The Malcontenta bak-2

by Barry Maitland

  ‘You were there last week?’ Some genuine interest registered.

  ‘Indeed. I go back from time to time. But …’ He frowned. ‘Oh dear. Have you been back at all recently?’

  She shook her head slightly, her immaculately shaped hair brushing across the collar of her blouse. ‘No. There have been many changes?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes. And especially in the past year, since … well.’ He shrugged and smiled vaguely.

  ‘Since what?’

  ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t comment.’ Then, apparently changing the subject, ‘You know, I could say that you’re responsible for my being here. I became quite interested in the architecture of Stanhope, and through that in the work of Palladio. That’s the reason my niece’ — he indicated Kathy still standing at the doorway of the restaurant — ‘and I are here. To see it in the flesh.’

  ‘Your niece?’ Gabriele looked politely in the direction of his hand.

  ‘Yes. I’ll introduce you. Do you mind?’

  He called Kathy over. ‘Isn’t that a marvellous coincidence, us looking for a restaurant for lunch, and who should I spot but Mrs Beamish-Newell, whom I’ve spoken of many times. Do you remember, Kathy?’

  ‘Of course.’ They shook hands.

  ‘I use my family name now — Montanari, Gabriele Montanari. Perhaps — ’ she looked undecided ‘- perhaps you would care to join me?’

  ‘Are you sure? How marvellous! We’d love that. Just for a bit. We don’t want to be in the way.’

  ‘Not at all. My life is very boring these days. It will be interesting to hear of Stanhope. I am expecting a friend, but …’ She shrugged.

  ‘Well, you just let us know when you want us to go, Gabriele. May I call you that?’

  She tilted her head gracefully. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t recall your — ’

  ‘David. And this is Kathy.’

  ‘Your niece, yes. How nice.’

  She looked carefully at Kathy, who tried not to show her surprise.

  ‘So, what is the latest gossip from Stanhope?’

  ‘It isn’t the same, Gabriele. I always believed it was you who brought the humanity to the place. These things are intangible, I know, but so important. And when you left, I was proved right. It seemed to have less … soul. More like a business. But perhaps I shouldn’t speak out of turn about your former husband.’

  ‘Oh, speak out of turn as much as you like, David. And his wife, what do you make of her?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Brock appeared to struggle to find an appropriate word. ‘What would one say? Efficient?’

  ‘Yes, one might say that.’

  ‘A trifle … cold?’

  ‘Efficient and cold. Yes. A bitch, in other words.’

  Brock gave a little splutter and looked down, nodding his head vigorously.

  ‘You are smiling, Kathy. Have you met her?’

  ‘Yes, I have. I thought she was a bitch, too.’

  ‘Good, we are getting somewhere. Now, I see my friend coming. Before she arrives, tell me what happened a year ago.’

  ‘Oh well, there were some new staff changes. One in particular. Quite a disruptive influence, one would have to say. Charming, but …’ Brock raised his eyebrows suggestively.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you would rather we left you to have lunch with your friend in peace, Gabriele. In any case, I don’t really like to speak ill of the dead.’

  Her face drained of colour and she froze in her seat. At that moment a dark-haired woman in an expensive but overworked costume with gold accessories arrived at the table.

  ‘Gabriele, cara!’

  ‘Ciao, Violetta.’ Gabriele half rose, still looking shocked, brushed checks with her friend and murmured introductions.

  ‘You are most hospitable, signora,’ Brock said, ‘but we don’t want to intrude. We should leave you in peace.’

  ‘Please sit down, David. I insist.’

  ‘Well, in that case I insist on buying us a bottle of champagne to celebrate our fortunate meeting. Would that be in order?’

  ‘As you wish.’ She sat back and explained in a low stream of Italian to Violetta, who evidently spoke no English.

