Yours faithfully
No signature. It was dated the 8th of March. Evelina, therefore, was set to go to the appointment on the very day she died. Had someone killed her to prevent her going? There was nothing to support that theory, but De Vincenzi told himself that it was crucial to trace the unknown correspondent, even if turned out to be a pointless waste of time.
Crucial and essential—even more so than meeting the Boltons, which he’d promised himself he’d do that morning. The two siblings—who were staying in the Albergo Palazzo, as he’d learnt from Anna Bolton’s invitation, which Clara had kept back—could wait. As far as De Vincenzi was concerned it wasn’t Russell Sage, now John Bolton, who’d killed Valerio and Evelina, even if the whole mystery appeared to revolve around him, as the two orchids seemed to suggest. De Vincenzi didn’t believe the outlaw was guilty—not even of the theatrical and symbolic presence of the flowers beside the bodies.
He phoned Sani at San Fedele, who reassured him that nothing had disturbed the tranquillity of the O’Brian Fashion House during the night. Sani had left there at seven in the morning, while everyone was still sleeping; Cruni remained with the other officers.
“Go and get some rest for a few hours. You’ll be needing it. I’ll take care of Corso del Littorio. Come back to the office this afternoon.” He was fond of his deputy, and his words resonated with affectionate concern.
He chose a roundabout route and, after taking two trams, one more crowded than the other, De Vincenzi arrived in via Catalani at nine o’clock. Splashing through the mud and rain he found 75, a small house without any number or other signage at the entrance. He didn’t bother inventing a pretext for his appearance at the home of Evelina’s unknown correspondent and, trusting to the inspiration of the moment, pressed the bell.
The door was opened by a haughty and disdainful elderly woman wearing a white apron over her black dress. By spinning her a story about how he was looking for a small house to let, he managed to discover that this one belonged to a commendatore who found it convenient for the occasional break, but only ever stayed for a few hours. With persistence, and displaying his police badge to the shocked woman, De Vincenzi learnt the name of the owner, a fairly well-known banker, possibly a millionaire.
He found himself back in the mud, in the middle of the road, with a set of directions. Even if they proved to be important, this would be a tough nut to crack. And yet postponing his visit wouldn’t ensure him a better welcome, so it seemed more urgent than ever that he go.
This time he took a taxi to Piazza della Scala. Although the huge waiting room at the internationally renowned banking institute was chock full of people, the commendatore received him without delay. He was a stout man, rough-hewn, all lined and wrinkled, with the watery pallor of a diabetic. De Vincenzi realized immediately that his title of police inspector was the open sesame, and that the commendatore was worried. More than worried. Afraid.
He gestured for De Vincenzi to sit and sat looking at him.
“I’ve asked you to come in straight away, despite my being extremely busy. But I don’t understand.”
“Of course.” Polite both by nature and habit, De Vincenzi now appeared disarmingly smooth. “How could you understand? But perhaps this letter will help.” He held out the letter he’d found in Evelina’s purse.
The commendatore recognized it without reading it, and he became even more agitated.
“How ever did this letter fall into the hands of the police?”
“For tragic reasons: the woman to whom it was addressed has been murdered.”
The man started. He seemed momentarily lost, but quickly regained his composure. The colour returned to his cheeks, his eyes grew steely and his face tensed. He shifted things around on his desk as if re-establishing order in front of him. But the reorganization and calculation were actually taking place internally.
“You realize, Inspector, that this business must be conducted with a great deal of tact and delicacy?”
“Oh, I assure you I know that all too well!” De Vincenzi sighed.
“How did you find out that the letter was from me?”
“There’s an address on it.”
“And old Sofia told you.”
“Old? Not very. But yes, old Sofia had to tell me, Commendatore.”
“I see.” He pushed at a large crystal ball, picked up a pen and replaced it. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to help me understand. Nothing else. Think it over. What I’m asking is completely risk-free for you. My only goal in coming here is to find a lead that will take me to the murderer.”
