The Baron was clearly distressed and exasperated, but he made a supreme effort, and tried to reply collectedly. “I avoid cultivating any personal relationship with them. I don’t crave the position of the guru, the cult leader, or the father confessor to troubled youth. There’s no advertisement for my lectures.”
“So, how do they know about them?”
“Through word of mouth. Apparently it reaches most countries of Western Europe.”
Ghedina was determined not to be impressed. “Do you even know the names of your listeners?”
“A few have insisted on introducing themselves, but I don’t recall their names, and I don’t want to.”
“Do you know what they do when they’re not at your lectures? How they get here? Where they stay, for instance? The Villa Riviera is pretty remote.”
“That’s their business, not mine.” The Baron closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then another. His eyes still closed, he murmured: “Ask my secretary, Giorgio Moser. He lives in Verona.”
The Inspector was merciless. “Roughly, could you say how many people were at your latest lecture?”
“About a hundred.”
“A hundred?” Ghedina’s concern showed on his face, but the Baron had not opened his eyes. “Did your niece Angela ever attend? Baron? Are you all right?” The old man’s mouth had dropped open and his head lolled sideways as his chest heaved with short, labored breaths. The Inspector called for help.
Dumitru arrived, and helped the Baron to his feet. “You’d better call the doctor right away,” the Inspector said, and walked out of the drawing room. He did not look forward to further dealings with a man who could move so suddenly from pomp to pathos. But he relished the chance to stroll around the villa, so different from the usual squalid scenarios of his professional life.
He reached the kitchen, and proceeded to interrogate Afina and Samanta, who looked distressed. Still, he questioned them in depth until one of his policemen interrupted him. “Inspector, we’ve found something you should see.”
“What is it, Colucci?”
“We’ll just take you there, by car.”
Colucci, a stocky goggle-eyed type consistently passed over for promotion, liked to make a mystery of things, and Ghedina indulged him. They got into the police car, but the Inspector had barely time to fasten his seat belt before they arrived. “What the hell is this?” he asked.
Before them, in a meadow among vineyards, were many tents. Some of their occupants were talking, smoking. “The students!” the Inspector reproached himself, “of course!” He couldn’t have imagined that they camped on the grounds, yet he should have! “Colucci, call for back-up forces, immediately. Tell them to fly down here. I want twenty more men, with Gallorini among them.”
“Inspector, shouldn’t I call the headquarters in Verona? They’d get here a lot sooner.”
“No, this is our investigation. Call our people in Bolzano. We will deal with the campers until then. Tell them they must race down here!”
Ghedina got out of the car and walked up to one of the young men. The other ones surrounded him. There were, he estimated, about thirty of them. “This is a police investigation,” he said in a loud voice. “I want you all to follow me back to the villa.” They looked at him with distrust, even hostility. “Colucci,” he called, “come here.” The assistant strutted into the circle and looked around as Ghedina addressed the group.
“Now, listen. I’ve just spoken to the Baron, and he too wants your collaboration. Is that clear? So, follow me back to the villa.”
More meekly than he had anticipated, they did. Ghedina led the procession; Colucci, in the car, followed it at a walking pace. Both the Inspector and the policeman had had their Berettas at the ready all along.
They reached the villa, and the other policeman there, with no incidents. Ghedina had the two policemen round up the men in the ballroom. Then he himself stood on the podium, presiding over the Baron’s students. “I have a tragedy to announce.” There was a murmur as he told them what had happened; then he added: “We’ll be asking you a few questions. We hope that you may shed some light on our investigation. That’s all.”
That wasn’t entirely true: the young men standing in front of him were all, technically, suspects. They were on the grounds during the night in which Angela had been killed. That is, if she had been killed somewhere within the property. But he had to wait for the back-up forces to arrive, and in the meantime engage in very informal questioning with the students. If he were too intimidating at this stage, they might try to escape.
