Daggers and Men's Smiles (10 page)

“Alfieri. Bella Alfieri. Highly competent and completely reliable.”

“Good.” Moretti stood up. “I was hoping to speak to some of your lead actors, but I see from the schedule they're filming right now. It will have to wait until tomorrow — oh, did you know that Mr. Ensor says his wife is missing?”

“No, I didn't.” Monty Lord seemed genuinely surprised.

“Does she have a function of any kind?”

“Apart from being Gilbert's minder, you mean? Not officially. They've had some godawful fights since we started shooting, but there's no doubt he behaves better when she's around — or else she takes the crap he usually hands out to others. She is — was — a gifted woman. Gave it all up for that shit — what we do for love, as the song says, eh, Inspector?”

“Yes.”

It was time to move on and end the interview. Moretti was beginning to worry about his assumption that Sydney Tremaine was safe, and anxious to get back to town. As he opened the door of the trailer, he asked Monty Lord, “What do you know about Giulia Vannoni? I don't see her on the list we were given.”

“No — I only wish she were part of Epicure Italia. That's one hell of a dame, brainy as well as beautiful. She's head honcho of the olive oil side of the business and she's turned it into an international success. A lot of the family's income comes courtesy of that lady's smarts.”

“Interesting. Thank you for your time, Mr. Lord.”

“You're welcome.”

“Oh, by the way, the story is that there's a tunnel leading from the house to the bunker.
Is
there one?”

Monty Lord shook his head. “There may have been once, but not anymore. If we'd gone farther into the bunker, you'd have seen that there are all kinds of other passages branching off the main tunnel, but they're all filled with debris, and some have caved in. I'm sure if one was still open into the manor, the marchesa would know about it.”

The producer came to the door of the trailer and closed it as Moretti went down the steps.

Liz Falla was waiting for him back in the courtyard. She seemed excited.

“Good guess, Guv,” were her first words when Moretti joined her. “Giulia Vannoni left on that motorbike with Mrs. Ensor riding pillion. There were quite a few eyewitnesses. Tongues are wagging.”

“Why didn't anyone tell Ensor?”

“A conspiracy of silence, Guv. Most people hate his guts, and got a kick out of seeing him sweat. Besides, as one of the cameramen said to me, ‘Let him get a taste of his own medicine.'”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that Ensor plays the field — boys
and
girls, if you get me.”

“What a charmer.”

“I got the address of Giulia Vannoni from the art director, who's a friend of hers. Seems she has a place here she uses from time to time — somewhere out near Icart Point. She's close to her aunt, so he says.”

“Interesting. Let's get back into town. I'll have to report to Chief Officer Hanley before too long.”

As they returned along the winding lanes that led to St. Peter Port, Moretti found himself thinking about love. About the marchese and the marchesa, still married, who lived coldly apart. About the tears of a young girl for whom kind words were as precious as the passion she felt for her risky choice of lover. About a redhead and a blonde on a scarlet and black Ducati, with the salt wind of the island blowing through their hair.

Fracas
.

That was it. The name of the perfume. Uproar. Chaos.

He still couldn't remember the name of the girl. But he knew it hadn't been Valerie.

Her heart was beating hard enough to burst the thin cotton of her shirt — as hard as the blows she would have liked to have given him, to wipe the taunting smile off her husband's face. When Sydney Tremaine found herself in the corridor outside the marchesa's sitting room, she was shaking with suppressed rage, the humiliation of being insulted in front of the civilized and quiet-spoken detective inspector. If they had been on their own, she would have picked up the nearest blunt object — anything that would have served as a missile — and thrown it at Gil.

What should she do now? Wait meekly around until the interview was over, babysit Gil for the remainder of the day, as she usually did, and then return to their hotel suite to scream and shout and rant at each other? Or to drink too much, have sex if Gil was not too drunk, and go to bed?

The prospect was appalling. Sydney leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she saw a figure at the end of the corridor. It was the woman who had arrived on the motorbike, the woman she had seen running along the cliff path — and whom she had told the detective inspector she didn't know.

“Wait!” Sydney started to run toward her.

The woman stood and waited, her hands on her hips. As Sydney got closer, she saw she was smiling.

“You are Sydney Tremaine, the ballerina.”

“Ex-ballerina. You are the jogger I saw on the cliff path near the Héritage Hotel.”

One finely pencilled eyebrow was raised. “I don't jog. I run. Yes. Giulia Vannoni.”

“You didn't hear me call out?”

“I hear nothing with my iPod. Not the birds, not the sea, nothing.”

She extended her hand and Sydney took it.

“Someone threw a dagger at my husband at about the same time.”

“So they tell me. And missed. If it had been me,
cara
, you would be wearing black right now.”

