A Murder in Tuscany

by Christobel Kent

  It had not been necessary to spend long with Per Hansen to know that the man was completely incapable of dissimulation. Sudden violence, possibly, if pushed to an extreme. Followed by abject remorse.

  Sandro had seen signs of neither; in addition he had told the same story as Alec Fairhead. They had walked together in the early afternoon, perhaps as far as the river, he couldn’t remember. He had said good night to Loni Meadows, gone to his room and not emerged until the following morning; he had played Grieg.

  ‘You were perhaps the last person to see Loni Meadows,’ Sandro had then said abruptly.

  The man’s wife had left early on: Yolanda Hansen had opened the door to his knock, wearing a long nightdress and a dressing-gown, sensibly brought from home, no doubt. She’d understood straight away, and hurried downstairs, saying something about bread.

  The room could not have been less like Fairhead’s; it had been a tip. There had been signs that the wife had tried to make inroads, clearing a space for a cup on the table. Hansen himself had looked only bewildered, as if Loni Meadows had happened to someone else, in a different lifetime.

  But eventually he had responded. ‘I – yes,’ he had said, and he had begun to flush, darkly. ‘I went to her room. I – she had been very attentive to me.’ He had passed a hand over his forehead. ‘I don’t mean that it was – her entirely. I – ’ and he had cast about, as if looking for his wife. ‘I have always liked women,’ he had said finally. ‘But I’m not experienced with them. Only my wife. I thought this was a great – emotion. A great love; it was like madness. I don’t – I didn’t understand what I was feeling.’

  ‘I know,’ Sandro had said, and he had sighed.

  Hansen had gone on. ‘I didn’t understand anything – until that night. I was standing at her door and she was looking at her telephone, reading something there, and she simply wished I would go away. I suddenly realized that she wanted me to disappear, I was inconvenient.’ He had put his hands to his head. ‘And now it seems that everyone else knew, all along, that she was having this – affair. This other affair, going to hotels.’ He had sounded sick.

  ‘But you have your wife, now,’ Sandro had said, intending to comfort him. We have our wives.

  His head resting against the window, Per Hansen had straightened, looking at him gratefully. ‘You’re an odd sort of detective,’ he had said.

  Sandro had laughed abruptly. ‘I suppose I am,’ he had said. Hansen had been looking down out of the high window, and there had been something about the way he was looking that had drawn Sandro to him.

  ‘You didn’t hear her leave?’ he had said quietly, following his gaze. Down between those cypyresses. Sandro had seen that from this room slightly more was visible to the castle’s right – or left if you were facing it from below, from the river. Down where the women lived, the villino and the studio. ‘You didn’t hear – anything?’

  ‘I was listening to my music,’ Per Hansen had said, stiffening, chastened to the point of anguish by Sandro’s implication. Might the sound of the accident have echoed across the hills, might it have come up this far? ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

  And if he had, Sandro had thought as he’d examined the man’s hollow-eyed look, he would have gone to help. And then a shadow had passed across Hansen’s face in the thin morning light. ‘Later,’ he had begun hesitantly, then stopped. ‘Later, though. I did see something. Thought I saw something.’

  And so another little shred of evidence had joined the rest; a threadbare little collection, but stubborn. It would not go away.

  Sandro straightened, the whisper of the water in his ears, and threw one last pebble, heard it splash, saw it enter the black water between the mounded snow overhanging the banks. There, he thought, following the stone’s trajectory, and as he thought it someone called his name.

  When Cate came in, Luca was sitting at his desk reading a letter. Handwritten, on the heavy-gauge paper the castle provided to the guests, a small representation of the castle’s silhouette in one corner. He didn’t look up for a good minute after she entered the room, staring at the page as Cate stood awkwardly wondering if she’d misinterpreted his distracted answer to her tentative knock, wondering if he had not in fact wanted her to come in at all.

  It was different, Cate thought as she stood there; the room that had on her last visit seemed full of life and purpose, busy with Luca Gallo’s energy, stuck about with itineraries and Post-it notes, now seemed dusty, chaotic and neglected. The photograph of Luca’s lover, Salvatore, had gone from its place in the corner of the computer screen.

