The Villa Triste

by Lucretia Grindle

  ‘Dottoressa,’ he said, ‘if you wish to speak with someone, you must follow correct procedure.’ Sounding like a petty official, even to himself, he added, ‘There is no point in continuing to harass my secretary. Please, contact the press office.’ And turned on his heel.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘No! You don’t understand.’

  He spun around. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘But I do.’ Pleased to have genuine cause to be annoyed, he added, ‘Only too well. You are the one who does not understand. I do not give interviews. Now, if you will excuse me—’

  ‘Wait! Wait! It’s not that. Wait, I’ve been trying—’ She grabbed his arm, her voice rising to a high, shrill note, her small white hand fastening like a claw on the black sleeve of his coat. ‘Please!’

  In the piazza, several people had stopped and were looking towards them. The flower seller was hurrying across the damp pavement, rising out of the fog, his bandy legs making him look like a giant wind-up toy.

  ‘Dottore!’ he called. ‘Dottore, is everything all right?’

  ‘It’s about Giovanni Trantemento.’ The woman’s voice dropped to a low hiss.

  ‘What?’

  She was small, and dark, her glossy hair cut short, like a boy’s.

  ‘Just tell me,’ she said quickly, the words not much more than a whisper. ‘Please, just tell me. Was his mouth filled with salt?’

  ‘So, Dottoressa Sachs’ – Pallioti’s guess had been right, that was exactly who she was – ‘what is it, exactly, that I can do for you?’

  In the low light of the cafe he had hustled her into, and robbed of her ephemeral cloak of fog, Doctor Eleanor Sachs looked less ethereal than simply cold.

  Watching her, it occurred to Pallioti that, having successfully cornered him and commanded his attention, Eleanor Sachs now found herself, as the Americans were fond of saying, ‘in over her head’. Feeling no particular desire to rescue her, he leaned back in his chair, deciding to let her stew in her own discomfort. If he hadn’t been so annoyed – he didn’t like being stalked and ambushed any more than the next person – he might have been tempted to smile.

  The table he had chosen was at the very back of the room, in a dark corner suited to trysts and arguments and people who did not want to be seen together. Having explained to the flower seller that everything was a mistake, brought on by the fog, that he was perfectly fine and had merely not recognized an old friend, he had hustled the woman who was now sitting opposite him out of the piazza as fast as he possibly could – not because he had any particular desire to have a drink with her, but because until a few minutes ago he had been under the happy illusion that the police had kept to themselves the more intimate facts of Giovanni Trantemento’s death.

  He cocked his head slightly, watching her. There were only a limited number of ways she could have discovered the information, and in the next half-hour he intended to find out which one she had used. If it was the most dramatic, that she’d murdered the old man herself – well, he wasn’t worried about being overpowered and they were around the corner from the holding cells. If, on the other hand, it was the far more likely eventuality that someone on the inside of Enzo’s or Cesare D’Aletto’s investigation had told her – then he would, without delay, have their tongue cut out. He might even wield the knife himself.

  He realized that the waiter was bearing down on them. Rapidly, he produced a twenty-euro note – he was in no mood to cede any high ground by letting her buy him a drink. After she’d told the boy what she would like, he muttered that he’d have a glass of red wine.

  Eleanor Sachs glanced up. Something like a smile flitted across her face, as if she knew that what he really wanted was a double grappa.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘that’s very gracious. I thought you’d like to see these.’

  She opened her wallet and slid two cards across the table. One was an American driver’s licence from the state of Ohio. The other was some kind of security card issued by an Exeter University in England. Both had a picture that looked at least enough like the woman sitting opposite him. Both said she was thirty-five years old and that her name was Eleanor Angela Sachs. He nodded and slid them back to her.

  ‘I repeat the question,’ he said. ‘What is it, exactly, Dottoressa Sachs, that I can do for you?’

  The waiter returned. Eleanor Sachs poured some wine into her glass from the small carafe that had been placed in front of her. Her hand wasn’t shaking, but it wasn’t entirely steady, either.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that it’s actually what I may be able to do for you.’

  ‘And what would that be?’ he asked, obligingly taking the bait.

