“Your interrogation, you mean!” The smile disappeared from her face as she came in. Her eyes turned steely and her entire body stiffened. It appeared that the room awakened an irrepressible disgust.
“Why did Valerio avoid seeing you?”
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t question me on that point, Mr Detective. Valerio is dead and the relationship I had with him should be of no interest to you.”
“Valerio was murdered, Signorina Campbell.”
The girl shot him a fiery look. “Are you implying—”
“I’m not implying anything. But I’m looking for the man or woman who killed him.”
“I might have done it, but I didn’t. Someone else got there first. Someone who might have had more reason than I did for getting rid of that pest.” Verna Campbell spoke with cruel resolution.
“Look, Miss Campbell, I’d like you to tell me exactly who this ‘someone’ is who might have had such a motive.”
The girl’s eyes shone with sarcasm. “Ah, is that all?”
“Of course that’s all.” He marvelled at his smooth tone. “Wouldn’t you like to sit down? Our interview may take some time.”
“I prefer to remain standing.”
“As you wish. You see, Signorina Campbell, you’ve told me too much to be able to stop there.”
“What did I tell you?”
“Hmm. Various things, which helped me to understand a number of others. In any case, assisting justice is a duty, and it won’t do you any harm to carry out that duty. But we must continue. You’ve enlightened me regarding Valerio’s character and morality, and in doing so revealed your hatred of him—your current hatred, which may have sprung from another feeling you no longer have for him, or at least believe you no longer have, for some reason of your own.”
“Shut up!” She’d gone deathly pale and the order came from her lips with extraordinary vehemence. “Shut up! You have no right to root around in my heart.” Her chest was heaving. De Vincenzi heard her grinding her teeth and, as he understood these symptoms, prepared himself for a hysterical attack. But through some extraordinary feat of will Verna succeeded in controlling herself.
“Where are you going with this, Mr Detective?”
“I’m trying to discover the name of the person who murdered Valerio.”
“I don’t know. But even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. I’m too grateful to whoever it is to betray them.”
“Now think, Signorina Campbell. The person who strangled Valerio hasn’t stopped at that. Evelina was strangled too. And it’s not over! In some cases, a crime is nothing but the first link in a chain…”
“Why should they kill again?” Her voice was now shaky and her face had gone paler than ever.
“Because they’ve already killed, and because sometimes one must go on killing in order to try and save oneself. Because this morning Cristiana found another orchid in her room.”
Verna’s eyes widened. “An orchid? What does that mean?”
De Vincenzi ignored the question. “Won’t you tell me what you know, Signorina Campbell? Won’t you tell me when you saw Valerio for the last time?” He paused, staring into her eyes so intently that she finally lowered her own. “How did you know, Signorina Campbell, that Valerio was dead and lying on Signora O’Brian’s bed? The news of his death couldn’t have reached you by the time I questioned you.”
“Who told you I knew anything?”
“You yourself. You showed not the least surprise when I suddenly presented you with the body.”
“Cristiana had told me that there was a police inspector in her room who wanted to speak to me. And she said: ‘Valerio’s had the great idea of getting himself killed and he’s landed us all in it.’”
She looked away. What she’d said might have been true, but she was hiding something else—something other than the tumultuous storm of thoughts and feelings caused by discovering that Valerio was dead.
“Have you seen any orchids in this building, Signorina Campbell?”
Again, terror danced in her eyes.
“Orchids?”
“Did you know that the murderer leaves an orchid beside each body?”
“Yesterday,” she murmured, almost whispering, “yesterday, in this room, there were two orchids in a vase. Valerio must have brought them.”
“Where were they?”
“There, on that table.” She looked at the table and remarked, “And now the vase is gone, too!”
6
It was four o’clock on that rainy Friday in March when events in the Cristiana O’Brian Fashion House began to spin towards their dizzying and dramatic conclusion.
But De Vincenzi had been expecting this for several hours. As soon as he’d learnt from Verna Campbell that Valerio had brought the orchids to Corso del Littorio, he made his escape and left the fashion house. He took the lift from the second floor to the reception area and rapidly fired off some orders to Cruni before leaving the building, under the confused and watchful eye of the quaking Federico.
Cruni’s orders were to wait a few moments and then send away the officer and all the policemen stationed in the building. De Vincenzi had suddenly decided to lift surveillance and abandon the crime scene to the mercy of events and the will of the person who’d already killed two people and was surely contemplating killing at least one more.
Once in the street, De Vincenzi headed for a restaurant. He’d left Corso del Littorio so suddenly that no one would notice his absence, or at least not for some time. So he’d have a chance to eat before things started up again; he’d left the coast clear. That they would start up again, he had no doubt. Nothing that had happened up to that point could be anything other than preparation for the main event, the one for which Valerio’s body had been taken to Cristiana O’Brian’s bed and for which Evelina had been strangled.
He got to San Fedele at around two and found Sani waiting for him in his office.
“Anything new from Corso del Littorio?”
De Vincenzi shrugged—“Another orchid”—and went straight to his own room.
