A Murder in Tuscany

by Christobel Kent

  With reluctance Gallo dropped the key into it. ‘Oh,’ said Sandro, looking at it thoughtfully. ‘Just one more thing. Do you have her number? The Dottoressa’s mobile number?’

  Gallo blinked back at him, alarmed. ‘Her number?’ As though he’d asked if he had the dead woman’s underwear.

  ‘Her mobile number,’ said Sandro patiently.

  Fishing in his pocket again, Gallo got out a small, battered phone and prodded at it until the tiny glowing screen yielded up what he was looking for.

  Sandro offered no explanation beyond a smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said. Gallo went on standing there until eventually Sandro put a hand to the door and took a step forwards, and only then did the man finally turn to leave.

  As he turned the key in the heavy panelled double doors, Sandro thought about Niccolò Orfeo. Too arrogant, would be his first thought, to bother with murder. Too stupid, his second.

  The apartments were dark, a warm, velvety, scented darkness: even without turning on the lights Sandro would have known a woman inhabited them. Would have known, perhaps, what kind of woman too. A woman who liked to make her presence felt, who liked to trail her distinctive fragrance through other people’s lives; a woman who liked her comforts, and her pleasures. He reached around the door for a light switch; he expected a blaze of overhead brilliance from some great monstrosity of a chandelier but the switch turned on a series of lamps, peach and gold, casting a soft glow through the large, untidy room. He closed the door behind him.

  The room wasn’t just large, it was palatial. Opposite a panelled wall it had three long windows to match the one in Sandro’s little room, and was dominated by a huge bed, with an ornately carved wooden headboard, a dark velvet cover, and scattered with at least half a dozen items of discarded clothing, some laid out as if to suggest entire outfits. She’d taken some time choosing what to wear. On the floor an emerald green shirt of some fine material lay crumpled; it had clearly been worn. A pair of trousers; silk underwear. Also worn. Sandro stepped over them, wondering what Luisa would have said. Getting the picture.

  A door in one corner stood ajar: the bathroom. Leaning in, Sandro flicked on another light; this one was lit like a star’s dressing room, soft light glowing round an antique mirror. A big marble bath like a Roman emperor’s, soft mottled green tiles that looked very subtly expensive. It seemed only recently fitted out and decorated, and Sandro remembered what Gallo had said, that previous Directors had not occupied these rooms. So she had appropriated the most beautiful rooms, and had them done out in her colours. Sparing no expense.

  Set into the tiles in one discreet corner, Sandro eventually discerned what he was looking for: a bathroom cabinet. It yielded nothing that interested him very much: some painkillers with codeine, heavy-duty, but only one had been taken. A woman who didn’t fuss about with herbal remedies but went for the nuclear option, only sparingly. Had he been looking for contraceptive pills? Well, he found some. Fifty-five, but not yet menopausal then. And something he thought was HRT medication, so belt and braces, this was a woman still powered on her own hormones, but she wasn’t taking any chances. The last thing this woman wanted was a baby.

  Stacks of expensive creams and lotions. What would she have done when the signs of getting older couldn’t be ignored or moisturized away any more? Plastic surgery, probably. Sandro compelled himself not to judge. Why shouldn’t she want to hang on to her looks? Feeling the woman’s presence around him like a warm, suffocating fog, he closed the cabinet door thoughtfully, and returned to the big bedroom. The dressing table held cosmetics and a small leather case of jewellery; it looked like the real deal, or most of it. Some pearls with a diamond clasp, a star-shaped diamond brooch, a ring with big sapphires, opals, garnets. A dark red lipstick lay unsheathed, worn down to a nub; her favourite shade. Luisa would enjoy this, wouldn’t she? Or perhaps it would upset her; perhaps one then the other. Sandro got out his mobile, and dialled the number Luca Gallo had given him.

  There had been no mobile phone in the plastic bag the orderly had handed him at the morgue. He had not found it at the river, on his hands and knees in the frosted grass as the light ebbed. Was it here, buried under the discarded clothes, in a drawer or a purse?

  Would it still have charge, two days on? Plenty of phones would, these days. He raised it to his ear. It was ringing, somewhere. He lowered it again, covered it with his hand, and listened. Ringing somewhere, but not here.