  At last he looked up from the piece of paper, and Cate saw that Luca’s face was quite pale under the cheerful beard, and the look he turned on her in that moment was completely desolate.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, taken aback.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, blinking back down at the paper. ‘Oh,’ then sighed. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, but Cate just stared back. ‘It’s Orfeo,’ he said briefly, when she said nothing, and let the piece of paper fall to the desk. ‘Sounding off.’

  ‘Orfeo?’ Cate looked towards the window. ‘But he – he’s – ’

  ‘He’s gone back to Florence,’ said Luca. ‘First thing this morning, and left this,’ he flipped the piece of paper with a forefinger. ‘We know where to find him, he says, if he is required.’

  ‘Know where to find him?’ Cate didn’t understand.

  ‘He means Sandro Cellini,’ said Luca, following her gaze towards the window. ‘Apparently Cellini did something to offend him last night. Spoke to him about the Dottoressa’s death. About his – relations with the Dottoressa. He’s very angry.’

  Cate felt herself grow warm with the knowledge of her own guilt. ‘I – ah – I see,’ she said. Luca looked at her consideringly, but when he spoke it was not on the subject of who might or might not have known about Loni Meadows’s affair; anyone might have told him, pleaded Cate silently, suddenly sure that she had been the last to know.

  ‘He says he intends to dissolve the Trust,’ said Luca briefly, and Cate stared at him. ‘Take back the castle.’

  We’ll all be out of a job, was Cate’s first thought, and it came with something surprisingly like jubilation. But her second was for Luca Gallo, for whom leaving the Castello Orfeo would be the end of the world. ‘Can he do that?’ she said.

  Luca took the piece of paper with a sudden movement and crushed it into a ball. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Probably.’ And made an impatient gesture, waving something aside. ‘Lunch,’ he said, and the old Luca seemed to be back, albeit in a faded version. ‘With this snow – I’m worried Ginevra will be running out of provisions. We can’t let the guests go hungry. Care will need to be taken, things may have to be rationed.’

  Cate looked at him warily, a number of questions presenting themselves, not least whether Luca knew of the guests’ plans to go their separate ways as soon as Sandro Cellini had talked to them. And certainly when she had come past it on her way to Luca’s office, the kitchen had been dark, no sign of Nicki or Ginevra; one of the questions she had come to pose to him was whether they were snowed in down there. Had Luca simply been holed up here for too long to know what was happening?

  ‘I – um – ’ she began, but then Luca’s mobile began to vibrate on the desk, jiggling among the papers. He answered it, giving Cate a quick look that told her to stay where she was.

  ‘Ginevra,’ he said, frowning. Cate heard a gabble, weary, anxious, pleading.

  ‘He’s what?’ More gabble. ‘All right, all right.’ Luca’s tiredness sounded extreme, as if he had reached breaking point. ‘Look, just leave him where he is. No, leave him. You stay there, I’ll be down, the snow’s melting. I’ll be down.’ He hung up and let a long breath out, his face between his hands.

  ‘What’s happened?’ said Cate.

  ‘Mauro,’ said Luca, with resignation. ‘He’s – it looks like he’s pushed it too far this time. Some kind of crisis.’

  For God’s sake, tho
ught Cate, as if we didn’t all know. ‘Is he drunk?’

  Luca looked at her sharply, then gave up. ‘Not exactly,’ he said wearily. ‘More like – withdrawal. He’s hallucinating, got the shakes, she says. Can’t stand up. She’s worried.’ He looked up at Cate, his brown eyes wondering whether she might conceivably be able to help him out of this. ‘Looks like lunch might have to be late today.’

  She should have gone straight to the kitchen to get started, she knew that. But the roads had begun to thaw, Luca had been right, and as she watched his hire car creep down the hill towards the farmhouse, Cate found her gaze shifting across to her little motorino, forlorn under the trees, its saddle freighted with snow. Found herself wondering what Sandro Cellini was doing down there, throwing stones in the river. And before she knew it she was back in her room, collecting her helmet.

