A Murder in Tuscany

by Christobel Kent

  ‘Was hers anonymous?’

  ‘She wrote under the name Lonestar,’ said Gallo, darting a glance at Mascarello. ‘Certainly I was aware that she was the author of the blog; I imagine others were.’

  ‘What I am saying,’ Mascarello went on abruptly, leaning forward as if in pain, ‘is that I believe – ’ and from the way he said it this was not a matter of belief but of certainty ‘– I believe that the email was sent by someone who had applied to be a guest at the castle, and I believe that that person, in the writing of the email, in the taking up of a fellowship that would place the person close to her, was motivated only by a desire to wreak some kind of revenge on my wife. To exercise some kind of punishment.’

  He sat down again, and Sandro heard a brief whistle in his breathing. The man was old, after all. He was old and ill.

  Sandro waited to be sure that he had finished. ‘Revenge for what?’ he said. ‘So your wife did have enemies?’ He watched the man disguise his frailty by taking in breath in small, silent movements of his ancient pigeon chest, refusing to gasp.

  ‘That is for you to discover,’ said Mascarello eventually, and when Sandro saw that the disdain was now gone from the lawyer’s gaze, he realized that he had been given the job.

  Chapter Eleven

  AS THEY EMERGED ON to the Borgo degli Albizzi, Gallo had looked so shaken that Sandro had taken pity on the man and wordlessly steered him by the elbow into a bar, a little further down the street.

  The morning was still cold, and the bar full of Saturday shoppers, teenage girls on their way back from the cheap clothes stores of the Via del Corso, and women coming back the other way, laden with carrier bags from San Ambrogio. As he and Gallo came in to the pleasant fug of coffee and baking, Sandro had to smile and apologize half a dozen times, bumping against yet another woman’s load of prickly artichokes and blood oranges. Sandro thought of that castle, out in the cold, dark hills, and didn’t want to leave his city, this place full of life, and women shopping, and bars with sparkling marble and brass. He thought of Luisa, less than a kilometre away, presiding over her shop floor, and knew he should go over there.

  Explain the situation calmly, tell her he’d certainly be back before she left for New York. But even the thought of that place got him churning again: New York, those steel and glass buildings, those hustling crowds, Luisa laughing and clinking glasses with Frollini thousands of kilometres away.

  Damn it, he thought. Put it out of your mind, and do your job.

  Without asking what he wanted to drink Sandro bought Luca Gallo a caffè macchiato, one for himself, and two small shots of brandy. Edged the man ahead of him into the rear of the long, narrow bar-room and located a quiet space.

  ‘He’s a hard nut to crack,’ said Sandro, eyeing Gallo closely. ‘Mascarello.’

  Gallo downed the macchiato, but left the brandy alone.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ he said. He had a careful way of talking; measured, polite, even when, as now, he was rattled.

  It occurred to Sandro that it must be a tricky sort of job, running the Castello Orfeo. All those foreigners, and a woman like Loni Meadows to deal with. He reached into his briefcase and got out the brochure Gallo had given him, turning the pages. Photographs of buildings, a gallery space, staff and benefactors, lists of names.

  There was an aerial shot, the grey, prison-like block of the castle with its outbuildings, spread across the ridges of the hills. He’d had a bad feeling, even last night, about the place.

  A picture caught his eye, a familiar face he couldn’t quite put his finger on: he peered more closely. It was a small world, though. This city was a village, and this country was a bundle of villages, tangled up in each other.

  ‘Did he come down to the castle ever?’ he asked, turning the page. ‘Mascarello? To see her?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Luca Gallo, as though the idea was rather alarming, ‘Never. I met him, oh, once or twice before, at receptions in Florence. Arts gatherings, you know, at the British Council. Some of the American university campuses.’ He gave the brandy a thoughtful look. ‘But they didn’t live together, you know, not any more, even before she came out to us, to Orfeo.’

  ‘You were there for a long time before she arrived?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Gallo, nodding. ‘Eight years. She’s the third Director I’ve worked with. Before that I was the administrator of an opera house, in Sicily.’

  ‘And you’ve always had happy relationships with them? You don’t mind – the division of labour?’

