Bruno stood stock still and shouted, “Call your dog off please.”
“Who are you? What’re you doing on my land? If you’re one of them lawyers, you can fuck off out of here.” The dog barked even louder and made feints towards Bruno’s legs.
“I’m from the Procura.” Bruno bitterly regretted not having asked a uniformed policeman to accompany him.
“Dick, come here.” The dog reluctantly obeyed and went to stand protectively by his master. The old man waited till Bruno walked up to him and placed himself on the opposite side of the wheelbarrow so that Bruno was forced to talk to him across it. Flies buzzed loudly.
“So, what do you want? Spit it out and then bugger off.”
“I wanted to talk to you about Ursula von Bachmann.”
“The German cow.”
“I take it you don’t like Germans.”
“No, I bloody well don’t. I was here during the war and let me tell you, there are some things you don’t forget, young man.”
“You weren’t a soldier?”
“No, I’m diabetic.”
“It must have been very difficult.”
“It was. They killed my brother like a dog.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And then they come here and think they can lord it over us all over again. Why don’t they stay in their own country?”
“I take it you weren’t happy about the Signora coming to live here?”
“No, I bloody wasn’t. Her husband, that von Bachmann, made the gun that killed my brother.”
“I see.”
“Her aunt was a real Signora, a proper lady, but that bloody woman came here and killed all her cats before she was cold in her grave. She exterminated them. Only a German would do that.”
“Could you tell me what you talked about with her?”
“She wanted to buy me out and I said no and that’s about it.”
“You didn’t talk about the war?”
“Not bloody likely.”
The door opened and an old crone came out and stood beside her husband.
“What’s he want?” she asked peering at Bruno.
“How should I know? He likes wasting people’s time, talking about the war.”
“Don’t you go getting all excited.” She patted her husband’s arm. “What do you want, anyway?” she asked Bruno belligerently.
“Were you here when the Signora came here?”
“Yes, I was. Some Signora! She wouldn’t even come into the house to say what she had to say.”
Bruno could imagine why. The steaming manure was really getting to him, but he didn’t reckon the inside of the house would be much better than the outside.
In the dining room the children chattered happily, unaware of the fact that an atrocity had taken place in the house. Lapo, on his third gin and tonic, briefly wondered what the adults would be saying to each other if the children hadn’t been there. Perhaps it was better that Isabella had decided to allow them to eat with the adults this evening. Teo was looking very tired and when Marta brought the food in and set it on the table, he sighed. Isabella, wearing an expression of wifely and motherly concern, said encouragingly, “That looks lovely. Come on, everybody let’s eat. We’ve all worked up quite an appetite swimming.”
“I’m hungry,” said Camilla and began to eat as soon as her mother set her plate down in front of her.
Marianna arrived shortly after they had all started. Isabelle said, “I’m sorry, we didn’t wait. The children were hungry and I wasn’t even sure you were coming down.”
Marianna smiled dreamily at them, “Not a problem.” She sat down and served herself, eating very little. Once again she was wearing white, this time white trousers and a sleeveless top. Conversation was confined to the children and it was only when Isabella took them upstairs at the end of the meal that the adults were free to talk.
“Do we know anything more?” asked Teo anxiously.
“You don’t think they’re going to tell us anything, do you? We’re all prime suspects.”
“Surely not. Guido maybe, but not us. She was our mother.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time that a mother has been killed by her child,” remarked Lapo. “What do you say, Marianna?” He stared hard at her.
“I’m sure you’re right, but not in this case. I don’t think any of us would have been capable of killing Mamma.” She held his gaze.
Teo remarked, “It has to be someone who had a key to the house. I’ve been thinking and there’s no way Mamma opened the shutters. She was paranoid about it. There was no sign of a forced entry so it had to be someone with a key and there aren’t that many of us.”
“So it was Guido.” Lapo grinned. “How very convenient. It lets us all off the hook and gets rid of a ridiculous little worm of a man that none of us can stand.”
“Don’t you think he did it?” asked Marianna.
“I doubt it. He’s the sort that goes off in a sulk. I can’t see him being violent.”
“Of course he’s very fastidious and you know he can’t stand blood, he faints,” remarked Marianna chewing thoughtfully on her food.
“Marianna, you’ve been chewing the same piece of food for half an hour. Do yourself and all of us a big favour and swallow it.”
She did and then drank half a glass of water as though to make quite sure it went where it was supposed to go. “I’m not terribly hungry.”
“Eating is a duty,” said Lapo solemnly, thrusting a fork-load of food into his mouth. He chewed it and then swallowed it aided by a gulp of wine.
“To whom, for God’s sake?” asked Teo irritably.
“To yourself.”
“Right. Be serious. Do you agree it must have been Guido?”
“It must have been, if you say so,” said Lapo facetiously.
“I mean it. I’ve thought this through and there’s no one else it could have been.”
“Good, then I’m sure the police will soon arrest him and we can stop worrying about ourselves.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Yes you are and I bet I know why.”
