Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances

by Dorothy Fletcher

  “I don’t mind it.”

  “Let’s go down now. I have things to attend to.”

  “Where is the signora?”

  “I haven’t been told yet.”

  “She’s dead too, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but you see, darling, she was old, perhaps she wouldn’t mind. At any rate, you’re not to think about it”

  “No, and I shan’t grieve. Mama told me so.”

  “That’s right. What’s done is done.” We went down the stairs together. The lawyers had left, and I made my way over to the other garden. Emilio, the son of Pietro the gardener, was weeding around some bushes. He looked up shyly as I started to pass him, and said, “Buon giorno.”

  On an impulse I stopped. “Where’s your father?” I asked.

  “Not feeling well today,” he said, in labored English. “Couldn’t come.”

  I stood beside him. “I’m leaving the villa,” I told him.

  He ducked his head and murmured something. I didn’t quite catch it, but assumed he was telling me he was sorry. I said, “Yes, so am I. It turned out so badly.”

  “Si,” he said, shaking his head. “Male, male.”

  “Now you’ll be working for the Monteverdis.”

  He shrugged. Work … he had to work. What did it matter whom he worked for?

  I said, “Emilio, when my aunt died, the Contessa, you were here, weren’t you?”

  “Si.”

  “The ladder was near the other house?”

  “Si, signorina.”

  “And the little girl was standing beside it?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “The little girl was at the upstairs window.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean? The signora had asked her to fetch some shears.”

  “Yes,” he said. “She looked in the window and asked the little girl to go down for the shears. And then the child did, so after that she was upstairs again. I was working, and my father too, and then there was a terrible scream. The signora, you understand. My father ran, and I too, but it was too late.”

  He made a sound between his teeth. “She was dead, the signora.”

  He sighed. “And then they were all there. It was … I will never forget it.”

  “I can certainly understand that,” I said. “Emilio, when the signora, my aunt, fell to her death, where were the others?”

  He looked at me, questioning. “Per favore?” he asked, not quite understanding.

  I was trying to set the scene, for the last and final time, in my mind. I said, “For example, where was Mrs. Wadley?”

  “She was there,” he said, pointing to the garden table.

  “And you and your father?”

  “Over there.” He indicated a spot not far from where we were.

  “And who was in the other garden? The Monteverdis’ garden?”

  “No one was there,” he said. “Only when the accident occurred. They ran out of the house.”

  “But when she was on the ladder, there was no one in the garden next door?”

  “Only the signora,” he said. “On the ladder.”

  “One more thing, Emilio. Do you have rats here?”

  His eyes, astonished, looked into mine.

  “Rats?”

  “I mean … are there rats hereabouts?”

  “But no,” he said, astounded. “Rats? Never, signorina. Maybe near the river, posso. But never up here. Sometimes field mice, piccolo, but never rats.”

  “Thank you, Emilio,” I said. “I know you and your father must have wages coming to you. I’ll see what I can do about it. You won’t be cheated.”

  “Grave.”

  “Buona fortuna, Emilio.”

  “Buona fortuna, signorina,” he answered and, with his shy eyes looking away quickly, bent to his weeding again.

  • • •

  I went into the house and, closing the door of my room, opened the package Elizabeth had left for me. As soon as I slit it open I knew why it had rattled. There were two things in there, both gold. One was a handsome watch which, when I looked closely at it, bore the engraved initials of the Principe on its back. I didn’t know his first or middle name, but the last letter, elaborately curlicued, was an M.

  “You won’t find your watch,” the Principessa had said to her husband, on my first morning at the villa.

  “No, I am afraid it is gone forever …”

  I put it down on the bed and looked at the other gold object. Delicate, dainty, fit for a small, childish neck … a heart-shaped locket on a slender chain.

  And that was all.

