Sani watched him go, and then shook his head sadly. It was more than tiredness. He couldn’t put up with any more. He took a chair and placed it at the beginning of the corridor. At least that way no one would go by without his seeing him and being able to stop him. But not even that precaution—which seemed absolutely necessary to Sani—could stop the fatal course of events. Nor did it.
17
The Flemington couple were sleeping when De Vincenzi went into the blue room. The lamp was still on.
Mrs Flemington was breathing unevenly and shifting fitfully. Her husband, in shirtsleeves and without collar or tie, had slumped over the table where his head lay, shattered by tiredness and drinking. Before him, a black revolver and the square bottle of whisky made two marks on the red velvet cloth. His glass lay overturned not far away, a bit of liquor spilt from it and smearing the carpet. Nothing in the room had been moved. The pile of luggage reached right up to the window. It was cold in there. Left unattended, the central heating boiler must have cooled down and the room, level with the inner courtyard, had absorbed all the damp from the pouring rain.
De Vincenzi noisily shifted a chair, coughed and took a few steps around the room. He left the door open so he could call an officer if necessary. In the lobby, the officer paced back and forth to keep warm, his steps resounding on the stone floor.
All at once, Mrs Flemington turned on her side and groaned. Her husband slowly raised his head, placed an elbow on the table and tried to get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. He blinked and moaned.
“Flemington!”
He looked at the inspector without recognizing him. His eyes were dark and troubled, he’d paled and his cheeks were drooping. The lines around his mouth were deeper and threw his purplish lips and his prominent and commanding nose into relief.
“What’s going on? What do you want?” He looked around, and when he saw his wife his memory began to return. “Ah…” He grabbed the revolver, keeping it covered with his large hand, on the small finger of which sparkled a diamond. He then laughed and withdrew his hand. His laugh had recovered its grating tone and his expression cleared instantly. “Who’ve they killed now! You’re not coming to tell me that some other Novar—, Bonar—, —ceno… another bizarre name of someone I don’t know… or perhaps I’ll discover I’m in some nuthouse.”
“Stop laughing, please, Mr Flemington.”
He stopped and waited.
“The moment has come for you to talk. Tell me everything. Vilfredo Engel has told me about Major Alton and his brother. Pompeo Besesti has also started down the confessional path. Was he the fifth person you wrote to and asked to come here?”
“Indeed.”
“Then you’ll need to tell me everything you know and acquaint me with the terms of the will.”
“What about Julius Lessinger? What are you doing with him? Have you found him? Who else has been killed—of these five?”
“Someone tried to kill Carin Nolan, but she’ll live.”
“What about you? What have you done?”
“I’m carrying out my duty, Flemington. And in order to do so, I must insist that you speak.”
“Do you think what I have to say will help you stop the murderer? The heirs, or at least, the heirs presumptive… there are five, and so far he’s killed only two. It’s not a lot.” He emphasized this with one of his peculiar laughs. “We’re still here, my wife and I… Lessinger won’t do things by half. He wrote that to me.”
De Vincenzi jumped. So Julius Lessinger actually existed? Was he really the one De Vincenzi had to arrest?
“I’ve taken all the precautions I possibly could, and as it happens nothing has threatened you and Mrs Flemington before now. Show me what Julius Lessinger wrote to you.”
Flemington got up and moved the chair from the table. For several moments he remained standing, as if trying to get his balance. When he moved, however, he wasn’t unsteady. He took his jacket from the back of the chair and put it on. Then he drew a bunch of keys from his trouser pocket. He went to the suitcases and set the smallest one, in black leather, on a nearby chair and opened it. Every movement was slow and studied, and he hesitated for a moment before each one. Without a doubt, the man had great control over himself, but he must still be feeling numb with alcohol. He turned back to the table and sat down. In his hand was an envelope. He put it down in front of him and then pushed it across the table to De Vincenzi. The letter bore the address of George Flemington in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and was postmarked Hamburg. It was in English, and the whole of it was typewritten, even the signature.
The person who killed my father and my sisters has always escaped my revenge. But it will fall on those who expect to divide the spoils. Even the innocent will pay for the guilt of their fathers. I’ll get them when they’re ready to reach for the blood money. Everything will happen in the course of twenty-four hours, and you’ll be with them. A mother will fall on the body of her son. A brother will atone for the guilt of his brother. They’ll have three roses on their tombs.
JULIUS LESSINGER
De Vincenzi slowly folded the piece of paper and put it back in the envelope. He heard Mrs Flemington’s quiet moaning; having woken up, she was now crying. Flemington turned towards the sofa and said in a harsh voice, “Diana! It’s useless crying.”
De Vincenzi saw the woman hurry to dry her eyes as she sat up on the sofa, recomposing herself and trying to reassume her proud, dignified air.
“Mr Flemington, everything I learnt from the others allows me to understand this letter almost entirely. But I still don’t know what sort of ties bound you to Harry Alton. Would you describe them for me?”
“Are you trying to initiate proceedings against the dead?”