Sani understood his boss very well, and when he saw De Vincenzi lock the door behind him he said to himself that the latest orchid must in itself be an important development, one of those decisive factors that threw De Vincenzi into a particular state of turmoil and required him to seek solitude. It would lead to his taking decisive action and end with his explanation of the puzzle and the arrest of the guilty person. In fact, Sani immediately heard him pacing nervously across his room, another habit that revealed the intensity of his focus.
For his part, however, De Vincenzi wasn’t even trying to find an explanation for the mystery this time. He was sure there would be a new development, in itself illuminating, and he was waiting for it. It was the anxiety of expectation that made him nervy, both with himself and others. Whoever had let the furies loose with the crimes in the Cristiana O’Brian Fashion House was unable to stop, wait or call things off. He’d have to act quickly, though, as indicated by the third, ominous orchid… He struggled to gain control of his nerves, forcing himself not to think of the ordeal. But it required too much effort, so he decided to reconstruct the events of the last twenty-four hours. He went over them methodically and meticulously, starting from the moment he’d stepped into the building on Corso del Littorio.
The principal figures appeared to be Cristiana, Prospero O’Lary, Madame Firmino, Clara and… Verna. It was she who stood out in his memory, troublingly and all the more painfully because of her fierce cynicism. Then there was little Rosetta, with her plait like a mouse’s tail twisted round her head. Had the assistant really played no part in it? He’d bungled things by not questioning her. He’d surely have been able to get something out of her, since girls of her age are very curious and nosy…
One figure stood out from the others, like an obsession. There were no firm clues to set this person apart, yet he was basing all his theories on them, theories that had seen him practically flee
from the fashion house, convinced that only in that way would he be able to return at the right moment. Naturally, he might be mistaken, and it was of course a serious risk he was taking—at the very least, he risked never being able to solve the mystery.
Three orchids: three bodies. At the moment there were only two bodies. Even though he believed his hunch was correct and would prove to be so, by removing himself from the scene he was setting himself up to stumble across another body before he could intervene.
He looked at his watch mechanically: it was three. At that very moment the telephone on his table rang. Instantly, he felt as if a great weight had been lifted. He approached the phone with the firm conviction that, for him, this was the beginning of the end, the final halloo of the hunt when it sights the fox.
A loud voice bloomed into the earpiece, making it vibrate. A voice both warm and instantly enveloping that came across as immediately likeable, even though it was mangling the Italian, twisting it with a foreign accent.
“Mr Detective De Vincenzi?”
“Yes. Go ahead, Signor Bolton.”
“Aha! You’re choosing the name you want, Mr Detective. So may I call myself John Bolton without being corrected? Thank you.”
“Call yourself whatever you like, Signor Moran.”
“Bolton! That’s better, thank you.”
“So?”
“I’ve been thinking, Signor Policeman.”
“And?”
“I’d like to see you again. The fruit of my reflections may interest you. However, I wouldn’t like to come to you…” The earpiece buzzed even more when the peerless John Bolton laughed. De Vincenzi had to hold the receiver away from his ear to preserve his hearing. When he put it back, Bolton had finished laughing. “It would be the first time I’d come spontaneously and willingly to a police station—and that would seem excessive, truly excessive.”
“I’ve got it, Signor Bolton. You’re worried that someone might see you?”
“A precaution, Mr Detective, a precaution. Well, what do you say to coming here to see me?”
“Now?”
“Oh yes, better now.”
It wasn’t the call De Vincenzi had been expecting. At least, the tenor of the communication didn’t seem to be what he was waiting for. And yet he felt strangely calm and contented. The wheels had been set in motion, the gears were working. It wasn’t because of his reflections that Bolton-Moran wanted to speak to him. It must have been some new thing urging him to reveal to De Vincenzi a detail he’d kept back at first. Some new thing, which the third orchid had foreshadowed that morning.
The telephone rang again. Corso del Littorio was calling: it was Madame Firmino.
“Inspector!” Her voice was broken, almost sobbing. “I found—I found a vase full of orchids. It was hidden. And don’t laugh at me, Signor Inspector, but I’m beginning to be afraid.”
“I understand, Signorina—and so well that I’ll be there straight away.” He hung up the receiver, put on his overcoat and hat. It had to be the beginning of the end.
Five minutes later he walked through the entrance to the fashion house.
7
It was Rosetta who opened the lift for him. Madame Firmino was in the corridor, apparently absorbed in studying some fabric samples by the light of one of the showroom doors. She acted surprised when she saw him.
“Already back?” She gave Rosetta a slap, shoving her towards the back of the room. “Go to the workroom.”
The assistant trotted away and disappeared upstairs. Madame Firmino walked up to De Vincenzi.
“Don’t say that I phoned, eh? The orchids are in the trunk room, the first on the left when you get out of the lift.”
“How did you find them?”
“I looked for them. Nothing more natural than that they should have been hidden in a room no one ever enters.”
“How many are there?”
“Lots. I didn’t count them.”
“Who do you think could have put them there?”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Are you joking? If only I knew.”
She rolled her head, throwing it back as if in challenge. She did it to buck herself up, and quickly added, “If I knew, I wouldn’t be so afraid!”
