“I’ve come as well. Didn’t you want me here? And yet I’m meant to be here. Everyone gathered together, eh, for the reading of the will! There’s a million pounds to share out. A nice nest egg! But I’m part of it. He told me so. He told me everything, he did. I was the only woman he spoke to. A lovely man, and so young! Did you think I wouldn’t find you? I was looking for the inspector, and I’ve found everyone here. Much better. That way the rest of you will hear me!”
Sani stood behind her, perplexed. He’d been hoping to grab her but hadn’t dared.
“I tried to stop her, but she ran ahead of me.”
“It’s not important,” said De Vincenzi. “Come on in.”
He was so used to speaking English to those people in the blue room that he had spoken to Stella in English as well.
“So you think I don’t understand English? I don’t speak it, but I understand it.”
She came in. Mary Alton backed away, unobtrusively and with her usual gracefulness. She sat down. Everyone around her kept quiet and looked at the woman in green and yellow pyjamas with dyed red hair, trying in vain to understand how she had suddenly appeared in their midst at that precise moment. Sani and Cruni remained at the door to stop anyone from escaping.
Stella looked for a chair and, seeing one against a wall, went to sit on it, crossing her legs. On her feet were slippers with two large white feather puffs that covered her ankles. De Vincenzi left her no time to reprise her soliloquy.
“Now that you’re here, you’ll answer my questions.”
“Oh, oh, what a tone! Of course I’ll answer… if I want to.”
“No. You’ll answer all the questions I put to you unless you’d prefer to go to San Fedele straightaway.”
The woman blanched.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m telling you I’ll send you to San Fedele and have them take out the file on Rosetta Carboni.”
Stella bit her lip till it bled. She was on the verge of a panic attack, but De Vincenzi put a stop to it.
“Keep quiet and answer me. It’s the best thing for you to do at this point. How did you know Douglas Layng didn’t die by hanging, but was killed before that?”
“I knew that? Who told you I knew that? I didn’t know anything.”
The inspector took a step towards the door.
“No!” she shouted immediately. “All of this is vile!”
“When I questioned you for the first time, you yourself said, word for word: how do you know he didn’t die by hanging? Therefore, you knew it too.”
She bent her head, put her cigarette-holder in her mouth and hurriedly blew several puffs of smoke.
“I knew it because I saw him dead in his room.”
All of them started, apart from George and Diana Flemington, who didn’t understand Italian. Even the widow shivered, and her eyes went dark and shiny like two hard gemstones. Engel’s doll slid to the floor.
“What time?”
“It must have been eight at night, or shortly before.”
“Why didn’t you scream? Why didn’t you raise the alarm?”
She answered violently, getting up from her chair. “Because if I had I would have died too!”
“So you saw the murderer, and the murderer saw you?”
The question made her conscious of the full force of her impetuous affirmation. The blood drained completely from her face to her heart; she looked ashen. She went quiet and her eyes widened. The ivory cigarette-holder dropped to the ground with a click.
Stella Essington looked around, saw Sani and Cruni at the door and backed away. Perhaps she hadn’t recognized them, or thought they’d block her escape. She let out a sharp, piercing scream, like that of an injured beast. It was a moment of agonizing terror for everyone. Even the English couple jumped to their feet.
De Vincenzi barely made it in time. He grabbed Flemington’s wrist and tore the revolver he’d pointed at Stella from his grasp. He put it in his pocket and turned to Stella, who’d backed up against the wall, her eyes bursting from their sockets, her lips pursed, her hands extended in front of her.
“No! No! It’s not true! It’s not true!”
All hell broke loose as she watched De Vincenzi approach. She crumpled to the ground, muscles twitching, nails dug into her flesh and her teeth gnashing. Sani and De Vincenzi took hold of her and physically carried her out of the room. When they got to the lobby they set her down on the wicker sofa. She was so tense, so rigid, that she slid immediately to the floor, overturning the little table.
“Call a taxi!” De Vincenzi ordered Cruni.