  Violetta did enjoy champagne, however, and by the time they opened the third bottle, and the waiter had still not appeared with any food, her enjoyment of the company wasn’t in the least inhibited by the fact that Kathy spoke no Italian and Brock’s stock of phrases was pretty well exhausted. Gabriele maintained her poise, rather distant, joining in only when her friend demanded a translation of something. Kathy watched Gabriele out of the corner of her eye. She was smoking American cigarettes and building a small pile of white stubs smeared with her brown lipstick in the ashtray in front of her. Only her fingers were restless, the long nails perfectly manicured and coloured to match her lipstick.

  At one point, while Brock and Violetta were deep in confused conversation, she turned suddenly to Kathy as if she knew she was being studied and said, ‘I don’t remember your uncle at all, you know.’

  ‘He’s usually a very quiet man,’ Kathy replied. ‘Self-effacing.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Stanhope?’ Gabriele asked. ‘Yes, I was there last October.’

  ‘Do you know what he was talking about just now? A death?’

  Kathy wasn’t sure how Brock wanted to play it. ‘It was very strange,’ she replied. ‘Shocking.’

  Gabriele fixed her with her dark eyes, letting Kathy see that she was used to having her way. ‘He said a staff member. Who was it?’

  ‘His name was Alex Petrou.’

  Gabriele continued staring at Kathy.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kathy said sympathetically. ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Know him? Why do you say that?’

  ‘I could tell from your reaction it was a shock. I’m sorry.’ Gabriele shook her head, momentarily uncertain. ‘How did he die?’ she said quietly. ‘He was hanged.’

  The gleaming brown finger-nails no longer moved.

  The waiter’s arrival broke the silence which had suddenly descended on their table. ‘Food at last,’ said Brock.

  Violetta ate energetically, apparently now concerned about the time, and finished her saltimbocca while Gabriele was still toying with hers. They exchanged words, Violetta urging, Gabriele irritated. Finally Gabriele pushed her plate away and said to Brock, ‘I am sorry, I must go. I will speak to the waiter.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it.’ Brock looked carefully at her.

  ‘Will you remain in Vicenza long?’ She was staring across the square, apparently more interested in the teenage boys on their scooters.

  ‘Probably not. We had thought of driving out to see the Malcontenta tomorrow. I don’t suppose you’d be able to join us? Perhaps in the afternoon?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said coolly, ‘I am occupied.’

  She got to her feet, ignoring Violetta’s fulsome goodbyes to Brock and Kathy. Then she lifted her cigarette packet from the table and said, ‘In the morning I am free.’

  As they watched the two of them walk away, Kathy said, ‘You seem to be quite good at picking up strange women, Uncle.’

  Gabriele appeared precisely ten minutes later than the time arranged. She smiled as she watched Brock try to explain to a pair of uniformed policemen why he was parked illegally within the old city walls. Then she stepped forward and came to his assistance, dismissing the officers with a couple of phrases. ‘Is this your little car? How sweet,’ she remarked to Brock. She settled herself elegantly in the passenger seat in front of Kathy and they set off.

  ‘It is a beautiful day for a drive,’ she said. And it was a beautiful day, the spring sun starting to dissolve the silver morning mist over the fields as they sped eastward along the autostrada towards Padua and then Venice. Gabriele waved for him to take the Dolo exit, and he slowed and followed her instructions as she directed him along quiet roads across the flat countryside. The mist became heavier and more persistent as they neared the coast, and sev
eral times Brock was forced to slow to a crawl as they came upon a particularly thick patch.

  Finally they turned on to a gravel drive and, with dramatic effect, the stone bulk of the Malcontenta loomed before them. Whether it was the quality of the light or the rugged character of the stonework and pantiles, it seemed more archaic, more powerful, than its English offspring at Stanhope, which by comparison appeared fastidious and neat, a polite copy without the brooding presence of the original. Brock stopped the car and they approached on foot. The place was quite silent and deserted; no sound of a dog, voice or motor disturbed the morning quiet. They walked all round the house, seeing no sign of anyone, and returned to the car, where Brock opened the boot and took out a bag and a rug.

  ‘Let’s sit over by the willows and have our picnic,’ he said.

  ‘A picnic?’ Gabriele smiled.

  ‘I try to think of everything,’ he replied.