Sydney saw that Giulia Vannoni had green eyes but, unlike her own, they were long and slightly slanted, and they were looking challengingly at her.

“Why were you standing outside my aunt's study?” she asked. “Are you looking for her?”

“No. The detective inspector is questioning my husband. I — left. I didn't tell him that I saw you. I'm not sure why.”

“Ah? Perhaps you hope I will hit my target next time?”

The pent-up anger of the past few minutes — of the past few days, weeks, months — burst from Sydney Tremaine in a flood of tears. “Christ! No. Yes. I don't know!”

“Hey!”

Giulia Vannoni did not put her arms about her, pat her on the shoulder, talk in soothing tones. She took Sydney by the elbow and steered her toward the foyer that led out on to the terrace. “I've got to move my bike. Come on.”

The Ducati stood where Giulia had left it, with a small group of admirers around it — English and American crew members, and some Italian
macchinisti
, brought in to handle the equipment rented from Rome.

“Hey boys — don't touch!”

“The bike you mean, Signorina?”

Puzzled, Sydney watched Giulia Vannoni explode. Most Italian women she knew enjoyed such remarks, or dismissed them with a shrug or a humorous comment. But this Amazon turned on the man with a burst of such rapid Italian that Sydney missed most of the meaning, although the language was pungent enough to make the joker flinch. The crowd quietly withdrew.

“My new baby. Superbike eleven ninety-eight, special edition. Beautiful lines, great control.” Giulia was smiling again.

“I like the logo.”

“Pretty, isn't it? It is the emblem of many of my friends in Florence.” Giulia's smile grew wider. “Like a ride?”

Sydney indicated the intricately painted gold and black helmet with its dark visor hanging on the curved handlebar. “I don't have one of those,” she said.

“We'll find one. Come.”

Sydney found herself following Giulia and the Ducati around the side of the manor, along the path that had led to what she now thought of as her point of no return. One thing was certain: wherever the path and Giulia Vannoni were now taking her could be no more disturbing than the scene of violent death on the terrace. The shock of seeing Toni Albarosa with a dagger in his chest — a dagger that looked distressingly like the one that had landed on the hotel patio at Gil's feet — seemed to have deprived her of rational thought, and she was content to have this complete stranger decide what she should do next.

In an area to one side of the main courtyard, which was principally used for vehicles in the movie, were parked the hired limousines and the various cars, bikes, and motorbikes that belonged to the crew. Giulia propped up the Ducati and made for a line of motorbikes, sorting through any helmets that had been left as if she were in a store.

“No,
troppo grande
— mmm, no,
brutto — si
!” Triumphantly she held up a neat metallic black helmet with bronze highlights. “
Bello, perfetto
— from Roberto Stavrini, like mine. It will go with your hair.”

“But I can't —”

But she could. The helmet was placed on her head, the strap fastened beneath her chin.

“Eh — Cosimo!”

Giulia called out to a tall bearded man crossing the courtyard, and Sydney recognized the art director, Cosimo Del Grano, who was on his way to the building where the costumes were stored. “Lend us your jacket.”

“Darling, but why?” he protested, as Giulia started to remove his heavy denim jacket, kissing him profusely as she did so.

“Because, because,
caro
— I'll get it back to you.”

As the two talked and laughed, Sydney began to put together the pieces of the past few minutes: the jibe by the crew member and Giulia's reaction, the way Cosimo spoke to this woman, even the emblem on the Ducati. Could it be —?

The jacket was huge on her. Sydney rolled up the sleeves and hauled it across her body. She could feel her heartbeat quieting, the delicious irony of the situation easing her sense of desolation. It looked as if the whirligig of time was bringing in a revenge far sweeter than she herself could possibly have dreamed up, in her wildest and cruellest imaginings.

“Come on, Sydney,” said Giulia Vannoni. “Let's go.”

* * *

And go they did. Heart in mouth at first, Sydney felt every muscle in her body stiffen as they roared away, the wind blowing through her completely inadequate sandals, the Ducati accelerating rapidly as Giulia put it through its paces, winding along the lanes to the south of the Manoir Ste. Madeleine, smooth as the feel of Giulia's soft leather jacket beneath her hands. Gradually, Sydney found her own movements blending with Giulia's, much as she had learned to move with another dancer in a pas de deux, relying on the strength and expertise of her partner.

They seemed to be heading for the southern coastline of the island. In spite of their introductory tour, Sydney was vague about the geography of Guernsey, but she knew that this coastline — unlike the flatter, gentler western coastline where much of the filming would take place and where many of the wartime installations were to be found — was craggy and spectacular. Wild and beautiful, its cliffs and coves were breathtaking enough to have attracted the painter Renoir on a visit to the island. They turned yet another corner in a small, winding lane and Sydney saw a sliver of milky blue horizon beyond a cleft in the pine-covered slopes. Sydney felt herself slip toward Giulia as the Ducati descended a steep slope between the trees.