When the extra policemen finally arrived, the Inspector sighed with relief, and went into the library to use his cell phone. He called headquarters, and asked them to put him in touch with a PM from Verona. The PM should call him as soon as possible. It couldn’t be more urgent. Then he instructed Colucci: he and his men were to interrogate all the students, get their names, ages, etc. And press them for answers. None was allowed to leave the ballroom. To Gallorini, he said:
“Take a few men and search the grounds: the villa, all the outbuildings. The Baron mentioned his studio—that too. And the garden, the student’s camp, the vineyards, the woods. Everything must be searched and inspected.”
“Inspector, do we have a search warrant?”
That was Gallorini: meticulous, as one would expect from a graduate in Classics. No, of course they didn’t have it yet. Ghedina called Dumitru: “I hope the Baron is feeling better. Please go to his room and ask if I may have permission to search the grounds. Let me know right away.”
Dumitru was back within minutes. He put his hands behind his back, like a schoolboy making a prepared speech: “The Barone says thank you, he is feeling a little better. He gives you permission to do anything you need for your investigation.” Gallorini was informed, and the search was his assignment for the remainder of the day and the next one too. Before he started, Ghedina questioned Dumitru, asking him first of all for his working permit, which he found in order. Then he asked many other questions. When he was done, he told Gallorini to use Dumitru as a guide in his search.
Shortly afterwards, Orsina arrived, escorted by the police car, and saw the Inspector. She was beginning to recover from the initial shock, and now felt tremendous rancor at the authorities for having detained her husband. She had gone through the succession of the events in her mind, and had realized what she had missed in her previous frantic revisitations: she and Nigel had slept together on the fateful night. No, poor Nigel was being suspected unjustly. It was outrageous, how could they do that?
“If you have to ask me something, do it now, Inspector. I’m done with all my tears, and I’m done with all my patience too!”
Ghedina enjoyed the outburst. Since the discovery of the thirty-one students, all possible suspects, he too had begun to wonder how guilty Mr. MacPherson could be. Still, question his wife he must, and did.
“Please accept my condolences, Baronessa. Shall I interview you here, standing in a hallway, or is there somewhere less inconvenient for you?”
The Inspector’s unexpected good manners brought back the well-bred woman that she was; they adjourned to the drawing room.
Ghedina began questioning Orsina, though he focused more on Nigel than on herself. She claimed to have slept uninterruptedly from midnight until eight o’clock, and that Nigel was with her at the beginning and end of this period. What more could she say?
“No, I’ve no suspicion that he might have been ‘involved’ with my sister, if that’s what you’re hinting at, Inspector.” She did suspect something, perhaps a fling, but that could have nothing to do with poor Angela being dead; there was no point in letting the Inspector know. “We are all fond of each other,” she continued, “we spend a lot of time together, but we are honorable people.” Was that true? she asked herself in her mind. All the aristocratic families she knew were, to various degrees, unloving and estranging, and hers was no exception.
“Do you have any idea,” th
e Inspector added, “about who might be responsible for putting your sister’s body in Mr. MacPherson’s car? As far as you know, does anyone have a grudge against him?”
It was plain to see how much the situation pained Orsina. Still, she found the strength to reply. “No one outside the family even knows Nigel,” she said, and when pressed: “Inspector, no member of the family could have done this to Angela. It’s simply absurd that on top of suffering such a tragedy, we should have to defend ourselves.”
Ghedina enjoyed looking at her, and let her speak. “Why don’t you try the crowd that comes to listen to my uncle’s lectures?” she continued. “I never speak to them, but I see them all over the place on his lecturing days, and some of them look …”
“A bit dubious?” the Inspector prompted.
“Yes,” said Orsina, who had checked herself before using Nigel’s term: “Fit for the gallows.”
“They’re being questioned as we speak, Baronessa. That doesn’t mean that I can arrest them because of their looks.”
“Of course not.” Orsina paused. The Inspector was not as obnoxious as she had feared. Perhaps he could actually be of help. She certainly wanted justice for her poor sister, so she went on: “I have to tell you that Angela was in a strange mood the evening before.” Orsina described their conversation, ending with Angela’s promise to tell in the morning.