  I thought about it for a long, long time. Held both golden objects in my hands. And now I knew who had killed Mercedes. Or at least knew that one of them had. There had been a woman on a ladder, perhaps chatting gaily with the two persons inside the window just beyond. An old man and a little girl. And then, while she scarcely credited the evidence of her own eyes, someone had leaned out and pushed her, sent her hurtling to her death.

  Reaching out, in desperation, unbelieving, her hands had seized a gold watch and a gold locket. First thin air, as she tried to steady herself and then, perhaps sobbing frantically, her grasping fingers had clutched, as if at life, whatever they came in contact with.

  A man’s watch and a child’s locket.

  But who had done the pushing?

  The Principe? It seemed logical. Proud, deprived, emasculated … despising the woman who had disinherited him. Yes, I could picture him, in that one lightning moment, putting his hand out and —

  But the child had been there too, according to Emilio. It had been from that vantage point that Mercedes had asked for the shears, and the child had gotten them. And then had gone upstairs again.

  And the other picture came into my mind. The little hand going out, perhaps even in a spirit of fun … to touch the curly, gray hair of an old woman and then, mischievous, not knowing what she was doing, gave a shove …

  Or knowing what she was doing …

  I had the watch and the locket. Signifying nothing. Elizabeth had seen, but I hadn’t. And I would never know. Peter had questions, and the signores Predelli and Pineider had questions. Only Elizabeth had known what hand had sent my aunt to her death … and Elizabeth was dead too.

  I remembered her words. It will be your decision …

  I sat there until the bright day faded into dusk. I kept thinking about that beautiful, tawny-haired little girl, and hoped, against hope, that hers hadn’t been the hand that had left Mercedes, her neck broken, dead on the grass. I kept thinking that she had remembered me, whom she had never seen, and thought of me as “little Barbara,” in the same way she had almost certainly thought of the child next door as “little Eleanora.” That, perhaps because of Eleanora, she had recalled a child of her own flesh and blood, however far removed, and so had made me a legatee in her will. If she had loved that child next door, desired her as she would have desired a daughter of her own, what were her last thoughts … if Eleanora had put out that fatal hand and sent the ladder flying?

  I didn’t want to dwell on it. My heart was heavy and I thought of Elizabeth, lying who knew where. Elizabeth, who in a few short days, had come to be my friend. Mercedes was an X quantity: I would never know what she was really like, but I had known her friend and companion and had, perhaps, come to love her.

  I went out to the garden and looked down into the valley.

  Down there lay a city I had begun to cherish, a city to which, perhaps, I had come home. Someone of my own blood had passionately adored that city, and the Italian ethos, and the stones that had been there for centuries. There was no possible way that Mercedes could have guessed that a girl from America would sigh and muse, as she herself had, over the glory she had found and never left. She had met a young man and woman, newly-married, had liked them, had enjoyed their company so much that their shapshot, in a gilt frame, was among countless others on the silk scarf that covered the top of the Boesendorfer grand. She might have forgotten them,
in the welter of her rich life, but some stray cell in her brain, toward the end of her life, brought them to mind again, and she remembered that they had a child, as she had not, a child named Barbara.

  I knew then that Elizabeth had been right, that I would never say anything. For there would be no advantage. Elizabeth had told me, when explaining why she kept her knowledge to herself, “It would hurt someone I love.”

  I thought, she meant Gianni. I knew she had cared deeply for that Italian boy. And I knew that Gianni meant something quite important to me as well. I couldn’t hurt him. But it was more than that. History is made of small crimes and large ones, small greatnesses and large ones, and in the end the final arbiter is what some call God but is really the hidden writing on the unseen wall. We live with secrets, all of us, even as that beautiful child Eleanora, in our jealously-guarded wicker baskets, and the sum of every man’s life is known only to himself. We die with our pitiful misdeeds buried in our stilled hearts.

  I sealed the package again, put it into my suitcase and then, remembering the dust marks of a few days ago, took it out again. No, I thought, no. Because it had suddenly come to me that someone next door knew of the missing items, and the terrible meaning of them … I didn’t dare leave that package about, for someone to find. I couldn’t chance it.

