The Rome Affair

by Karen Swan

  ‘Killed?’

  But he wouldn’t elaborate and she had to wait until they reached the garden room, where Cesca had so unsuccessfully conducted the second interview yesterday. One set of the garden doors on the far side was already open, a gentle breeze wafting through, and straight ahead was a large group of people, all gathered around a staked-out length of yellow tape.

  ‘Sinkhole.’

  Cesca looked at Alberto in astonishment, before looking back out at the garden again. Sure enough, beyond their legs, she could see the sudden yawning chasm in the middle of the garden – several of the orange trees had disappeared altogether, the elaborate parterre in ruins. A shudder ran through her. It was the exact spot she had seen the gardener working in just the other day. The thought of the ground opening up beneath him . . . She shivered again.

  ‘How deep is it?’

  ‘Twenty metres.’

  ‘My God.’ She pressed her hands to her lips, watching as a man lying on his stomach wriggled to the edge of the hole and spoke into it. Elena was standing to the side, listening intently to something a man in a boilersuit and hard hat was saying to her, one arm folded calmly at her waist, the other on her cane. She was wearing a pale-blue belted dressing gown over white linen pyjamas, her spectacles on, her feet shod in flat white leather mules, yet still, somehow, she managed to look more formally attired than her companion. ‘Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘No. But they easily could have been. We were lucky it happened just after six this morning; the garden was empty.’

  ‘Did you hear it?’ she asked.

  ‘I am surprised you did not,’ he said simply. ‘You are not so very far away.’

  ‘Well, actually, I’m wondering if I may have done.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘But I’m not sure. I was sleeping. I think I did but I incorporated it into my dream.’

  He raised an eyebrow but said nothing – thankfully, for she really didn’t want to share her dreams with Alberto. They both went back to looking at the activity in the garden again.

  ‘Elena must be very upset. Her beautiful garden, ruined.’

  ‘Yes. Although I believe at the moment she is just grateful no one was hurt.’

  It appeared that someone – or several people – had already been lowered into the sinkhole, as there was a sudden flurry of activity and of ropes being hauled.

  The bell at the front door rang loudly and Alberto tutted. ‘More press, no doubt,’ he muttered savagely, stalking away.

  Cesca didn’t watch him go. She stepped out through the doors and into the still-shaded garden, curiosity getting the better of her. What did a depth of twenty metres look like? Quietly, not wanting to bring attention to herself, she skirted the group, moving in the opposite direction from where Elena was talking with the boilersuited man.

  She found a quiet, unoccupied corner of the taped-off square and peered over the edge as far as she dared, staring down into the bottomless black. Except it wasn’t bottomless – huge heaps of earth, paving slabs and mangled trees were tossed together like a cake mix, some of it reaching up to only a few metres from ground level. ‘Goodness—’

  ‘Hey! How did you get in here? You can’t be here!’

  She looked up in alarm to find the man in the boilersuit and hard hat striding angrily towards her, and she felt her stomach muscles contract as she realized that she recognized him. In fact, she would have known him anywhere.

  ‘This is a restricted area!’ he exclaimed, clearly not recognizing her as he bore down upon her. ‘Get back from there! Do you have permission to be here?’

  ‘You again!’ she exclaimed, feeling a rush of heat. ‘What are you doing here?’

  The man looked perplexed. ‘What?’

  ‘Francesca!’

  She looked up to find Elena walking towards her. ‘Can you believe it?’ Elena asked in a tone approaching excitement.

  ‘Uh, well—’ Cesca began, but she was stunned into silence by Elena kissing her warmly on both cheeks. As though they were friends. As though yesterday had never happened.

  ‘Another ten feet to the right and the east wing of the building would have slipped into the earth. I could have been buried alive in my sleep!’

  Cesca thought she, personally, would have been a lot less excited and lot more upset to wake up to find a chunk of her garden swallowed up. But that was just her.