  Gallo smiled. ‘I love my job. I wouldn’t want to be Director, no; behind the scenes, that’s how I like it. So yes, very happy.’

  ‘And other – longstanding staff?’

  ‘A couple,’ said Gallo, ‘Mauro and Ginevra; handyman and cook. And Ginevra’s niece, Nicki. Mauro’s family has been there for generations: he was born at the Castello Orfeo, more or less.’

  The set-up came into sharper focus for Sandro. ‘That can’t have been easy,’ he said. ‘They must have been – wary. Country people don’t like incomers at the best of times.’

  Luca Gallo stiffened. ‘They’re hard workers. They’ve had to learn to adapt, with each new Director, obviously.’

  ‘This one in particular? Any – specific problems?’ Gallo looked down at the bar top, his unease palpable. ‘With the staff or the guests? Any – ’ Sandro searched for the word, ‘any history?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ said Gallo, looking alarmed, his hands fluttering in protest. ‘The guests – well, there are privacy issues. Really, I don’t think – I don’t pry into their lives, I don’t ask questions. Really, I don’t gossip. This place – ’ and he leaned forwards, impassioned, a believer. ‘The Castello Orfeo is a sanctuary for them, to produce art. A safe place.’

  ‘All right,’ said Sandro easily. ‘Let’s look at it from another angle. Think of yourself as a witness.’ He spoke softly. ‘That day. Tell me what happened. Everything you can remember.’

  Gallo sighed. ‘Loni and Mauro did have a – disagreement. That day. That last day. Over his leaving Orfeo to help another farmer; it was nothing. Nothing.’

  Gallo’s voice had descended to an anguished whisper. It was to his credit that he wanted to defend his staff as well as his guests and Sandro could picture the handyman in question, suspicious, territorial, taciturn, like all contadini.

  ‘And she sounded off at him?’

  Gallo nodded stiffly. ‘I explained to her that it was something that was expected, in the countryside. Helping others. She didn’t really understand.’

  Sandro had the picture now. ‘I see, and was there anything else – unusual?’

  Gallo shrugged. ‘A trip to Siena was cancelled that afternoon, because some of the guests – were busy with other projects. The Dottoressa was annoyed about that; the guests are generally expected to attend organized activities. Although there is some leeway, of course.’

  There was silence, in which Sandro felt growing resistance: just defensiveness, perhaps.

  ‘I suppose you get to know them well,’ he asked, as casually as he could. ‘Living in such close quarters. Like – I don’t know – being in the army, or something. No secrets.’

  Gallo might be the peacemaking, non-confrontational type, but he was no fool. ‘You mean, did I know any of Loni Meadows’s secrets?’ The colour was back in his cheeks now; if anything, they were positively ruddy in the warm bar.

  ‘I suppose I do,’ said Sandro calmly. ‘I could hardly ask her grieving widower if he knew who she was sleeping with, could I? Even if he didn’t happen to be the powerful Giuliano Mascarello.’

  Luca Gallo was turning the little shot glass between his fingers, on the bar. He said nothing.

  ‘For example, where was she going, when she crashed that car, in the middle of the night? Might there have been somebody going with her?’

  Gallo looked up from his contemplation of the amber liquid. ‘I believe that she was havinga – relationship. She – well, it
was well known that on certain nights she would go in the car, late, down to the town. And not return, sometimes, until the next day.’

  ‘Certain nights?’

  Gallo looked at him, head on one side, his sharp, intelligent eyes at odds with his soft, shambolic exterior. ‘I believe it was generally towards the end of the week. Though I didn’t make a chart.’

  ‘And she would go alone?’

  ‘I didn’t watch her go,’ Gallo said. ‘It was never a part of my job to monitor the private lives of the guests, or of the Director. We do have – at the Trust there are certain principles – ’ and at this point he stopped, looking uncomfortable.

  ‘Principles?’ Sandro probed gently.

  ‘Well, it’s clearly not a religious order, but – we discourage partners’ visits, that kind of thing. The time the guests spend with us is most productive if they are allowed to focus more intensely on their work. Without distractions.’

  ‘I see,’ said Sandro. It made sense, of a kind. If he was obliged to live without Luisa, would he focus more intensely? Perhaps he’d find out; actually he doubted it, very much. ‘And did this – rule, or principle, or whatever – apply to staff as well as guests?’