  ‘Well—’ She paused and tucked the cards back into her wallet. Then she said, ‘I can tell you about Roberto Roblino, for a start.’

  Pallioti’s hand paused for a fraction of a second too long as he reached for his glass. Score one for Doctor Sachs.

  ‘I assume you know who he is?’ Eleanor Sachs asked. ‘Roberto Roblino?’

  Pallioti sipped his wine. Eleanor Sachs was watching him. Her eyes were disconcertingly large, and ever so slightly tilted, like a cat’s.

  ‘I’m not a journalist,’ she said suddenly. ‘That’s what’s worrying you, isn’t it? That’s why you wouldn’t return my calls.’ She laughed, an odd little barking sound. ‘I don’t blame you,’ she added. ‘I read that piece in the New York Times. It was horrible. Honestly.’ She drew her finger across her chest in an X. ‘I wouldn’t write that kind of crap. I’m a university professor, not a hack.’

  ‘A university professor?’

  Pallioti really didn’t care what she did. All he really wanted to know, and preferably sooner rather than later, was how much she knew and who she’d got her information from. It seemed, however, that he was destined for at least an abbreviated tour of her biography, because Eleanor Sachs nodded enthusiastically, as if being a university professor somehow explained everything.

  ‘At Exeter University,’ she said. ‘In England. My husband and I both teach there. He’s English,’ she added.

  ‘That’s very nice,’ Pallioti said. ‘But I’m afraid I still don’t understand. Your interest in this case, in Giovanni Trantemento, Dr Sachs, is, precisely, what?’ Remembering some saying about flies and honey, he made an effort to smile. The result was not filled with warmth.

  A wary look came over Eleanor Sachs’s face.

  ‘You see,’ Pallioti continued, ‘regardless of your profession, Signora – or do you prefer Dottoressa?’

  ‘Signora is fine.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘regardless of your profession, Signora Sachs, you still have not told me what it is you think you know – I presume you think you know something – or how you came to think you know it, or why you are apparently so eager to talk to me that you have harassed my office and all but flung yourself under my car.’

  She smiled. Pallioti was glad to see that it looked more like a nervous twitch.

  ‘Well, you see, I’m writing a book.’

  ‘A book?’

  ‘Yes. As I said, I teach at Exeter University, in England, and I’m writing a book. I’ve written several others, but this is on the partisans.’ ‘On the partisans?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she nodded. ‘Social history.’ Sensing safe ground, her voice gathered confidence. ‘I collect oral histories, stories, really, that sort of thing. I have a PhD. About eighteen months ago, I interviewed Roberto Roblino.’

  She was looking at him, he thought, as if she expected him to drop his jaw in amazement. Or leap out of his chair and applaud. Because she had a PhD. Because she had written books. Because she conducted interviews. It was all very familiar, and suddenly very irritating.

  He nodded and gestured for her to continue, preferably rapidly.

  She looked at him, a flash of irritation rippling across her features, took a sip of her wine and said, ‘I wanted to talk to him again. To Roberto Roblino. I’m taking this semester off,’ she added. ‘To work on
this. Finish my research. I got here about a week ago. I’d been trying to call him. Then I found out he was dead.’

  She looked at Pallioti as if this somehow explained what she wanted to tell him. He gestured again.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, I was planning, on this trip, to talk to Giovanni Trante-mento, too.’ Eleanor Sachs looked at him. When he said nothing she frowned, pinching her small heart-shaped face. ‘Actually, I’d been trying to talk to him for some time. But he said he didn’t give interviews. So I thought I’d just go see him, arrive in person. It’s harder for people to kick you off the doorstep. But when I got here, and went to his building, I found out he’d been killed. The concierge – the old lady who looks like a prison warden – she wouldn’t tell me a thing. So I called Roberto Roblino. I wanted to say I was sorry. I wanted to—’

  She shook her head as if the rest of what she had to say was self-evident. She picked up her wine glass, and took another sip.