  ‘Yes, I rather think you do. Are you a tax inspector, Mr Brock? Or a policeman?’

  Brock looked at her in surprise.

  ‘I am sure you were never a patient at Stanhope when I was there. I have an excellent memory.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I much prefer people to be honest with me.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ Brock said.

  They walked over to the willows and found a stone bench, and the two women sat down. While Brock was unpacking his bag on the rug and offering them rolls and coffee from a vacuum flask, he explained to Gabriele something of who they were and what they were doing there. He outlined the circumstances of Petrou’s death but didn’t mention Rose’s murder.

  After a lengthy silence Gabriele finally said, ‘This coffee tastes strange.’

  ‘I added some fortification,’ Brock admitted. ‘Brandy.’

  ‘My former husband would not approve of your drinking habits.’

  He smiled. ‘Nor of your cigarettes.’

  She shrugged. ‘I still have dreams about him. It took him only, oh, I don’t know, a few months, to control me. I was young, I was in love with him. I let him take control. It took me many years to recover myself again. In my dreams he still comes to claim my obedience. Every cigarette I smoke is a message to him.’ She gave a tight smile. ‘A smoke signal of disobedience.’ She opened her packet and lit up.

  Kathy, sitting by her side, asked quietly, ‘How did you break away?’

  ‘I didn’t — he did. He had an affair with one of the nurses. I knew about it but did nothing. I thought, how banal, the doctor and his nurse, it would blow over. But she was greedy to have him and she became pregnant. We had no children — it was the one thing I hadn’t been able to give him. And when he discovered that she was having his baby, he decided that was the most important thing for him.’

  She sucked in a deep lungful of smoke before going on. ‘He was very ruthless. That is the way he is when he has made up Ins mind about something. He made things impossible for me until I agreed to return to Italy and let him get a divorce. My father was very angry but he could do nothing — Stephen had found a new business partner to give him money to keep the clinic going. The irony was that they lost the baby at birth.’

  She glanced over her shoulder at the Malcontenta and frowned. ‘I sometimes felt that it was the house that made us barren for him. She has never given him a child, I think.’

  ‘Laura?’ Brock asked.

  She nodded, ‘Laura Parsons.’

  ‘Parsons?’ Both Brock and Kathy echoed the name.

  ‘Yes. She now takes his name, according to English law. But I am Catholic. In my family’s eyes he is not divorced.’

  ‘Laura is related to Geoffrey Parsons?’ Brock asked. She looked blank.

  ‘The Estates Manager at Stanhope,’ Kathy urged.

  ‘I know no one of that name,’ Gabriele said. ‘That must be something else she has arranged since I left.’

  They sat in silence again. Kathy thought of Laura Beamish-Newell, her brother and her lost child, and adjusted her perception of the woman in the light of these new facts. If Rose was pregnant when she died, would Laura have been aware of it? And how would she have reacted?

  Brock said quietly, ‘Tell us about Alex Petrou, Gabriele.’

  She shrugged. ‘He was not a nice man. He was working here in Vicenza at a private clinic in which my father holds an interest.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘I had forgotten that it was Stephen who first made Papa consider investing in such a place. Anyway, my father mentioned this man who was causing difficulties for the clinic, a scandal. He said he was like a virus, contaminating everyone he came in contact with — men and women. And when he said that he must be made to leave, to go far away, before the reputation of the clinic was fatally damaged, I thought what a fitting present it would be for Stephen and Laura to receive such a person. It could be my final message to them both.’

  She ground out her cigarette with her heel and lit another. ‘I met him and told him that he would be in big trouble if he remained in Italy. I said that, for the sake of my father, I could help him get a new job in England.’

  ‘And he agreed to that?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘I gave him some money and I insisted that I drive him to France to make sure he crossed over. He had to go to Rome first to get his papers from the British embassy. I told him things about Stephen. I knew that Stephen wouldn’t be able to resist him.’

  ‘You mean Stephen is bisexual?’ Kathy said.