  I peeped out of my room, didn’t see Lucrezia, and with the package under my sweater, went into the vaulted drawing room. There was a little niche, behind a bust of Dante, and I crept across the room and hid the package there. It was high up, so high that I had to stand on a chair, and I doubted that Lucrezia would cover that particular spot in a day’s dusting, especially under the sad circumstances.

  It was completely hidden and I felt it was well done, that telltale package far from the sight of prying eyes. I went back to my room and, not knowing what provisions had been made for Lucrezia, made up my mind that I would tell her that she would be repaid, by myself, for her time and services, that when I came into my inheritance, I would share some of it with her. Because she had been so kind to me. I felt like giving it all away; it didn’t mean anything to me any longer.

  She made a luscious supper, and we ate in the garden, early, because she couldn’t take another night off. She had a husband and children; she had a life. “You’ll be all right?” she asked, when she had washed up the dishes and was ready to leave.

  “Of course,” I said, and watched her rush off on her Vespa, vanishing down the steep road. I went into the house again, all alone, leaving a trail of lights behind me as I went to my room. Peter Fox had called, saying that the Hotel Continentale had a room for me. He had wanted to take me there immediately, but I said no, just one more night at the Villa Paradiso, because after all it belonged to someone else now, and I would never set foot on it again, ever.

  He seemed to understand, said he would be there if I wanted to call him. But I didn’t want to call him. I lay in bed for a long time, listening to the night sounds, and wanted to cry. But I couldn’t. Finally I got up, took two aspirins, and went back to bed. In the morning Lucrezia would be there, would wake me up with ineffable smells … bacon sizzling, and eggs done to a turn. I didn’t lie in darkness; I couldn’t bear to. I left a small light burning on the writing table near the windows. Weary, doleful, I closed my eyes and, sighing, fell asleep. A soft breeze drifted in from the outdoors. The sheets were cool, and felt so good, so good …

  Chapter Fourteen

  My eyes opened. I lay stiffly, retreating from some dream or other. There was something my mind was trying to tell me. For a moment, I tried to recapture the dream … there had been a child, and the child had smiled up at me. But, frowning, I admitted to my waking self that the smile had been strange … and not childlike … but curiously adult.

  Oh, I was dreaming about Eleanora, I thought, as I came out of my night stupor. What a funny smile she wore … not very nice, not at all nice …

  I was by then fully awake.

  Weirdly awake. There was a notion in my mind. There was something, something …

  I plumped my pillows and pondered. Yes, there was something … something that bothered me.

  Something nagging at me …

  The lamp, whose shade I had tipped, made a warm arc, golden and comforting. I burrowed into the pillows and asked myself what it was that tried to pierce my consciousness.

  And then, in a flash, I knew.

  Elizabeth, in her bed, white as a ghost and dead as a doornail … from an overdose of sleeping pills.

  But lying on her right side …

  On her righi side …

  It was all, suddenly, as clear as a bell. Of course, I thought, of course. Lying on her right side … the “bad” side. When she woke in the night, having turned, in her sopor, to that poor, crippled hip, she’d screamed. Had waked me. Screamed out in pain … and I’d rushed in to her.

  Then how could it be, I asked myself, that, having taken an overdose, “despondent at having lost her lifelong friend, the Contessa,” she had swallowed the pills and settled in the bed on her right side … which meant agony for her … meant pain that brought her awake, screaming …

  No, I thought. No. If she took the overdose, depressed, finally wanting to end her life, she would turn to her “good” side, perhaps say something to God, or whomever she believed in, and drift off … forever …

  But she certainly wouldn’t … couldn’t … do it on her crippled side.

  I was cold, and shivering. I knew it, I told myself. I knew it. Someone pushed the pills down her throat. Someone forced them into her mouth.

