The Viper

by Christobel Kent

  Cut and run.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE FEELING OF DREAD CAME, unexpected, as they took the narrow turning off the strada statale towards Sant’Anna.

  It had seemed to take them forever to get going. Pietro had been summoned to a meeting with the super, there’d been paperwork to file and Sandro suspected both were connected with his secondment to the case. Perhaps they were having second thoughts about using him as a consultant: he half-wished they were.

  The scene of the crime. He knew what you had to do was talk – talk to people and watch them as they talked back. But these people had closed their doors, they wouldn’t talk. And at the thought of Sant’Anna he got a shifting, shadowy feeling, like the dark river at night, the river that whispered as it flowed black beyond the parapets, sliding under the bridges. The feeling that came when he thought of the place where it had happened: the woodland path; the tumbledown hut; La Vipera itself. That house.

  Sandro had collected his ancient brown Fiat from where he kept it under the trees of the Via Romana, the roof plastered with birdshit and dead leaves, and went to meet Pietro in the Piazza Tasso. The incredulous laugh at the passenger window: it had been a while since he had been in Sandro’s car.

  ‘Business good, then?’ said Pietro, but he knew that even if business had been booming Sandro wouldn’t have traded in this car. He would drive it till it dropped.

  He might have upgraded it if Luisa ever drove, but she’d gone off it after the baby, so almost thirty years ago. Luisa had slowly come back to life in small ways, out of the house, back to work, but something about driving still panicked her. He never mentioned it.

  ‘What if some big job comes in,’ said Pietro, climbing in, brushing down the passenger seat with a comical grimace, ‘someone you need to impress?’ Sandro just gave him a look. They’d set off, out up towards Poggio Imperiale, under the green shade of the long avenue of trees where the groomed gardens of the wealthy sat behind high walls, and as he drove Sandro pondered. Luisa had sounded odd on the phone. Not herself.

  ‘Luisa told me she was in the emergency room at Santa Maria Nuova this morning and Benedetta Salieri was brought in,’ he said abruptly to Pietro, eyes on the road. They were sailing round the hillside high above the red-roofed city now, in the striated shade of the huge leaning umbrella pines. ‘Took an overdose, reading between the lines.’

  ‘The daughter?’ Pietro was interested. ‘I hadn’t heard.’ Hospitals were supposed to report drug overdoses.

  ‘Well, early days, isn’t it,’ said Sandro. ‘It could have been prescription drugs. And we all know they sometimes give the patient the benefit of the doubt, don’t we?’

  ‘What was Luisa doing in the emergency room?’ asked Pietro, and then, not waiting for an answer, ‘Who did she talk to? Who brought Benedetta in?’

  ‘The brother, apparently,’ said Sandro. ‘Or half-brother.’

  ‘Right,’ said Pietro thoughtfully.

  ‘And you said Bartolini was away when – well, for both murders?’

  Pietro nodded. ‘The lads spoke to the Greek friend – Bartolini was quite free with the number – that he’d stayed with in Paros. Apparently he didn’t leave the island for his whole stay. I also got the name of the –’ he cleared his throat ‘– rest home where he spent the ten days with his sister. Actually, I called the place this morning, it’s up in the lakes, and they confirmed that they were both there when Lotti was killed. Left four days ago.’

  Sandro shifted at the wheel, obscurely disappointed. He’d have liked to make that call himself. It felt uneasy, coming in to this late, after uniformed officers had already been in there. Greece wasn’t far away, he observed in stubborn silence. The lakes even closer. He didn’t know what he had in for Luca Bartolini, except a certain warmth in Luisa’s voice when she’d mentioned him. A certain hurry, too, as if to distract him. One of the advantages, or maybe disadvantages, of four decades together: it was like being the same person, sometimes.

  They were on the superstrada now, leaving the city behind. The car rattled and jolted. The old road was in a terrible state, patched and potholed. The woodland to either side was still in full leaf, the colour only turning slightly here and there, and the trees overhung the carriageway, turning it dark.

  ‘He showed me pictures on his phone,’ Pietro went on, ‘Bartolini did. I didn’t get as far as asking for corroboration or dates, but …’ He shrugged as if to say, you know what it’s like. These big houses. And then he surprised Sandro by saying, ‘But maybe we should.’

