“No! I cannot see why anyone would kill Novarreno. I knew him. I met him here. But I would never have imagined that that Levantine had any connection with Alton or his heirs.”
“Maybe it was he who created one—a tie.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know Signora Mary Alton?”
“No.”
“But Douglas Layng, yes—right?”
“I met him here. It would have been about a month ago.”
“What sort of friendship did he have with Major Alton, or how closely related were they? And with Signora Alton?”
“I don’t know!” Besesti struggled to get up. Once on his feet, he seemed to recover his pompous demeanour. He looked at the inspector with his blue eyes, still murky and cloudy. “Inspector, this questioning has gone on long enough. I have no right nor any duty to tell you anyone else’s secrets. I have nothing to do with the crimes committed in this hotel.”
“And with those that are about to be?”
He looked away, and then quickly at the door.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
De Vincenzi said coldly, “Fine. You know very well what I’m alluding to. It’s my duty to protect your life along with everyone else’s. Yet although I’m doing everything I can, you’re doing nothing to help me! You’ll only have yourself to blame.”
He turned his back on Besesti and made for the door. He had his hand on the knob when Besesti called out, “Inspector!”
“Well?”
“When Flemington arrives, do let me know. I need to speak with him immediately.”
“The meeting with the heirs is fixed for today. Flemington has already arrived in Milan.”
“Without saying anything to me! Where is he? Tell me where he is and let me go to him.”
“You’ll see him shortly.” And De Vincenzi left the room, closing the door behind him. He found Sani and the two officers in the corridor.
“The doctor has arrived,” Sani told him.
“Put a guard on this door.”
De Vincenzi went up to Room 6. Standing in the doorway, he saw the doctor from the emergency medical service there with the body. “The same wound as the other one, Doctor?”
The doctor let out one of those inarticulate sounds which spared him the bother of answering. He got up slowly. He was so tall, he looked like a compass opening out. In his hands he held the switchblade, which he’d extracted from the dead man’s chest.
“The same weapon, I believe,” he said, turning to De Vincenzi. “It’s not easy to find a knife with such a long, thin blade. It reached the heart this time, too.” Then his skull-like face tensed and his eyes flashed. “But weren’t you and all your men in here when they killed this one? Are you going to let this massacre go on all night?”
De Vincenzi shrugged.
“I’m leaving, and I hope you won’t be calling me again to remove more knives from dead men’s chests.”
De Vincenzi had already left the room and gone down the first flight of stairs. He was hurrying up the steep stairway to the attic rooms while the doctor continued hurling sarcastic barbs at him. Despite the rude and discourteous manner in which they were offered, De Vincenzi felt the doctor’s words had something in them. No one would have believed that another man could be killed in this hotel, occupied as it was by police and guards in every corner.
Cruni was sitting on the top step. When he saw the inspector he rose, holding on to the railing.
“Any news?”
“No, sir. They’re sleeping in there.” He pointed to the maids’ room. “I sent the porter away since the room is still occupied by… the body. In the other two rooms there are now two men. But they were talking for a long time, shut up in the first room. It was the fatter one, the one who looks like an elephant, who called the other man as soon as he went into his room. He seemed crazy and panted like a seal. I’ve no idea what was going on, since they started speaking in English.”
He’d seen the porcelain doll: De Vincenzi didn’t doubt for an instant that Engel’s agitation hinged on that fact. But didn’t the doll belong to him? What was the story behind these porcelain dolls that had to be brought to Milan, to that hotel, by the will of Harry Alton, who’d advised his wife not to forget her own? I have reserved a surprise for you that’s not the least bit banal… But then something new had turned up—possibly expected, despite being feared—and the surprises turned macabre. He was about to knock on Engel’s door when an idea occurred to him and he stopped.
“Go and get the owner, bring him up here. Hurry!”
Virgilio arrived with Cruni at his heels, urging him to hasten upstairs. The poor man was dizzy with sleep and fear, completely disorientated by the wrath of God which had unexpectedly struck him and his hotel.