“Any clue about what she intended to reveal?”
“No, unfortunately. But there’s something else.”
“Yes?”
“Well, I don’t know how to put it … Many of them are the sons and daughters of old friends of the family. We refer to them as the ‘villa-hopping’ set.”
The Inspector looked perplexed.
“Families who still own their ancestral palaces and villas, here, in the Veronese. During the summer, they exchange visits, and hop from villa to villa.”
“Lucky them!” thought Ghedina, who said, “I find no harm in this.”
“Of course not. But you see, some of these kids are very rich, and very jaded, and that’s a dangerous combination. What I mean,” continued Orsina, “is that, still in their teens, they’ve already been exposed to more than their due of fast cars, sex, drugs—you name it.”
“Really?” he said, and then thought, “only a hundred and sixty kilometers south of Bolzano, but worlds apart.”
“Yes. This isn’t to say that my poor sister had any vice. But among her friends there were many bad influences. I was relieved that she was about to go to university in England, away from that crowd.”
“I see. Are you suggesting that she might have hopped on her Vespa and gone to one or more of these villas the night of her murder?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a grimace adding, “please don’t use that word. I can’t bear it.”
“Could you produce a list of some of these friends? I need to question them.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Thank you. Anything else you wish to tell me?”
“Yes: I saw Angela walk back to the villa, late in the evening, after our talk in the garden. But it’s possible that she might have changed her mind—she was fickle—and instead of going to bed, she might have gone out on her Vespa.”
“Ah, the Vespa: another piece of the puzzle. If, as you have suggested, she left the villa on it, and met somebody, and then the … accident happened, how could she have returned to the villa? Who would have taken her back? And who would have put her in the trunk of your husband’s car? The same person, presumably?”
“May I leave now, Inspector? You’re asking questions I can’t answer, and my uncle is sick.”
He bowed slightly and allowed her to go. It was true, he was asking her questions that did not pertain to her. But it was a device he had used in the past, sometimes successfully: to encourage a suspect to offer hypotheses as to what might have happened, and then let her contradict herself, or say something revelatory that she did not mean to say. This time, though, he probably just enjoyed speaking to such a beautiful and classy woman. His job seldom brought him such fringe benefits.
Ghedina went to the ballroom to check on the progress. The students were being questioned, and Colucci was overseeing the transfer of all the data to the police headquarters, for their records to be checked. “If there are a few particularly suspicious ones, single them out, and I’ll interrogate them myself.” For the moment, he preferred ambling in the wonderful villa, looking for clues and inspiration. He chanced on Marianna and started asking her questions, but the old woman wept so much over the loss of the Baronessina, she was incoherent.
Finally, he strolled to the garden, and noticed the immense trees and the statues beneath them. He sat on a bench and made a mental report to himself.
“The students are all suspects, all thirty-one of them, if they’ve spent the night on the grounds, which is likely. The staff are also suspects; I would rule out the women, and Dumitru seems harmless. But again, technically, they all are; never judge by appearances, etcetera, etcetera. The Baron too, and his niece, are suspects, though I tend to think of them as indirect victims more than anything else. I’ll also look into the villa-hopping crowd, and that will prove difficult. Finally, the chief suspect, Mr. MacPherson. I’ll interrogate him, and for hours on end. I wonder what he might—”
A brainwave interrupted his train of thought. During what he considered his glory days as a young man in Cortina, he had been befriended by a client of his father’s, a Scotsman in his forties named, coincidentally, MacPherson. He was a pretty good skier and a judo enthusiast. He even spoke some decent Italian, as he preferred to ski “on the sunny side of the Alps,” and had enough money to do so often. Gianluca—the Inspector—taught him some skiing “secrets” on the slopes, so MacPherson repaid him by teaching him some judo. And, as Gianluca was a fast learner, some judo “secrets” as well. He remembered one lesson vividly: it had to do with strangulation.