  If it was locked, overlooked, in a drawer at police headquarters in Pozzo Basso, would it be heard? Probably. Would they have turned it off? Probably; and yet this phone had not been turned off. Just as Sandro raised his own mobile to his ear again, the answerphone message came on, and he felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck and the sound of that voice, speaking softly to him out of the past, completed the picture he had of the dead woman to perfection. He knew her scent, the precise colour of her eyes, even the shape of her neat body imprinted on those clothes left lying on the floor and the big gilded bed, and now her voice. No mechanical default message for Loni Meadows, no: she had to record her own, in two languages, breathy and sweet, her English perky, direct and intimate, the Italian lazily, seductively American. She would never have bothered to get it right, Loni Meadows would never have felt the need to camouflage herself among the locals.

  She couldn’t get to the phone right now. As if she was talking to him, and only to him.

  You’re falling in love with her, Sandro jeered at himself, in love with a dead woman, and not a nice one. Perhaps it was because the thought of Luisa smiling into another man’s eyes had not been out of his thoughts for forty-eight hours, but he had a sudden and startling image of one of those rooms full of old coats and broken crockery and dusty pictures that the unloved dead leave behind them, his hoard of forgotten and embarrassing emotions, among them, hopeless infatuation. He quickly clicked his mobile shut, terminating the call.

  The bedside tables, matching walnut cabinets with delicate legs and each with a tiny drawer. Which side did she sleep on? Both, by the look of it. Capricious, prone to self-love, sprawling across the bed. A book on one side, its spine cracked, a half-full water glass on the other. Sandro went to the cabinet with the water glass and pulled open the drawer and took out the silver blister pack of triangular pills he saw there, had expected to see there. Not always blue but all colours, these days, although these happened to be a light grey-blue, four gone, one of which he had glimpsed through the plastic of the evidence bag containing Loni Meadows’s possessions. Viagra.

  There was a desk in a corner, and on it a small white machine he barely recognized as a laptop computer, so small and slender was it. Of course, she’d have a computer. It was open. Sandro stood there, contemplating it. Would she have left it open? He pressed the on button with a fingernail: the screen turned blue-green; he waited. Nothing, just the silent, blind glow. No request for a password. The feeling grew in Sandro that someone had tampered with this machine. If he had been in the force, with a whole department devoted to extracting information from computers – well, he wasn’t. Did this compact little assembly of plastic and circuits and silicon hold all her secrets? Probably not: machines had their limitations. Sandro knew he could put it in his bag and take it back to Florence for one of Mascarello’s technical contacts to take apart – but for the moment Sandro would have to go on without it. It was only a machine, after all, a modern shortcut to someone’s private life. There were other routes.

  Footsteps were coming downstairs, from above him. Turning towards the sound Sandro saw that he had not quite closed the door behind him, which was stupid. Swiftly he crossed the room and gently eased it shut, hearing the person pass on down without pausing. He took one last look around the room, for now.

  She had changed in a hurry. She had taken Viagra with her, and her mobile, because it wasn’t here. She had been going to meet her older lover.

  In his own cramped maid’s quarters, Sandro checked his mail one last time, but there was n
othing.

  19.45; Luisa would have left work, surely? If they’d sent her home early, as they should have done after a long Saturday with a busy few days ahead of her, she might be turning her key in the apartment’s lock right now. She might have been there for half an hour, sitting at the kitchen table, even supposing she didn’t see the note straight away – Sandro found himself grinding his teeth. Forget it. Below him the music was rising steadily, building to a point of no return.

  Luisa didn’t do email; he didn’t know why he’d felt that surge of mingled hope and dread as he’d pressed send and receive. Downstairs the last notes thundered out, there was a brief silence then a spattering of applause.

  Time to meet the locals, thought Sandro.

  ‘Private investigator? Into the Dottoressa’s – accident? You knew that?’ Nicki wouldn’t show Cate her face, letting her hair hang down, but she nodded almost imperceptibly.

  They were in the kitchen, hurriedly polishing glasses and cutlery and setting them on trays, because everything was behind schedule now.

  Even as she said it, though, Cate realized that somehow it wasn’t as much of a surprise as it should have been. Even when they’d first seen him, from the brow of that hill, climbing out of his modest little car, there’d been something about Sandro Cellini. Something careful and meticulous. Tiziano and Alec Fairhead had seen it too, she’d known that by the way they fell silent in the dusk beside her.

  ‘Who told you?’