“Who is she afraid of?” asked Sani.
“I’ll tell you later. Get her to the hospital because as long as she’s here, she won’t talk.”
They put her in the cab and Cruni got in with her.
“Don’t leave her bed.”
And the taxi took off in the rain, with the woman in yellow and green pyjamas slowly losing consciousness, slumped against the seat.
Cruni lit a cigar stub. It was hours since he’d smoked and he could stand it no longer.
19
As he went back into the lobby with Sani, De Vincenzi murmured, “We’re nearing the end, but the most dreadful thing is yet to come.”
He went into the blue room, where everyone was still standing. They looked at him in terror, as if expecting him to announce a further catastrophe. He feigned indifference, even smiled.
“Please sit down. Miss Essington is a little deranged. She can’t have seen anybody or any killer. The cocaine is giving her hallucinations.” He turned to Mary Alton. “We must finish this as soon as possible. I’d like you, Mrs Alton, to go and get the dolls.”
The widow was momentarily somewhat perplexed, as if she hadn’t understood. She let out a deep sigh and fluttered her eyelashes. De Vincenzi repeated the request. She then nodded and left in a rush. Her quick, light steps could be heard on the staircase—then nothing. The men sat down. Mrs Flemington was so petrified with fear that her husband had to reach out and take her arm, drawing her closer to him.
“Are you perfectly sure, Besesti, that the killer can’t be Lessinger?”
“Yes. It can’t be Julius Lessinger.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t answer. It was clear he was struggling to swallow, as if his throat had closed up.
“Why not?”
“Because… Julius Lessinger died in Buenos Aries in 1913.”
It was such an extraordinary revelation that everyone was struck speechless. The first to recover was the lawyer. He leapt to his feet, threatening Besesti with a raised fist.
“Scoundrel!”
Besesti’s head drooped.
“Dastardly blackmailer!”
“Quiet, Flemington!” shouted De Vincenzi.
“He’s a scoundrel! He terrorized Harry Alton for five years with the threat of Lessinger’s revenge.”
“Be quiet now!” The inspector forced him to sit back down.
“It’s true,” muttered Besesti. “But I didn’t talk to the major about Lessinger after—”
“After you convinced him to become your partner in the coastal trading business.”
“Yes. I met Julius Lessinger by chance in hospital in Buenos Aires. He had a bed next to mine, and he was very sick—tuberculosis—and he wasn’t going to get better. He confided the whole story to me.”
“How had he heard it?”
“It seems he’d got Dick Nolan drunk one day and made him talk. He was the one who killed him in battle. He shot him in the back. He didn’t kill Alton as well because he wanted to recover the box of diamonds first. Then he got sick and was sent back to Johannesburg. Meanwhile, Alton and Engel had gone to England. What Lessinger was doing in Buenos Aires I’ve no idea. All I know is that he died in despair, because he wanted to revenge himself on Alton and he’d managed to find out where he was.”
“In Sydney?”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
“When Lessinger died, I left for Sydney. My situation in Buenos Aires had become unsustainable.”
“And from Lessinger’s story you immediately saw a way of recouping your fortune!”
Flemington was still in a state of overexcitement. He was exasperated by Besesti’s ugly game with Harry Alton—the pretence that Lessinger was still alive and the blackmail threat—with its consequences for himself and his wife, the mother of Douglas Layng.
“But that letter! Who wrote that letter, then?” Flemington roared, his finger pointing at the table where the letter from Hamburg was still lying.
“The person who wrote it wanted to do what they have done, making everyone believe it was Lessinger,” came the calm voice of De Vincenzi. “Mr Besesti, did anyone besides you know about Lessinger’s death?”
“I kept quiet with everyone!” He got up. “I swear by Christ I haven’t spoken about Julius Lessinger for five years, to Alton or to anyone else. The threats to him did not come from me.”