  ‘That would have been unlikely, Viscontessa,’ the man said gruffly, his hostility towards Cesca abated, somewhat, following Elena’s effusive greeting. ‘But it is true it could have caused real damage to such an historic building. I’m afraid until we have finished our checks, we cannot be sure this sinkhole has not already caused trouble to the foundations of the building, nor can we discount the possibility that another sinkhole may open up nearby.’

  Elena’s grey eyes widened. ‘Should we evacuate?’

  ‘At this point, no, but we will keep you informed, naturally.’

  Elena looked across at Cesca again, seeing the confounded expression on her face. ‘I’m sorry, Cesca, have you met Signor Cantarelli? He is the Soprintendenza Archaelogica di Roma. Signor Cantarelli, this is Francesca Hackett, my biographer.’

  Cesca was a little taken aback to hear such a grand title bestowed on her stop-gap job.

  ‘Signorina.’ He held out a hand, not in the least fazed that only moments before he had been shouting in her face and about to throw her out.

  Cesca stared at it. Did he seriously think she was going to shake his hand when he – he – had almost run her down? He had drawn blood. She had a scab! But Elena was there, Elena was watching, Elena was her boss.

  Slowly, she shook his hand. ‘Actually, we’ve met before,’ Cesca said evenly, her eyes flinty.

  ‘Yes?’ he frowned. ‘No. I think I would remember. Your hair is very bright.’

  Bright? Was he trying to be offensive? She swallowed, refusing to be ruffled. ‘Last week, near to the Trevi? You almost ran me over on your scooter?’

  He continued to look at her blankly, his dark-brown eyes clear and steady, not a flicker of emotion on his face. ‘You have confused me with someone else.’

  Cesca raised herself to her full height. How could he not remember? He’d looked straight at her! ‘On the contrary, I would nev—’

  ‘Excuse me.’ He walked off, leaving Cesca staring after him, open-mouthed. He had got to be kidding! She couldn’t believe he had just done that! Disrespecting her. Again. She watched as he joined the man who had just been hauled from the hole and was stepping out of a harness, the flash-light on his head torch still switched on.

  ‘It’s funny – his mother is a friend, although I haven’t really seen him since he was a child. But I must say, he seems highly capable,’ Elena said, watching as the two men began talking together intently.

  He seems arrogant and rude, Cesca thought, glowering, but she didn’t say the words out loud. She watched as Cantarelli and the other man walked over to where a laptop had been set up, both examining whatever was on the screen attentively.

  ‘You can imagine my fright,’ Elena went on.

  Cesca turned to face her. ‘Yes. It must have been terrible.’

  Elena nodded, her eyes still bright. ‘At first, I thought it might be an earthquake. I couldn’t understand what my eyes were showing me. We had no idea whether it was going to keep growing, you see. Alberto was just fabulous, of course. He took charge, calling the authorities, and they were here within minutes. Obviously they understood the historical importance of the palace.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Cesca mumbled, her eyes drawn back to Cantarelli again.

  ‘It was almost as though he had some sort of contingency plan already in place. Alberto, I mean: he started evacuating the most precious treasures from the galleries; he called in all the gardening teams and they helped him to move anything of importance, in case the building should become unstable.’

  ‘Good thinking. Where is it all now?’

  ‘In the north wing. It’s the furth
est point from this court-yard, so it seemed the safest.’

  Cesca raised her eyes skywards. Elena’s private apartment was four floors up at the very end of the east wing, looking straight down on this. If the ground floor should crumble, the upper storeys would come down too. Her pristine white home . . .

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ Elena said with a shudder, looking towards the top floor. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing more we can do at this stage. We must let the authorities conduct their tests and explorations. The sooner they’ve ticked all the boxes, the sooner they can close this gaping hole up again and I can get my beautiful garden back.’

  ‘And how do they do that? Close it up, I mean?’

  ‘Mortar, I believe. It’s quick, stable and eradicates any future risk of something like this happening again.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Anyway, I need to go and get dressed. I look an utter fright. I cannot quite believe I’m standing in my garden in my pyjamas in front of all these strangers.’ She cocked her head. ‘When did we say we were meeting up next?’

  Cesca blinked, wondering whether Elena really had forgotten the manner in which she had abruptly terminated their interview yesterday afternoon. ‘Uh . . . we hadn’t.’

