De Vincenzi went straight to the hotel manager. “Have these people heard?”
Virgilio jumped to his feet so suddenly and awkwardly that the chair fell over behind him. The four put down their cards and stood up, facing the inspector. Lontario copied them, standing on his gammy leg with difficulty and leaning on his cane.
“War injury?” asked De Vincenzi.
“Yes,” he responded with a sort of grunt. He wasn’t pleased to be reminded of his infirmity, however glorious the cause.
“Have you known Signor Engel for long?”
“No. Why? I met him here.”
“And why do you come to this place?”
“When we settled in Milan after the armistice, my mother and I, we lived in this hotel for a few months. Time enough to find an apartment and have our furniture sent from the Veneto, where we’d been living before that.”
“So Signor Da Como, too?”
“All of them casual acquaintances.”
“I see. But in any case, you’ve made actual friends of those two.”
“If you want to call it friendship.”
“What can you tell me about them?”
The captain laughed. “That they play piquet well— as they do many other games, for that matter…” He paused to stare at the inspector. “I don’t believe I can be of any help to you, you know. I don’t know a thing.”
Verdulli, the theatre critic who was constitutionally green with bile, made his sharp voice heard.
“So the Englishman was hanged, eh? Just like in a novel by Poe!”
“Who are you?”
“Socrate Verdulli. Do you know me? I’m the editor of Secolo.”
“And you?”
“Beltramo Pizzoni, of the Banca Commerciale.”
“And you?”
“Me? I’m a painter. Igino Pico. Do you think I could see the body? I ran upstairs as soon as the hunchback raised the alarm, but I was sent downstairs immediately. I’d be interested to paint it. I’d light it from below, though, with a smoky candle…”
“You?” De Vincenzi turned to the last card-player and raised his voice to shut the painter up. Pico shook his head with pitiful distress. Taking his glass from the table, he drank its contents down in one gulp.
“I’m Giuliano Agresti from the Gazzetta dello Sport.”
“Not one of you knows anything?”
What could they know?
“Fine. You can go on playing.”
The four immediately sat down and picked up their cards.
“Now, who remembers which cards have been played?” Verdulli said ironically.
“May I go home?” the captain asked, and De Vincenzi nodded.
Lontario went straight to the coat rack at the back of the room, limping on his stiff leg.
“That one won’t be coming back to the Three Roses!” Pico jested. He took Virgilio by the jacket and whispered in a comically grave voice: “Bring me another half-litre, kind Manager. We’ll need a few to make it through to tomorrow.”
De Vincenzi went towards the lobby. When he got to Maria’s desk he noticed she was still sleeping, and took pity on her. He turned to her husband.
“Send your wife to bed. I’ll question her tomorrow.”
He left hurriedly. The first room he entered was Number 2, Stella Essington’s. About thirty, Stella Essington, whose real name was the more common Rosa Carboni, pampered herself like a girl. Because she was waiting for the inspector, she’d put on pea-green pyjamas with yellow trim. Horrible things, enough to set the teeth on edge, like lemon juice. She was smoking, sucking on a long ivory holder encircled with pinkish diamonds.
“Make yourself at home, Inspector—I’ll tell you everything I know—but not on that armchair; it wobbles.” She offered him a soft chair.
De Vincenzi looked around. “Do you play the cello?”
She raised her hands to the heavens before his astonished face.
“Forgive me! If you only knew how the sound of the cello moves me! All my faculties vibrate like its strings.”
She was leaning on the headboard and gently arching her back over it. Although she wasn’t laughing, her lips were parted and drawn at the corners as in a rictus, and her pupils were shiny. She looked at the door, which De Vincenzi had left partly open, and frowned.
“We can be heard. Do you want to close it?”
“No one is listening.”
“That’s right. You’ll have guards in the corridor. But what I have to tell you is very serious.”
“What is it?”
“Only to you. On your word of honour as a gentleman. Ah! What a bore it is to talk like this!”
She moved away from the bed and stepped over to the mirror on the wardrobe. She regarded her figure and put a hand through her hair. All at once, as if severing an invisible bond, she headed for the nightstand beside the bed and made as if to open the drawer.
“No.” The icy voice of De Vincenzi stopped her. “Not now. You must stop. And you must tell me who provides you with the drugs.”
The response was immediate. The woman threw herself across the bed and began to sob; her shoulders, her entire body shook. De Vincenzi saw the yellow and green, and the unnatural red of her hair, cut short on a shaved neck and highlighted with brown. He shrugged. What could this one tell him? He started for the door. He would lock the woman in her room. But Stella Essington heard his steps and bounced up like a spring. She turned to him, again raising her hands towards the ceiling.
“No! Holy Virgin! You must hear me out! I beg you, listen to me,” she screamed.
“Don’t scream, for—” and he forced himself to stop, in order not to swear. Who had advised him to begin with her? “Don’t scream, or I’ll go.”