  ‘Well, not the kitchen staff, obviously,’ said Gallo, ‘and not formally, to anyone, but – well. It was always felt to be appropriate, for those of us who were involved on the artistic level.’

  Which would explain why Loni Meadows went elsewhere for her – liaisons.

  ‘But you don’t know who he was? The man with whom she was having a relationship?’

  ‘If it was a man,’ said Gallo, smiling faintly. It occurred to Sandro that Gallo was gay. Did that make things simpler? It meant he hadn’t been sleeping with Loni Meadows.

  ‘You think it might have been a woman?’

  ‘No,’ said Gallo uncomfortably. ‘I don’t think so, actually. I was just – well. One can’t assume.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Sandro. ‘Absolutely.’ And they sat in meditative silence for a brief, almost contented moment. Sandro thought of that great, forbidding castle, of those people held up there; thought of Loni Meadows speeding away from it in the dark, those blue eyes focused on a distant point, a lover, escape.

  ‘What kind of place is it,’ he said, ‘this town she’d go off to?’

  ‘Pozzo Basso?’ said Gallo dismissively. ‘A pretty ordinary little place, you know, a bar or two, hotel, railway station, hospital, police station.’

  ‘So I start there?’ Sandro pulled out the preliminary police report Gallo had given him; it had an address. He went on talking, almost to himself. ‘I’ll need half an hour to sort everything.’ He shuffled the pages.

  He came to a photograph, and stopped short.

  ‘She wasn’t in the car, when they found her?’

  He saw it, that awful stiff pose. One shoe off, face down in the water, matted hair. A woman got up one morning, got dressed, chose those shoes, and didn’t know she’d die in them.

  Gallo shook his head slowly. ‘She must have come to, they think. Struck her head against the door pillar, enough to kill her, came round. But all the time she was bleeding into the brain, and with the cold – ’ He broke off.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Sandro. ‘You don’t have to go through it again. I’ll talk to them. With Mascarello’s authorization, they should let me see – well. Everything I need to see.’ He sighed. ‘I’d better get going, if I’m to get any more – photographs of the scene, for example. The autopsy report; the report on the vehicle, the drugs screen, all those things. I’ll have to come today. Yes?’

  Luca Gallo had gone pale again. ‘Yes,’ he said carefully. ‘Clearly, that’s what you must do. I suppose I hadn’t thought – you’ll have to be discreet.’

  Sandro held back a snort. ‘I know how to be discreet,’ he said.

  Gallo pushed his brandy glass away from him. ‘Drink it,’ said Sandro. ‘You might need it.’

  ‘It had to be her,’ said Ginevra. ‘He was sleeping with the Dottoressa. Who else could it be?’

  The kitchen was warm, and full once again: Anna-Maria, with her coat off by now, Nicki, Mauro glowering at the back door, keeping an eye out through the glass, for more unwanted guests, perhaps. On the stove the biggest Moka coffee machine was bubbling and five little cups and saucers sat on the table. It was close to lunchtime and the hampers still hadn’t been distributed, but no one seemed to be bothered.

  Per Hansen had appeared at the top of the castle’s wide stone stairs as they came through the gateway. A little deputation of women, Mauro with them, had ranked behind the man’s wife.

  ‘Yolanda,’ she had said. ‘My name is Yolanda.’ And past caring, she had burst into tears in front of them all; having delivered her furious speech, it seemed she had no anger left in her. When she had seen her husband in the big, dark, arched doorway she had run awkwardly ahead of them, and up to him. Everyone else had stayed where they were, in the courtyard, waiting for Hansen to speak.

  Yolanda had reached Per but then she had stopped just short, as if there was an invisible barrier preventing her from touching him. The Norwegian had broken it, putting a hand to his wife’s, saying something in tender, muttered Spanish. He had said nothing to the women or Mauro, but led his wife inside the great gloomy hallway, and closed the door.

  ‘I think Ginevra’s right,’ said Cate now, and everyone looked at her. ‘He used to watch her. The Dottoressa. I saw him, at dinners, watching her. And that time they went in the minibus to Rome, he was carrying her bags when they got back. All the way up to her room.’

