‘I thought so,’ said the woman. Witch. Neapolitan witch, thought Giuli in a panic. Then the woman smiled, a crooked little smile. ‘I was the same,’ she said, ‘with my first. Throwing up left, right and centre.’
Giuli pulled off her helmet, and a gust soaked her. ‘It’s about the friend,’ she said. ‘The woman, Gianna Marte, the mother’s carer.’
The Neapolitan stepped back, frowning, and admitted her into the hallway, but no further. She closed the door. ‘I thought you were her coming back,’ she said.
‘What?’ said Giuli.
‘She just left,’ said the woman, and when Giuli whipped round to look down the narrow, empty street she sighed. ‘I mean, like, ten minutes ago. Fifteen.’
‘Left for where?’
The concierge shrugged. ‘Search me,’ she said. ‘My guess is back there. To the old lady. To the big house.’
‘She was on foot?’
‘Moped,’ said the Neapolitan, gesturing towards Giuli’s. Giuli frowned. Something about that struck the wrong note, somehow – but she supposed everyone rode a moped these days. Though not Luisa.
‘What did she come for?’ said Giuli.
The woman looked crafty. ‘She said she wanted to collect some of Miss Benedetta’s things.’
‘But?’
‘She went straight for the bedside cabinet,’ said the concierge, folding her arms across her front. ‘I told her –’ hesitating ‘– I told her a friend of Miss Benedetta’s had taken it already. The scrapbook. She wasn’t pleased. I mean, I don’t know any German but it sounded nasty.’
‘German?’ Giuli shivered abruptly, out of nowhere.
The concierge shrugged again, ‘Sounded like it,’ and extended a hand to Giuli’s thin soaked jacket. ‘You’ll catch your death,’ she said. ‘You want to come in and sit down? I could call your – husband?’
‘No, wait –’ said Giuli. She did feel odd. Cold.
The woman sighed. ‘Please yourself,’ she said. ‘Anyway, she asked about you and the older lady.’
‘Luisa,’ said Giuli, her voice sounding far off. There was a roaring in her ears and she didn’t know if it was the wind or her own blood. Luisa out there. She groped for her phone to make sure the message had gone to Sandro.
The woman was still speaking. ‘I guess it was her baby too –’ and there was a hesitation in which the word hung in the air ‘– the scrapbook, I mean. Their … project. The last time she came, three, four days ago, it was her brought the newspapers. A pile of ’em.’
‘Her.’ The single word came out like a gasp. The sharp little face peered up into hers, swimming. ‘You saw it too, didn’t you?’ said Giuli and the face tilted. They’d all seen it and all pretended they hadn’t. A smudge on the edge of the clipping pasted in, a smudge of a larger stain underneath that looked like blood.
The Neapolitan looked at her with curiosity. ‘Look here,’ she said, and Giuli was leaning on her small figure suddenly, more heavily than she would like. She felt a sweat break over her, felt her belly like a stone: she knew she was bleeding. Looking down, as if from a height, she saw that her phone was in her hand still and she raised it, her hand shaking. The woman’s hands under her arms.
‘Enzo,’ she said. ‘My husband’s Enzo.’ And the phone fell to the floor with a clatter as she fainted for the third time that day.
*
It took five minutes to reach the top of the road where it turned into a gravelled space, bounded by the trees where she entered it and what looked like a high black wall. Luisa could still discern no lights. Warily she entered the space and looked up: the sky was a deep inky blue, with clouds moving fast across it. There was no moon. She walked by the wall, holding a hand up to the rough plaster to feel her way, turned the corner and was in a courtyard. A rectangle of gloomy greenish light falling from a window high up illuminated a central well under an iron lid, shuttered windows and three steps up to a doorway. The space dripped with a strange echo. Luisa shivered: she was soaked to the skin but it was more than that.
She’d been here before. Servants’ entrance. And as she remembered she swayed, dizzy a moment, feeling that the high walls of the courtyard were tipping around her. The thunder rolled again and as it ebbed she thought she heard something else, a thin high sound, not quite human, not earthly, coming from inside the building. In that moment she wanted only to turn around and leave – but she stood her ground. She walked: she came around the battened well and climbed the three stone steps. A cheap plastic bell-push sat beside a rusted iron handle, and after a moment’s hesitation she pressed it.
