CHAPTER 23
It took them four days of smooth, fast talking and some good solid help from John Everett to get themselves disentangled from officialdom, then, as threatened, Toby firmly took Penny off to Italy over her agonized protests that she hadn't even seen Alex and couldn't they stay another day or two.
In Bologna they picked up the Bentley and drove up to Colle d'Imola to collect Toby's promised wine. They arrived to find the village in a mild state of ferment over the Contessa's recent demise. Though they had loathed her in life the locals were prepared to mourn her now, for her going had further stripped the village of status and acclaim; the title had died with her, and maternal cousins, who had inherited the ruins of the palazzo, had come, taken one look at it and gone again, declaring that the state was welcome to it so far as they were concerned. Now the villagers had their heads together making rather improbable plans for restoring it themselves and opening it as a tourist hotel.
Toby led Penny to the quiet cemetery where a newly dug mound of earth scattered with a few wilting flowers stood beside the memorial to Christiana Amalfi. They looked at it in silence for a minute or two, then Penny asked, "No family vault?"
"Destroyed in the war."
"Hmm what a curious woman she must have been. You can't conceive of a hate that great, somehow. What did you make of her?"
Toby grunted. "Since this case has also had overtones of Dante throughout, I came across a description m Benvenuto D'Imola's book on him that fitted her very well. A woman called Ciangbella,' he quoted, 'an arrogant woman who went about the house with a rod m her hand. Sometimes she flogged the houseman, sometimes the cook and when she went to Mass and the other women did not give her place, would lay violent hands upon them. She stayed at Imola for a while, had many lovers and lived lewdly.' Yes, that about fits the Contessa."
"Oh dear! Doesn't sound at all the kind of person for you, Toby. Did you have a very bad time with her?"
His eyes twinkled at her. "Well, you do rather put me through the wringer on your behalf, you know. It's not an experience I'll forget in a hurry."
They sought out Father Antonio, who confessed to them that he had not told the Contessa of Lorenzo's death. "I couldn't do it," he said simply, "to take away her last hope, to lay that heavy burden upon her when she was so near death herself—no, I could not do it." He sighed heavily. "But I shall say my prayers for her poor, tormented soul."
"If you see Francesca Volci," Toby told him, "you can tell her that Alexander Dimola will see that she is recompensed for the money she gave his half brother."
Again the priest sighed. "Ah, yes! The money will be welcome, no doubt, but nothing can repay her for her other loss, can it? She sorrows, poor thing, because it was she who urged him on to go to America, to go to his death. Lorenzo, with all his faults, was a man who was terribly unlucky when it came to the women in his life."
"Indeed he was," Penny agreed, thinking of Inga.
They picked up the wine from the enthusiastic Emico and were urged by him to return one day and visit the new "albergo" the village was planning. "At the rate things get done around here," Toby remarked, as they wound back down to the plain, "that should take twenty years at least."
They drove back at a leisurely pace through the burgeoning spring of France to the wet spring of England, arrived soggy but thankful in the venerable city of Oxford, and went directly to their equally venerable offices in the Pitt-Rivers Museum. Toby was deeply immersed in his own pile of mail when Penny burst into his office, waving a green slip of paper in her hand. "Look what I got from Alexander Dimola," she chirruped excitedly, and plonked it down under his nose. "My first fee, $5,000—isn't that terrific!"
"Are you going to keep it?" Toby demanded in a shocked tone. Never having had to give a thought to money himself, he tended to be very stuffy when it came to matters of business.
"I don't see why not. After all he did ask me to find Wanda's murderer, which I did. And it's not as if it'll make a dent in the Dimola fortune." She took up the check and waved it dreamily. "Just think, being paid to solve a crime, it opens up vast new vistas before my aging self."
"That's just what I'm afraid of," Toby said with deep gloom.
"I also got a long letter from him and one from Ann Langley as well," she continued happily. "They don't seem to hold the way things turned out against me—which is great, though I confess I'm a bit surprised."
"So, what has happened?" Toby tried to camouflage his curiosity but failed miserably.
"Well, they did charge Steven with manslaughter, but I'll be very surprised if he gets anything but a suspended sentence with Alexander in the fight You know, maybe the demise of both their wives wasn't such a bad thing after all—now Alexander can marry somebody more suited to his station in life."
"What a horribly snobbish thing to say!" Toby was shocked.
"Snobbish but true. It struck me from the first that the Dimola women were decorative but lacked the clout— social and otherwise—that you'd expect in a family that well endowed. I'm sure Alexander will remedy that now he is mature."
"And how about Steven—do you think he and Ann Langley will get together?"
"I very much doubt it. I think that was a case of two raging romantics in an 'I-love-you-but-I-mustn't-touch* situation. Now they can, I don't think either of them will Ann, I feel, has grown up a lot too, and has her eye firmly on Carson Grange. Her letter was Carson this and Carson that and nary a word of Steven. On Steven's part I think half of Ann's attraction lay in her resemblance to Annette—his first love, by all accounts. Steven's marriage to Inga had all the earmarks of a rebound affair. Also it obviously shook him when Ann so blatantly revealed that she thought he might have been the murderer. No, I wouldn't be a bit surprised that if dear old Dad doesn't come out of his operation, after a discreet amount of time Steven and Annette will make a match of it."
"Good God! Like a seventeenth-century Italian drama," Toby snorted. "Positively incestuous! And Rinaldo is going to risk the operation?"
"Yes. Of course he was vastly solaced by the news his son and heir was not the murderer, but he is going to wait until Steven is off the hook and then have it. I don't really think he cares to live any more in his condition, and who can blame him? Still, Maria has a lot of faith in this Dr. Lavin, and so do I, so he might bring it off. I asked him to look at Zeb before I left, and he did something and Zeb came right out of his coma, roaringly anxious to 'tell all!' " She giggled suddenly. "He always did have a lousy sense of timing."
"Regular Mrs. Fixit, aren't you?" Toby growled suspiciously. "Going back to hold his convalescent hand?"
She grinned at him. "No, thank you! I think Zeb and I have thankfully seen the last of one another."
"And how about the nephew?"
She grimaced. "Well, he's O.K. physically, but the state police did give him the boot. However, Alexander has offered him a very good job as security officer for Dimola Enterprises, and he's dithering between doing that or going back to school under his Vietnam G.I. benefits to become a teacher. I think he'd be a very good one, but I imagine, from the tone of Ann's letter, that he'll probably plump for the high pay of the Dimolas and wedding bells with her. Not a bad ending all round actually."
"So what do you plan to do with your loot?" demanded Toby.
A dreamy look came into Penny's face, and she perched herself on the edge of his desk. "Oh, I'm going to get a new car—a Triumph Spitfire, a bright green one like John's."
"What! One of those instruments of torture! You must be out of your mind. I can think of nothing more unsuitable for a woman of your age and position!"
"Oh, rubbish! It's a really zippy little car, just right for me. Why don't you like the idea?—want a cut of the loot?" she added crudely. "Come to think of it, you did have rather an expensive time of it."
"Certainly not! I have no desire to join the ranks of professional detectives." Toby was at his stuffy best. "But if you're flinging your money about, you could send
a donation to Father Antonio on my behalf—God knows the poor man could certainly use it and he was a great help to me."
"Good ideal I'll do that." She jumped up and started to bustle out of the door, then stopped halfway out and turned. "All the same," she said defiantly, "I am going to get the Triumph—as Albert says, 'It's a nice little car.'" And closed the door with a decisive bang.
Toby looked at the closed panels of the door in exasperation. "And who the hell is Albert?" he demanded.
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