  Someone …

  I knew it all along, I said aloud, talking to myself. I knew it. There was a dark story, yes. About Mercedes, my aunt, the late Contessa, and about her “beloved enemy,” Elizabeth Wadley. Both of them. Both of them had been put to death. A Monteverdi had done it. A member of that disinherited family had done it. Killed two women, one after the other, so that the Villa Paradiso would revert to the original owners. Cruelly, with malice aforethought, one of them had slain first my aunt, then the dog, and then Elizabeth.

  I must call Peter in the morning, I thought, and checked my bedside clock to set the alarm for seven. And then I turned over again, my head heavy and aching dully, pulling up the sheet to cover the glare of the lamp. I was so tired I could have cried. It had been an ordeal, and to be up to it, to get the best of it, I needed a few hours respite.

  And then I fell asleep.

  • • •

  I woke because my hand was asleep. Ugh, I thought dimly, and started chopping away at it, not fully alert, but trying to bring the blood back to my numbed member. It felt like a lump of clay. I wrung it, trying to flex the fingers.

  I was, suddenly, wide awake.

  The light was out. The lamp near the windows, which I had left burning, was burning no longer.

  Why, I wondered, stiffening. Why?

  I lay in the darkness, my heart hammering.

  Why was the light out?

  I heard the furtive steps. Tensed, listening, every nerve taut. God, I thought. I was in the dark … and someone was in this room …

  For a minute or two longer I lay there, cravenly, trying not to gasp, or show that I was awake. And then, gathering my forces together, while the faint light of the half moon, raying in from outdoors, showed me the dark shadow a few steps away, I drew my legs up, as silently as possible, pushed the covers back and then, with a gargantuan effort, jumped out of bed. Barefoot, I plunged toward the open windows, stifling a scream, and in the next moment was tearing across the wet grass, my breath sobbing in my throat.

  Reason made me opt for the dividing gate between the division of the villa. Because there were people there. One of them might be intent on my destruction, but the others, sleeping above, would come to my aid. I zigzagged crazily, my feet drenched with the night dew and, about to screech my lungs out, found a hand over my mouth. I froze, as if ice had formed over my heart. I was still, for seconds, feeling the cold gr
ip of death on me, unable to move a muscle.

  And then I found a sudden, superhuman strength. I writhed, trying to release myself, while the hands wound tighter around me.

  “Let me go,” I sobbed, wrenching at them.

  “Please … per favore … please …”

  I knew Gianni’s voice.

  “It’s me,” he said. “It’s me.”

  I wrenched a hand free, drove at him, hissing like a snake. I felt like an animal at bay. “Let me go …”

  A mouth came down over mine, crashing, with opened lips, against mine. My hands scrabbled up and down, against him, trying to push him away, trying, desperately, to get free of him.

  “Let me go, let me go!”

  His lips left mine. With strong hands he imprisoned me. I could feel his heart beating. “No,” he said. “No. Listen to me, listen to me.” He bent back one of my wrists; the pain was almost unbearable. I felt the water come into my mouth, and the tears smarted my eyes.

  “Please don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t hurt me.”

  “Then you must be quiet,” he said inexorably.

  “Yes, I will … but please don’t hurt me like that …”

  His voice was rough. “I only want to love you,” he said harshly, and his mouth came down again, mashing against mine. And against all reason, with my heart beating wildly against the cage of my chest, I returned his kiss. Wound my arms around his neck. I must be utterly crazy, I thought in a daze. Crazy …

  At last I broke free, whispered, pleasing. “What?” I asked. “What do you want? Please, Gianni, let me go. Please.”

  He released me. “You won’t scream?” he asked anxiously.

  I stood trembling. “No, I won’t scream. But what is it? Why did you come into my room? Don’t you understand how frightening it was? I’m all alone. And then the light was out …”

  I felt a hand, soft, in my hair. “I didn’t want to frighten you,” he said, and his voice was like a caress. “I’m so sorry, darling.”

  “Well, you nearly drove me out of my mind,” I said, tearfully. “How could you do that?”

  “Please forgive me. I just wanted to talk to you. I must talk to you. There are things I must know.”