A woman she assumed was a maid answered the door, in an embroidered red linen pinny, peering at her. A cavernous hallway sat behind her and there was a familiar scent of baking. ‘Yes?’ said the woman, her sharp voice at odds with the sweet, comforting smell and the apron, and Luisa took a step closer on the doorstep, listening. She could hear nothing.
She held out her hand. ‘I’m Luisa Cellini,’ she said.
‘Cellini?’ said the woman, turning her name over as if she wasn’t sure if she knew it. ‘What is it you want?’
Taking another step forward, Luisa saw her face, whiteskinned, pale-grey eyes, braids folded across the top of her head. ‘I’m a friend of Benedetta’s,’ she said, trying to sound casual. ‘And of the princess, as a matter of fact, from long ago. At the hospital, Mr Bartolini said they were bringing her home. I know it’s late but I was worried about her. Could I –?’
‘Mr Bartolini has gone out,’ the woman said more uncertainly. Her accent was singsong.
‘I see,’ said Luisa pleasantly. She gave it a moment, then said. ‘I wonder if I could have a minute with her, Benedetta? I mean, just sit by her.’
‘Was it you called her earlier?’ The maid’s voice rose, anxious.
‘No,’ said Luisa, wary, feeling herself go still, but the woman was fretting now, unburdening herself.
‘Mr Bartolini had told me to take her phone away so she could rest but I had forgotten. I heard it ring –’ She hesitated, and took a step backwards, and let Luisa in. Carefully, she closed the door behind them and glanced up the stairs. ‘I didn’t mean to listen.’ She sighed. ‘Whoever it was upset her.’
‘I thought I heard someone cry out,’ said Luisa, ‘just now.’
But the woman shook her head a little. ‘That was Madam,’ she said. ‘The princess. She has her moments – I’ve just given her the medication, she’ll settle down, it takes twenty minutes or so.’ Glancing up the stairs anxiously again. ‘Perhaps you could go and see Miss Benedetta. You seem – your husband is the policeman, is that right?’
‘Yes,’ said Luisa, wondering how even this random person knew.
The maid was wiping her hands on her apron agitatedly. ‘I’ll take you up,’ she said.
Obediently, Luisa followed her broad behind up the wide stone staircase. Portraits were hung all the way up, obscure in the dim lighting; Luisa supposed they must be economising on electricity, forcing herself to think of that, mundane thoughts to calm the pattering of her heart. ‘Where did Mr Bartolini go?’ she asked as they climbed. She didn’t want to talk to him: she wanted access to Benedetta and he would stop her. She knew that suddenly. ‘Back into the city?’
‘Oh, no, down to the bar, no doubt,’ said the maid, not bothering to turn around, ‘or to her house, they’re thick as thieves these days – ’ But then she broke off to cast a quick glance over her shoulder, as if to remind herself who she was talking to, and clamped her mouth shut.
They stopped on the first floor, the piano nobile, and the long landing stretched out to either side of them, doors at regular intervals that would lead to the large rooms at the front of the house, just as Luisa had remembered it. The soaring painted ceiling, the intaglio tiles, the little gilded tables, the portraits and at either end a long shuttered window. There was a smell of church incense and floor wax and the house was very still and silent around them.
‘Thick as thieves?’
said Luisa stupidly.
The maid regarded her. ‘Miss Benedetta’s room is at the end,’ she said. ‘The little salotto. We – the ladies sleep on this floor, as the family doesn’t use it for entertaining any more and the stairs are too much for the princess.’
‘Thank you,’ said Luisa. ‘You’re very kind.’
And as if the words sparked something in her, the maid said, ‘I don’t know what he sees in her, I’m sure. Dressed like a man and a good five years older than him.’
‘Maria Clara Martinelli?’ said Luisa. ‘That’s where Mr Bartolini is, with her?’
The woman nodded, fidgeting, then blurted, as if confessing, ‘It was Mr Bartolini told me about the truffles, and I passed it on to Giancarlo. Will you tell him that? Your husband?’
‘Yes,’ said Luisa, without the faintest idea what the woman was on about.
Then the maid subsided. ‘You want me to show you in?’
‘That’s fine,’ said Luisa, but something was wrong.
