for forensic analysis.”
“What does that mean? Are you looking for blood? Well you won’t find any.” Guido turned to the others. “Whatever you think, I loved Ursula and I didn’t kill her.”
He left the room with Dragonetti and the family drew together, united by their feeling that Guido was the man who had murdered Ursula. Piero, who’d remained silent, asked, “Could I give my statement first? There’s a lot I need to do.”
“If it’s up to us, of course,” said Marianna, “but I rather think that it’s out of our hands. From now on we can only do what they allow us.”
“Until they catch whoever did it and that won’t take long. We all know who’s responsible,” Teo said firmly.” It won’t take them long to prove it.”
“Guido isn’t a fool you know. He’s hardly going to leave blood-stained clothing in his hotel room. He’s had stacks of time to get rid of anything incriminating,” Marianna stated.
“Unfortunately, that applies to all of us, Marianna. We’ll just have to trust in forensic science to find some microscopic trace evidence.”
Lapo smiled grimly. “This is real life, not an American crime series and we’re not in America. I wonder how good the police are.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Isabella looked up as Teo entered the room. The children had been asleep in their room for the last two hours and would be waking up soon. Isabella was lying on her bed resting, but sleep would have been impossible. Apart from anything else she had a disturbing, worrying piece of information and she’d been turning it over in mind wondering whether or not to talk to Teo about it not. When he came in, she saw that he looked dreadful and made her decision.
“You poor thing,” she said sympathetically.
He sat down heavily on a chair. She thought he looked somehow immeasurably aged. She got off the bed and went over to him.
“Are you alright?”
“Of course I’m not alright. I’ve had the shock of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more terrible.”
“Was she disfigured?”
“Disfigured? She didn’t even look like a human being!”
“Oh my God, I had no idea!,” she cried in horror.
The memory of his mother’s eye suddenly struck him yet again. He got up and lurched into the bathroom where she heard him vomiting copiously.
“Tell me about Madam.” Dragonetti carefully used the name by which Piero and Marta always referred to her.
“She was… it seems strange to use the past tense… she wasn’t a bad person, a little foolish sometimes, especially over men, but not a wicked person.”
“Are you referring to Guido?”
“Guido and the others.”
“There have been other Guidos?”
“Yes, and her husbands weren’t wonderful either except for Romeo Ghiberti, and he died.”
“You’ve been with her, how long now?”
“My wife and I joined the staff twenty-five years ago. Tebaldo was only a child then.”
“Tell me how you came to be here.”
“Well, she’d been married about eight years I suppose. She was still young and von Bachmann had bought a palazzo in Venice. That’s where we came in. Madam had relatives in Italy on her mother’s side, so she spoke Italian and knew the country. She far preferred it to Germany, although of course they spent a lot of time there even after they’d bought the Palazzo. Her father, as I’m sure you know, was Krapenfeld, who owned the famous armaments factory, which of course nowadays also makes electrical appliances, that was after the merger with the von Bachmanns. Anyway, she was looking for a couple who would take over the running of the house and we were found to be suitable. We
’ve stayed ever since. Of course we’ve moved around from Italy to Germany, a period in France, Venice and then mainly the Palazzo in Florence and now here.”
“She divorced her first husband, didn’t she?”
“Yes. Quite frankly von Bachmann was an absolute monster. I say was, but of course, he’s still alive. I suppose he must be about eighty now and of course mentally he’s deteriorated. He was much older than Madam and to tell you the truth it was an arranged marriage. It facilitated the merger. He led Madam a merry dance, chorus girls and so on, well that’s what they called them in those days, and the thing ended in divorce. After that she had a couple of… relationships… before marrying David Rama the Italian pasta king, that’s Lapo’s father. Unfortunately, he messed around a lot too, especially after Lapo was born, and Madam was left alone too much. She consoled herself with another man, rather like Guido, and when Rama found out he divorced her. Then there were… others, but her third husband Romeo Ghiberti, was undoubtedly the best of the bunch. That’s Marianna’s father, though she never knew him. He was only interested in cars, probably to the exclusion of everything else. He died in a car crash before Marianna was born, but it probably wouldn’t have lasted anyway. He was never at home.”
“I see. And Guido?”
“Guido della Rocca claims to be of noble birth, but I have my doubts. He may be from a distant branch of the della Rocca family but he’s a self-made man. He deals in antiques and antiquities, some of it really old archaeological stuff, I suppose. The sort of thing that should be in a museum, I’d think, but then I don’t know a lot about it. Anyway, Madam had decided to marry him.”
“How did the family, her children, feel about that?”
“It’s not really my place to say. Let’s just say they didn’t get on with him.”
“What did you think about it?”
“Quite frankly, I was surprised. There had been other men, after Ghiberti died, but none she wanted to marry. I didn’t really understand why she wanted to get married again. No one did.”
“Did you hear the argument between Guido and Ursula yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hear anything they said?”
“No. It’s not my habit to eavesdrop.”
“Quite, but nothing reached your ears by chance?”
“Nothing. I just know that she must have thrown him out because he left in a hurry and didn’t come back.”
“But he sent roses this morning?”
“I presume they came from him. I didn’t read the card.”
“I did, and it was affectionate, so couldn’t it be that in fact they had a tiff and nothing more?”
“Of course, but they never have before and it wasn’t a tiff, it was a terrible row. We could hear them shouting from downstairs.”
“Alright. Is there anything else that you think I should know?”
“Yes. Madam received two threatening anonymous letters. I did go to the local Maresciallo about them.”
“I know about that. Have you any idea who sent them?”
“If I had, I wouldn’t have gone to the police.”
“Really? What would you have done?”