  She left by the front drive, on impulse: the quicker route to the river, swooping down between the cypresses, slowly at first then faster as she reached the main road and more clear tarmac, holding her breath and feeling a ridiculous euphoria to be out of there, under her own steam. Tempted for a second just to keep going, until she wondered, where, though? Home? To Pozzo Basso, and Vincenzo? The thought gave her a queasy feeling, of guilt and aversion. She came to the brow of the hill and stopped. Sandro Cellini was bent over, up to his knees in a snowdrift by the river and looking at something. She called his name.

  Looking up briefly, he hardly seemed to register she was there; just a hand over his eyes to shield him from the snow glare, and the slightest of nods. By the time Cate was down there, Sandro was practically in the river itself, one foot on the bank, another on a stone in the shallow flow, hanging on to a branch.

  She came down slowly, because it was steep, this last bit; on a motorino you had to stick to the middle of the road even when it wasn’t half-covered with snow. Not the first to die down there, was that what Mauro had said? Poor Mauro. Shaking with the DTs in a dark room, in another sunless dip between the hills. Everyone knew it was dangerous; but Loni had thought she’d live forever.

  The rear wheel of the Vespa slid a little on the snow, but Cate held steady. What was he doing down there? She came to a stop, breathless, at the foot of the hill and set her feet down on either side just as Sandro’s head jerked up. A dripping arm held over his head in triumph, something small and silver in his hand; the hand bone-white from cold.

  ‘Got it.’ He spoke to no one in particular, in a fierce mutter. Cate dismounted, pulling off her helmet.

  ‘Got what?’

  He looked at her a moment then held it out, a smoothed silver pebble, a piece of dead technology. Loni Meadows’s phone.

  State of the art cameraphone on this model, Cate had heard Loni say that – to whom? To Tina, the artist. You mustn’t reject the new, Loni had said. Embrace the technology. Aiming the phone around the dining table and pretending to snap them each one in turn. Per looking bashful, Michelle scowling.

  ‘It’s not art, though,’ Michelle had said. ‘It’s like blogging. Incontinent photography. The world’s full enough of shit as it is.’ Michelle was always back at her, from the moment she’d arrived at the castle. Was she happy, now Loni was dead? That question gave Cate pause.

  Sandro Cellini was sticking his hands under his armpits to warm them, grimacing in pain. ‘It’s hers, isn’t it?’ he said, teeth chattering.

  Cate turned it over in her gloved hand. ‘You found it,’ she said wonderingly. ‘Will it do you any good, after all that time, under the water?’

  Cellini had now folded his arms across his chest and was rocking to keep warm, his weathered face, his kind brown eyes fixed on the strip of dark water between snowy banks.

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said, and she heard the chatter in his teeth, saw his blue-knuckled hands.

  ‘Haven’t you got any gloves?’

  The detective nodded at the verge and she saw a pair of woollen gloves on the snow; not warm enough to start with, and now soaked into the bargain. And his coat, she noticed, wasn’t thick enough, either. Sandro Cellini looked sheepish, but happier than he’d seemed since he arrived at the castle, as if enjoying her exasperation. Cate stuck the phone in her pocket and pulled off the leather gauntlets she wore on the motorino; two sizes too big for her. An old boyfriend’s. The thought depressed her; too many old boyfriends. As she handed the gauntlets to Sandro, Cate realized that she’d already consigned Vincenzo to the same status.

  ‘How come you found it,’ she said, ‘and the police didn’t?’

  ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Maybe they don’t think like I think; maybe they don’t look anywhere but the obvious places, maybe they think anything but the obvious things.’ He sighed. ‘Look, I don’t want to badmouth them: and often enough the obvious is the answer. Maybe they’re just lazy, or maybe they turn up at an accident scene, and they see what they want to see. And when the local big man comes along and flatters them a bit, when they know the deal at the Castello Orfeo, they don’t think, let’s have a closer look. They smile like a girl receiving a compliment, and they forget all about what job it is they’re supposed to be doing.’

  ‘You think it was Orfeo?’ Cate thought of him heading back to Florence in the big car. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘I heard him,’ said Sandro. ‘No, it wasn’t him, he was at home in Florence with his delinquent son. He’s too vain and self-centred and stupid, anyway. But I think he wanted to make sure he didn’t get in the papers over it, that’s all.’

  Cate took her hands out of her pockets and folded them across her body in the biker jacket, thinking.