“I’m only trying to understand the intentions of those who are still alive. Tell me everything you know about Julius Lessinger.”
“He is Donald’s son.”
“Who told him how his father and sisters were killed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who could have told him about the death of Major Alton, and above all, about the meeting between the heirs in this hotel? The allusion to the three roses is significant. How could Julius Lessinger have known? What do you know about Julius Lessinger?”
“I was in Sydney in 1915.”
“Were you in business with Alton?”
“Not exactly. In fact, I wasn’t at all. But I was the major’s legal consultant and I assisted him.”
“In a serious trial?”
“If you are interested, I’ll explain. But I’d reiterate that this seems the wrong moment to reconstruct the entire life of a dead man.”
“So let’s say it was a trial for coastal trading, in other words supplying submarines on the high seas.”
Flemington interrupted him, and for the first time his voice betrayed his anxiety. “Did Scotland Yard send you a wire?”
A smile from De Vincenzi. It was in his interest for the other man to believe it.
“It’s not important, Mr Flemington. That’s not what matters. Go on. You knew Julius Lessinger in Sydney?”
“Someone spoke to me about him, someone who’d met him.”
“Pompeo Besesti.”
“You know that too?”
“I guessed it.”
“Yes, it was Besesti who spoke to me about him, and who first revealed to Alton that Lessinger’s son knew about how his father had been killed.”
“And Besesti thus became Alton’s partner,” De Vincenzi said, as if to himself.
The lawyer could not contain a look of stupefaction.
“All this deduction is your work?”
“Easy! Besesti told you he’d known Julius Lessinger personally?”
“He did.”
Exactly. How could he not have known him? The bankrupt from Buenos Aires had had dealings with Lessinger, learnt the story of the four murders and the box of diamonds and left for Australia in search of Alton. When he found him, the game had been e
asy. He became the major’s business partner and kept him under the thumb of his secret. And that’s how the Bank of Pure Metals had been founded—with a capital deposit of ten million. All this was simple to reconstruct. It was, however, more difficult to explain why Julius Lessinger, knowing the tragic story and determined to revenge himself, had not himself gone to Australia—and had let Harry Alton die a peaceful and natural death only to enact his revenge on the innocent in this horrifying manner. It was unthinkable that he had not traced the major’s footsteps, given that he was now demonstrating perfect knowledge of everything about him, including the story of the three roses, the existence of Alton’s son, who bore a name which wasn’t his father’s, even the ties that bound Alton to the Flemington couple. But what, in the end, were those ties? Was it possible that Flemington had always acted and continued to this day to act for the major—even at the risk of his own life? My wife held Douglas Layng on her lap as a baby…
De Vincenzi looked at the woman. She was still sitting up straight in her chair, immobile, staring at her husband, as if to draw from him the strength required for her impassivity, which after all was only superficial. The silence persisted, cold and heavy. Slowly, slowly the shadows lifted, while others blew in thick behind them. Nothing De Vincenzi had managed to discover was helping him to proceed towards a solution to the problem. The revelations were jumbling up in his head, superimposing themselves on one another in no discernible order. The spark was missing.
“So Pompeo Besesti must be able to recognize Julius Lessinger.” He paused. The Flemingtons stayed seated, unmoving.
“You set today as the day for the reading of Harry Alton’s will, is that right?”
The lawyer nodded in agreement.
“Good. I’m going to have the people you convened come in here.”
“Not all of them,” sneered Flemington.
“Not all,” the inspector repeated, and he then became brusque. “Mr Flemington, do you know the terms of the will?”
“No. Alton sent it to me in a sealed envelope a couple of months ago, when the doctor told him there was no hope. He absolutely prohibited me from opening it until after his death and in the presence of those five people he nominated… those five people and the three porcelain dolls. That was his precise wish.”
“The third doll must be in Carin Nolan’s room. But why in this hotel?”
Surprised by the question, Flemington hesitated.
“Don’t tell me you can’t explain it, because the major himself stated in the letter to his wife, which I have here, that you know very well about this hotel.”
“It was here that Harry Alton was married.”
“For that reason alone?”
“When he decided to marry Miss Mary Vendramini, the major agreed to meet his future wife in Milan and this was where they met up.”
“So you’re saying that it was Mrs Alton who chose this hotel?”
“She waited here in any event for the major’s arrival.”
“And you?”
“I… was called by Sir Alton to be one of the witnesses at the marriage.”
“And the other witness?”
“The lady ought to have chosen one, but she refused. The pastor took it upon himself to find an English person passing through or else living in Milan who would perform that favour. It was an older man whose name I don’t remember.”
“You see no other reason that might have induced the major to choose this place as the meeting point for his heirs?”
“Alton had his irrational fears and superstitions. The fact that he was married here could have been enough for him to have suggested it.”
De Vincenzi quickly wrote down a name at the top of a page in his notebook and went to the door. He gave the paper to the officer in the lobby and then returned to the table.
“Was it Lessinger’s letter that made you fear for the life of young Douglas Layng?”
“Yes.”