“Is there anything else?”
“Nothing other than that they’ve left me here almost all alone.”
De Vincenzi studied her.
“You mean Cristiana is out?”
“Cristiana and ‘Oremus’. Even Campbell, who must have gone with Cristiana.”
“‘Oremus’?” He wasn’t smiling.
“That’s what the models and dressmakers call him. It’s Mr O’Lary.”
“All three of them went out together?”
“No. Prospero stayed in the office with Marta and me. We thought Cristiana must have been in her room, but Marta went to see her and she wasn’t there.”
“What time was this?”
“It must have been two, maybe two-thirty. We looked for her everywhere but in vain.”
“Are you sure she went out?”
“Well, where do you think she would have hidden? Her maid was missing as well, I told you. Of course they went out together.”
“You’re only guessing.”
Madame Firmino shrugged.
“I’ll take you to see the orchids now. Or maybe you’d like to speak to Marta?” She started for the door of the office.
“Wait a moment. What about Signor O’Lary?”
“Oh, he was worried about Cristiana’s absence. When Marta and I went back to the office to tell him for certain that Cristiana must have gone out with Campbell, he was waiting for us in his overcoat and hat, ready to go out. And in fact he did go out right after he said, ‘I think I know where she is. It’s better if I go and get her.’”
“So where do you think she’s gone?”
“I don’t know, Inspector! You attribute to me an awareness of people and things that I genuinely don’t have.”
“You say this was at two-thirty?”
“About that.”
He looked at his watch: it was three-twenty.
“Let me into the administrative offices. Then we’ll go upstairs.”
They went through Evelina’s room. De Vincenzi paused for a moment in front of her desk. Evelina had been strangled between six and six-thirty, when clients were leaving the showrooms. Madame Firmino and Prospero O’Lary were in the office, where they were shortly joined by Cristiana after he’d sent her downstairs so he could be alone at the scene of the crime. He’d then discovered the body at around seven, while the two women and Prospero were in the office. The person who’d strangled Evelina could only have been someone she knew well and trusted enough to let use her phone. But he could now add another clue to the few he already had. Whoever it was must have come down from the third floor in order to commit the crime, since they’d brought an orchid with them, and had thus had to go and get one where they’d been hidden—in other words, the trunk room.
He turned to face Madame Firmino. “Try hard to remember, Signorina. Yesterday I left you in this room at six.” He pointed to the door to the office. “You were in your dressing gown, chain-smoking.”
“So?”
“When I came back later and told you that Evelina was dead, Cristiana and O’Lary were with you. Which one entered the room first?”
“Prospero. Cristiana came in a few minutes later—at least ten.”
“So from then on, none of you left this room until I came in?”
The woman wrinkled her forehead.
“Wait… I remember Cristiana taking Prospero over to the window where they started talking seriously. I couldn’t really be bothered about what they were up to. But yes, that’s it. I don’t want to tell you something that isn’t so, but I seem to recall that at a certain point Prospero left, and Cristiana went to sit at her desk. But in any case ‘Oremus’ couldn’t have been gone for more than a couple of minutes.”
“Are you sure abo
ut this?”
“Sure? No. It’s my impression that that’s what happened, but I may very well be mistaken.”
“Mistaken to the point of getting it wrong about whether it was Cristiana O’Brian who went out?”
“No, no! Cristiana went to her desk. I remember that perfectly.”
De Vincenzi walked into the office. Marta was sitting at Cristiana’s desk, and looked at De Vincenzi worriedly.
“What’s happened now? Why are you back?”
“Nothing odd about my being back. What are you afraid of?”
Marta stood up and addressed Madame Firmino.
“Did you tell him that Cristiana has gone out?”
“Are you sure, actually certain she’s gone out, Signorina Marta?”
Marta paled and replied in a high-pitched voice, “She’s not in her room and I don’t see where else she could be. If she was in the atelier we’d have seen her.”
De Vincenzi went over to the desk. Nothing on its surface apart from the usual things. The drawers were locked. He remembered that Cristiana had been writing when he’d entered the room the day before, and she’d hurried to put away her papers in one of the drawers. He made for the central drawer, as if to open it, but he held back. He didn’t have any right to open it, at least not yet.
“Let’s go upstairs,” he said. As they went through the office he remembered John Bolton. The American was waiting for him.
“Just a moment.”
He went to the telephone and called the Albergo Palazzo. After a few minutes’ wait, they told him that Mr Bolton had gone out, and no one in his suite was responding. De Vincenzi put down the receiver. That was strange. Bolton had phoned him to ask him to come to him immediately…
He suddenly felt nervous. The orchids were on the floor in a rough ceramic vase in the corner nearest the door, between the wall and a trunk. He counted them: five. The hiding place was just a figure of speech: anyone who came into the room would have seen them. Whoever had put them there must have been confident that the room wasn’t often used.
He went back to the corridor where Marta and Madame Firmino stood waiting for him. He closed the door. Marta had been questioning Dolores and now knew about the flowers. She asked in amazement, “Are you leaving the orchids in there?”
The Mystery of the Three Orchids Page 10