  Slowly Sandro took off the gloves and handed them back to her, and they both looked to the road, in shadow still, and the crest behind which stood the castle.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what you think happened now, or not?’ said Cate, pulling the gloves back on. He looked at her for a long moment, then said, ‘Come with me.’

  They walked up, Cate pushing her motorino; fifty metres. Overhead the thin band of blue had narrowed and the sun was dimming, edging back behind the cloud. The air was cold and damp, and a wet wind had got up. They stood at the top of the short hill and looked together at the castle, black against the snow. The flag, Cate noticed, was still at half-mast. To the left of the castle’s dark, symmetrical bulk, through the spindly trees, she could see the shapes of the outbuildings; the laundry, the villino lower down. To the right, Cate noticed, the roof of the farm was just visible, and when her eyes adjusted to the snow glare, a criss-crossing of animal tracks in the soft white contours.

  ‘You think it wasn’t an accident,’ said Cate.

  He nodded. ‘There was nothing wrong with the vehicle,’ he said, as if he knew what she was going to say next. ‘The police report was categorical: no failure, only slight wear on the brake pads. No one tampered with the car.’

  Cate felt colder, all of a sudden. ‘So do you think – there was someone in the car with her, after all?’ Someone like Per?

  Sandro turned back, looking down the hill to the black ribbon of river winding behind the sharp bend, and the bare clumped willows that had obscured Cate’s view of the car and the tow-truck as she had come into work on that icy morning. All around them the empty landscape stood silent, waiting. Slowly he shook his head. ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘Barely, though. The passenger side of the car was completely caved in. You’d have had to be in the back, and wearing a seatbelt, to have escaped alive, and even then you would almost certainly have sustained some kind of injury. And I think it happened another way. I think it was worked out in advance.’

  ‘But you can’t,’ said Cate stubbornly. ‘You can’t cause a crash by – by remote control.’

  Sandro turned towards Cate, looking at her thoughtfully. ‘There was a patch of ice,’ he said, ‘running down the side of the road. Down the slope. It’s the patch she hit that sent her off on to the verge.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cate, waiting.

  ‘You all knew she drove dangerously,
and that she didn’t wear a seatbelt: all of you. From Luca Gallo down; anyone who’d been in a car with her or even seen her climb into one and drive away. You all knew that this was a tricky bend. Did you all know how cold it was going to be that night?’

  Cate eyed him. ‘I guess. When you’re stuck in this place, the weather’s pretty important.’

  Sandro nodded, took a deep breath. ‘I saw the ice,’ he said. ‘Yesterday evening. I saw the skid marks. A thick sheet of black ice a metre wide, down the side of the road for maybe four metres. That’s quite a lot of ice; quite a lot of water.’ He kicked at the snow on the side of the road: some ice still showed dark beneath it.

  ‘Only thing is,’ he said, ‘I can’t work out where that water came from, to turn to ice. There’s no culvert, there’s no spring up here. Because if there had been, it would have made the road so dangerous every time there was a hard frost, it would have had to be diverted long ago.’

  Cate stared at the dark patch beneath the snow, glassy and dangerous. ‘You think someone – made the ice?’

  ‘I’m not a scientist,’ said Sandro. ‘The police have forensics teams for that kind of thing, only in this case it didn’t seem to occur to them.’

  Thinking of the policeman, cosy in the kitchen of the castle with Mauro and Ginevra, Cate could see how he might have overlooked all sorts of things.

  Sandro was still talking. ‘But even I can see that it could be done. You’d need water, and you’d need to know how cold it was going to get. It would have to be done while it was still light, but starting to chill right down.’

  ‘Someone came down here,’ she murmured, feeling the hairs on her neck prickle and rise.

  ‘I think,’ Sandro said softly, at her shoulder, ‘that this was a murder by degrees. At each stage, she might not have died. The crash might not have killed her; if she had been wearing her seatbelt she might even have walked away from it.’

  Cate nodded, chilled to the bone.

  Overhead the sky had thickened, turned grey as the last shard of sun died. It wasn’t human, to live in a place like this, Cate thought, without neighbours, with no one to hear you if you called. Did someone hear Loni Meadows?