The commendatore peered at De Vincenzi, trying to read him. He made his deductions quickly and decided on a certain froideur, which he adopted in money matters and which had brought him his wealth.
“Where do I come into it?”
“You can easily help me to understand why someone would kill a calm, peaceful woman weighing more than a hundred kilos and suffering from heart attacks. We always need a motive.”
“What do you want to know, then?”
A humble, bashful smile preceded De Vincenzi’s reply. “Everything, Commendatore. Everything.”
“The woman approached me by phone.”
“When?”
“About a week ago.”
“And she wanted…”
“Yes, I’ll tell you. But I ask for your discretion, your absolute silence. May I count on that?”
“I believe so. What I mean is, I think I understand what you’re about to tell me and that, therefore, I can see to it that your name is kept out of the inquest.”
“What do you think I’m about to tell you?”
His method: getting others to speak in order to gain the upper hand.
De Vincenzi smiled. “I’ve seen your secret villa, Commendatore, and I know Madama Cristiana O’Brian and her fashion house.”
“So you’ve gathered that Cristiana was blackmailing me!” he exploded. “Yes. She’s been doing it for a year now. I took a friend to her fashion house and I was a damned idiot to pay her bills personally. After the second bill was paid, that woman—O’Brian—telephoned me to say that she knew my private address, my family’s address, and she was afraid that one of her bumbling employees had sent a copy of the bill to my wife by mistake. Clever, no?”
“Rather.”
“I paid. And naturally I forbade my friend to set foot again in that filthy den of blackmailers. Would you believe it?”
“Yes, I believe it, Commendatore.”
“After a month, another telephone call. O’Brian told me she’d noticed that my friend had stopped coming to her. She said, regretfully, that the same bumbling employee was about to write to my private address to suggest other designs that would certainly appeal to the taste of the person I was protecting. What could I do? I paid again.”
De Vincenzi rose. “Thank you, Commendatore, and please excuse the disturbance.”
“Don’t you want to know anything else?”
“The rest I can imagine. Signorina Evelina discovered her boss’s plot and phoned you in turn, offering to stop it.”
“Exactly. Another blackmail.”
“But no! I think not. That poor thing would have been on the level. She believed she could stop Cristiana O’Brian’s criminal activity—and maybe she really could. It may be that she’d discovered another secret she could use with Cristiana, one that would render her powerless with you and the others. Because, of course, you wouldn’t have been the only one to have fallen into that typically American-style trap.”
“On the level!” exclaimed the commendatore, genuinely amazed.
“Otherwise, why would she have been murdered? Yes, I understand: to eliminate a rival. But I assume she approached you in good faith. You can’t weigh more than a hundred kilos without having a correspondingly light conscience!”
When he got to the door, something occurred to De Vincenzi. He turned and went back to the desk. “Excuse me. One l
ast question. Was it a young man with dark hair, quite good-looking, who came to get the money for O’Brian?”
“Shameless! Yes, that’s him.”
“I see. Well, it’ll console you to know that that young man has also been murdered.”
In the lift, De Vincenzi stood watching a young man in brown put a finger in the collar of his constricting uniform. He took Cristiana O’Brian’s small green address book from his jacket pocket and at N he found the name of the commendatore from whom he’d just taken his leave.
2
The day had begun well for De Vincenzi even though it was still raining. He’d come up with a convincing reason for the murders of Evelina and Valerio: Evelina might have been killed because she’d got involved in Cristiana’s unsavoury dealings and Valerio because he was becoming awkward. This would mean that Cristiana O’Brian was responsible for a double murder. Who else would have had a motive for making a difficult, even dangerous, assistant disappear, or for ensuring that Evelina kept quiet for ever?
However, though Cristiana had a typical liar’s personality, and one might be able to credit her with the requisite criminal know-how gleaned from living in that environment in America, one couldn’t forget that Valerio’s body had been found on her bed, and this was something she’d never have done. De Vincenzi realized that she’d never have carried Valerio’s body to her own bed after killing him in the “museum of horrors”. Besides, there was the “coincidence” of John Bolton’s sudden arrival and the deliberately symbolic appearance of the orchids.