  This seemed to surprise her. ‘Well, how’s four o’clock this afternoon?’

  Cesca nodded. ‘Yes, wonderful. I’ll get everything ready.’

  ‘I’ll see you then, then. You’re doing a great job, Francesca.’

  ‘Th-thank you.’ Baffled by the sudden about-turn, she watched Elena walk – regal in her pyjamas – towards the French doors in the east wing, which exactly mirrored those of the garden room. The men glanced up as she passed before returning their attention to the screen.

  Cesca turned and walked back into the garden room in the west wing, passing through the long, grand galleries towards her office, already exhausted by her working day before it had even begun.

  The blond man was significant. Clearly neither Elena’s father nor a brother, he nonetheless shared the same unassailable self-confidence and matinee-idol looks of a Valentine. In almost every shot, he was a man of action. In one photograph, he swung out from a yacht’s rigging, wearing white shorts and a navy jumper, the sleeves pushed up to reveal muscular, tanned forearms, his smile revealing a straight set of brighter-than-white teeth. In another, he was standing by a propeller-engined plane in dark slacks and a chunky cream polo-neck jumper, his eyes hidden behind reflective aviator sunglasses. He had a commanding presence even in black-and-white. He could well have been an actor, Cesca mused: he clearly loved the limelight, with Elena barely in any shots with him. Cesca wondered whether she had been the one taking the photos, like her father.

  The wedding photographs were visually gripping. The church was surprisingly humble – just a single-storey, white weatherboarded affair – but the flowers more than compensated, with Casablanca lilies cascading from Elena’s bouquet and mop-headed white roses braided round the door. Her parents looked like they were dressed for a regatta – George in a dark blazer and ivory flannels, Whitney in a pale dress with knife-pleated skirt and white fox stole. Elena looked stunning in a magnificent sort of ‘Swan Lake’ dress with downy feathers on the skirt, her eyes bright behind a plumed veil, her youthful plumpness shaped into waspish-ness by a tight corset. In almost all of them, she was openly laughing, her body language so much more expansive than in the photos of her childhood. Those, Cesca realized – now that she had a direct comparison – had been muted and stiff with Elena staring at the camera warily, Winnie standing devotedly at her side, the two of them grouped as though arranged by the photographer. But in these, standing beside her handsome new husband, Elena looked radiantly happy. And incredibly young.

  Cesca frowned, staring closer at the image, trying to gauge her age – eighteen? Nineteen, perhaps? It was hard to tell when, back then, everyone looked forty by the age of twenty-eight. Whatever. She was evidently madly in love, with her whole life stretching ahead of her. It was clear the all-American dream was rolling on.

  Chapter Twelve

  Boston, September 1962

  Laney stirred the silver spoon slowly. She never usually took sugar in her coffee but Winnie always used to put sweetener into her drinks to help with shock whenever she fell as a child – and she was shocked now.

  ‘Mr Charles, do you mean to say that unless I tell the world the intimate details of my marriage, I cannot divorce Jack?’

  The lawyer looked back at her over his heavy-rimmed glasses, the tinkle of china and titters of laughter around them as inappropriate to the gravity of their conversation as a can-can dancer high-kicking on their table.

  ‘I’m afraid, Laney dear, we have to cite something and the classic grounds for divorce are cruelty – be it physical or mental – desertion and adultery. Legally, we have an obligation to show why you are justified in becoming exempt from the assumption of marital permanence.’

  ‘But Mr Charles,’ she began. ‘Once the press gets wind of this divorce, it will become a front-page story and any one of those reasons will be a red rag. They won’t stop until they get the truth. Desertion is my opposite problem. He’ll never leave and he’d happily tell that to the press. Adultery? Well, that would be nothing less than an invitation to start digging around any woman unlucky enough to be seen with him, be she his sister or accountant or secretary. And as for cruelty—’ Her voice caught and she looked away quickly, watching the girl at the coat-check taking a man’s jacket from him. It was windy outside and it had started raining, too, judging from the way he took a comb from his suit pocket and raked his hair back slickly.