“The object of strangulation in judo,” MacPherson had explained to him, and then only partially illustrated, “is to cause the victim to lose consciousness. There are two ways to go about this. Respiratory strangulation, by pressing on the trachea in front of the neck; this prevents renewal of oxygen in the blood and brings about asphyxia. Then there is a much more sophisticated way: sanguineous strangulation. It consists of compressing the carotid arteries from either side of the neck, under the jawbone. This prevents the blood from irrigating the brain. Loss of consciousness comes rapidly, within fifteen seconds. By the way, if the pressure is not relieved, death occurs within minutes.”
But of course! How could he not have thought of it right away? That erythema on the victim’s neck, that small area of redness that the medical examiners had interpreted as a hickey, had been something else entirely. He had seen it himself, but had not realized that it was, in fact, an ecchymosis in the making, a bruise that had not had time to develop. The young woman’s heart attack had been brought about by strangulation! And furthermore, that sort of precise sanguineous strangulation taught by the ancient martial art.
“All right, all right,” Ghedina cut himself short, “so what? What does this tell me? The victim was strangled, by a very knowing hand belonging to a cold-blooded murderer.” He was shocked that the detail had eluded the experts. It was his own intuition, and a good one too. The media had not written about it, of course, or even alluded to it. Presumably only two people were aware of it: he and the murderer. That gave him an edge—or did it? Of course it did: the murderer knew judo!
“Nonsense!” Ghedina said to himself. But then, on second thoughts: “I could find out if some of the Baron’s sympathizers study judo.” Knowledge of ancient martial arts, on the other hand, did not seem to fit the stereotype of the villa-hopping debauchees.
“Excuse me, sir: are you Inspector Ghedina?” The Inspector’s musing was interrupted by a strident voice. “Barone Riviera della Motta has asked me to make myself available to you. I’m his secretary, Giorgio Moser.”
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br /> The Inspector summed up the brown suit, the light hair combed to cover creeping baldness, the sharp nose and intelligent eyes. He questioned him at once.
Giorgio, he learned, had seen Angela, her sister and brother-in-law at the villa, “but although I’m called a secretary, I don’t keep regular hours. I get the ballroom ready before the lectures, and I keep track of the listeners. I have a good memory for faces, but none at all for names, and anyway names are never given. It’s a very impersonal process; the Baron insists on that.” As the Inspector pressed him, he produced, out of his jacket’s inner pocket, a ticket for a late night movie.
“The movie ended at, what, midnight?”
“Something like that.”
“And what happened next? Where did you go?”
Giorgio blushed. Ghedina pressed him for an answer.
“I … I went to a friend’s house. It was poker night. The host, I and two other friends usually start playing at midnight and stop in the wee hours of the morning.”
“Oh, I see: a gambling den.”
“Not really, Inspector, not at all!” Outside the four state-owned casinos, gambling is illegal in Italy, and Giorgio was well aware of that. “We play for fun, very small sums at best.” That was not true: largish sums usually changed hands during those nights, and only solvent players were admitted.
“Right, that’s what everybody says,” Ghedina replied. “You will provide us with the names and phone numbers of all these gentlemen.”
Begrudgingly, Giorgio agreed. Of course, he hoped that this would have no consequences for any of them; it was completely harmless, just a fun way to spend some time among old friends, and—
“Walk me back to the villa,” the Inspector cut him short, “and my assistant Colucci will take care of these details. We will question your friends.” In his mind, he added: “But this particular investigation is only concerned with your alibi, and at present you seem to be the only suspect with one.”
As he handed Giorgio over to Colucci, the Inspector finally received the call from the PM in Verona he had been waiting for. From the library, where he had gone in search of privacy, he quickly outlined the unusual circumstances of the crime, and the initial stages of the investigation. Then came his request: he wanted all thirty-one students to be detained provisionally. The PM was taken aback. The Inspector explained. “It’s not enough just to arraign them with a writ: some of them aren’t even Italians, and they may well disappear before the date set for appearing in court. No, we need to detain them.”
The Forbidden Book: A Novel Page 13