by Peter King
“How do we get a look inside?”
“Not a voyeur, are you?”
“This is a serious investigation,” I told her severely.
“I know. I ruined a skirt, a blouse, pantyhose, a pair of shoes, my nails, and a new hairdo already. It’s very serious.”
“Put them on my bill. Now, that last booth, how do we—”
“Give me a ten-thousand lire note.”
I reached for my wallet. “Better make it twenty,” she said.
She took it and pushed her chair back. “Come on.”
I followed her and she watched the waiters, picking one she obviously knew. She whispered in his ear, at least a whisper to compete with the music. He took the bill, crinkled it to assess its value in the darkness, and nodded, saying something to her. She took my hand and we moved close to the last booth.
Black curtains enclosed it and a square board was above it. The waiter rapped three times on the board, and after a moment a voice within uttered something we could not hear.
The waiter motioned to Francesca, telling her to be ready. The waiter twitched aside the curtain and poked his head in, being deliberately careless in leaving one side open wider than the other. Francesca peered into one side of the booth, waving frantically to me to look in the other side.
It was over very quickly. Francesca said a word of thanks to the waiter and we returned to our table. “Did you see your side?” she hissed anxiously.
“Yes,” I told her.
“Well?” She banged her fist on the back of my wrist. “Who was it?”
“Giacomo Ferrero.”
Her mouth opened in astonishment, showing her white teeth.
“Did you see?” I asked.
“Yes.” She looked away deliberately.
I banged a fist on her wrist just as she pulled it away, laughing.
“Well, come on! Who was it?”
“What makes you think there was anyone else in there?” she asked innocently.
“In that kind of booth? Tell me or I’ll—”
“Please! No violence! It was Elena Pellegrini.”
There was a moment of silence. It was silence between us at least. The music had found a new and more penetrating beat. I ordered another round of drinks. “We need these,” I told Francesca, “as shock absorbers.”
It took her only a split second to grasp the meaning of the English words and I continued. “A widow’s grief lasts longer in England.”
“In Italy too,” she said. “In opera at least.”
“Whereas here in real life … we had better tell the captain, hadn’t we? Or maybe he doesn’t listen to gossip?”
“He probably knows already,” she said, indifferent.
“How?” I asked in surprise.
“He stations one of his people here whenever he has an important case. This is an ideal place to pick up rumors.”
“Do you know who it is?” Automatically, I looked around in the gloom.
“He uses someone different each time. Sometimes it’s a customer, sometimes a waiter. Sometimes it’s a man, sometimes a woman, and other times … half and half.” She gave me an amused smile. Gossip and scandal are part of the Italian way of life.”
“Yes, Italians love intrigue, don’t they?”
“We learned it from the masters: Machiavelli, Cellini, Cagliostro, Casanova …”
I shook my head. “A police force making use of gossip! Extraordinary!”
“When is it gossip and when is it an important clue?” Francesca asked.
The drinks arrived. She drank and then said, “Many Italian men have mistresses. No Italian woman does. Most of these mistresses are the wives of other men.”
“Go on,” I urged. “I have the feeling you’re leading up to a point.”
“Well, don’t you see? The funny thing is that it’s only recently that men have been getting uneasy about this. It’s taken them all this time to work out that the situation is mathematically impossible.”
I thought about it. “You’re right,” I said, and she gave me a superior smile.
“Still,” I added, “we’d better tell Cataldo.”
She sipped and nodded pensively. “Pellegrini’s wife and Giacomo Ferrero together … that does suggest a motive doesn’t it?”
“The eternal triangle? Yes, it does. I wonder too if it fits in with Brother Angelo’s statement about ‘Pellegrini and the three chefs’?”
“I don’t trust that Brother Angelo,” Francesca said and there was that look of steely determination on her face. “I don’t care if he is a monk.”
“I’m sure he isn’t. The bishop would have tossed him out by now. Threatening people with a knife and almost pushing them off parapets cannot in any way be part of routine monastic training.”
“You take things like that personally, don’t you?” she chuckled. Then her expression changed. She was staring past me, towards the door. “It can’t be!”
Entering the Fica was a daunting experience, as I had found out already. It was like stumbling into a dark cave with no idea if the next step would find ground under it. Now that our vision had adjusted, it was amusing to watch others come in, fumbling for a chair or a table, staggering as if sightless.
The couple coming in now were just as cautious and uncertain. They came close to our table, obviously not seeing us. We could see them, though, which was the reason for Francesca’s astonishment.
They were Ottavio Battista, the enfant terrible of Italian gastronomy, and Vanessa Mantegna, the wife of Bernardo, chef-owner of the San Pietro and the wizard of plant and flower cookery.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK when we left, and in the taxi we dissected the night’s findings, pondering over the unexpected couplings taking place—and being observed—in the nightclub.
“The demure Vanessa, seemingly devoted wife and partner of Bernardo, plant and flower chef, seen in the Fica with the demon king of the kitchen, Ottavio!” I said. “Does that have any significance as far as the puzzle of the three chefs is concerned? I can’t see how. It’s just a marital infidelity and nothing more, isn’t it? A sort of romantic culinary triangle?”