  Nicki shrugged, looking truculent.

  ‘Ginevra?’

  ‘Actually, Mauro. Luca Gallo told him an investigator was coming, to put the wind up him, maybe.’

  Cate took a step back and eyed Nicki more closely. ‘Because?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Nicki dully. ‘Mauro says Gallo wants to get him sacked, just like the Dottoressa did. Thinks it’s a big conspiracy, the whole thing.’

  ‘Really?’ She didn’t believe it.

  ‘Maybe he’s being paranoid about Luca,’ Nicki said, fiddling. She looked listless and uncomfortable, her skin even blotchier than usual in the heat of the kitchen.

  ‘Nicki,’ said Cate, ‘don’t take this the wrong way, but you need to get out of this place. I don’t mean just move to Pozzo, I mean, far away. Living down there, your mum, Ginevra, Mauro – ’

  ‘You think so?’ said Nicki, frowning, as if the possibility hadn’t occurred to her. She eyed Cate. ‘Well,’ she said, in a burst of confidentiality, looking around as if she might be overheard, ‘the Dottoressa certainly didn’t like Mauro, even before – that morning. She gave him a written warning. She said if she caught him drunk again he’d be out; she even said she was going to get some kind of breathalyser.’

  Cate recalled her recent trip into Pozzo to collect her things, Mauro sloping back from the bar with a flush and brandy on his breath. ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘she had a point, didn’t she?’

  ‘It’s his home,’ said Nicki simply. She came and stood beside Cate at the door. ‘This place is his life.’

  Dangerous to turn a man out of his home. They stared at each other, both sensing that this was serious; the presence of Sandro Cellini in the castle confirmed that. Had she always wondered whether it had been an accident? Cate realized that she had; also that she, for one, was actually glad Cellini was here.

  ‘It’s snowing again,’ said Nicki, looking past her. Cate pulled the door open a little more and together they looked out. The snow was falling steadily under the arc of the wall light, thick and soft and silent. The bumpy surface of the back road was already carpeted with white, and the night seemed muffled.

  ‘Snowed in, are we?’ said Cate. ‘Does that ever happen?’

  Nicki gave her a scornful look. ‘Once or twice a year. Mauro should be out there clearing the drive.’ Cate nodded, thinking. ‘He works hard,’ said Nicki, and she looked troubled.

  ‘I know,’ said Cate, and sighed.

  They both took a step out; the air was clean and sharp and Cate felt the flakes falling soft as down on her upturned face, then cold and wet. She shook her head, feeling it in her hair, seeing it beginning to settle on the trees, on the hire car parked under them, the saddle of her own motorino. In the wider, deeper dark beyond the castle Cate even thought she could see the glimmer of white on the hills around them. It suddenly seemed extraordinarily quiet.

  ‘The music’s stopped,’ said Nicki, but as they listened to the silence a distant shout went up from the other side of the castle, a kind of football cheer. ‘Are they coming for food?’ said Nicki, alarmed.

  ‘Quick,’ said Cate. ‘Come on.’ It must be eight, at least; how could she have lost track of time? The kitchen clock said half past.

  But when they hurried in, loaded with dishes, the dining room was empty. Cate took off the cloths: zucchini filled with minced meat, cold rolled stuffed veal in slices, grilled aubergines with parsley and slippery red and yellow stewed peppers. The crostini she’d helped prepare herself, what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ said Nicki, but Cate could hear them in the corridor, coming across from the library down the awkward passageways. She met Tiziano in the doorway.

  ‘Boicotta,’ he said, triumphantly.

  Behind him stood Per, his wife Yolanda clinging fiercely to his arm. Per looked determined, like a man whose only hope was to get as drunk as he could. Alec Fairhead brought up the rear; his face behind Yolanda’s shoulder was pinker, healthier, and he still had that look she’d seen on the stairs, of being surprised by happiness. Freed; or perhaps he was just drunk too.

  Cate set her hands on her hips. ‘What do you mean, boycott?’ There was a gleam in Tiziano’s eye she didn’t recognize; of malice, of wildness, or rebellion. ‘What would you be boycotting?’

  ‘This place,’ said Tiziano.

  She knelt, and still in Italian, so the others wouldn’t understand, she said, ‘You know, don’t you? About the detective.’

  Tiziano nodded. ‘Luca told us,’ he said warily. ‘We were in the music room, before I played. Captive audience.’ She thought of the music that had poured out, after.