“How long have you managed this hotel?” De Vincenzi had to repeat the question in order to be understood.
“Two years.” He gave his explanations in broken sentences, now verbose, now struggling to find words. He’d been in charge of a large beer hall in the city centre. He’d found two or three clients there who’d lent him the necessary funds—partly to help him and also believing they were making a good investment—and he’d taken over the business in 1917, agreeing to a ten-year lease with the outgoing hotelier, who still owned the building.
“So in 1914, The Hotel of the Three Roses was managed by…”
“By Bernasconi, a Swiss man who’d founded it thirty years before and had become rich, chiefly because of the restaurant.”
“Where is this Bernasconi now?”
“Here, in Milan. He lives in via Solferino. He comes to see me every day. I would prefer him not to come, because—you know—everyone does things their own way, and all he does is criticize and give advice.”
“Take him back downstairs and get him to give you the precise address of the old hotelier. Go and get him at seven and bring him here.”
He’d hoped that Virgilio would be able to tell him about Major Alton and his wedding at The Three Roses in 1914. There was nothing to do, however, but wait for day to arrive so he could interrogate Bernasconi.
He knocked at Engel’s door. Silence at first, then a chair moving, a drawer closing. The man was moving about the room. He knocked again and said, “Open up. I need to speak to you.”
The door opened. Vilfredo Engel—huge, sturdy elephant that he was—had put on his white silk pyjamas, so tight he was practically bursting out of them. They pinched at his armpits and across the chest, and hugged his back and legs. The bottoms ended a full six inches above his ankles, leaving his enormous, hairy calves bare. His tiny eyes blazed with bewilderment under bushy grey eyebrows.
“What do you want? Why did you wake me up?”
But he hadn’t in fact been sleeping. The bedsheets were turned down in welcome, but it was clear he had not yet lain on them. De Vincenzi stepped into the room while Engel trailed after him awkwardly, waving his hands around to emphasize his objection. But no matter how hard he searched, the inspector could not see a doll. He must have hidden it in a drawer or his suitcase.
“Signor Engel, go back to bed if you wish, or else sit down. I need to speak to you without interruptions.”
“But who are you?”
“A policeman. Did you not know that a body was found hanging from an iron bar on the landing just outside your door last night?”
“Have you come to arrest me? In which case I’ll say nothing unless my lawyer is present.”
“Why should I arrest you? Were you the one who killed Douglas Layng?”
“No! I deny it. I didn’t even know the poor young man. It’s awful. Just because he was hung up outside my room, there’s no reason in the world to believe that I have the least thing to do with such an atrocious crime.”
“Calm down. No one is accusing you of having killed Layng. But to say that you did not know him is a lie. Let’s not waste time. It will be better for you and for me.”
“I have nothing to do wi
th it! I protest! I have the right to the assistance of a lawyer.”
But he sat down, and the chair squawked under his weight. With his hands on his knees, his shoulders rounded and his pointy head bent backward so he could keep an eye on De Vincenzi, he seemed like a gigantic monkey whose trainer had goaded him into putting on that silly white costume for amusement’s sake.
“Was William Engel your brother?”
“Yes.”
“When did he die?”
“In 1902.”
“In South Africa?”
“No, in London. In my arms.”
“He was an officer in Major Alton’s battalion?”
“Yes.”
De Vincenzi paused for some time.
“Would you repeat to me what your brother confided to you before dying?”
Engel blinked.
“Would you tell me about Julius Lessinger?”
He went on questioning, affecting indifference to the questions, yet watching for their effect on the man’s face. However, it wasn’t possible for Engel’s face, stiff and leathery as it was, to twitch or betray his feelings. De Vincenzi could only try reading his eyes, and he did this accurately, subtly, beadily: two shining points between half-closed eyelids.
“It’s an old story you’re asking about. I’d hoped it was buried for ever.”
