by Peter King
He had an impossibly handsome face, a fuller version of Victor Mature, and his strong Roman nose was perfect for looking down at people—a posture made easier by his two or three inches over six feet in height.
I had pulled Pellegrini’s body closer to the edge of the pool after getting over the shock of finding him floating. Making sure he was dead was not difficult even though I knew it must have occurred within the last half hour. I was sure that the woman who was either the cook or the housekeeper and the person who had found me looking down at the body had rushed off to call the police, but I had phoned Francesca, thankful that she was in the office today.
“Pellegrini is dead,” I told her. “Don’t ask questions. Yes, I’m still here at his house. Just call the police to come here, then come yourself—now, immediately.”
“Dead!” she repeated, but it was the automatic reaction of 99 percent of the population. The one word was her only conventional comment. “Pronto!” she said crisply. “I’ll be there right away.”
She wasn’t here yet, though, and this imperious captain was giving me a rough time. I told him the story up to the minute I had walked in here as we stood by the pool. Two of his men had pulled Pellegrini’s body out of the water and were examining it.
“Thirty minutes,” he said thoughtfully.
“Yes. Gunther can confirm that,” I told him.
“You were touring the cheese factory,” he said as if he found that a suspicious act.
“Yes.”
“Why? What is your interest in cheese?”
It was at that moment that the door burst open and Francesca rushed in. She was wearing dark purple slacks and a tight black sweater—her office working clothes presumably—and I was never so glad to see someone in my life.
She threw me a quick glance and dashed into Captain Cataldo’s arms.
My mouth probably fell open as they chattered in rapid-fire Italian, and then the captain turned to me. “So, you are here working for Mr. Desmond Lansdown?”
I had caught the name in their conversation but little else, it had been so fast.
I started to explain but Francesca took over. I did not object in the least—somehow it all sounded better when she said it. When she was finished, she said to me, “The captain knew Desmond while he was making Don Juan here. They became very good friends.”
I nodded, relieved. Cataldo’s look toward me eased slightly. I recalled Lansdown’s comment in his fax to the effect that Francesca would be useful as she knew a lot of influential people. “So what happened?” she asked briskly, as if taking charge of the investigation. I recapped and Cataldo listened attentively, although I had already given him an outline. Just as I finished, the police doctor came in and Cataldo took him over to the two men examining Pellegrini’s body.
He rejoined us and said, “I shall, of course, phone Signor Desmond and ask him to confirm your story.”
“Good,” I told him. “I’ll feel better if you do. By the way,” I added, “he’s in Spain.”
“Spain?” he said, surprised. “He is not acting the life of El Cid, is he?”
When I told him whose life Lansdown was acting, Cataldo said, “Ah, King Richard with the heart of a lion, well, the English equivalent of El Cid. Where in Spain is he, do you know?”
“He gave me a phone number where he could be reached.” I took the phone number out of my wallet and wrote it on the back of my card. He nodded, turned the card over casually and his face hardened. “‘The Gourmet Detective’,” he read. “You did not tell me you are a detective.”
That title is always getting me into trouble. It’s too late to change it now, though, and I hastened to explain to him. “I’m not really, it’s just a name somebody gave me once and it was good for business so I kept using it. I don’t do any detecting in the sense you mean. I hunt for rare food ingredients, advise restaurants and producers on where to locate substitute or replacement foods—that kind of thing.”
“And precisely what are you doing here in Italy? Desmond Lansdown is a world-famous actor—why does he employ you?”
Sam Spade or Mike Shayne would have given him a hoity-toity answer about their mission being confidential and tossed out some smart-alec remark like “Who’s Desmond Lansdown?” but as I had found Pellegrini’s dead body under circumstances which were decidedly suspicious, I decided honesty was the preferred policy. I told him about the three chefs and also my cover story as a journalist gathering information for Lansdown’s eating guide.
Cataldo nodded slightly. “Ah, yes, I remember he has a famous restaurant in London.”
“And others in New York and Miami,” added Francesca.
He grunted then resumed his interrogation of me, asking some questions that were new and interspersing them with questions covering the same ground again. He was interested in thedinner of the evening before, and Francesca, explaining that she was there with me, loaded him with names and details.
“Bernardo Mantegna, eh?” he said thoughtfully. “He served plants and flowers in the food, did he?”
“Yes. That’s his specialty.”
“He is one of your three chefs,” he nodded. He resumed his questions, and when a suitable pause in the interrogation came along, I took the opportunity to tell him of the two attempts on me. He listened, his smartly manicured eyebrows coming together in astonishment. “At first, you thought the charge of the buffalo was an attempt on Signor Pellegrini?”
“He did, although neither of us was sure.”
“Then the attack in the tower of the duomo convinced you that you were the intended victim?”
“It seemed to suggest that.”
“Tell me again exactly how it happened—this monk with a knife.”
A strong element of skepticism was implicit when the question was put that way but I told him. “You saw no one else?” he asked.
I agreed.
“So you have no idea why he did not complete his task of assassination?”
“No,” I said.
“You saw nothing to indicate what he may have seen that caused him to run away?”