“I would have confronted him. I know how to deal with people like that.”
“How?”
“Well, it would rather depend on who it was. I mean some doddery old man, lost in the past, is hardly a threat, whereas a young racist is quite something else.”
“Racist?”
“The letters referred to Madam’s nationality and to the war.”
“So you were worried?”
“Well, yes. That’s why I went to the police.”
“And you have no idea at all who could have written the letters.”
“None.”
“Alright, did you see any strangers near the villa earlier that evening?”
“No.”
“Did you or your wife leave your bedroom at any time during the night?”
“No.”
“Your bedroom is on the lower ground floor, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hear any noises during the night, anyone trying to break in?”
“I slept all night like a baby, apart from one visit to the bathroom, and as far as I know, so did my wife.”
“Alright, you can go. I know your wife is very tired and she’s had a terrible shock. We’ve already briefly questioned her and I won’t need to see her again until tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
“One last thing. Have you formed any opinion about who could have committed this crime?”
“Yes, I am quite convinced in my mind that it was someone from outside. There is no way that a member of this family could have done it and, when I say family, I have to include Signor della Rocca in that group. People of their sort don’t commit murder.”
Dragonetti repressed a smile. Generalisations were always ridiculous, and in this case, appallingly so.
When Piero finally got down to the kitchen to speak to his wife, Marta, she was in a state of near collapse. The two kitchen staff had been sent away and told not to return the next day, in fact not to return until further notice. Marta had remained alone after their departure, apart from the policeman to whom she’d served coffee in the late morning, and later a small lunch. She herself had eaten nothing. Piero had come down for the lunch tray and then returned for the coffee tray to take up to the dining room but at that time the others had been present and they had not said a word to each other. Now, when at last they could, Marta was surprisingly loath to actually tell him what she had seen. She’d thought she would want to express all her outrage and her sense of horror that someone could actually do something like that to another human being, but now that he was here, she couldn’t find the words. In fact, as soon as she saw him, she burst into tears.
By late afternoon, Drago had accumulated a vast amount of information on the victim’s family. Maresciallo Spadaccia had proved to be efficient, pulling up files through his computer and feeding him information as he requested it. His personal observation had also given him a little. Isabella had no love for Ursula, nor did Marianna. He considered them briefly. It hadn’t seemed to him to be the sort of crime a woman would commit, but he knew he shouldn’t generalise. Two teenage girls had knifed a nun a few years back and another adolescent girl had done the same to her mother and younger brother. It had been a blood bath. Matricide. Was this also a case of matricide? Had the vestal virgin taken a knife and wielded it to kill and mutilate her mother? What about Lapo, whom he hadn’t liked from the moment he saw him. This had nothing to do with his size or deformity. The boy was actually quite beautiful, but Drago had had a gut reaction which he couldn’t ignore. There was something about Lapo’s eyes… yes, he felt there was definitely something not right about him. But Lapo had had a severe asthmatic reaction and that couldn’t be faked, or could it? And the pale delicate Tebaldo whose sickness could be remorse. He, too, could have killed his mother.
If he accepted that this murder could have been committed by a woman, that also brought Isabella into the picture. Isabella hadn’t loved Ursula and had expressed her feelings quite openly. However, as things stood at the moment, he thought that Guido seemed to be the most likely suspect. The unprecedented row that afternoon, his banishment, and the loss of all his dreams and desires might have tipped the balance of his mind. He remembered Guido’s tears and dismissed them as quickly. Tears could be produced on tap by even the most hardened criminals, or on occasion they were actually tears of remorse. So, Guido della Rocca, antique dealer, toy boy and who knew what else, had been so close to achieving what he wanted, but something had happened to demolish everything in an instant. One monumental row had shattered his dreams. It was quite understandable that he should want to take his revenge. If he couldn’t have her, no one else would. Drago had seen it happen before.
He thought about the others in the house. Piero, the impeccable man-servant, too good to be true? And the f
aithful Marta, whose reactions had most certainly not been faked. Unless further evidence came up, he felt he could safely eliminate them as suspects. The next day he would have the results of the forensic analysis of their clothing. Anyone who had wielded a knife like that would have been contaminated by the victim’s blood, probably quite heavily. Of course they’d all had time to get rid of any bloody clothing, so the results might yield nothing. The weapon had also been got rid of somewhere and at some time during the night. Lapo had been heard coming in at four. Had he just come back from throwing away anything that had been in contact with the victim, clothing, shoes and knife?
He had a strong feeling this was not going to be an easy case to solve.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lapo sat in his sister’s bedroom watching her rummage through her wardrobe.
“What do you think they’ve taken, Lapo?”
“How should I know? They’re your clothes. Don’t you know what’s missing?”
“Have you been up to your room?”
“Yes. They’ve taken the clothes from my dirty clothes basket and what I was wearing yesterday evening. Didn’t they ask you?”
“Of course. I didn’t go out so I wasn’t wearing anything last night, just an old T-shirt. I told them about that.” She went over to her own clothes basket which was in her bathroom. “Look it’s empty. Good God, they’ve even taken my knickers!”
Lapo laughed. “When the police come to your house, you have no privacy and no rights.”
“How disgusting.”
“It’s a good thing this didn’t happen a few days ago or they might have found something much more interesting.”
“That’s true.” She laughed hysterically, “So it’s all for the best, right?”
“You do see that it’s for your own good that you don’t see that boy anymore.”
“Roberto, his name’s Roberto and I went to see him in hospital yesterday afternoon.”
“Did you? How is he?”
“Bad. It’s terrible. He’s so ill. He’s got to have God knows how many operations and they can’t even guarantee he’ll walk again.”
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