  As if on cue, as they rounded a curve in the road a row of black cypresses came into view, leading up to a villa surmounting a hill – two hills, in fact. Grand houses were ten a penny in this part of the region, their owners always moaning about the upkeep and the taxes. Worth a fortune, though, and the Salieri place was close to town.

  ‘We didn’t speak to any of them back then,’ Sandro said, uneasy. ‘Why would we? We did go up there, just a formality, to see if they had any complaints about the house. There was an old caretaker, told us the family had gone to the sea for the summer.’

  He’d forgotten the visit completely, but now it came back to him: a violently windy day, one of those August tempests whipping up the Arno and sending tiles off roofs and showers of leaves down the drive to the Salieri place. Rather late in the season still to be at the seaside. The big ornamental gates had been locked, and although they had rung and rung the doorbell set into one of the stone pedestals, it had taken the old man forever to appear, with his truffle-dog. Truffles were like gold: maybe that’s how the Salieri managed the upkeep.

  ‘Benedetta, though –’ Sandro hesitated. ‘Did you say she was in the city in the summer?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Pietro thoughtfully. ‘And I wonder what the prompt was for this suicide attempt. I mean, it could have something to do with all this?’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Sandro. ‘It’s possible that just reading about a murder on her doorstep could do it. If she was fragile. Luisa said she’d been fragile for years.’ He didn’t much like the idea of talking to Benedetta Salieri: mental illness was very hard to interrogate. He glanced sideways at Pietro, who was chewing his lip.

  ‘Well, when we were up there, there was no evidence of Benedetta,’ Pietro said at last. ‘Marte said something about her living in town, not at home.’

  ‘She sounds very co-operative,’ said Sandro and Pietro frowned this time, not in a joking mood, obviously.

  ‘She didn’t really talk about her employers, for obvious reasons, not under their roof. We certainly should talk to the brother again,’ he said stiffly. ‘I can see you’d like to get up to the grand house. You have to understand, at that stage I didn’t know if Manzoni would agree to getting you involved.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Sandro mildly, although it did intrigue him, the big house he’d never been allowed up to last time. ‘He’s probably still at the hospital.’

  Beside him Pietro said nothing.

  ‘I’d like to talk to the maid, though, or housekeeper, whatever she is,’ Sandro persevered. Pietro grunted. And he said nothing more until they reached the exit for Sant’Anna.

  Sandro wondered if he’d taken offence. It was only to be expected, he told himself, resuming a relationship after such a gap. A little awkwardness. He wondered again what the boss had wanted Pietro in for. The journey was no more than half an hour, and Sandro had been about to get up the nerve to ask when the turning came, out of the blue, along with that bad feeling, and he had forgotten the question.

  They’d driven past signs to Sant’Anna since, he and Luisa, on their way down to the sea or driving off to other woods on a sudden urge of Luisa’s to pick mushrooms or forage for chestnuts. He always noticed the sign; once or twice he thought Luisa did too but neither of them ever said anything.

  Sandro swung the wheel and almost immediately the first houses of the hamlet that was Sant’Anna came into sight, a bell-tower beyond them. It had been so
long and it was all so familiar. The faded lettering of an advertisement for some longgone amaro painted on the flank of a house. La Vipera’s graffiti, or whatever it had been scrawled across its wall, came into his mind, a monstrous advertisement for their careless way of life.

  ‘There,’ said Pietro, breaking in on his thoughts as he pointed to a small stone house on the edge of the village, its window boxes bright with geraniums. ‘Marte lives there. I checked with her before we left, and she said to meet her at home, not up at the Salieri place.’

  Sandro pulled in. ‘So you’d already –?’

  Pietro permitted himself a tight smile. ‘I know you,’ he said.

  *

  You could tell Gianna Marte wasn’t from these parts. She wore her greying blonde hair in a coiled bun at the back of her head and was very bright eyed, very eager, very wholesome, with a singsong edge to her accent. She brought with her a whiff of gingerbread.

  They sat at a table covered with an embroidered cloth while she made them her special herbal tea. ‘Madam enjoys it,’ she said, laying out pot, cups, saucers. The tea was yellow and tasted of absolutely nothing to Sandro, who wished for a small strong coffee but didn’t say so. She came, she explained before they had even asked, from a village on the Swiss border. She kept dimpling shyly at Pietro.