He was sincere. Once he had succeeded with the initial blackmail, and had got rich from it, what point was there in continuing to make use of the secret? After all, it was dangerous enough to send his business partner to the gallows—and their fates were linked. Apparently, someone else who knew the horrifying story of the killings had impersonated Lessinger, taking care to keep Alton’s terror on the boil. But why?
And what was the motive for killing Douglas Layng, for having injured and nearly killed Carin Nolan, and for keeping all the other guests under the imminent threat of death?
The deep, harsh voice of Vilfredo Engel sounded strangely troubled. “Whoever the murderer may be, it’s one of us.”
That he was in the hotel was clear, considering the fact that Stella Essington had seen him and Novarreno’s attempt to blackmail him had cost him his life. But that he might be in the very same room…
“What are you trying to tell us, Engel?”
Engel had picked up the doll and was holding her upside down by the leg. Livening up, he replied, using the doll to gesticulate. His overcoat fell open, revealing the white pyjamas stretched tight across his body. He looked like a buffoon.
“The letters were written to terrify, and to render this tragedy easier to execute. Only one of us could know the story, and know where to have all the heirs meet. And only one of us could have any interest in the deaths of the others.”
“But why?” shouted Besesti.
Flemington got up and looked at Engel.
“What do you mean, Mr Engel?”
The pachyderm turned slowly to contemplate the lawyer. He sneered.
“No one could understand better than you, Flemington of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, since you’re a lawyer, what interest an heir might have in being the only one left to receive the inheritance!”
Besesti interrupted:
“In that case, I’m excluded from any suspicion. I expect nothing from Alton. And I’m waiting to hear why I’ve been made to join this hellish meeting.”
The sane, quiet voice of Da Como was heard as he turned to the inspector.
“I don’t have anything to do with it either. I’ll be damned if I ever play another trick in my life—my having put the doll on Engel’s bed was nothing but a joke. Why have you made me come down here?”
De Vincenzi suddenly started. The doll! The two dolls Mary Alton had gone to get! She had not come back!
“Sani!” shouted a lacerating voice.
“Here I am,” Sani answered, rushing in from the lobby.
“Who is guarding the first floor?”
The deputy inspector paled. “No one—it’s true! I was there but then I came down after that woman.”
Pushing Sani aside, De Vincenzi rushed for the main staircase. But he hadn’t even reached the first landing when he stopped. Mary Alton had appeared before him. She was descending slowly, the two dolls in her arms.
“Ah,” the inspector sighed. Then he recovered himself and smiled. “I was afraid you weren’t able to find Carin Nolan’s doll.”
“I had to look in all her drawers, as a matter of fact. I couldn’t find it. It was in a hat box in the wardrobe.”
“Good.”
He let Mary go ahead of him and followed behind her, waiting for her to enter the blue room.
“Go up to the first floor and stand guard in the corridor. Rooms 7 and 19 are occupied, as you know. Take special care with Room 7, and if you hear the slightest suspicious noise, enter immediately.”
“I’ll make sure of it,” Sani hurriedly reassured him, hoping to excuse his earlier forgetfulness.
“Are you armed?”
“Yes,” and he showed De Vincenzi his revolver, which bulged in his jacket pocket.
De Vincenzi went back into the blue room. The widow had put one doll on the table and was sitting with the other in her arms, holding it tight against her breast. It was her doll. The one on the table, even though similar in all respects to the other two, had on a little blue silk dress. Why were the others, then, both dressed in pink gauze?
“Mr Engel, when your brother went back to Africa and you kept the doll with you, what was it wearing?”
“What are you talking about?” Engel asked, astonished. He couldn’t understand how the doll’s clothing mattered in such a tragedy.
It was Mrs Flemington who answered. “I sewed the two pink gauze dresses. My husband asked me to do it. Harry Alton had begged him to organize two dresses for the dolls.”
“Harry was afraid that Lessinger would come to London, discover the dolls and recognize them as the ones that had belonged to his sisters. He wanted them destroyed, and he asked Engel and his wife for them. But both Engel and Mrs Mary refused to hand them over. So he thought their clothes should be changed. It was my wife, as she said, who made the dresses.”
