Vittoria had mentioned Mrs Galli blackmailing Margherita. And Paolo had said no blackmailer would kill their prey. But what if Mrs Galli had known how much money Margherita was expecting to earn from the Pecoriello project? What if the discussion that Vittoria had thought was blackmail had in reality been a simple threat? What if Mrs Galli had seen the chance to get her hands on more money? From the way she dressed and hobbled around, it was clear she wasn’t exactly swimming in cash. And hadn’t she killed a beetle in the restaurant, just to let the writers’ group know she didn’t value certain people’s lives any more than the insect’s? Maybe she wasn’t really a religious fanatic. What if she had only pretended to be asleep on the sofa when Giò and Annika had found her? Had she really returned to her room before the murder took place? What if she had instead gone back to the restaurant after Guido and the waiter had left?
Giò wrote a text to Paolo, urging him to interview the woman early the next morning. Mrs Galli needed to explain why she had used threatening words with Margherita. And Paolo could confirm whether she had tried to get in touch with Mr Pecoriello.
22
A Hard Awakening
Dr Gimondi was shaking his head at Brigadiere Paolo Rossi.
“I should have told the hotel to call the emergency services, but I didn’t realise it was this bad.”
“Could you tell me exactly what happened?” Paolo said, inviting him to sit down on the sofa in front of him.
“Mrs Galli phoned me yesterday at around 6pm and asked me to come visit her this morning as she didn’t feel too well.”
“How come she called you? Did you know her?”
“When I picked up the call, it took me a while to realise whom I was speaking to. Then I remembered – when I was here with Dr Siringa on Saturday, Mrs Galli asked to have my card, saying she might need the services of a doctor during her stay here.”
“Did she tell you what was wrong with her?”
“Not on Saturday, but yesterday on the phone she mentioned she suffered from type 2 diabetes and a few heart troubles. I asked her to explain any symptoms she was experiencing and if she had tested her glucose level.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said she was keeping her sugars under control, but that in the last few days she’d maybe had too much alcohol and was feeling a little dizzy. But she didn’t specify any more alarming symptoms.”
“Didn’t you offer to come out there and then?”
“As a matter of fact, I did, but she said that early this morning would be fine. I advised her to alert the hotel staff should she start to feel worse, explaining that in the case of an emergency, it would take me 30 minutes to get here as I live in Capitello. I reminded her that Dr Siringa lives in Acquafredda, but she said she didn’t want someone used to dealing with corpses to attend to her.”
“And you didn’t think of calling an ambulance yourself?”
“I admit I didn’t take her too seriously. You see, on the phone she sounded rather more chatty than you’d expect from someone who’s not feeling well. I thought I’d be safe to leave things until this morning.”
“When did you arrive?”
“Must have been around 7.30, but the receptionist might be more precise. I asked him to let Mrs Galli know I was here, but she didn’t answer her room phone. I tried her on her mobile, but again no answer. It was only then that I thought something might be seriously wrong. I asked the concierge to accompany me. We knocked on the door, and when there was no answer, we entered the room with the hotel master key and we found her in her bed. I believe she had passed away no more than three to four hours earlier.”
“And what did you do then?”
“Simply called my colleague Dr Siringa and asked the receptionist to get in touch with you.”
At that moment, Dr Siringa came back down the stairs and sat beside Dr Gimondi.
“Dilated pupils, pyjamas soaked with sweat, used syringe beside her… it looks like an insulin overdose.”
Dr Gimondi nodded. “And the half empty bottle of whisky?”
“Only made things worse.”
“Did she inject the insulin herself?” Paolo asked.
“Forensics say there’s no sign of anyone else having been in the room,” Dr Siringa answered slowly. “The door was locked, according to the receptionist, when they tried it earlier. No signs of burglary. The balcony door was closed too.”
“And I guess it’s difficult to establish whether it was a deliberate suicide attempt or a mistake?”
“Correct. The lack of a note leads us to suspect it wasn’t suicide. Also the whisky might have confused her so she thought she hadn’t injected herself yet when in fact she had.”
“Would twice her regular dose kill her?”
“It’s not a simple case of maths, it depends on many variables – her heart condition, how much alcohol she’d had, when she had taken her previous dose of insulin, what kind of dinner she had had…”
“I see. Nothing to add on top of that?”
“Yes, there are a few cases when people become addicted to insulin. They like the way it makes them feel.”
“Like a drug?”
“Exactly. Mind you, it’s not common. But then, it’s not common for a female diabetic over 60 to drink too much. I’ll let you know how much alcohol is found in her body.”
Gimondi was looking admiringly at his older colleague.
“Time of death?” Paolo continued.
“I’d place her death at around 4am, no more than thirty minutes either side,” said Dr Siringa.
As the two doctors discussed the state of the corpse when Dr Gimondi had arrived, Paolo listened in, his expression concerned.
“Do you think it’s suspicious?” Dr Siringa asked him.
“Yep,” Paolo replied bluntly.
“I know,” Dr Siringa said, as if reading the thoughts behind Paolo’s words, “two sudden deaths at the Pellicano Hotel, one after the other, is a bit too much of a coincidence. I’ll tell you more after the post-mortem.”