  ‘And how did you get the job down here?’ he asked politely. ‘Didn’t Benedetta – Miss – the princess’s daughter move there at one time?’

  She smiled again, not answering. Very discreet. ‘Cookie?’ she said, pushing a plate of flower-shaped biscuits towards him.

  ‘So,’ Sandro said. ‘You knew Mr Lotti.’ Her eyes went round as saucers and she dimpled at Pietro again, as if asking permission, but there was a flush to her now. She shifted in her seat and fussed with the cup and saucer in front of her.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gianna Marte, her mouth set in a line. ‘He was friendly. He suggested once or twice that we might visit the cinema together and I – well, he was considerably older than me, you understand, and I wasn’t quite sure what he –’

  ‘I understand,’ said Sandro. ‘But you were on good terms? You hadn’t actually turned him down?’

  Her flush deepened. ‘Not in so many words, no,’ she said. ‘Yes, we were on good terms. I think he had hopes, you know.’ She nodded at a garish teapot on a shelf above the stove. ‘He bought me gifts.’

  Sandro glanced up at it. ‘Very nice,’ he said, standing for a closer look out of politeness. It was hideous and vaguely familiar.

  Marte sniffed, extracting a balled tissue from her apron pocket. ‘He brought me that back from the city barely two weeks ago.’

  ‘From Florence?’ She nodded. Sandro lifted it and looked on the base, where the potter’s mark had been pressed into the clay.

  ‘You had an opportunity to observe his habits?’ Pietro prompted from the kitchen table and she smiled, more happily now. Sandro set the pot back down and returned to the table.

  ‘I did,’ she said, her head bobbing up and down, obedient. ‘As I told you, Commissario, Mr Lotti didn’t usually walk his dog up at that end of the village. Not many people went up there, they – it’s cold. Damp. The sun doesn’t reach that far up the valley, not even in summer.’

  ‘Not many people?’ Sandro was gentle, diffident.

  ‘Only that Martinelli, she lives up there. She and Lotti were not friends, so perhaps that’s why he didn’t –’ She broke off, the flush returning. ‘She was rather unpleasant, as a matter of fact. When she saw me speaking to him, she gave me such a horrible look. Only a couple of weeks ago, not long before –’ She sniffed, clutching a napkin to her mouth. ‘He told me she didn’t like him. He said she was an old prude. They’d had an argument over something or other, long ago. He wouldn’t tell me what, he only seemed to find it rather amusing.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Pietro. ‘You didn’t mention that last time.’

  ‘People in this village are the least friendly I have ever met,’ Marte burst out. ‘Mr Lotti was the only one who would talk to me. Must I just stay inside my house silent when I’m not at work, keep my mouth shut and mind my own business? And now he’s dead.’

  Pietro patted her gingerly on the shoulder. ‘Please don’t upset yourself, Miss Marte. I can quite see there’s not much in the way of conversation at your place of work.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ she said, subsiding. ‘Mr Bartolini is very – he is a gentleman, good-mannered but hardly says a word when he’s here.’

  ‘He was away all the summer?’ She nodded. He pressed her further, ‘And more recently?’

  ‘He came back in the third week of August and, almost immediately, off he went again. Taking his sister away on – well, they called it a retreat. He said it would be good for both of them. She has these – she has nerves.’

  ‘Benedetta Salieri doesn’t live at the villa?’

  Marte folded her arms complacently across her front. ‘She has her own place in town, some fancy place, she’s supposed to live there. Only, when she has one of her turns –’ She stopped, discreet again.

  ‘What are they like? These episodes?’ asked Pietro quickly.

  ‘Hysterics,’ said Gianna Marte, putting a hand up to smooth her bun. ‘Honestly, I think they indulge her. They call it depression but … she pretends to harm herself. Rants and raves. And then off she goes to a luxury hotel –’ She checked herself, smiled more stiffly. ‘Anyway. You haven’t touched your tea!’ Reproving. Sandro suppressed a prick of irritation. ‘Eat up!’

  Pietro obediently picked up a biscuit and nibbled. ‘And when she has one of her turns?’ he said.

