The Hotel of the Three Roses

by Augusto De Angelis

  Sani looked at his watch. “It’s two,” he said quietly. “I’m wondering…”

  “What?”

  “… if we can continue to keep these people locked in the dining room all night.”

  De Vincenzi shrugged. “They’re playing cards, just like every other night.”

  A voice from downstairs said: “The inspector is on the first floor.” They heard someone coming up.

  It was the doctor. He was very tall, and with his hat pulled down over his eyes, his collar turned up and a long nose that stuck out menacingly like a beak, he looked more like a scarecrow than ever.

  “I’ve finished. You can order him to be moved to the Monumentale cemetery. I’ll go there tomorrow morning for the autopsy.” He was ready to leave.

  “You can’t tell me anything else, then?”

  “What do you want me to tell you? Someone killed him. The weapon must have been a long, thin knife, pushed in right up to the hilt. The rope used to hang him left bruises, but they weren’t very deep, which means that, hung up like so, he would have been there less than an hour.”

  “When did he die?”

  “It’ll be necessary to find out where the body was kept until he was hung up. If it was a very warm place, then rigor mortis wouldn’t have lasted as long and the secondary flaccidity, which in this particular case had barely started, would have appeared fifteen or sixteen hours after death. Normally it manifests twenty-four hours later.”

  “Taking into account that he was kept in this room or a similar one…”

  The doctor grunted in assent and looked around. “And you took him down when?”

  “Around eleven-thirty, or thereabouts.”

  “OK. I’d say he was killed sometime around nine or ten in the morning. There you go.” He turned on his heel and disappeared.

  Sani looked at De Vincenzi. “At eleven the chambermaid and porter came to the room and the body wasn’t here!”

  “Right. But go on. We’re not finished!”

  “Eh? The sheets weren’t yet soaked with blood at eleven.”

  “Right. And at eleven, that rinsed cup wasn’t on the nightstand. Therefore, according to all appearances, which might be certainties, Douglas Layng hadn’t yet drunk the narcotic and was still alive.”

  “And yet the doctor couldn’t have been out by four hours. Post-mortem indications don’t lie.”

  “Hmm. He said himself: if he was kept in a very warm place…” De Vincenzi looked around and went over to touch the radiator elements: warm, yes, but not enough to be suffocating. He opened the wardrobe: nothing but clothes. He was looking for something and not finding it.

  Sani followed his movements, clearly uneasy. “What are you looking for?”

  De Vincenzi didn’t reply. He walked around the room once more, then suddenly stopped and sniffed the air.

  “The window was open, yes?”

  “Wide open.”

  “Ah!”

  That could be the explanation. In which case, his hunch stood up. Everything now hinged on whether or not he’d find in some other room what he’d vainly looked for in this one, ever since the discovery. There wouldn’t have been enough time to take something so cumbersome out of the hotel. Unless… What did he actually know about what had happened from the time they’d found the body until Bianchi had arrived with his officers, considering that Bianchi had immediately blocked all exits?

  “Here he is, Inspector.”

  The officer presented a skeletal man dressed entirely in black, his bony face ashen, the colour olive-toned skins turn when they pale. The blackest of eyes flamed out from their sunken sockets.

  “Ah! What’s your name?”

  “Giorgio Novarreno.”

  De Vincenzi was ready to begin his interrogation, but the man slowly and solemnly raised his right hand, forcing De Vincenzi to keep quiet. He remained absolutely still, but quickly scanned the entire room.

  “A man was killed in this room,” he offered, his voice warm and melodious, “at precisely twelve-thirty yesterday. There’s still a lot of blood in here.”

  Sani flinched. De Vincenzi wasted no time; he took his subordinate by the arm and pushed him out of the door.

  “Wait for me downstairs.”

  He closed the door once more, turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket. He then went to stand in front of the palm-reader, who remained fixed in his moment of inspiration.