And with that, Paolo knew it was useless even trying to get any more out of the doctor right now, but his mind was working furiously. His cop’s hunch was hammering his brain with a single message:
“Foul play.”
He left the two men and returned to Mrs Augusta Galli’s bedroom. The forensic team is still at work, taking nothing for granted, but they only confirmed that the door had not been forced and there were no signs of anyone else having been in the room.
Strazio and another young carabiniere joined him.
“We need her mobile,” Paolo said. “I want to know all the recent phone calls she’d made. Have a look at her laptop and send me all the files she’d created or modified in the last month.”
“I’ll see to that,” the young carabiniere replied.
Giò was still fast asleep when her phone started ringing repeatedly. Opening one bleary eye, she looked at the handset: 7.30. She’d happily have slept for a few more minutes, but the call was from Annika and she couldn’t ignore her.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Giò, please come downstairs as soon as you can. The carabinieri are here again.”
“The carabinieri? What’s happened now?”
“Mrs Galli. I’m afraid she passed away in the night.”
That was enough to get Giò out of bed, showered and dressed in double quick time.
When she got out of the lift, the first thing she saw was the hotel chef, shouting in the face of Maresciallo Mangiaboschi.
“You’ve kept my kitchen closed for days, accused me of food contamination, and now another woman has died in this hotel. You’ve got to admit this time, it can’t have had anything to do with our food. So, what have you found out? Why did she die? I’m sure the same thing caused both deaths, because nobody’s ever dared to die here before!”
Mangiaboschi didn’t seem as large or bold as usual. His whole body seemed to shrink as her rage made the chef look bigger than sh
e really was.
“And now, what should I do?” the woman continued. “I was supposed to reopen my restaurant today. I’ve been to Sapri market, bought fresh food as everything in the kitchen will be old and rotten by now. Are you about to tell me you’re closing my kitchen again?”
She jabbed a finger against his breast and the maresciallo shrank back as if it was a sharp knife.
“Please, go ahead and do all you were meant to do. There’s no reason to close…”
“You’d better not, not now that I’ve done all the shopping. Didn’t your parents teach you not to waste food?”
Now the accusing finger was moving as fast as a fencing foil just below the maresciallo’s nose.
“No need to waste any food, the kitchen will be open today,” he stuttered.
“And you’d better keep your eyes open and do something useful before anyone else thinks it’s OK to die in this hotel. What times we live in! And we pay you a large salary to do what? Close our kitchen and let other people die?”
She picked up one of the boxes full of fresh vegetables from the floor beside her and stalked into the restaurant, shutting the door loudly behind her.
“What a woman!” the maresciallo said. Turning round, he spotted Giò, who had just decided she’d be better off in the bar with the rest of the writers than trying to speak to Paolo. She greeted him sheepishly.
“This place is cursed,” he growled, turning his back on her and heading towards the opposite end of the corridor and Brigadiere Rossi.
“The hotel owner has arrived. Do you want to question her?” Paolo asked.
Mangiaboschi nodded, but as she hadn’t been there the previous night, there was little the owner could add. She did, however, let the two carabinieri know that she was also mad at them for doing nothing to prevent another person passing away in her hotel. Would she have to shut down the Pellicano after it had been in her family for over 50 years?
The only question the maresciallo managed to squeeze in was to ask whether she trusted all of her staff. He was soon to regret his audacity.
“They’ve all been with me for decades, and I’d trust them with my life. You’ve already tried to accuse my chef and were proved wrong…”
Oh no, not the chef again. Mangiaboschi had fallen into the trap of being too curious. In future, he would leave the torture of interviews to his brigadiere.
As the woman left in a fury, Mangiaboschi turned to Paolo.
“She’s right,” the maresciallo whispered. “We’d better interview all the guests again. After all, both victims were in the writing business. We need to understand if Mrs Galli was upset enough to attempt suicide, or if she injected too much insulin by mistake.”
“Or maybe it wasn’t self-inflicted at all.”
Mangiaboschi looked at Paolo as if he was insane.
“Always ready with the conspiracy theories, aren’t you? I’ll tell you what, Rossi, if you don’t learn to solve problems instead of creating new ones all the time, you won’t have a long or easy career in the force.”
“Guido Gagliardi was the last person to see Margherita alive,” Paolo insisted. “Then last night, he said he went back to his room around midnight and saw a waiter walking along the corridor upstairs. I asked the concierge, but he said no waiter was in the hotel at that time. He was the only member of staff present, and he never went up to the first floor.”
The maresciallo was finally listening. After all, if he arrested a killer, especially if they were a stranger to the area, it wouldn’t do his career any harm. His superiors would commend him, as would the Regione Basilicata politicians, so he began to take an interest.
“Gagliardi, you say? And he was the only other person in the writing circle who was involved in Margherita Durante’s project, connecting him to Augusta Galli as well.”
“Correct,” Rossi replied.
“I still believe you tend to overthink issues, as if we don’t have enough on our plate, but in this instance, I’m inclined to agree with you. Investigate, but be quick about it. We will talk again later when we have Siringa’s post-mortem.”