“OK, but listen to me.” She looked around for her ivory cigarette-holder, which had fallen on the bed, and lit another cigarette, taking it out of her pyjama pocket along with a box of matches. “That poor boy… Oh! it’s terrible!” She put her face in her hands. “Oh! If I could only calm my nerves! I had to contain myself for so long down there in the dining room, where you penned us up like beasts.” She turned hastily and pointed melodramatically to the bed. “I’ll die in that bed. I feel it.”
“Tell me instead: where did he die—that young man?”
“How do you know he didn’t die by hanging?” Her eyes sparkled maliciously.
“Don’t worry about that. But I don’t know where he was killed and I’m waiting for you to tell me.”
“I… He was very friendly with me. Me alone, amongst all the ladies in this hotel. Have you seen them? Pah! They’re worthless. The only one whose friendship meant anything to him was me. He used to say he wanted to take me to England…”
“What else did he say to you?” He went over to her and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Do you know why he was killed?”
He waited. She was, perhaps, talking nonsense. But maybe it was better to let her speak.
“He was killed because he was going to inherit a million pounds. It’s true! Don’t you believe me?”
A million pounds. The whole of Rosa Carboni was summed up in that fantastic figure. But apart from the sum, what did she really know, this woman? “Get the hunchback to tell you. He knows a lot. He lies like a slut when he talks about people who know how to keep him at the requisite distance, who aren’t of his class. He’s always hated me, he has! I don’t respect him anyway. But if he wanted to tell everything he knew…”
“Good. I’ll speak to Signor Bardi. Now go to bed and stay calm. Tomorrow morning we’ll talk everything over.”
He hesitated. Should he turn out her stash next to the bed? Ether, or cocaine—there was always the risk of finding the woman the worse for wear the next morning. But he shrugged. If he started seizing drugs, it would raise the alarm in the hotel, and the important thing at the moment was to move quickly. If Julius Lessinger really…
“Did he confide anything in you, the young Englishman?”
“Why?”
“Did he mention anyone in particular?”
“Why?”
She was on the defensive. She threw a glance at the nightstand.
“Go to the devil!” De Vincenzi said to himself. He left and locked the door.
One down. Who next? Number 3 was staring him in the face—in black, on the door. He looked at the hotel plan he’d put in his pocket. That door opened onto the room of Pompeo Besesti, the director of the Bank of Pure Metals. He hesitated. He’d need to use tact with this one. The chief’s words rang in his ears, those he’d let fall as he’d touched the flower on his lapel. You have no relationships with any of these people. I prefer it that way. You’ll have free rein. Are you with me?… He lifted the latch and opened the door. The room was dark. Could it be that he was sleeping?
“That room is empty, sir.” It was the officer on guard at the bend in the corridor.
Empty? He turned on the lights. Bed remade. A gleam on the silver toiletry items. A chest. In the middle of the room—how large that room was! At least six by eight metres—a table at the foot of the bed, with many cards and several logbooks on it. He saw some yellow bars under the leather blotter. He picked them up. He was no expert, but he guessed they must be gold. They were stamped: 20K. Pure gold. One was green. So he left them lying around like that. But why was he not back at three in the morning? De Vincenzi went into the corridor and called Sani.
“Phone headquarters. Franceschi must be on duty. Tell him to send a few good officers from the flying squad to do the rounds of the local bars. I want them to catch Pompeo Besesti, but not arrest him, and when they find him—if they find him—keep him dangling without letting him know why, and find out where he was from eight yesterday evening till now.”
“But—”
“Be quick about it!”
Sani went downstairs. The telephone was in the lobby near the toilets.
Why, though, did it seem strange to De Vincenzi that Pompeo Besesti wasn’t in his own room at three in the morning? He closed and locked that door too. The first room he came to round the corner of the corridor was Number 12: Mary Alton Vendramini, the widow who’d arrived from England that day. But everyone was arriving from England! And yet, this one…
He knocked softly and before she could respond he opened the door and closed it behind him. Slowly he turned. Only his tiredness and the unconscious need to proceed quickly with this new encounter had induced him to enter the room in that way. He was also lost in an insoluble problem and troubled by the whirl of his feelings.
What he saw inside the room made him jump. Lying on a rug in the middle of the room, Mary Alton Vendramini was looking at a porcelain doll clothed in a rosy gauze dress, her arms reaching out for a hug. Such was De Vincenzi’s amazement that he was rendered speechless for several minutes. Another doll… With each step he took in the investigation, he found unexpected connections between all these people when it seemed there shouldn’t be any. And this one here had arrived only this morning.
The woman—now that she had taken off her hat and veil—looked truly beautiful. A pure profile, a small head of golden-blond hair. Her heavy plait was wound from the base of her neck to her crown. Her thin eyebrows were arched and her strangely violet irises were dark behind extremely long eyelashes. Passionate lips on a perfect mouth. Her body was thin, yet full and soft under a clingy black silk dress. Her legs, sheathed in the shiny black material, could be seen under a short knee-length petticoat. She was lying on her side, with her legs folded under her.
She raised her head and took a long, sad look at De Vincenzi, who’d stayed next to the closed door. Taking the doll in her arms, she made as if to get up. Almost unconscious of what he was saying, De Vincenzi murmured, “Don’t trouble yourself.” But he immediately recovered his coldness and asked brusquely, “Who gave you that doll?”