“What if I told you that Julius Lessinger had killed Douglas Layng?”
“Impossible!”
“Why? Who else could have wanted that young man to die?”
“Who else?” He sniggered and then began to pant again in that way of his, with his lips and cheeks puffed out.
“Who was Douglas Layng?”
“The son of—” He stopped and reached out for the drawer. “There’s a bottle of cognac in there. May I offer you a glass?”
“Douglas Layng was the son of? Go on. Do you want me to complete your sentence? He was the son of Major Alton.”
He began to snigger once again. “If you already know…”
“What about his mother?”
“What gentleman would reveal such a secret? Because you find me in this shabby room on the top floor of a third-rate hotel, you think you have the right to insult me?”
What patience! But he wasn’t trying to be devious in order to avoid being questioned. It was worse than that: he was devious by nature.
“Look, Engel. Try to understand the seriousness of the moment, of all that has happened and might happen. How do you explain the body’s being placed on this landing right outside your room?”
“It’s the most out-of-the-way corner in the hotel for carrying out a crime, this is. The youth would have been dragged up here on some pretext. Don’t you see that this is a real dump? They don’t even light the rooms properly, by God!”
“He wasn’t hanged up here. Douglas Layng was stabbed hours before, then dressed and brought up to this landing and hung from the rope.”
Engel let out a sort of grunt. He might have been upset—but how could one tell?
“They would have known you would not have been able to avoid seeing him when you came up to your room that night.”
“Me?”
He made as if to get up, but fell back into the chair; it groaned. He drew back and looked around the room.
“All set up for me…”
“And look what they dropped at the bottom of those stairs.”
De Vincenzi took the small piece of folded paper from his pocket, the one Sani had picked up on the first landing of the stairway. He read: “The first: the youngest, the innocent. This isn’t a warning. It’s the beginning of a series.”
“Give it here!” Engel practically tore it from De Vincenzi’s hand and looked at it closely. He was frightened. He held the paper for several moments, still looking at it and panting continuously, gasping for breath. Suddenly he burst into laughter—coarse, raucous and punctuated by phlegmy coughs. There were tears in his eyes.
“What’s the matter? Why are you laughing like this?”
“Extraordinary, and all of you fell for it! Julius Lessinger, eh? Crocodiles! Revenge! A box full of diamonds! Now you’ll bring out all the details of that story that obsessed Harry Alton in the last years of his life. Ah! The man hanged up here in order to terrify me!”
“But that young man was killed. And not only him.”
“Of course he was killed. But first, it’s not at all certain that Lessinger is in Italy. And this paper is enough to show that Lessinger doesn’t have anything to do with the murder.” He laughed and laughed, murmuring “Imbeciles!” between guffaws.
De Vincenzi was overcome by a strange sense of the surreal, the fantastic. Madness.
“Lessinger has never been to Italy! He has always lived in Africa and Australia. He can’t write in Italian, Lessinger! And he couldn’t have learnt it in a few days, since he could hardly write in English!” He stopped. He seemed to have pulled himself together. He offered the sheet of paper to the inspector and got up. “The whole thing is a farce! Like putting that doll on my bed… Damned Da Como! He performs the tricks and the others take advantage of them.”
Whenever De Vincenzi had occasion to recount this scene later, he’d say: “If I didn’t go crazy in that room, I’ll never go crazy again in my entire life. Since, you see, if there weren’t already two people dead, one might still have been laughing! But there were two bodies, and only a few minutes later there would be a third, and I already knew who it would be.”
14
Engel was sitting on the bed, still in his white pyjamas, his legs sticking out of them and red slippers dangling from his bare feet. De Vincenzi stood in the middle of the room staring at Carlo Da Como, who’d stayed near the door. Dressed once more in collar and tie, Da Como had had to wait to be questioned. He knew all too well that this awful story was just beginning. He managed to appear calm, perhaps even indifferent, but he was profoundly worried. It was he who’d put the porcelain doll on Engel’s bed—he’d already confessed during a stormy conversation with his friend and he confirmed it now to the inspector. But how could he have known that, as soon as he’d gone down to the dining room, someone would bring a body up to the third floor and hang it on the landing? A tragic trick of fate…
“Have you known Engel a long time?”