  “No play-acting,” De Vincenzi stated, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Tell me everything you know—or else I’ll immediately accuse you of being the author of this crime or an accomplice.”

  8

  The man gave no sign of being uneasy. Whether it was remarkable self-control and a seasoned talent for acting or he really did believe in his own supernatural strength, he maintained his moment of rapture.

  “You can’t accuse me of a crime that was committed by someone else.”

  “By whom?”

  He smiled, and his smile was sinister. “I don’t deny that someone might be able to find out. I don’t know.”

  “I repeat: this is not a performance. So you can begin by telling me something about yourself. What do you do?”

  “Salesman. Everyone knows it…” He paused, then seemed to become human. He spoke simply, as if confiding in someone. “I’m a salesman now. I’ve had a lively existence, I have. I’ve been all over the world, earning my keep with some effort. I come from the East. In Italy, Levantines are not known for their honesty.” He shrugged. “You won’t find anyone who can make a well-founded accusation against me. What have I done? I’ve grown and sold tobacco; I’ve been a stoker on the Sea of Azov; fisherman on the Black Sea; I’ve traded in bricks and watermelons, going up and down the Dnieper; I’ve been a clown in a circus; I was an actor. Now? I deal in trifles. Indispensable objects—because they’re unnecessary. Men don’t always need bread, but they always need someone to make them marvel. A little paper flower, which opens as if by magic…”

  On a night like this, after having taken a body down from a rope, De Vincenzi’s nerves were raw. But he controlled himself. If there were some way to get this cunning and deceitful Levantine to reveal something useful, he could do nothing but let him go on talking in his own way, and do all the acting he wished.

  Novarreno had taken a step backward and had gone still again. A smile crept over the inspector’s face and he went to sit with his back to the wall.

  “Take a seat. I believe we’ll be speaking for some time.”

  A look of dismay flitted over Novarreno’s ashen face. “In here?” He looked around, and his gaze fell on the headboard. “I actually have some urgent business… an appointment.”

  “At this hour? Are you joking, Novarreno? It’ll soon be three in the morning. Sit down, I tell you, and let’s talk about this calmly. I’m not in a hurry myself. I’m not leaving this hotel until I find out who killed Douglas Layng—and until I’ve arrested him, of course.”

  “But what do I have to do with it? I don’t know anything.”

  “You know, for example, that the young man was killed in this room and that he was killed at exactly twelve-thirty. You said so yourself! And you’re the only one who knows this. I’ll bet that—” He jumped up and turned back the bedcover and the sheets, revealing a huge stain, black with blood. “Look! Did you know this, too?”

  Novarreno didn’t even back away. Angry and stock-still, he looked beyond the stain at the headboard… Only his jaw muscles worked convulsively, as if he were using incredible force to control himself.

  “I know nothing! I sensed that a man had been killed in here as soon as I entered this room.”

  “Ah, yes! So you’re a necromancer, right? And the time it happened? Did you feel that, too, when you came into the room?”

  “Yes,” and he added no more. He didn’t even try to make it seem logical, to offer an explanation, to justify his absurd claim with an argument, however specious.

  But why had he spoken? It didn�
�t seem possible that he was the killer, for the precise reason that he’d talked. However great an actor he was, however consumed with the need to cause continual sensation—to shock—one could not suppose that the charlatan in him was stronger than his sense of danger, his instinct for self-preservation. And since one couldn’t give any weight to his necromantic divination—even if one tried to explain it as a hypersensitivity of the nerves or a telepathic phenomenon—what was left?

  “Where is your room, Novarreno?”

  “Next to this one. The next door along.”

  De Vincenzi was left, therefore, simply with this: the Levantine had heard Douglas Layng being killed through the thin walls of his room and now, after having impulsively and rashly given in to his desire to demonstrate his occult and divinatory powers, he was reluctant to speak for fear of the killer.