It was already eleven by the time De Vincenzi got off the tram in Piazzale Fiume.
John Bolton and his sister Anna occupied an extremely luxurious apartment on the second floor of the Albergo Palazzo, where they received De Vincenzi straight away. The man who’d been the king of American bank robbers and now wanted to appear as the peaceable John Bolton was waiting for De Vincenzi in the sitting room. He stood next to a table where a few antique coins, greenish-yellow and corroded, lay next to a volume bound in red leather. He was smiling and wearing his gold-rimmed spectacles.
“I’ve been offered these coins, but I’ve only found one that’s worth anything. They’d have me believe it’s one of the coins with a Kufic legend struck in the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, and they brought this book to show me. It’s from the series on these coins published in 1844 by Domenico Spinelli, Prince of San Giorgio. I’m dubious about the coin’s authenticity, but I’ll end up taking it, with the proviso that I can show it to Alföldi on my next trip to Vienna.”
He spoke without affectation, his accent strangely pitched between irony and teasing. While he listened, De Vincenzi took a look round. The room was full of flowers, in pots and vases. They were everywhere—on tables, the console, the floor in front of the window—but not an orchid amongst them.
Bolton approached De Vincenzi.
“To what do I owe your visit, Signor Detective?”
“I see you’re passionate about flowers,” he said with a smile, “and I’ve come straight from a house where I saw two orchids yesterday, one next to each of the bodies…”
Bolton furrowed his brow and took off his glasses. He was clearly unaccustomed to looking through them and wanted to watch his adversary carefully.
“What sort of conversation is this? Why are you talking to me about bodies?”
“Because there are some, and because you saw at least one of them, Signor… Bolton.”
“Oh, so that’s it! Cristiana told you all about me.” He shrugged with indifference and indicated the sofa. “Would you like to sit down so I can provide some explanation?”
He sat and waited for De Vincenzi to join him.
“So, my dear Ileana told you everything.”
“Actually, she didn’t. Or rather, she wasn’t the first to tell me.”
“I don’t understand.”
It seemed to De Vincenzi that having someone else in on his secret was upsetting Bolton, and he instinctively made up his mind not to mention Prospero O’Lary. “It’s not important, really. I suspect that when you came here to find your wife, you were prepared for the possibility that you might be recognized. And I suppose that, apart from a certain sort of publicity, you knew you wouldn’t meet any real danger if it became known that you are Russell Sage, sentenced to seven years by the court of Rutland—”
“—and let off for good conduct, as it happens.”
“And you emigrated to Europe because?…”
“Change of air, Signor Detective! What do you think? When you decide to turn over a new leaf, you need to live in another climate, circulate in another environment with a different set of people who don’t know you any more than you know them.”
“Turn over a new leaf?”
“Completely.” He spoke with great seriousness and came across as utterly sincere. “Ah, yes, my friend. I’m not making myself out to be better than I am. But I’m getting older, and certain—how shall I put it?—certain activities require youthful vigour, impetuosity, faith in yourself. After my spell in Alcatraz, I felt a bit rusty. Tired, and unable to go back to my double life again. I had to choose between one of my two lives, and either surrender completely to criminal life—as you can see, these aren’t words that frighten me—or settle down as a businessman, maybe in manufacturing, and by doing so completely satisfy my interest in books, coins, rare and beautiful things. I preferred the second alternative since it seemed more relaxing. I’m getting older, I tell you! Which means the change had to be radical. I rounded up what was left and departed for Europe with my sister.”
“And you immediately started looking for your wife.”
“Not right away, and not on purpose.”
“Here, you found yourself confronted with a body and an orchid. Were you aware that there are now two bodies?”
It was the orchid that really struck Bolton, since he exclaimed, “An orchid? It’s the second time you’ve mentioned it.” He was genuinely surprised.