  ‘Well, you can imagine,’ she said. ‘What I thought – when I found out he’d been shot, in his home. Just like Signor Trantemento. Then I saw your press conference and . . . To be honest’ – she had the good grace to sound slightly sheepish – ‘the salt was a guess. But at least it got your attention. Not about Roblino,’ Eleanor Sachs added quickly. ‘I know he had salt in his mouth. His housekeeper told me. She said she ran out and turned him over and – it must have been horrible. But Giovanni Trantemento did too, didn’t he?’

  As she spoke, Pallioti felt a flood of relief and did not let it show. He was beginning to understand now. Not a member of Enzo’s or D’Aletto’s team after all. The housekeeper. Who Cesare D’Aletto had assured them wouldn’t utter a squeak, but never mind. He ignored Eleanor Sachs’s question about Trantemento, and asked his own.

  ‘His housekeeper? Roberto Roblino’s? She told you?’

  Eleanor Sachs nodded. ‘Maria Grazia,’ she said. ‘Signora Franca. She’s the one who told me. She takes care of him, she and her husband. She’s such an angel. And she was so upset, poor thing.’

  ‘And you spoke to her, when?’

  Pallioti’s press conference had been on Saturday night. Roberto Roblino’s death had not been reported until Sunday afternoon, and he and Enzo had not heard about it for several hours after that. Yet Eleanor Sachs had called his office for the first time late Sunday afternoon. She appeared to be claiming that she had known about it before they did.

  She nodded and put her glass down. ‘Sunday,’ she said. ‘Sunday afternoon. I called the house, Roblino’s house, and Maria Grazia answered. She’d just found him. She was all upset, waiting for the ambulance. When she picked up the phone, she thought I was the police, calling for directions or something. The poor thing,’ she said again. ‘It was awful. I stayed on the phone with her until they came. Then,’ Eleanor Sachs added, ‘well, right afterwards, I remembered I’d seen you on TV the night before, so I called.’

  Pallioti looked at her for a moment. Despite his relief about his own people, he could swear she was lying. He wasn’t sure about what. The housekeeper story made sense, just. So, if it wasn’t that, what was it?

  ‘So,’ he said finally, ‘just to be certain that I have this straight. What you wanted to tell me was that, due to your work on a book about the partisans, you had interviewed Roberto Roblino. You had not, however, interviewed Giovanni Trantemento?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ever meet him? Speak to him?’

  ‘No. He didn’t answer my letters and when I rang him, he hung up on me.’

  Pallioti nodded.

  ‘So, you interviewed one old man, and never interviewed, met, or even spoke to the other, and now both of them are dead?’

  Eleanot Sachs nodded, her eyes wide and eager.

  Pallioti looked at her for a long moment, then he said, ‘If you’ll forgive me for saying so, Dottoressa Sachs, it doesn’t seem very extraordinary.’

  ‘Well, not when you put it that way, I suppose, but—’

  ‘Hardly worth numerous phone calls and trailing me through the streets.’

  ‘Trailing you through the streets? I—’

  ‘And,’ Pallioti pressed, ‘I infer, although you have not actually said so, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that you are suggesting that the same person killed them, these two old men – one of whom you interviewed and one of whom you didn’t – and that, inadvertently or otherwise, you know something about it?’

  She nodded. ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I am. Yes.’

  ‘And do you have any evidence for this, or is it merely an idea because you happen to have met, or actually not met, them both?’

  He knew he was being offensive now, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t say he’d warmed to Eleanor Sachs, but for a moment there he had thought he detected something, like a shadow moving underwater, or a faint scent on the wind. He had thought, just briefly, that perhaps she had something to say. But she was going to turn out to be just another enthusiast. A self-important, self-dramatizing foreigner. One more of the strange and dreary breed who for some reason believed that inserting themselves into police investigations was either their duty or a rather jolly pastime – culturally enlightening, and good fodder for dinner parties. There had been any number of such idiots during the Monster investigations. Several, if he remembered correctly, had ended up in jail. As far as he was concerned, if it wasn’t so expensive to keep them, they could have stayed there. Served life. For wasting police time.

  ‘Look,’ she was saying, ‘I know this sounds sort of crazy. But have you ever heard of Il Spettro?’

  ‘The Ghost?’ Pallioti glanced at his watch and shook his head. It was hot in the back of the cafe. Saffy’s flowers would be wilting. He needed to get to the gallery. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have never heard of the Ghost.’