“Why do you ask that?” the woman replied. She was standing in front of him. “It’s mine!”
She squeezed the doll ever closer to her breast, as if she feared he would take it from her.
11
He must not let the allure of her sweet, sad beauty get the better of him, De Vincenzi commanded himself. Since he was still young then, almost a novice—the horrifying crime with which he was concerned was his first important case—his reaction was inevitably strong, and the tone of his questions strained.
“Tell me the story of this doll.”
“Why do you believe there’s a story to it?”
Mary Alton Vendramini answered quietly, her voice sweet and full of childish notes. There was great candour in her and in her violet eyes, so deep and velvety.
“Your husband is an officer in the English army?”
“He was. He died two weeks ago.”
“Why did you come to Italy?”
“Because I’m Italian.”
“Do you have family in Milan?”
“No. My family has nothing more to do with me. I haven’t come back for my family!”
“Did you know Douglas Layng?”
The woman stared at De Vincenzi without speaking.
“Answer me.”
“I did not know him.”
“Why, then, did you come to this hotel and why did you arrive this very day?”
She trembled. “I’m cold,” she murmured. Holding crossed arms with long, white, diaphanous hands, she shivered, squeezing the doll ever more tightly against her breast.
De Vincenzi noted that Room 12 was small, and filled almost entirely by the large double bed. It was overheated. He was sweating.
“Signora, the crime committed against that young man is one of the most atrocious imaginable!”
“I’ve been here alone since yesterday morning.”
At the foot of the bed was an armchair. The woman—so tiny, fragile and blonde—fell into it. Her legs sparkled under the transparent silk covering them. She continued to look at him, but he couldn’t get a handle on her. De Vincenzi had to struggle to overcome a sort of vertigo. For more than three hours he’d been exhausting his brain power in the delicate game of seeking the end of a thread to guide him. He was worn out, exasperated. Anyone he’d interrogated could have given him that thread, and instead they were all hiding it. Novarreno, Bardi, the hunchback, Flemington and his wife… and now this one here. What had he found out by now? Nothing! A doll on an iron bed—on the top floor—in the dark—and now another, similar doll in the arms of this woman who was hiding behind her innocence in order not to say anything. Nothing at all. Or was it the same doll? Absurd! Cruni was on guard upstairs. No one could have gone up there. He grabbed a chair and practically threw it onto the floor in front of the armchair. He sat down.
“Look, Signora, we cannot go on like this! Tell me why you came to this hotel. Why you have a doll like that one there… Tell me how you are linked to the tragedy that’s taken place here, that’s still unfolding…” He was answered by silence. “It isn’t possible for you to keep silent. Sooner or later, I will know why. No one is leaving here until I find out.” Silence. He looked resigned. “You must answer me, Signora. I’m prepared to go on with my questioning for hours, until you are exhausted by the very sound of my voice. Tell me about your husband. He died two weeks ago, you tell me. Where?”
“In Sydney.”
“Of what illness?”
“He was old, my husband, and he’d had an adventurous life in the colonies. A hard life.”
“Where?”
“South Africa.”
“Where did you meet him?”
A smile. “What do you know about me?”
“Nothing. But don’t delude yourself. By tomorrow I’ll know everything. It’s pointless lying or keeping quiet. I’ll find out everything about you.”
“I know it’s pointless. However… You think I don’t wish to speak because I have something to hide, something compromising. Something a person can’t confess, is that right?”
“I don’t think anything. Answer me.”
She shook her go
lden head. “No, no, it’s not that. I’m afraid. I can’t speak!” Her voice remained quiet and low, but she wasn’t lying. She was afraid. Like Novarreno, like Bardi the hunchback, like Mrs Flemington, like the lawyer Flemington—underneath his posturing and aggressive sarcasm.
Of what? And of whom?
“Do you know Julius Lessinger?”
She jumped to her feet. She’d gone so white as to look nearly blue. Thus bloodless, her features appeared even more delicate, evanescent, indistinct. But she didn’t waver. De Vincenzi didn’t feel the need to reach out, for fear that she’d fall. She was afraid but she wouldn’t faint. She was pale, but her violet eyes were as dark as a stormy sky.
“Who told you about… about him?”
She realized she was still holding the porcelain doll, which was completely pink, too pink, with those rosettes flaming high on both cheeks. She went to the chest of drawers—one step and she was there, so small was the room—and put it down. The doll lay with its hands in the air and its legs askew. Mary then turned round and sat down in the armchair. She pulled her petticoat over her knees and sat with her feet together, composed, almost rigid. Her chest heaved a little, beating against the snug silk of her dress.
“I’ll tell you what I know. In the meantime—” she shook her head, forlorn and discouraged—“fate!”
“Did you really arrive in Milan this morning?”
“There’s a stamp from border control on my passport. You can check it. This morning… In any case, it was for tomorrow only.”
“What was?”
“Right, you don’t know! No one has told you.”
The Hotel of the Three Roses Page 8