“Aren’t you a flower lover?” De Vincenzi glanced at the roses, zinnias, violas, irises and gladioli in turn.
“Ah, so that’s it?” Bolton’s face hardened; his brain was turning over. There was a brief silence. “Let’s speak frankly, Signor Detective. I deal with situations; I always have. This is why I knew the federal laws over there better than a judge. Your laws aren’t as familiar to me, but I have some experience of men. So: you suspect I’m behind that murder. I don’t believe you want to charge me with the other body we’ve spoken about, right? You’re here to make me talk and then you’ll say, ‘Russell, my friend, anything you say from now on can and will be used against you.’”
De Vincenzi laughed. “Oh, but in Italy we’re not obliged to caution criminals like that when we arrest them!”
“So are you arresting me?”
“It’s precisely what I’m not doing, Signor Sage. I have no proof that you strangled Valerio.”
Russell Sage looked at his hands and asked, “Did you say Valerio? I don’t know him.”
“Maybe. But you do know the O’Brian Fashion House well enough to be able to find your wife’s room without anyone escorting you there or seeing you. It must have been the first time you’d set foot in the business on Corso del Littorio.”
“Well, it was the first time, Signor Detective.” He rose. “May I?” He disappeared through the door that led from the sitting room to the other rooms in the suite. He returned in a moment with two envelopes. “Look at these, Signor Detective.”
One was the blue envelope of the O’Brian Fashion House, showing its pierced dove logo, with the typewritten address of Mr John Bolton, Albergo Palazzo. The other, white envelope was larger and contained a sheet that had been folded in four to make it fit. De Vincenzi opened it.
It was a plan, a detailed plan of the first and third floors of the fashion house, with arrows indicating the route—via the service stairs—to Cristiana’s room. But the little rectangle was captioned: Ileana Sage’s bedroom. De Vincenzi
looked over at Russell, who nodded.
“That’s how I learnt where my wife was and what name she was hiding behind—from these two letters which arrived the other day: that is, the day before the event. I’d come to Italy intending to look her up, because I knew she was here. I knew that because I’d followed her to Paris, and she escaped me just when I discovered through a private detective agency where she lived. I was about to go and see her. But if it hadn’t been for these two letters, I wouldn’t have discovered so soon that Cristiana O’Brian was Ileana. Who sent them to me, and why? Those were the very questions I was asking myself before you arrived, Signor Detective. I began asking them the moment I found Ileana beside a body. I decided it was both pressing and wise to get out of there as quickly as possible.”
“And now?”
Russell put his gold-rimmed spectacles back on and looked at De Vincenzi, smiling good-naturedly.
“I now think someone was trying to trap me by showing me the way to Ileana’s room—because there was a body in there. Add the orchid to all this in order to finger me, since I love flowers, and you have the picture.”
He appeared perfectly confident now, and De Vincenzi asked himself if he really suspected Cristiana. But for the time being, Russell Sage, refashioned as John Bolton, must have told De Vincenzi everything he could—unless he was keeping him sweet with a stack of lies, one after the other, each appearing to be the truth.
He put the two envelopes in his pocket. Bolton watched him as he did so, once more smiling affably.
“We may see each other again, Signor Bolton.”
“It would give me great pleasure, Signor Detective. I plan to stay in Milan for quite some time.” He escorted De Vincenzi to the lift.
“Would you like to see your wife again?” De Vincenzi asked as he got into the lift.
“I believe it will be necessary, Signor Detective.”
3
The girls turned towards the door as it opened. Irma was doing her nails with a towel spread over her knees and Anna was reading a flyer about a romantic film, A Dream of Love. Gioia sat motionless, hands on her knees, chin squared. The only thing that made her interesting was her blue eyes, clearly defined by long lashes, and the youthful freshness of her skin. She was staring straight ahead with such a dark look on her face that it seemed as if she were about to cry.
The Mystery of the Three Orchids Page 8