  For the third time, De Vincenzi said curtly: “Sit down!” and the man sat in a chair beside the bed, without showing the least horror or repugnance at the blood-soaked sheets. The inspector covered up the bed again—he was the one who couldn’t stand the sight.

  “Listen to me closely, Giorgio Novarreno. Don’t imagine that I’m going to let this farce continue. You know something, and you’ve got to tell me what you know. You won’t be leaving this room until you’ve talked. Understood?”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t know a thing.”

  “What were you doing, and where were you yesterday at half past twelve?”

  A malicious smile was the first response; it came to him spontaneously. He spoke slowly.

  “Was I the only one to give you the time of the crime? Or had you already more or less settled on that moment?”

  “What if I told you that my calculations and those of the doctor coincided exactly with your information?”

  “I’d have to believe you. But I remain struck by it as I would by a supernatural event. Think about it, I beg you. If I were the killer or his accomplice, it’s obvious that even if I were play-acting, as you say, I would have suggested any time except that of the crime, and in any case I would have proposed a time for which I had an alibi. So either you believe that I’ve spoken moved by some force outside myself—call it telepathy, occultism, divination, the nervous tension of a sick organism, whatever you wish, in fact—in which case you’re trying to prove a suggestion that might be completely wrong… or you believe that I might be mixed up in this business, in which case you should pay no heed to my words and consider them no more than a guilty man’s attempt to derail your investigation and confuse your thoughts.”

  He was clever. In command of himself, in any case. Of course there had to be something else underneath all this. This man, acting as he did, was clearly pursuing his own goal. But what was it?

  All at once, De Vincenzi decided to change tactic and rely on cunning. “That’s right,” he said. “I see you’re not devoid of logic. But you could be helpful to me all the same and I’m counting on your voluntary collaboration.”

  “Of course.”

  “When did you see Douglas Layng for the last time?”

  “Yesterday morning.”

  “What time?”

  “Three in the morning, when we came upstairs together to go to bed.”

  “Who else was with you?”

  “I don’t know. I only remember coming up with Layng. The others had either gone up before us or followed later. The game was over.”

  “With whom had the Englishman been playing?”

  “With everyone… baccarat isn’t a closed game, you know. Donato Desatta was banker and anyone who wanted to placed a bet.”

  “And the Englishman?”

  “From the moment he learnt how to play that cursed game, he played whenever he could, like a desperate man. In the early evening, when he had no alternatives, he’d start playing baccarat with only one other player. He even played with the ladies.”

  “And lost.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who taught him how to play?”

  Novarreno didn’t hesitate. “Da Como.” He smiled. “Da Como will be hit hardest of all by his death.”

  So Carlo Da Como was the one who’d won a thousand lire in one night with Layng. And he was living in one of the little rooms on the top floor… Was it possible to imagine that the tragic mise en scène had been staged just for him?

  “What did you and Layng talk about when you went upstairs?”

  “Nothing. A few words, whatever one says on the way to bed after sitting shut up in a room for hours, gambling.”

  He was lying. De Vincenzi could tell that he was lying. Even if his hesitation hadn’t been obvious before he spoke, his actual voice, which he’d tried to infuse with indifference, had betrayed him. But why? He was clearly responding to some of the questions with sincerity, though there were others he was trying to avoid.

  “Where were you born, Novarreno?”

  “In Adalia. On the Gulf of Adalia, across from Cyprus… Asiatic Turkey. A miserable, tragic country.”

  “How long have you been in Italy?”

  “Since ’14.”

  “And during the war?”

  “I travelled… on behalf of your government.”

  So he’d been a spy, if one could believe he was telling the truth. It would be easy to check.

  “Yesterday? Tell me what you were doing from—from, shall we say, eight in the morning onwards.”

  “If you want me to give you an alibi you can check up on, I don’t think I’ve got one. For the very reason that I could never have imagined that what’s happened would happen, I took no steps to ensure that I had one.”

  “Let’s see… before we come back to this, how did you know Douglas Layng had been killed?”