The woman was halfway down the stairs, gliding in her haste on soft slippered feet, and then Luisa realised what that scent that hung around her was, the smell of foreign baking: gingerbread. ‘Gianna?’ she called, and the woman turned. ‘You’re Gianna Marte?’
The maid was at the foot of the stairs and she turned, bobbed her answer, yes, and was gone, flicking the lower light off behind her. Luisa stared after her. Fair-skinned, blonde, sweet-scented, German-inflected – but this wasn’t the woman she’d seen at the hospital. The deep gloom of the empty stairwell mocked her – and then from along the landing Luisa heard a groan.
Tiptoeing along the smooth old tile of the gallery, she remembered what Gianna Marte had said about medication – and the ladies. So both of them were here, the princess and Benedetta. She pushed open the first door and the great salon yawned, cold and dark, the only light the rectangle shed in from the landing. The dust-sheeted shapes of chaises and hard armchairs sat muffled in the dark, gilded side tables and armoires ranged along the walls and the three long windows. The room where Luisa had pinned Benedetta into her wedding dress, thirty metres of duchesse satin and bugle beads, and where the old prince had stood at the window and looked down. Silently, she pulled the door closed and moved along. There were two more doors: Benedetta’s was on the end. She knew that. But the princess’s medication might yet have to take effect. She stopped. Gingerly, she turned the ebony handle of the painted door and took a step inside.
The room was dim, but not dark, and between the two long windows a four-poster sat, its heavy draperies concealing the pillows until Luisa took a step, then another, into the room. Behind her the door creaked shut. The Princess Salieri, whom she had not seen in five years, more, was propped up on her pillows with her arms laid straight in front of her, stiff as a doll. She was thinner – so much thinner. The flesh had fallen away from her face so it was all hollows and shadows, the eyes dark pools, and Luisa must have made a sound because she spoke, her voice as piercingly aristocratic as it had ever been.
‘Who goes there?’ And then a rusty laugh that turned into a despairing cough. Luisa took three, four steps and she was there, beside the bed. The princess’s skeletal hand lifted and fell, patting, and gingerly Luisa sat.
‘Luisa Venturelli,’ said the princess, and on the pillow her head tilted, interrogative, and then she gave a sudden yawn. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, making as if to lift a hand to her mouth but giving up. ‘You’re married to the policeman but I can’t remember his name.’ The words came more slowly now, an edge of slurring.
‘I’ve come to see Benedetta,’ said Luisa, and the heavy lids that had been drooping lifted, like a doll’s. The princess’s eyes were dark and filmy, and she let out a sigh, and then the cough was back. Luisa saw a glass of water on the side table and offered it.
‘That child,’ said the princess, craning her neck to take a sip. ‘That child.’ And her hand fluttered, waving the glass away. ‘You see what she’s done now?’
‘What has she done?’
The princess looked at her, judicious, and then her eyes turned vague, crafty.
‘They told me,’ she said, ‘but I can’t remember.’ The hand came up, slow, slow, and just when Luisa thought it would fall back, the forefinger, no more than bone, reached her temple, tapping claw-like before dropping to her side. ‘They think I’m gaga,’ she said, and her face twisted in what Luisa did not immediately recognise as a smile.
‘What happened to Benedetta?’ said Luisa in a whisper. ‘What happened to her baby?’
The old head moved restlessly on the pillow. ‘What he did was none of my business,’ she said. ‘He took her down there with him – well, she was his daughter, after all, how was I to prevent them?’ Her lip curled. Luisa knew she was talking about her husband and Benedetta. ‘And she came back pregnant. I told her it was out of the question to have the child. A child whose father is unknown? Not only unknown but –’ She struggled on the pillow and gave up, sitting back again. ‘She was always headstrong. Well, she got more than she bargained for. Men from the street. The village butcher. I did wonder even if Alberto – but women weren’t to his taste. If I’d given him a son …’ and her face turned away, the beaked profile against the white pillow.
Luisa stared and stared, her eyes feeling hard and round as boiled sweets with the staring. But the old lady was talking again, dreamy, slow. ‘It was simply a medical matter. I told her. The doctor came to the house. I told her it was for the best. And then of course a marriage had to be arranged, in a hurry. Switzerland – to get her out of the way, before people talked, before she talked.’