“Maybe,” Francesca said, musing.
“Now the words of Brother Angelo—”
“I don’t believe a word he says.” She was blunt and uncompromising.
“I know you don’t, but some things he said might have been true. ‘I can tell you about Pellegrini and the three chefs.’ That’s what he said.”
“But he didn’t tell you.”
“True—his life was in danger.”
“Are you sure of that?” she asked darkly.
“Clearly, you have taken a dislike to this cleric you have never met.”
“He tried to kill you.”
“Yes but—”
“And he’s no more a cleric than he is pope.”
“It seems likely—”
She sighed in deep exasperation. “There you are then.” Her tone changed. “Now Giacomo Ferrero and Elena Pellegrini, that’s different.”
“A different bowl of minestrone altogether,” I agreed. “Another of the three chefs and the grieving widow of a man who may have been murdered …”
“There’s motive written all over that,” Francesca said decisively.
“There certainly is.” I fumbled over my next words, trying to put them the right way. “You have a lot of … affairs in Italy, don’t you?’
“We are a very passionate people.”
The taxi swung around a corner and Francesca put out a hand to steady herself. It fell on mine. I left it there. So did she.
“Many of Italy’s most famous men have dedicated churches to their mistresses. Did you know that?” she asked me in a neutral tone.
“No, I didn’t.” I thought for a moment. “Nor can I think of any other country where that could happen.”
“Raffaello—you call him Raphael—is most famous for his many paintings of the Madonna. You know of him,
of course?”
“Yes, I’ve seen some of them—in Washington, in the Louvre, in Munich.”
“He used his mistresses as models for all of them. Most are portraits of La Fornarina, the baker’s daughter.”
“I didn’t know that,” I admitted. “But you still don’t have divorce, do you?”
“And never will.”
“So that encourages infidelity in marriage, doesn’t it?”
“Oh yes, but divorce is worse. It would endanger the family structure—and in Italy, the family is the structure of life, the basis of everything.”
“So,” I said, squeezing her hand, “infidelity could be a more powerful motive for murder than I think.”
She squeezed back. “We say in Emilia Romagna that food is a more powerful motive than sex.”
“When you say ‘we’, do you include yourself?”
“I—oh, here we are.” The taxi pulled to a stop in front of her apartment. I looked at it longingly but she leaned over, seemed to hesitate, then gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With a flash of long legs swinging out the taxi door, she was striding across the pavement and I was giving the taxi driver the name of the Ambasciatore Imperiale Hotel.
At that time of the morning, the lobby of the Ambasciatore Imperiale was quiet. I retrieved my key and went up to my room. I closed the room door behind me and flicked the light switch.
I was not alone.
Brother Angelo sprawled facedown on the floor.
He was in the same brown robes and his back was stained in blood from the knife protruding from it. I recognized the knife at once—I had last seen it pointed at me on the top parapet of Modena cathedral.
It was a shattering moment and yet mitigated by the inevitability of the outcome. Brother Angelo had shown every sign of being terrified by the man whose face he had seen in the car outside the Questura. He obviously feared being killed because of something he knew. The fact that that same man was a killer was in no doubt after his murderous attempts on Francesca and me with the crop-spraying robot plane and the six-wheeled behemoth.
Then the thought struck me that both Brother Angelo and his killer had managed to enter my room. Was the killer still here? I opened the room door wide to facilitate a high-speed exit. As a weapon, I could see nothing that I could take with me on my search. My eye went back to the knife at least twice but I could not envision myself pulling it out of the body. I took a large ceramic lamp as the best weapon to hand.
The bathroom and the small adjacent lounge were empty. I breathed heavily with relief, put back the lamp, then hastily closed the door and put on the chain. Then I picked up the phone and called Francesca. She sounded wide awake.
“I thought you might call,” she said breathily. “Do you want me to come there?”
“Yes,” I said, “very much, I—”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes—”
“Wait! Don’t hang up—listen, bring Cataldo with you.”
There was a silence.
When she spoke, her voice was glacial. “I certainly will not and I’m disappointed that—”
“Listen!” I implored. “Brother Angelo’s here and—”
“What?” She spat out the word and I had to jump in to stem a flow of what were surely going to be scatological words in Italian with which I had no familiarity.
“Listen ! Listen! He’s dead!”
“Dead?” It was inevitable that even a girl as fast on the uptake as Francesca should repeat it.
“He has a knife in his back, the same one he threatened me with.”
“There? In your room?” Her voice was little more than a whisper now.
“Yes. I opened the door, came in, and there he was.”
“All right.” Not for the first time, I appreciated her lightning-quick acceptance of a situation. Her voice was normal as she said, “I’ll call Carlo and then I’ll be right over.”
I hung up and prowled around the room. I stopped and examined the half of the face that I could see. It was more than I had been able to glimpse in front of the Questura. He looked to be in his late thirties or maybe a little older, a pale complexion, a large nose, and a long chin.