“Why had Layng already been in Milan for a month?”
Flemington glanced at his wife. “The boy wanted to visit Italy and he was taking advantage of the fact that he had to come here anyway.”
“Therefore, Douglas Layng knew before the major died that he would have to come to this hotel to hear the reading of his father’s will. Who told him?”
The lawyer bit his lip.
“I did,” he said reluctantly.
“Why?”
“It wasn’t a secret.”
“Did you let anyone else know?”
“No, but at the station, where my wife and I went to see Douglas off, he told me he’d spoken to Mrs Mary Alton about the reason for his departure.”
“So the boy knew his father’s wife?”
“He couldn’t not know her, since when the major married her he was already grown up.”
“Why didn’t Alton give his name to his son?”
Another brief hesitation.
“Alton abandoned Layng’s mother, leaving her alone with the baby. She gave her son her maiden name.”
“Where is that woman now?”
“She married another man.”
“It was in Australia, of course, that Alton met her?”
“Yes.”
“Did Alton see her again later?”
“Yes.”
“Her husband didn’t know about him?”
“No.”
The officer opened the door to let in Mary Alton Vendramini. Flemington rose. The widow wore an open expression, with her pure profile under that great mass of golden hair. She was so fragile…
“Pardon me, Signora, for having asked you to come down.” De Vincenzi then turned to Flemington and continued in English: “The lawyer, Flemington, will shortly read your husband’s will.” He pulled up a chair for her. She sat down, nodding a greeting to Mrs Flemington, who hadn’t taken her eyes off her from the moment she’d come in and was resting, dignified.
“You didn’t bring the doll with you, Signora?”
She looked at him, stunned.
“The doll also needs to be here for the reading of the will. Major Alton stipulated that as an essential condition.”
“If it’s really necessary,” Mary Alton murmured, and she made as if to get up.
“Not now. I’ll ask you to go and get it before the reading begins.”
De Vincenzi remained standing. He paused very briefly before beginning to question the woman in a cold voice, still in English so that the Flemingtons could understand.
“Why, Mrs Alton, did you deny knowing Douglas Layng?”
Mary’s eyes flashed.
“Because it wasn’t necessary for me to tell you!”
“But it was also true that you knew him! Did he trust you?”
“We were friends.”
“And he told you about this meeting that would take place at the Three Roses?”
“He told me he was coming to Milan and that he’d be staying at this hotel. In any case, my husband’s letter was sufficiently clear for me.”
“But you knew from Douglas Layng even before you received that letter?”
“Maybe.”
“Knowing the boy, and as the friends you say you were, why were you not upset? Why didn’t you show the least sign of concern when you heard about his tragic death?” But he gave her no time to respond. “And why, from the moment that you arrived in Milan yesterday morning, have you not looked for him? You didn’t let him know you were coming?”
She answered with innocent simplicity.
“I knew Julius Lessinger might be here, and I knew… that all of us were in danger. It occurred to me that it wouldn’t have done the young man any good to be seen with me.”
“But after his death?”
“Do you know exactly what happened in here, from the moment that man came screaming into the dining room? Everyone panicked! For my part, I knew that the death of Douglas was only the first, and it was something even more: it was terrifying. Why should I talk? To what end? I could do nothing
but wait—for my turn.”
“Did you know Carin Nolan?”
“I knew who she was and I’d spoken to her a couple of times. Carin Nolan didn’t live in London.”
“Mr Flemington, how do you explain the fact that Carin Nolan also came to Milan—to this hotel—at almost the same time as Douglas Layng?”
Flemington answered bluntly.
“Same reason as for the boy. And besides, Douglas and Carin were friends.”
It wasn’t a very convincing reply, but De Vincenzi turned again to the widow.
“Who told you the story of the Vaal crocodiles, Mrs Alton?”
“It was Harry. At a time when he felt Lessinger was getting closer…”
“In London?”
“Yes.”
“And he didn’t want to take the doll away from you? Didn’t he want to destroy it?”
“Why would he have done that?”
“For the same reason he asked Engel to give him a similar doll that had belonged to his brother.”
“Yes, Harry asked me for the doll. But I was the one who didn’t want to give it to him, and I told him I’d lost it. A few years later, though, when it seemed he was no longer worried about Lessinger’s threat, I confessed to him that I’d lied, and told him I… was fond of the doll and that it would be painful for me if he took it away.”
“Did you know of the existence of the other two dolls?”
“Of course.”
“What did you do in Milan yesterday, Signora Alton?”
“Oh, nothing in particular. I was in my room. I took a walk around the city.”
“What time?”
“I went out after lunch and came back around six.”
The doorbell rang and the front door opened. Voices. The officer came back into the lobby accompanied by two men with a stretcher. They went out and came in again, carrying in a second stretcher. De Vincenzi heard the men shuffling around and the dull sound of the stretchers being set down.
“One moment!” he said, and he left the blue room.
They had come to take the bodies to the Monumentale cemetery. One of the men went up to De Vincenzi and gave him a paper.
The Hotel of the Three Roses Page 15