Teo said nothing.
“Because you weren’t in bed like you said you were, or rather you were probably in bed but not here.”
“If that’s true then I wasn’t knifing our mother.”
“Are you having an affair, Teo?” Marianna looked at him in surprise.
“We’re not here to talk about me. We’re talking about mother’s murderer.”
“Quite. Listen, Teo. I heard you come in at about five. Tell me I’m a liar!” said Lapo triumphantly.
“How do you know it was me, Lapo?”
“Because I got up and looked over the stair well.”
“I went out for a breath of fresh air.”
“After murdering Mamma?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Every time I think about it I throw up. Why do we always have to talk about this at meal times?”
“Because we never see each other at other times. Perhaps you’re vomiting because you remember what you did and feel sick about it.”
“Shut up!” Teo leapt from his chair and ran out of the room.
Marianna put down her knife and fork and gave up any pretence of eating. “Perhaps that’s what I’m trying to remember. There’s something important that I know about that night but I can’t remember what.”
“Perhaps you saw me coming out of Mamma’s room with a knife dripping blood.”
She looked at him seriously. “No Lapo, it wasn’t that.” She got up, pushed her chair under the table. “I’m sorry I can’t stay here on my own with you.”
Left alone, Lapo, who, despite his advice to Teo and Marianna, had actually eaten very little, poured himself a generous glass of whisky and downed it in one gulp. Marianna might be having trouble with her memory, and all things considered perhaps it was better that way, but he had too many things that he longed to forget.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Van
essa, do you know the von Bachmanns, I mean Ursula von Bachmann?” asked Jacopo.
“Of course! Who doesn’t?”
“Tell me what you know about her.”
“Poor Ursula, what an unfortunate woman. She had quite a difficult life despite all her money. She always seemed to marry the wrong men.”
“And she was about to do it again.”
“That really doesn’t surprise me.”
“How far up the social scale was she, would you say?”
“You mean you don’t know! Jacopo, you’re a Florentine and she lived in Florence for years.”
“Yes, but as you know I’m not into parties with the upper echelons of the Florentine and foreign nobility.”
“Oh, and what am I?”
“Sorry, with one exception. I do know that your mother was a Visdomini. How could I ever forget?” He was sending her up and she knew it.
“You’d better not forget it. Now about Ursula von Bachmann, she would have had to give precedence to my mother had they lived a hundred years ago, and to yours, come to that.”
“That’s very interesting, but nowadays?”
“The von Bachmann’s were minor German nobility. They made a lot of money during the Second World War, arms. Anyway, the von Bachmann family merged their business with Ursula’s family’s factory after the war, in the seventies I think, and greatly increased both their fortunes. Von Bachmann is a household name now, though of course they still make guns. Actually, Ursula didn’t have blue blood, but her first husband did, or rather does, he’s still alive you know, and so did her third, Ghiberti, most definitely, but of course they are somewhat impoverished now.”
“Surely, only relatively.”
“Well, let’s say compared to the von Bachmann’s definitely, compared to you, they’re well off.”
“I get the message. She used the name von Bachmann, don’t you find that strange?”
“Yes I do, a little, but obviously the money counts more for her as a status symbol, than the blood line, because as you must surely know, Ghiberti comes from much better stock.”
“Oh God!, Vanessa we’re not talking about racehorses here.”
“Well, we’re not far off. I suppose you realise that I would never have even looked at you if you hadn’t been a Dragonetti.”
“Are you sure about that? I mean you didn’t know my surname when you made advances to me at the theatre.”
“I made advances to you!”
“Of course, or I would never have asked you out.”
“You crazy man. Now do you want to know about Ursula or not?”
“Please do carry on.”
“Ursula was a Krapenfeld, they’re nobodies, on her father’s side. Her mother was Italian, from a well-to-do bourgeois family from Lucca. Ursula was very Germanic. She was brought up in Germany and she never got rid of her German accent. People always thought of her as German.”
“She inherited a villa from her aunt, in a small town near Lucca. That’s where she was killed.”
“I’d heard she’d moved to Lucca and I know why she did; she couldn’t compete here. It’s not just the money that counts. In the circles that she moved in they look at your blood line too. She’s nouveau riche and the money is blood money – arms. Besides I have to tell you, she had cultural pretensions and drove everybody mad. If you got invited to a party at that wretched Palazzo that von Bachmann bought her, she always played the cello.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, I expect she thought she’d do better in a smaller arena. She painted as well and had little shows of her work for charity and she wrote too, poems.”
“A Renaissance woman.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“How remarkably interesting.”
“That’s not all. She had quite a reputation for snubbing those she thought weren’t worthy of her.”
“Charming. I’m getting the picture now.”
“She was surrounded by all the nouveau riche and the arrivistes, you know what I mean.”
“Do you know any of her children?”
“Only Teo. He was heavily into drugs when he was a teenager. They sent him off for rehab in Switzerland. It was all hushed up of course, but everybody knew. I was at school with him.”