“Nothing. I was baffled but obviously relieved.”
He gave me a reproving look. “You should have reported these attempts to us.”
“Well, Signor Pellegrini didn’t want to report the buffalo charge and my story sounded so weak. I mean, a monk with a knife … would you have believed it?”
The police doctor came to us, drew Cataldo aside, and they talked in low tones. Cataldo nodded in response to the doctor’s question and the captain rejoined us.
“The doctor must take the body to the forensic laboratory for further examination.”
“Any idea how he died?” asked Francesca. Cataldo might not have answered me but he said to her, “Signor Pellegrini has a small contusion behind one ear. It may have been caused by a blow from the waterwheel.”
“In that case,” said Francesca quickly, “he must have been in the pool already. How did he get there?”
He smiled at her affectionately. “Perhaps I will hire you as an assistant detective.” He pointed to the trail of coffee across the floor, the overturned chair, the coffee pot, and the broken china of the cup and saucer. “If I do, your first assignment will be to tell me what this means.”
“A fight?” she offered, screwing up her eyes in concentration.
“Possibly,” he said slowly. “We will see what other marks are on the body. May I see your hands, signor?” He examined them carefully, especially the knuckles. He nodded, satisfied, and snapped out an order to one of the men by the body. “An analysis of the coffee remains will tell us if something in it caused Signor Pellegrini to lose control and fall into the pool,” he told us.
A man and two women came in, one of the women carrying heavy camera equipment and the man a tiny tape recorder. The reversal of roles did not seem to be affecting either of them. Cataldo had a few words with them, and I noticed that they treated him deferentially. He evidently had a high stand
ing in the police organization.
“I’ll want to talk to you tomorrow,” he said. “When I have more information. In the meantime, you can go if you wish. After I have spoken to Signor Lansdown.” He went out of the room. Francesca and I sat and watched the police experts, prowling, examining, searching, photographing, exchanging comments.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I told Francesca. She smiled then became serious.
“You didn’t tell me you’re a detective,” she said accusingly.
“I’m not. Like I told the captain, someone nicknamed me that and the name has stuck. It has been useful for business so I have kept it. I’m really a food-finder, that’s as near as I get to detecting.”
“Were you a chef?” she asked.
“I was an apprentice chef at Kettner’s, a famous restaurant in London, then I joined the White Funnel Line as a chef on cruise ships. After several cruises, I worked out a way to stop at various port cities and work in a restaurant for a few months then catch the next cruise ship to another port. That way, I was able to study the cooking in a number of countries.”
“You went all over the world?”
“Most of it. I worked ashore in Sydney, Singapore, Beirut, Athens, Lisbon, Miami, Santiago, San Francisco, and a lot of others.”
“Then what?” she asked.
“I had had enough traveling so I got a job in London, hunting for rare food ingredients, advising on substitutes for foods that became expensive or hard to get. Eventually, I went on my own. I had a few successes and a columnist in a London newspaper wrote an article on me. She was the one who called me the Gourmet Detective.”
She had been listening attentively. She said, “So you haven’t had any cases like this one—with a murder, I mean?”
“Oh, I have. In the last few years, I’ve had more than I would like. Food has become big business. The products have much more value, so with the rewards higher, the risks are much greater.”
She smiled. “So you have become a detective after all!”
“Not my idea,” I assured her. “I’m not the violent type. The trouble is that a knowledge of food is sometimes necessary to the solving of a crime.”
I gave her some brief details of the case that had brought me together with Scotland Yard. “It looked like fish poisoning at first but then it got nasty. Then there was a case in New York concerning a valuable spice from the Orient, and last year I was in France, on a simple case involving a vineyard. Simple! That’s what I thought, but I was nearly killed a couple of times.”
“Wonderful!” she said, applauding prettily.
“It wasn’t. It was terrifying, I—”
“I meant you,” she said sweetly.
“I’ve been lucky—and in this case, it’s lucky you know Cataldo,” I added.
“Poof!” she said dismissively. “I know a lot of people. He knows more than I do and many more know him.”
“His uniform is spectacular.”
“Italy has five police forces, did you know that?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Each has a different uniform.”
“Which one of the five uniforms does Cataldo wear?”
“None of them.” We laughed, then she remembered that a body was just yards away and she covered her mouth with her hand in a little girl gesture.
When the captain returned, he beckoned to me with a wave that belonged in Tosca. “He wishes to speak to you,” he said, and I followed him to a room that was a business office-cum-study.
“What the hell is going on there?” shouted the familiar Cockney voice. “No, you don’t need to answer that, Cataldo told me. Terrible business—you’d better stick around there for a few days till he gets the situation sorted out.”
“I may have to,” I said. “As I found the body, Cataldo won’t want me to leave just yet.”
“Francesca helping you out okay?”
“She’s wonderful. I’d hate to be involved in this without her here.”
“She’s a fine girl. Knows everybody.”
“So I have found.”
“Listen,” he said. “I played Sherlock Holmes once. You probably saw the film.”
“I—er, think I must have missed that one.”