This was disinhibition. Luisa had heard of it. The elderly said what they liked without fear. The only thing to fear in the Princess Salieri’s case might be hell, but she probably didn’t believe in it. Luisa had to suppress a powerful urge to press the pillow over the woman’s face.
‘The silly girl ran away. While we were paying the doctor, Alberto and I. I could hardly be blamed for challenging his price, could I? Thieves, they’re all thieves …’ She seemed to drift a moment, back to some ancient quarrel with a long-dead tradesman, and then sighed. ‘Silly girl, ran straight back down there.’ On the bed the claw trembled, a finger raised. ‘She could have bled to death, the doctor said afterwards. Although, all things considered …’ The shoulders rose minutely in a shrug, the mouth downturned in distaste. ‘All things considered, she hasn’t amounted to anything.’
Luisa started up as though the bed underneath her had begun to burn and took a step, two steps backwards.
The face all planes and hollows turned on the pillow to look after her. ‘I remember,’ said the princess, quavering triumph in her voice, ‘I remember, d’you see. Not gaga. I remember what she’s done now.’ Patting the bedside table. ‘Benedetta told me, the little bitch told me. Left it all to charity, some do-gooder. But while I live …’ The smile trembled, ghastly. ‘While I live …’ and then the eyes closed, the lids quivered a moment and were still. On the pillow the head was motionless as marble. Either she had died or the medication had taken effect: Luisa found she didn’t much care which. She backed out of the room, carelessly hasty. On the landing, the house felt like a great tomb around her.
Do-gooder. The Neapolitan had called Benedetta’s friend a do-gooder, charity worker, churchgoer. The woman pretending association with the family, the woman Luisa had thought was Gianna Marte – until she’d seen Gianna Marte. The woman she had seen through a crack in the hospital bathroom door was not the woman who had opened the door to her.
M for Marte wasn’t M for Marte, after all. M for Martine.
Benedetta’s door, she saw as she got closer, wasn’t quite closed and warily she peered through the crack. A narrow bed against the wall, a humped shape in it. She pushed the door open. Where the princess’s room was grand this one was bare and cold and narrow, as though it had been carved out of a larger one. ‘Benedetta?’ she whispered, but the figure didn’t move. There was no sound.
With an awful feeling in her belly she came closer and put a gentle hand on the shape, but even before she leaned down to look for Benedetta’s face she knew. Too soft, too shapeless: she tugged back the blanket and there were pillows in the bed.
With an exclamation, she was out of the door and on the landing, flying, flying. ‘Miss Marte, Miss Marte,’ she called, her breathless voice echoing strangely in the lofty space, ‘Miss Marte,’ and the woman came out of the kitchen door wiping her hands on her apron, wary, frightened, looking very small in the lofty hallway as Luisa flew down the wide staircase and stopped, abruptly, in front of Gianna Marte.
‘What – what on earth is it? Is it madam? Is she –?’ The dark soft air of the great building hung around them like a cloak, muffling secrets.
‘No, no. It’s not. Not her. It’s Benedetta. Miss Benedetta. She’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ Gianna Marte made as if to push past her but Luisa stopped her with a stiff shake of her head.
‘You said someone called her. You said you didn’t mean to listen, but you did. Who called her? What did you hear?’
‘I – I –’ The woman’s face was slack with panic.
‘Come on,’ said Luisa, seizing her.
‘Miss Benedetta was saying something about a baby,’ said Marte, uneasy, struggling to get free. ‘Look, let me –’ Luisa released her. ‘Something about a baby that needed her.’ She stood sullen. ‘You had to keep her away from babies. Miss Benedetta was – she always wanted to hold them. One time –’
‘Could you tell if it was a man or a woman on the phone?’ said Luisa, interrupting her. There had been a time when Sandro had had to lead her away from the mere sight of a pushchair in the street – the worst were those papooses, the soft head, the tiny legs … ‘Think,’ she said.
‘How should I –?’ Then Marte stopped, pale brows drawn together under the stupid plaited hairstyle. ‘Woman,’ she said, her face clearing. ‘She said, “I know you’re my friend, my only friend,” and she said amica not amico. The woman seemed to be persuading her of something.’ She tilted her head. ‘Mr Bartolini was very glad when it seemed she had a friend, years ago. We never met her.’
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