  ‘Well, there are all sorts of stories about him. From during the war. And I—’

  As she spoke, Eleanor Sachs’s face changed. A flush of pink crept into her cheeks. She ran a hand through her hair.

  ‘He ran an escape line,’ she was saying. ‘For Allied POWs and Jews, mostly. It drove the Germans crazy – well, all the partisans drove them crazy – but they could never catch him. Some people don’t even think he existed. They think the Nazis made this person up because they were so frustrated. And of course, the Italians loved it too. There are all sorts of stories. If you believed them you’d have to believe this guy was invisible and had wings. And as I said’ – she finally took a breath – ‘no one’s ever been able to prove he actually existed.’

  Pallioti glanced up. ‘But you think he did?’

  She nodded. ‘Roberto Roblino did too.’

  ‘Robert Roblino?’

  Despite himself, Pallioti felt a twitch of interest.

  Eleanor Sachs nodded. ‘That’s why he sent me to speak to Giovanni Trantemento.’

  Pallioti frowned. That was it. She had said something about calling Roblino to ‘say she was sorry’. He had heard ‘an apology’. She had meant ‘condolences’.

  He picked up his glass. ‘Go on.’

  ‘There’s nowhere to go.’ She shrugged. ‘Actually, Roberto Roblino wasn’t very helpful. I mean, in general. He wouldn’t even tell me what his name had been. You know, in GAP – sorry, the Gruppi—’

  ‘Di Azione Patriottica. Yes, I know.’

  ‘Oh.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, they all had names. The Wolf. The Lion. That kind of stuff. It was supposed to hide their real identities. I don’t know how much it did. Anyway, Roblino didn’t really have too much to say, nothing specific anyway that was very interesting about that. I almost would have doubted he’d ever done anything, except for the medal.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, I finally asked him about Il Spettro. If he’d heard of him? If he thought he was real? And he told me to go talk to his old friend, Giovanni.’

  ‘His old friend, Giovanni?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Eleanor Sachs nodded. ‘Roberto Roblino said, if I want
ed to know about ghosts, I should ask Giovanni. Then he gave me Signor Trantemento’s name and address.’

  She looked at Pallioti and shook her head.

  ‘But I never had the chance,’ she said. ‘I had to go back to England. I wrote, he didn’t reply. I telephoned, he hung up. When I got back here, he was dead. Then Roblino was dead. The same way.’

  ‘And on the telephone, he said what?’

  ‘Signor Trantemento? About Il Spettro?’ She shook her head. ‘Not much. Nothing. The first time I called, I managed to get it out – what I wanted to ask about, and that Signor Roblino had told me to call. I thought he’d, you know, talk to me, because they were friends.’

  ‘Are you sure they were friends?’

  It wasn’t, Pallioti supposed, that unlikely. Old partisans staying in touch with one another. But it was the first he had heard of it. As far as he knew neither Cesare D’Aletto nor Enzo had found any suggestion in Giovanni Trantemento’s papers, or Roberto Roblino’s, that the two men knew each other.

  Eleanor Sachs shrugged. ‘Well, acquaintances,’ she said. ‘Whatever. Like I said, Roblino gave me Giovanni Trantemento’s address.’

  Pallioti thought about this for a moment. Then he asked, ‘But Giovanni Trantemento didn’t talk to you?’

  ‘No. I said my bit, and there was silence. Just a long silence. A minute maybe. Then he put the phone down. Quietly. As if he’d just pressed the button on the receiver. I called back, right away. Because I thought there had been, well, a fault on the line, or something.’

  ‘And what happened?’ Pallioti asked.

  ‘He told me to leave him alone. Then he hung up.’

  Pallioti nodded. It was not that surprising. By all accounts Giovanni Trantemento was a very private man who didn’t like talking about the war. Between the letters and the phone calls, she’d probably been driving him crazy.

  He drank the last of his wine. Over-oaked and faintly sweet-smelling, it left a furry feeling on the back of his tongue. Eleanor Sachs was watching him. He wondered how long it would take her to say whatever it was, to present the final trump card he could sense her holding back. He put the glass down.