Paolo frowned, wondering how he was going to break the news to Giò that another of her beaus was the carabinieri’s number-one suspect. She could be such a stubborn woman – after all, he was only trying to do his job, and she had been totally wrong to suspect Augusta Galli. Had she been sidetracked by her feelings, her sympathies, for Gagliardi?
“So, will you interrogate him again?” the maresciallo asked impatiently.
Paolo nodded. “Him, and the rest of his group. Will you be present for the interviews?”
“No, I’ve got work to do at the station,” Mangiaboschi said dismissively.
I wonder what that might be? Paolo knew full well it was a slack time at the carabinieri station with nothing to do except for paperwork – there was always paperwork, but it didn’t require a maresciallo to do it. So what else was so urgent for Mangiaboschi? Barking at his subordinates?
As his superior officer left, Paolo walked to the front desk and asked the concierge if he could be allocated a private room. Then he entered the hotel bar, where all the writers were sitting, called for Guido Gagliardi, and told all the others to stay where they were as he would need to speak to them again. Giò looked at him quizzically, but he just turned and left the room with Guido.
As Francesco left the room, Paolo scratched his head and spoke to Strazio, who had been beside him throughout all the interviews.
“There’s something weird going on. If they’re innocent, why are they all so nervous? Not one of them seems to be telling the truth.”
“And that Valentina was possibly the most nervous of them all.”
“Exactly. I was hoping the others would help us stack the evidence against Guido Gagliardi, but the more we dig, the more it seems they might all be involved.”
“You know that movie – what’s it called? The one where there’s a murder on a train, they suspect an outsider, but then they discover it was all the other passengers?”
“Strazio, that’s Murder on the Orient Express, of course. But that’s fiction. We’re in Maratea, and not on a train, but in a hotel.”
Strazio blushed, but in his heart of hearts, he wished he was investigating on that famous train.
“Have you managed to contact the night concierge?”
“Yes, he should be here any moment. But we’ve not heard from Giovanna Brando yet.”
“If the concierge is here, I’d like to speak to him first. Giò will be in the bar, trying to glean information from the suspects. Better leave her to last.”
A couple of minutes later, Strazio returned, followed by the night concierge who, after his first round of questioning, had gone back home to get some sleep.
“Sorry to disturb you again, but we need to go through the details of…”
“You asked me everything first thing this morning,” the man grumbled, none too happy at having been called in again.
“Yes, but we need to circle back to the first death. Would you remember what happened on that night? Did you see Mr Gagliardi return to his room?”
“In fact, I did, as he asked me for a thermos of hot coffee to take upstairs to his room.”
“And after that, you didn’t see anybody else wandering around the hotel?”
The man thought for a while before answering.
“No, that’s not correct. Soon after Mr Gagliardi had left, I saw Ms Valentina Valsecchi going upstairs.”
“Had she been in the restaurant?”
“I’m not sure. She’d certainly been somewhere – maybe in the foyer on one of the sofas, maybe in the restaurant. I can’t say for sure.”
“And how long had she been there?”
“The first time, you mean?”
Strazio and Paolo looked at him in horror.
“How many times did she come downstairs?” the brigadiere asked him finally.
“Twice that I know of. Mind you, I never spotted her coming d
own, but I saw her going back up in the lifts. The first time was at about 10.30. The second time, it was the middle of the night. Around 2am, I believe.”
“And what did she do?” Paolo launched an angry look at Strazio. This was all news to him.
“I’m not sure as again, I didn’t see her come downstairs. I had binged quite a few episodes of…” he flushed, “…Storm of Love on TV.”
“So you don’t know how long she was downstairs the second time?”
“No, I don’t know. The programme has an intriguing storyline.”
“Didn’t it look suspicious to you that she had come back downstairs?”
“Nope, she might have forgotten something. In fact, it looked like she had a wad of papers when she went back over to the lifts. Maybe she had come down to fetch it.”
“A wad of papers? About what size?” Paolo wondered if they’d finally got a lead.
“Like an A4 bundle of paper for a printer, but of course, there’s no printer here that I know of.”
“Why didn’t you tell us any of this when we interviewed you after Mrs Durante passed away?”
“Your appuntati,” the man said, pointing to Strazio, “asked me if I had seen anything suspicious or someone coming in from outside…”
“And you didn’t think it was suspicious that this woman had come downstairs twice?”
“Nope, that’s commonplace in a hotel. Many people suffer from insomnia, need a little walk, a break from their room. Sometimes they keep themselves to themselves in the foyer, other times they come up and have a chat with me. Night concierges are rarely lonely.”
“And did you chat with anybody that night?”
“Not that night. But Mr Gagliardi, for example, does most of his work sitting at one of the tables in the hall, and when he takes a break, we have a chat and a cup of coffee.”
“I see,” Paolo said with feeling. He needed to have a word with Strazio about how to conduct an interview. Giò would tease him mercilessly when she found out about this oversight. But for now, back to the questions – without leaving anything out this time.
Peril at the Pellicano Hotel Page 16