“Years and years. We met in London. We lived in the same boarding house.”
“Why don’t you say that the house was yours, Carlo?”
Engel’s voice was deep and hoarse. He was no longer chortling, but at that moment he doubled up with laughter, abandoning himself to mirth as if to shake off the terror that had overcome him at De Vincenzi’s revelation. It was followed by a state of meditative, searching prostration. It was clear that he was making a desperate effort to understand what was happening and why it was happening.
Da Como shrugged. “Inspector, it’s better if I explain it quickly. At one time I was rich. A long time ago. My father left a considerable estate and I was the only son, with three sisters. I frittered it all away. I was crazy about horse-racing in London. The bookmakers pocketed the better part of my money. Then there were the women. So, if you look for information about me, downstairs they’ll talk about my drug-dealing, about a Soho den, about my hotel where there was gambling…” He shrugged again. “All exaggerations. But I might as well tell you myself. I lived as I pleased, it’s true. And I learnt to my cost that any kind of life is difficult and one has to fight, armed and always ready to bear the cost personally. At the beginning, as a young man, I was innocent of this, with my own illusions, and people took advantage of me. When I no longer had anything, I did in turn what I’d seen others do: I killed off all my weaknesses and abandoned my scruples. There you have it.” He paused, waiting for the inspector to speak. But De Vincenzi kept quiet. Cruni could be heard pacing on the landing outside the room.
“None of this, though, has anything to do with that man’s murder, or anything else. Engel came to live in my boarding house. We’re friends. A few mo
nths ago when I suggested that I might return to Italy, it was he who immediately said he’d come with me, and he who brought me to this hotel, which I didn’t even know existed. It’s true that these days I’m living here hand to mouth. When I gamble and win, I pay my account here. But now I’m waiting to be hired by the Bank of Pure Metals. Engel introduced me to Signor Besesti.”
“It’s true,” the fat man uttered in his rough, deep voice.
De Vincenzi suddenly turned to him. “So during the war you were involved with Alton and Besesti in their… coastal trading business, right?”
“What do you mean? I have never been in business with Major Alton. I wouldn’t even have met him if he hadn’t come to see me after my brother died.”
“Why did he come to see you?”
“Because he wanted me to give him the porcelain doll.” It came out spontaneously, and he immediately regretted it. He seemed angry. “Damn those dolls and the rest of it. My brother died of a broken heart on their account. He was poisoned by the memory.”
“Wasn’t he, instead, afraid of Lessinger’s revenge?”
De Vincenzi was groping around in the dark, trying to latch on to some piece of the story he’d overlooked, something the others were revealing only in fragments, stray details that didn’t make sense. The crocodiles on the River Vaal, the dolls, Julius Lessinger, the memory of whom caused everyone to tremble… And the very fact of the gathering at The Hotel of the Three Roses, where a dead man’s will had convened everyone directly or indirectly connected to whatever he’d done—probably with the complicity of his two officers during the terrible years of his stay in the Transvaal… The box of diamonds… The soldier, Lessinger…
Engel took De Vincenzi’s blow without reacting. “Old story.”
“Yet it’s necessary to understand it all now, that story.” He turned to face Da Como. “So how did you know about the doll’s existence? Why did you want to play a joke on your friend by putting it on his bed?”
“I told you: we lived together. Do you think I could forget the fact that, amongst his things, Engel had a porcelain doll in a little pink slip? To begin with, I thought it was a memento of a child of his—faraway or dead. But he told me he hadn’t had children. I asked him about the doll, then, and he gave me some vague answer. But one night in London, we’d drunk a lot of whisky—”
The Hotel of the Three Roses Page 11