“It came around on video too,” he insisted.
“I don’t remember seeing—I mean, I’m sure I would remember if I had seen it. Perhaps I was out of the country at the time.”
“It played everywhere. They dubbed me in twenty-nine languages … well, anyway, I learned a thing or two about detecting, and what you’ve got to do …” I listened as instructed. After all, he was paying me. “I think you’ll find this advice helpful,” he concluded.
“I’m sure I will,” I said, although I was having trouble fitting the Hound of the Baskervilles into the setting of an Italian cheese factory.
Maybe he would add danger money if I told him the rest … I told him.
“A buffalo stampede?” he said aghast. “Then a monk with a knife? Never heard anything like it. Are you sure? Haven’t been hitting that grappa too hard, have you? No? well, you’d better be careful.”
I assured him that I had no higher priority.
“Keep me informed,” he said. “I’ve got to get back and kill a few more Arabs.”
He hung up. I replaced the phone reflecting that at this end, death was more permanent.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I DON’T THINK IT’S safe for you to go out alone any more,” Francesca said reprovingly. She was particularly lovely when she had that serious look.
“Are you going to be my bodyguard?”
“I can get a gun from Carlo,” she said offhandedly.
“Who’s Carlo? The local gun dealer?”
“Carlo Cataldo.”
“Oh, the captain—but do you know how to use a gun?”
“You release the safety catch and pull the trigger.” She made it sound easier than unhooking a bra.
We were having a light meal in a trattoria. Francesca had gone to school with the daughter of the proprietor and his industrious wife and chef. It had been a short day but a traumatic one. Here in the village of Fontanelice about ten miles southeast of Bologna, the sudden death of Silvio Pellegrini was a remote event, hard to believe it had happened.
Plenty of cars and numerous Vespas—those buzzing motorized scooters—filled the main street of the village, looking for parking places. A large, open-fronted hall was packed with slot machines, video games, and teenagers. A line waited impatiently in front of a movie theater, and cafes had a lot of business. Two snarling dogs circled each other, seeking every excuse to avoid a fight despite the cluster of onlookers calling for blood. In an alley, some small boys were playing soccer beneath strings of drying shirts, blouses, and underwear that hung limp in the still air. Men lounged, smoking, talking. Women leaned out of windows.
We were both eating pepperoni ripieno, red and green peppers with onion and anchovies. It is a simple starter, satisfying but not filling, tasty but not obtrusive. Crusty Italian bread rolls redolent with garlic accompanied the dish, and we were drinking the house Chianti. This is yet another wine which gained tremendous popularity only to have the market flooded with inferior product and severely damage Chianti’s reputation. It has begun to fight its way back, and the quality of this house variety was proof that the fight was being won.
“I am sure you know the story of Chianti,” Francesca said.
“I think I heard it once but I have forgotten it. Tell me again.”
“All right—whenever I do my guide duty, I tell it.”
“Guide duty?”
“Yes, when I don’t have any film work, I’m with the escort agency. We also conduct guided tours. When things are slow there—”
“Surely that never happens?”
“The tours slow down out of season. The escort business is always in demand.”
“I’m sure it is,” I murmured.
“Plus the interpreting and doing jobs lik
e this one for Desmond and you.”
“You have a busy schedule.”
“I do, and when I am guiding tours, I tell the story of Chianti.”
I did not interrupt this time and she smiled delightfully and went on. “The story starts with the Baron Ricasoli early in the nineteenth century. He was very ugly and very cross-eyed, poor man, but he was argumentative and stubborn—not at all likeable. Even so, he was clever and became prime minister for a time. He married a young woman called Anna Bonaccorsi and was extremely jealous of her. So much so that at a ball in Florence, when a young man danced with her several times, her husband, the Iron Baron as he was called, immediately took her out to their coach.
Instead of going to their family home nearby, they drove through the snow to Brolio, his family castle. It was a grim and gloomy place, empty for many years. The baron kept his wife there all the rest of their lives.”
“It’s a sad story,” I agreed. “But what about”—I raised my glass—“Chianti?”
“I’m coming to that. The baron’s hobby was experimenting with different types of wine and he tried something very experimental—he mixed black grapes, Sangiovese, with white grapes, Malvasia. He allowed this mixture to ferment twice. Others in the region tasted it and copied it and it became famous.”
“And that was called Chianti.”
“Right. One of the best Chiantis today is the Ricasoli and the best and most expensive variety is still called the Brolio Castle.”
“A terrific story,” I admitted.
“The baron preserved the sanctity of his family, kept his wife’s name unsullied, maintained his own honor, made a fortune, and gave generations after him much pleasure.”
“Everybody came out fine except his wife,” I reminded her.
“Sometimes honor is more important than happiness,” Francesca said primly.
“I’m not sure I’ll drink to that but I will drink to your knowledge as a tour guide.”
We did and confirmed that the Chianti really was as good as the earlier sips had promised. This one had not spent eight years in an oak cask like some of its more privileged relatives but Francesca said four grapes go into the blend that makes Chianti today and this one certainly extracted the maximum from them.