The window was sealed and I was on the tenth floor. I searched the room but could find nothing. I looked in the bedroom and the bathroom with a similar result.
I could not go out of the room and I could not stay in it but nevertheless I had to stay. Sitting quietly in a chair looking at a recently murdered corpse is a very difficult thing to do. Not that I wanted to keep looking at it, but it was there wherever I looked. I went over the room again a couple of times but still found nothing of any interest. I touched the back of one of Brother Angelo’s outflung hands very cautiously. It was still warm.
A few more torturing minutes and there was a rap at the door. I opened it and Francesca threw herself into my arms. She gave a little cry as, over my shoulder, she caught sight of the body. She untangled herself and stared down, fascinated. She had hastily put on dark brown slacks and a loose yellow sweater and she looked adorable. She had put on only a minimum of makeup and her eyes looked enormous as she stared at Brother Angelo.
“So that’s him.”
She was still staring as a heavy banging on the door announced the arrival of the dashing captain of the Questurini, Carlo Cataldo. He gave us each a brief look then went over to kneel by the body. He spent some minutes examining it without touching anything.
“Was the door open when you came in?” His question encompassed us both.
“I wasn’t here. I had gone home,” Francesca said.
“It was locked,” I said.
“The body was just like this?”
“I didn’t touch anything—oh, except for that lamp—I took it with me to make sure there was no one in the bathroom or bedroom.”
He checked all the rooms, finding nothing. “The night manager will be up here in a few minutes,” he said. “You two had better wait in the lobby.”
We sat at a table at the entrance to the bar, open to the lobby sufficiently that we felt reasonably safe. A night waiter brought us cups of espresso. There was not much to say and we didn’t say it. A murder can really stifle conversation. People started to come in, a few in uniform, most of them not. They all headed for the banks of elevators and they all pushed ten. My room must have been like the Marx brothers’ stateroom in A Night at the Opera.
Captain Cataldo joined us after some time. He called for an espresso and lit a cigarette. He was wearing the same uniform as always but without the plumed hat. He did not look in the least tired. He asked questions relentlessly and his memory seemed encyclopedic.
“Is this the same man you saw in the duomo at Modena?”
“It looks like him, but I’m only going by the robes and the knife. I didn’t see his face.”
“The same man you talked with in front of the Questura?”
“I got only a glimpse of his face. I couldn’t swear to it but it looks like the same man.”
“Now that you have seen his face, do you recognize him?”
“No. I never saw him before.”
He sipped his espresso. “I try not to jump to conclusions but we may have a line on his killer,” he said.
“So soon?”
He puffed a couple of times on his cigarette, pensive. “I have talked to Signor Dorigo and he is very unhappy at your amateur investigating.”
“Would he prefer an official investigation? It sounds like he may have something to hide.”
“We will find out. I want you to come with me to the Dorigo Farms. One of the workers there is missing. I asked if the man could program the robot spray plane and drive the vehicles. He can.”
“That’s your man,” I said. “If he tried to kill us, a hundred to one he’s the one who killed Brother Angelo.”
“We have some other information, Carlo,” Francesca told him and recounted our evening at the nightclub. He nodded. �
�Your man there will be telling you all this when you go into the Questura this morning,” Francesca went on briskly, “but we wanted to be sure you knew.” He nodded again. It was hard to tell whether he had a man there or whether he found the information useful.
“I’ll pick you up at ten o’clock,” He motioned to me first. “You”—and to Francesca—“then you.”
“This morning?” she said.
“Yes. It is now nearly four o’clock. You had better get some sleep.” To me, he added, “The night manager is having your belongings transferred to another room. This is your third, I believe.” I wanted to comment that the hotel had six hundred others but refrained.
“Did you drive here?” he asked Francesca and she nodded. “Then I’ll see you at ten.” He strode back to the elevator, boots thudding on the marble floor.
Francesca gave me a quick kiss. “You’re a man who makes life exciting, aren’t you?” Then she was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SO YOU ARE THE two who wrecked my Caproni and my Yakimoto!”
Antonio Dorigo spat out the words. Captain Cataldo looked at us affably and waited for us to answer.
“Is the Caproni the crop-spraying plane?” I asked innocently.
Dorigo glared.
“And the Yakimoto the big six-wheeled vehicle? Or is it the other way around?”
Dorigo gave a jerk of a nod. He looked about to boil over, a short pudgy man with little hair and a round, fat but disagreeable face. We sat in his office at his farm location, a couple of buildings away from the cafeteria where I had spotted the face I recognized—the event that had started it all.
“We didn’t wreck them.” Francesca said coldly. “The man who works for you tried to kill us with them.” She sat back in the uncomfortable chair, crossed her elegant legs, and stared right back at him.
“That’s rubbish!” Dorigo snapped. “Why would he want to do that?”
“Exactly what we are here to find out,” said Cataldo amiably.
“What were you doing on my land?” asked Dorigo unpleasantly.
“We were taking your tour,” said Francesca, lolling in the chair like a Medici princess.
“The tour doesn’t go through the rice fields,” Dorigo said.