  ‘What – how did they take it?’

  Tiziano put his head on one side. ‘Are you asking me to snitch?’ he said softly, using the word they’d have used in school. She smiled.

  Tiziano pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Well, Per just said, what? What? Like he’d lost his marbles. Tina looked petrified. Michelle started shouting at him that it was an outrage.’ He shot a glance over his shoulder at Alec Fairhead. ‘The Englishman – well. I thought he was going to burst into tears at first but then he seemed – you know. All English. Stoical: resigned, like he was facing a firing squad.’ They both looked now at Per Hansen and Alec Fairhead behind them, the former beginning to frown.

  ‘Tuttavia,’ said Tiziano loudly, and again, in English. ‘Anyway. We’ve come to tell you, we’re not eating. Or at least, not in here.’ He reached out for a tray of stuffed zucchini and set it on his knee.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Alec Fairhead, his voice slurring. ‘We’re sorry, Miss Giottone, Cate. We don’t mean it personally.’ He was still being polite, but his hair was untidy, and Cate could see the tie he always wore stuffed into his jacket pocket. ‘The girls are having a party.’

  ‘Girls?’ Cate couldn’t imagine who he meant.

  ‘Michelle and Tina,’ said Tiziano. ‘Michelle’s place.’

  ‘Is there any booze left in the library?’ Cate asked crossly. ‘Have you drunk it all?’

  ‘The music did it,’ said Per, his face comically solemn as he gazed down at Tiziano. ‘All his fault, the fault of the musical genius. A Bacchanal, I think it is called. A breakout from prison.’

  Tiziano set his muscled forearms on the wheelchair’s armrests; he looked like a warrior; he was certainly the ringleader and perhaps the only one sober. ‘We don’t like this private investigator business,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it was part of the deal. Not conducive to artistry.’
>
  ‘No,’ said Fairhead, his face wilder. ‘Not in the contract, being suspected of murder.’

  ‘We do not co-operate,’ added Per. At his side Yolanda looked up at him, her eyes shining.

  It was funny, thought Cate, looking at them, that having spent six weeks avoiding each other like nervous cats, these artists were now united. By Loni’s death. She took a step back, hands up. ‘Look, that’s nothing to do with me,’ she said. ‘I’m just the kitchen slave.’

  ‘We know,’ said Tiziano impatiently, and Cate bit her lip. He gave her a sharp look and for a moment she thought he was going to say something to soften it, but instead he put his broad hands down and spun the wheels, turning away in a tight circle.

  Obediently the others followed, Alec Fairhead only pausing, hovering a moment on the way back out into the corridor. ‘Sorry, Caterina,’ he murmured again, and she heard the slight slurring in his voice. ‘You see how it is.’ He frowned, seemed to brighten. ‘You could come too, you know. We’d like you to – at least – ’ Cate was aware of Nicki listening avidly at her shoulder. ‘At least, I would.’ Only then he clamped his mouth shut as if regretting what he’d said, and hurried off after the others.

  ‘I’m going to call Beth now,’ Cate heard herself say to Nicki. And perhaps they heard that too, only she closed the dining room door on them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  GIULIETTA SARTO HAD NEVER been in a house like this. She had to make herself move coolly through the wide white corridors, from one big pale, glass-walled room to another, making herself invisible as she passed among them, as if she’d been doing this all her life, but inside she was rooted to the spot, eyes on stalks.

  It had been easy. Or if not exactly easy, then a hell of a lot less of a nightmare than she’d expected. In fact Giuli was resentful, almost angry, that it had been so easy, and found herself wondering why she’d spent her life expecting to be refused entrance to almost anywhere. She knew it was only the dope that had made the boy she attached herself to turn and give her a smile as he preceded her through the gate and inside the Orfeo villa’s magic circle. They were all stoned on one thing or another, and full of the milk of human kindness; she hadn’t even needed to hand her own stash around. The little fraternity of dope heads; dope the great leveller – well, up to a point. Giuli wasn’t the only older person present – she spotted a guy with long white hair and earrings who ran a club in a fondo behind Santo Spirito, holding court on a big leather sofa – but she wasn’t under any illusions that if she didn’t watch herself, she’d be out on her ear. Because after brotherly love came paranoia, in the big warm wonderful world of drugs.