  She’d forgotten that; it had just jumped back into her head, when required. Per Hansen had followed Loni Meadows like a footman, carrying her two cases, she just flashing the odd smile back over her shoulder at him. She’d held the door open for him, he’d come inside her room. She’d shut the door behind him.

  Did that mean she was sleeping with him? Why go all the way to Pozzo to sleep with Per Hansen in the Hotel Liberty, when she could have just slipped into his room, or he into hers? Separated by only one floor. Would people have found out? Almost certainly.

  It didn’t make sense to Cate: she didn’t believe it.

  ‘And besides, who else could it have been?’ said Ginevra, hands on hips. The coffee bubbled up inside the aluminium pot, filling the room with its smell. Cate found herself longing for the biker bar, the friendly silence each morning as she snatched her espresso. Ginevra poured.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, ’he wanted to leave his wife for the old one from New York, Mrs Angry? Or the little crazy one with her mess and her pots?’

  ‘Well,’ said Cate reluctantly, ‘it could have been Beth, I suppose? The intern. Could be why she left.’

  There was a silence while everyone considered that thought, and dismissed it; Beth, more timid than a small brown rabbit, and the big, taciturn Scandinavian.

  ‘Beth was gay,’ said Nicki, from the corner, and everyone stared.

  ‘What?’ said Ginevra and Anna-Maria in unison.

  ‘She’s gay,’ said Nicki, folding her arms defensively across her bony chest. For the first time Cate noticed a little tattoo of a daisy at her wrist.

  ‘How do you know?’ said Ginevra, outraged.

  Nicky said nothing; she rolled her eyes. ‘Come on,’ she said; ’don’t tell me you didn’t know?’

  In the corner Mauro made a sound like a growl in the back of his throat. Ginevra’s mouth was set in a line.

  Cate laughed abruptly, and they all turned to look at her with uniform hostility. She looked down at her feet.

  Nicki, apparently liberated from a year or more of mute obedience, didn’t seem to be able to stop talking now.

  ‘I think she liked it,’ she said. ‘The Dottoressa. Lo-nee. The more gay girls the better.’ There were red spots of colour in the girl’s cheeks. ‘I think she vetted everyone who came through this place according to what she could get out of them, whether they would fancy her or whether they might be tempt
ed to fancy anyone else. She had to just be the queen bee, didn’t she? Didn’t want anything in the way of competition.’ She turned to look at Cate. ‘I’m surprised you slipped through the net, though. Not old, not ugly, not married, not gay.’

  Cate stared at her, speechless.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Ginevra sharply. Mauro yanked the door open and disappeared.

  Looking around the room at the other women, at each pair of watchful, unfriendly eyes, even Nicki’s, it took Cate no more than three seconds to make the decision to follow him.

  Outside the sun was all but gone; there was a bitter wind and the sky was a white blanket. There was a tang in the air, borne on the breeze.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Mauro, ‘someone’s lit a fire.’ He was staring down the slope in the direction of the villino. The women turned to look and there it was, a thick column of smoke between the black cypresses, eddying in the wind.

  ‘Is it the house?’ said Mauro, and his face was murderous, white with emotion. ‘The villino?’ He let out a string of expletives. Belatedly Cate remembered that the villino was the house Mauro had grown up in; in his eyes she saw the rage of one bitterly insulted. ‘Jesus, fucking idiot foreigners,’ he said, talking to himself now, striding stiff-legged for the tractor. ‘What in God’s name are they doing lighting a bonfire?’

  Cate ran after him as the tractor jolted between the cypress trees down towards the smoke. And as they approached, choking and coughing through the acrid cloud, the tractor swung out of the way and the two women came into view standing on either side of an oil drum from which the thick plume of smoke billowed and climbed. Tina and Michelle, and their faces were defiant.

  Cate saw Michelle, in her leggings and an ugly, oversized cardigan, move around next to Tina, a restraining hand on the slighter woman’s arm. Behind them, framed by the last yellow leaves of a pomegranate tree, the door to the downstairs studio stood open; she could see old newspapers on the floor, and a trestle covered with bits of pottery and tools.