  Gabriele looked uncomfortable. ‘He … I knew that he found young men attractive.’ The corners of her mouth turned down with distaste. ‘I don’t think he ever … But perhaps these things become more difficult to deny, to control, as one gets older.’

  ‘You don’t believe it likely that Petrou could have killed himself?’ Kathy asked.

  She stared at her beautiful finger-nails for a moment. ‘I think suicide was probably the only thing that he would not have been capable of.’

  When Kathy mentioned on their return to the car that she had never visited Venice, Gabriele insisted she couldn’t leave without having done so, since it was so close. As they drove through Mira they found a pay-phone and Gabriele made a call to some friends and arranged to meet them for lunch.

  Mists still shrouded the distance when they caught their first glimpse of the golden city, magically suspended in the lagoon, the unreality of its presence only heightened by the heavy odour of the oil refineries in the still air. They drove across the causeway and found a parking place in one of the autorimesse by the Piazzale Roma, then took the vaporetto along the Grand Canal as far as the Accademia, where the queue for the gallery waited patiently around the perimeter of the little square. They crossed back over the canal on the Accademia bridge and followed Gabriele through a labyrinth of narrow lanes until she brought them to an inconspicuous doorway in the sheer wall of a building. They entered and found themselves in a restaurant with a terrace overlooking the Grand Canal. Two people, a man and a woman, were waiting for them at a table on the terrace, greeting Gabriele and her companions with great warmth.

  Gabriele came to life in their presence, her face glowing with enthusiasm and the formerly stiff movements of her fingers expanding into flowing gestures of her whole body as she talked to them. Kathy sat back, soaking up the warmth of their company and of the spring sunshine. She turned to Brock and said, ‘This is magic’

  He peered at her over the top of his mafioso sunglasses and nodded, sipping contentedly at his vodka and tonic ‘Yes. Better enjoy it while we can. It’s back to the real world tomorrow.’

  Later that afternoon in Vicenza, after they had parked the Polo near the West Gate and walked with Gabriele back to the piazza where they had first waited for her, she stopped at the doorway of the Palazzo Trissino-Montanari and turned to Brock, offering her hand. ‘Do you think I was very bad, sending that man to Stanhope?’ she asked.

  ‘I think it was fate,’ he replied.

  And to Kathy, after Gabriele had shaken hands and disappeared into the
shadows of the courtyard, he added, ‘A Greek tragedy.’

  22

  They drove down to Rome the following morning, catching an Alitalia flight back to Heathrow in the early afternoon. As if to ram home the contrast, the Home Counties were once again blanketed by ominous black clouds, into which the plane’s passengers descended reluctantly. The world below was struggling through darkness, drenching rain and a baggage handlers’ dispute. Brock and Kathy finally emerged from the arrivals concourse and tried to work out where they had left their cars in the medium-stay car park. When they had found them, he turned to her. ‘I think you should follow me back to my place, check what’s been happening before you go to Crowbridge. You never know.’

  She did as he suggested, trying to keep him in sight through the spray and heavy traffic on the M4, then across the river and through the inner boroughs until they reached Matcham High Street and the archway into Warren Lane. They parked in the courtyard and ran for Brock’s front door, leaving their dripping coats on the pegs inside and taking the stairs up to the study. Brock lit the gas fire and went to make a pot of tea, while Kathy stood in the window bay looking out over the lane and the railway cutting. It seemed much longer than three and a half weeks since they had made toast here and watched the snow swirling outside this window. If she had been able to go back to that Saturday morning in the car with Gordon Dowling and elect to abandon the search for Brock’s house and leave well alone, she thought, sadly, that she would have done it. Not because she thought she was wrong, but because the price had just been too high. She began to tick off in her mind all the people who had paid for her unburdening herself to Brock — Brock himself, Gordon, Belle Mansfield and poor Rose. Four people, and herself — five lives disrupted. Not to mention Rose’s killer.

  ‘Just bills.’ Brock had been opening his mail while he’d been waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘Why don’t you ring your place and see if there’ve been any messages? Will there be anyone there at this time?’

  Kathy looked at her watch. It was half past four. ‘Hard to say. I’ll try.’