  ‘Off goes poor Mr Bartolini to look after her. I suppose that’s family, and his mother’s hardly able to look after herself.’

  ‘Could we go up there to see her, do you think?’ said Sandro. ‘The Princess Salieri?’

  ‘You could,’ Marte said doubtfully. ‘She’s usually asleep by now, though. When I left her, she’d already taken her pill, and Mr Bartolini said he would be back late.’

  Sandro looked down at the tea. ‘Did Benedetta Salieri know Mr Lotti?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Marte firmly. ‘If she was here she never went into the village. Agora-something. Hysterics.’

  ‘Agoraphobia?’ said Sandro. ‘Was she here this summer?’

  ‘She stayed in town.’ She shrugged. ‘So there’s no one for me to talk to,’ she went on. ‘The princess, God bless her,’ and she crossed herself, several times, ‘Madam, I mean, she has almost stopped talking. It used to be going over the old days, when her husband was alive, the dresses she used to wear, the balls they used to attend – I quite enjoyed that – and now she says nothing. Not a thing.’ She sniffed again and put down her crumpled napkin.

  ‘So,’ said Sandro gently, ‘the last time you spoke to Mr Lotti would have been when Mrs Martinelli saw you together?’

  Her lip quivered. ‘I suppose it was,’ she said.

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said he –’ A tiny wrinkle appeared above her nose. ‘He said he wanted to invite me to dinner. He intended to cook truffles for me.’ Again the blush. ‘He was sometimes a little … perhaps a little crude. He asked me if I knew they were an aphrodisiac. He was very pleased because he –’ she hesitated ‘– he knew where to find them.’

  ‘Did he say,’ Sandro kept his voice light, pondering that hesitation, ‘did he say who’d told him? About the truffles? A friend?’ Watching her, he saw the pink of her cheeks deepen, just faintly.

  ‘I think he overheard it,’ she said airily. ‘Perhaps in the bar?’ She smiled, as if pleased with her deduction. ‘He did drink in the bar. Brandy. In fact, that was where we were when he asked me. About the truffles.’

  Sandro heard it, the sound he was tuned to: dishonesty. He held her gaze and the pink deepened further. She looked down into her lap a second then up again. ‘Well,’ and again she compressed her lips, ‘it might have been – I might have heard it myself. And passed it on to h
im.’

  ‘And where did you hear it?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ she said.

  Sandro tilted his head, inquiring. ‘You can’t remember?’ he said.

  She shook her head tightly. ‘I honestly can’t! Isn’t that funny? Perhaps in the supermarket. In the next village?’

  A silence that grew. Her smile fixed. Sandro and Pietro exchanged glances. ‘You’ve been so helpful, Miss Marte,’ said Pietro, pushing his chair back.

  Gianna Marte got to her feet in a hurry, clattering the cups together. ‘Yes, well …’

  They offered her their thanks and left before she dropped all the cups on the floor.

  They walked back to the car, and Sandro became aware of Pietro falling into silence. ‘So Miss Marte heard about the truffles somewhere but she’s not saying where,’ said Sandro to fill it. ‘All that can’t remember nonsense. Someone told her in confidence? She’s afraid of giving away someone’s truffle secrets? I know it’s a cutthroat business but still. And if there were truffles around here these woods would be a lot more popular.’

  ‘Maybe she really can’t remember,’ said Pietro.

  Sandro glanced sideways. ‘Those dimples, is it? I didn’t know you were susceptible, Pietro. I wonder if Bartolini is. After all, she didn’t have a bad word to say about him, did she?’ No answer. ‘I was wondering, perhaps we could just go and peer in at Lotti’s place? You know, just to get the feel of it?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Pietro, but he wasn’t meeting Sandro’s eyes.

  ‘So what else did we learn?’ Sandro persevered. Pietro had never been such hard work. ‘That Martinelli and Lotti had a row and Benedetta really is a nutjob – but unless Marte is covering for her, she wasn’t out here but in town when Nielsson was killed.’ There was no response so he mused on. ‘Town’s not the other side of the world, of course, and Johanna Nielsson had to get out here somehow. Did she drive herself in the camper and if so where is it?’

  Pietro just jammed his hands in his pockets.