“What about this one?” the inspector asked, pointing to the blue doll.
“Carin Nolan was living in Norway. After the death of her grandfather, the doll was sent to Christiana from the Transvaal.”
“But, Mrs Alton, didn’t you tell your husband you’d lost it?”
“I don’t remember,” the widow replied. And she wrinkled her forehead. “The fact is, I had grown fond of the doll and wouldn’t let Harry have it back, or maybe I asked him to let me have it. I don’t remember. Maybe I said both those things. Harry was very suspicious, and not easy to deceive. But I don’t see what importance—”
“In fact, it doesn’t have any.”
“It’s definitely true about the clothes,” Engel suddenly exclaimed. “One day, Harry came to me and he himself changed the dress in front of my very eyes. The blue dress was burnt in the fireplace in my room.”
“Mr Flemington, read the will!”
Flemington stood up. He was clearly disturbed. He hesitated before walking to the black suitcase he’d left on the chair after putting it there in order to find the letter signed by Julius Lessinger.
“Inspector, you must take responsibility for reading the will at such a dangerous time.”
“It’s essential, Mr Flemington.” De Vincenzi looked one by one at the people surrounding him. Anxious expectancy was written on each face—everyone’s except for Besesti’s. He’d collapsed after his confession, elbows on the table, head in his hands, looking down. He remained immobile.
Flemington opened the suitcase and took out a large black leather portfolio. He went back to the table and drew from that an oversized envelope bearing five red seals. On the reverse, one could see four or five lines of the heavy, deliberate handwriting De Vincenzi had already noticed on the letter written by the major to his wife.
Flemington sat down. He read from the envelope he was holding:
To be opened after my death in the presence of the three dolls and Douglas Layng, Carin Nolan, Vilfredo Engel, Pompeo Besesti, Mary Alton. The reading must take place in The Hotel of the Three Roses in Milan (Italy). It must be read personally by the lawyer George Flemington, who will be accompanied by h
is wife, Mrs Diana Flemington.
The lawyer raised his head to look at his wife. Diana Flemington immediately stopped crying. Flemington’s nervous fingers lifted the red seals, one after another.
“Do you have a knife?”
Da Como was the first to get up and hold out a long penknife, which he’d opened. He returned to his chair in the corner. Flemington glanced at the open door, then at the inspector. De Vincenzi got up and closed the door. The blade of the penknife cut through the envelope, and Flemington’s fingers drew out a large sheet of paper folded in four. The reading of Harry Alton’s will was brief.
I leave all I possess to the three dolls, once the property of Donald Lessinger’s daughters. They alone are my legitimate heirs. The benefit of the goods which the dolls will thus possess shall be enjoyed by those to whom they have been entrusted. The doll temporarily given to my wife must be returned immediately to Douglas Layng after the reading of this will. Although the capital shall remain secure and inalienable, the usufruct shall be transferred from the three owners of the dolls to their own natural heirs until their extinction, at which time the life interest shall be enjoyed by the British Red Cross. This is my will, which my legal adviser and friend George Flemington will see carried out and respected. I, Harry Alton, being of sound mind and body, do hereby wish and decree.
Sydney, November 1919
A deathly silence followed the lawyer’s words. Mary Alton stood up. She held the doll to her chest, her fingers wrapped tightly around it. Her pallor was waxen.
“What does it mean?”
Flemington turned to look at her.
“It means, Mrs Alton, that your husband is not leaving you a cent of his possessions.”
“It’s not possible! That is not my husband’s will!” Her voice was cutting and the words forced through her teeth. Her whole body was shaking.
“What are you trying to imply?” Flemington asked.
De Vincenzi quietly watched Mary Alton. She had changed completely. Her violet eyes had turned into tiny, flashing emeralds. Her passionate, red-painted lips were now an open wound on a bloodless face.
The Hotel of the Three Roses Page 17