“See?” Giulia called over her shoulder, her words blown back by the wind. “
Mio castello
.”

Giulia's castle, set high above the sea, was one of the eighteenth-century Martello towers, built to protect the island against Napoleonic invasion. This one seemed to have been modified, because on top of the familiar circular construction with its tiny slit windows, was what appeared to be another storey, with wider windows, still elongated in shape. There was a stone wall encrusted with plants around the perimeter of a grassy enclosure, with a solid-looking gate set in it. Giulia brought the Ducati to a halt by the gate, and got off the bike.

“Here, let me give you a hand. I'll unlock this and we'll walk from here.”

“
Your
castle? I wouldn't have thought they allowed anyone to buy one of these,” said Sydney, removing her purloined helmet. She was grateful for the heavy jacket. They were high up, close to the edge of the cliff, and the wind was strong.

“Yes, it's mine. There are only one or two of these on private land — there's one out at L'Ancresse in the north of the island, I'm told — and I was lucky enough to be staying with my aunt when this one came on the market.”

“The marchesa is your aunt?”

“She is.”

Giulia pulled the Ducati through the gate, which she relocked. “Robbery is not such a problem here — it's the sightseers and nosey small
ragazzi
I want to keep away from the place,” she said.

For a moment, Sydney hesitated. Ahead of her, the Martello tower loomed, grey, cold and forbidding, like something out of a tale by Grimm. No attempt at decoration had been made to the exterior, and the area around it was unkempt, rough beneath her feet with exposed rock and long grasses. Above her head a flock of gulls wheeled with their hideous shriek. Ahead of her she saw that Giulia had unlocked the door of the tower and was pushing the Ducati inside.

Well
, she thought.
You've done dumber things in your life, woman
. And walked toward Giulia Vannoni.

“Welcome,” said Giulia, “to my
castello isola
.”

As Sydney stepped across the threshold, Giulia flicked a light switch by the door.

Sydney gasped.

Where the outside had been bleak and forbidding, the interior was warm, glowing with colour, ablaze with oranges, ruby reds, carmines, emerald and aqua, the glowing blue of stained-glass windows or Victorian enamels. Giulia was laughing as she flicked down the Ducati's stand, leaving it on a terrazzoed area by the door.

“That look of surprise on your face — you expected gloomy grey and black bleakness — no?”

“Yes. This is like — a secret garden.”

“That is nice. I am away so much I do not want those beyond the walls to guess at what lies inside. The lady at L'Ancresse has a picture window where there once was a gun, but no landscaping, no tearing out of these narrow slits for me. I make my own light. Always have done,
cara
. I like to feel — protected.”

Giulia's secret garden was contained in one circular room, with an iron circular staircase curling up close to one of the walls, its railings in
ferro battuto
, the spectacular wrought iron of Tuscany. The harsh stone of the round walls was largely hidden and softened by bronze silk curtains that had been used as an undulating backdrop, like an extra frame, for the paintings — most of them abstract, but again using the deep, glowing palette of their setting. Opposite the door through which they had entered, against a black wall — the one sombre note in the room — stood a bronze sculpture of a woman, arms raised as if she were about to dive on to the pale cinnamon terrazzo around the white translucent cube on which she stood, frozen in time.

I make my own light, Giulia had said, and it was the lighting that created the magic of her secret garden. Sconces in burnished metal mounted on the walls and standing on slender poles gave the feeling of candlelight to the space, while above their heads glittered a spectacular eighteenth-century Venetian chandelier.

“Where do you get the power from?” Sydney asked. “That's a practical question, not a philosophical one.”

Giulia laughed. “I have a generator. The Germans used this place during the war. The bigger problem was water, but there once was a house on the site, and there is a good well. Another practical question — are you hungry?”

“Starving. My last meal was at about five o'clock this morning.”

“Me too. Let us pour ourselves some wine and get something to eat. My kitchen, such as it is, is over here, by the lovely lady.”

To the right of the sculpture was a small space semi-concealed by a screen made of the same material as the translucent cube. Sydney stepped on to the carpet that covered most of the floor.

Beneath her feet rode a knight — from the red cross on his shield, it appeared to be St. George — a deep blue surcoat over his silver armour. To one side of him stood a slender maiden, hands clasped in prayer over her deep pink dress. At her feet roared an emerald dragon in his death throes, his elegant ivory throat pierced by a sword — or a stiletto, or a dagger, since only the elaborately decorated hilt protruded.

“This is —” What was there to say? Coincidence? An omen? Sydney was at a loss for words.

“
Spettacolare,
no? I had it specially woven for me. I so love the legend — the king's daughter sacrificed to the dragon that threatened the kingdom, and the knight who saves her.”