  “The hunchback yelled it out to everyone. How could I have failed to hear? I was by myself in the lobby, tucked away in a corner. I often go off on my own because I need to think freely. Bardi went by, running and screaming: ‘There’s a hanged man’ or something like that. There was a moment of panic… women fainting… chairs overturned… Someone found the nerve to go and look.”

  “Who?”

  “Me. And I was the one who telephoned the police.”

  “So you saw the dead man. What then?”

  “Then—nothing!”

  “On the contrary, then everything, because everything must have led you to suppose that the young man had been killed yesterday evening. You saw him hanging. So why did you say, as soon as you came in here, that the murder had been committed at twelve-thirty?”

  He didn’t miss a beat.

  “I could say I don’t know, because when I’m speaking during a state of spiritual clairvoyance, or something near it, I’m unaware of what I’m saying. And yet I’ll tell you that, precisely because I did see the hanged man, I was convinced that the crime had been committed some time earlier, and that the rope and all the rest were nothing but a trick rigged up to scare someone.”

  “Ah, so you’re a medical expert now?”

  “Somewhat. Of course, I’ve seen many bodies in my life. The Armenian massacres, the Great Thessaloniki Fire…”

  “So you thought the trick was rigged up to scare someone. Who?”

  He shrugged. “How should I know?”

  “What about your clairvoyant powers?”

  “My clairvoyance is limited to calculating which people, last night or this morning, would have had to bump into the body to believe there was one. But you can make that sort of calculation on your own.”

  “You’re right. So yesterday at twelve-thirty, you were…”

  “I was in the Galleria when the midday siren sounded. I started slowly for the hotel… I would have reached it in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  “And you naturally came up to your room?”

  “No. I went into the dining room and sat down at my table to eat.”

  “Who else was in the dining room at that time?”

  “Well, let’s see… I can remember if I try. Signor Belloni—the cas
hier of the Banca Indigena—his whole family were there: his wife and daughter… Agresti, with his wife… Desatta and Vittoria were there… You know who Vittoria is, don’t you?… And then that American… the Nolan woman… and the actress Stella Essington… and everyone in the usual group of old men—they have the table at the back and don’t live in the hotel—and then… yes, Da Como and Engel came in a bit later… and before one, Pompeo Besesti, the owner of the Bank of Pure Metals. Do you know him? They say he’s a fairly rich man. That’s it. Of course, none of this is worth anything as a witness statement. My memory may betray me. I was thinking about eating, not busy checking the hotel register to see who was missing. Not to mention that in no restaurant in the world are the diners always the same.”

  “That afternoon, you didn’t go up to your room?”

  “No, not until last night at eight. I went out right after lunch and didn’t come back to the hotel.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Another alibi entirely lacking witnesses… Every morning before I leave my room, I do my daily horoscope in order to find out how best to comport myself and how to go about my business. Well, yesterday my horoscope was dire.”

  He took a notebook from his pocket, opened it and read:

  A profusion of malign influences thanks to the Moon’s configuration with Uranus and Neptune. A day of difficult events and sinister complications.

  He lifted his head and looked at De Vincenzi. “Do you want to read it? I wrote these lines yesterday morning.”

  “Fine, fine.” The inspector was condescending. “Another amazing divination. But I don’t see—”

  “—what my horoscope has to do with my alibi for yesterday afternoon? How can I simplify this… A bad horoscope for me means no business prospects. And in those cases I don’t try to do anything. For that reason, I left my suitcase in the hotel yesterday, the one with all my—frivolous—samples in it, and went to Lake Como. I left from the North station on the 2.40 and came back on the train that arrives in Milan at 7.20. That’s it. There’s no hope, however, of anyone being able to confirm my statement, unless… of course… unless the North station ticket-seller at the window for Como remembers my face and the fact that I gave him a five-hundred-lire note to pay for a return ticket when it was only ten lire in total. He was very put out.”