  Mr Charles leaned a little closer, so that she could see the shine of the pomade in his grey hair, even detect his cologne. He lowered his voice. ‘It would be helpful if you could provide me with some insight as to why you cannot continue with the marriage. I assure you, everything you tell me is kept in the strictest confidence.’

  Laney sat back, glancing around at the bustling room. There were diners at every table, waiters gliding between the round tables with matching trays, dispensing cocktails. She looked back at him. Stanley Charles, the Valentine family’s lawyer, had been in her life from the day she’d been born. She had grown up with him walking the grounds with her father, playing backgammon with her mother, knowing him as her family’s benevolent guardian, the man they always turned to for help. So familiar to her was he that she saw him almost as a grandfather figure – which was precisely why she couldn’t go into the intimate realities of her marriage with him. If he knew, if anyone did . . .

  ‘I can’t carry on, Mr Charles,’ was all she said briskly. ‘You’ll just have to think of something.’

  He looked at her for a long moment and she held his gaze, determined now. No one could see by looking at her how Jack hurt her, but last night had been the worst yet; last night had been the last time. She wouldn’t endure it again.

  Whether Mr Charles recognized any of this in her eyes she didn’t know, but from the way he nodded, she knew he was finally seeing her as something more than the seventeen-year-old daughter of his client.

  ‘Well, we can do it, but it’ll be costly. Not to mention the public scrutiny. I’m afraid that is quite unavoidable. People will talk, no matter what reason we ascribe.’

  She looked away, knowing perfectly well how the shame of this divorce was going to play out, not just amongst the press but her own set. Her parents would express a thin-lipped disappointment that she couldn’t keep up appearances; from the few girls she still kept in touch with there would be invitations to lunch but not dinner, offers to partner at tennis but not dances. A divorcee was the most dangerous of women. ‘Then let them.’

  He nodded again. ‘I propose we offer a lump sum, a one-time-only offer to get him to leave, and then we can go for desertion; it’s humiliating for you, but potentially the least flammable choice.’ He caught his breath for a moment, looking at her with very still, concerned eyes. ‘If things are as bad for yo
u as I think they might be, then he’s not going to want the truth to come out any more than you.’

  She blinked, feeling a rush of heat to her cheeks, pressure behind her eyes. ‘What if he says he doesn’t care about the truth coming out?’ she asked, a tremor in her voice even though she was determined not to betray herself. ‘He might want more money. He could even blackmail us.’

  Mr Charles gave her a look so gentle it almost made her break down there and then. ‘Laney, has . . . has he done anything to you that could – if you reported it – result in criminal charges being brought against him?’

  Laney was quiet for a long moment before she nodded. ‘I . . . I’m not sure . . . possibly, yes.’

  He looked pained but he patted her hand. ‘Then we use that. Though it galls me that he should get anything at all, it would be better for you to simply get him gone. The threat of an allegation should be enough for him to take the money and run. Hopefully, though, we won’t even need to go that far – he’ll be sensible and see he’s getting a good deal.’

  ‘Well, given that he came into the marriage with practically nothing . . .’ she mumbled bitterly.

  Mr Charles squeezed her hand. ‘The important thing now is that he leaves, and with minimal fuss.’

  She inhaled deeply. ‘You’re right. I just—’

  ‘Stan!’

  They both looked up to find a man standing by their table. It was the man she had seen a few moments earlier checking his coat.

  Mr Charles sat back in his chair, looking happy to see their visitor. ‘Leo Znowski, well, I’ll be damned. I thought you were strictly West Coast these days.’

  ‘I am. I’m back for my nephew’s bar mitzvah.’ He tilted his head. ‘And maybe a little business . . .’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’ Mr Charles laughed. ‘Leo, I want you to meet someone very special to me: Laney Mont—’

  ‘Laney Valentine,’ she said forthrightly, offering her hand.

  Leo took her hand – but rather than shaking it, he kissed it instead, the way she had seen men do to her mother’s hand. ‘A pleasure, Miss Valentine.’