“Were you?”
“Yes, for two years. It was when my father was the American Consul in Florence and I went to the International School. That was before he got transferred to London.”
“Just think, I could have met you then.”
“I doubt it. I was at school and although I hate to remind you, you are a little older than me.”
“I’m sorry I always forget that I could have changed your nappies.”
“Well, you’d have had to be quite an unusual twelve-year-old to do that, but yes, you’re quite right.”
“So you don’t know the other children at all?”
“Well, of course, I’ve heard that one of them is, well, what do they say these days, vertically challenged.”
“A dwarf, you mean.”
“It isn’t PC to say that word.”
“He’s extraordinarily beautiful, but rather strange.”
“It can’t be easy for him.”
“I’m quite sure it isn’t. He’s got a deformed spine as well. There’s a terrible bitterness inside him. You can feel it, and rage, I would say.”
“Enough for him to kill his own mother?” Vanessa asked as though she couldn’t possibly believe it.
“Maybe. Yes, it’s possible, but if he hated her, I don’t understand why he’s waited so long to do it. You see, what interests me about this case is this, if one of the family members killed her, and quite honestly it looks probable, then there had to be a trigger, something must have happened to set him or her off.”
“Did anything happen that could have been a trigger?”
“Yes, Ursula had her first and last row with her gigolo husband-to-be and threw him out.”
“So you’re thinking he killed her out of disappointment.”
“He says he never left his hotel room but I’ve got men going through the hotel camera tapes and if he did leave the hotel that night, then it looks like it was him.”
“So what’s your problem?”
“No evidence. There’s no blood on his clothes, no murder weapon, no one saw him near the house, let alone in it, and everyone tells me he faints at the sight of blood.”
“Is there any evidence against any of the others?”
“No. All their fingerprints are in the room, except the daughter-in-law’s, but no one had any blood on their clothing.”
“You’re stuck then.”
“Unless someone confesses.”
“Is that likely?”
“Guido might, if I put enough pressure on him.”
“Sounds like you’ll have to.”
“You know my Elektra dream keeps coming to mind. I keep thinking this is matricide, but I don’t know which of her kids had sufficient reason to kill her.”
“But Elektra didn’t kill her mother did she?”
“No, it was Oreste, her brother, but it was at her instigation.”
“Which von Bachmann brother are you thinking of?”
“Lapo. He’s the only one I can imagine wielding a knife like that.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say about someone.”
“Well someone did it. You know, I look at them all; Marianna who looks like a vestal virgin dressed in white and seems detached from everyone and, well, it’s impossible even to think of her killing her mother. There was some friction over her choice of a boyfriend, but she comes into her inheritance next month when she comes of age, so there’s no motive there. Then there’s Lapo, who’s a very unpleasant character and he could have done it, but he doesn’t seem to have a motive. Tebaldo has even less reason. No one has a motive really, except Guido, the future husband. I can’t dismiss the fact that he’d just been thrown out on his ear, but he’s such a fop. He’s the last person
you would think could do it.”
“You’re just going round in circles, Jacopo. Can we get off the subject now. I hardly see you and I don’t really want to talk about work with you. We never do, which is one of the things I like about you. There’s a concert on tonight, shall we go?”
“That sounds like a very good idea. Did I ever tell you I think you’re amazingly clever?”
“I know I am, and you’re not bad yourself.”
“We could stay in and do something very interesting.”
“Really, like what?
He grabbed her hand and pulled her towards him, pressing his body against hers. He kissed her and then said, “Something of this sort?” and still holding her hand moved towards the bedroom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The next morning Dragonetti looked through the reports on his desk while Bruno observed him. Bruno noted with approval that Drago was chewing gum again. He smiled and Drago, immediately understanding why, said, “Twenty-four hours, well actually, twenty-five and a quarter, not bad eh?”
“Amazing!”
“Oh ye of little faith!”
“Not at all, I’m very pleased for you.”
Drago returned to the reports. One thing in particular caught his attention. He smiled and said to Bruno, “Guido did leave the hotel shortly after one and returned at just after two.”
“He didn’t stay out long then.”
“Looking at the distance he’d have had to cover, I’d guess if he went to the villa he only stayed about ten minutes. Just long enough to kill Ursula.”
“We still have to prove it.”
“We have motive, means and opportunity but that’s not enough. We need one small piece of evidence. If we can prove he was in, or even at the house, that would probably be enough.”
“Their nearest neighbours are the Rossi family but you can’t see the big house from theirs. I checked,” said Bruno.
“And they don’t use the same access road.”
“But they do use the same main provincial road to get to the house.”
“OK, so we need to know if one of them saw Guido driving either towards or away from the house at the appropriate times. I should think the old folk were in bed but you never know, the grandson might have seen something. And we’ll have house-to-house along the whole road, as well. Organise all that with Maresciallo Spadaccia. The road is a small one, not much used, especially at that time of night. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
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