Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death (30 page)

We passed through Borgo San Lorenzo by five, and I was pretty sure I’d recognize the route from there, helped by the convenient road signs. We passed a few rotaries, and then the villa with the whalebone, and a bit farther on the fallen tree where we were supposed to turn. I started up the hill, slowly, both for safety and because I hadn’t decided on a strategy.

I think Cynthia felt the same way. “You have any idea what you’re going to say?” she asked.

“No. None. I don’t know that I’ve ever confronted a killer before.”

“Do you think he’ll threaten us? Maybe toss us off a convenient hill?”

“I doubt it. I think he may guess that the game is up, even if the police haven’t dropped in lately.”

At the foot of the hill below the estate we pulled into the driveway and paused. It was still so beautiful—masses of masonry and stucco crowning the hill, with the row of tall thin cypresses leading the way up the driveway. It was so timeless. But then, this was Italy—and even murder was timeless here. So much history, so much misery.

I hit the gas and we climbed the hill. I parked where the vans had been the last time we’d seen the place. There were no cars in sight, and I wondered if there were any guests in residence, or if Barbara and Gerry had claimed a few days alone after our departure.

When Cynthia and I climbed out of the car, Barbara appeared at the doorway. She didn’t look surprised.

“Laura, Cynthia. I wondered if anyone would come back. I assume you want to speak with Gerry?”

She must know something, and again I wondered if she had always known, or if Gerry had been moved to confess in recent days. “Or both of you, if you prefer.”

“Come in,” Barbara said. “Can I get you something cool to drink? It must have been a long drive for you from Liguria.”

“Not too bad. And yes, a drink would be nice.”

“Let me find you some iced tea, and then I’ll go get Gerry. He’s down the hill.” She went to the small adjoining kitchen and I could hear a refrigerator door opening and closing, the clink of ice cubes. She returned quickly with two filled glasses. “There you go. I’ll only be a moment.”

When she’d gone out the door, Cynthia leaned toward me. “You think it’s safe to drink this?” she whispered.

“You mean, would she poison us? I doubt it. She would know that Jean knows where to find us—or our corpses.”

After a few minutes we could hear the sound of low conversation approaching, and then Gerry came in, followed by Barbara. He gave us a humorless smile. “No police?”

I regarded him steadily. He looked as though he had aged in the few days since we’d seen him last. “No, no police. They still don’t know what really happened. But I think we do.”

“You know that I killed Anthony Gilbert? I can’t say I’m surprised. If your group had come from some nice little junior college, most likely no one would have worked it out.”

“Barbara knows?” I nodded toward her.

“She does. She wondered why I invited the man to speak—he’d only just started teaching when she was at your college, but there were already rumors about him and students. Please, sit down, so we can all discuss this like rational adults.”

We sat. “Why, Gerry? Your sister?”

“You know about her? Yes, that was it. She was a good deal younger than I was, the baby of the family, and I guess you’d say we all coddled her. We were so happy for her when she went off to a good college—we felt like the whole family had succeeded. And she did really well her first semester. But something changed during the second semester.”

“She took Professor Gilbert’s class,” I said.

“Yes. At first she would write home glowing letters about how much she was enjoying it, and then she stopped talking about him. I was already in graduate school by then, and teaching, so I didn’t see much of her after her first year. And then my parents called to say that she was dead.”

“How did you work out why she did it?”

“She left a note. Oh, nothing pointing a finger specifically at him, but I’d been reading the letters that came before and it was clear what she was talking about. He had used her, briefly, and then he’d moved on, which I gather was his usual course. She thought she loved him, and that she was special to him. You can guess what happened. But she wasn’t strong and she couldn’t deal with his rejection. We never saw it coming. My parents were devastated.”

“You never told anyone at the college?”

“What could I tell them? That I thought that one of their handpicked professors had seduced and abandoned my baby sister? I had no proof, just an ugly suspicion. And to make that public, I would have ended up dragging Amy’s name through the mud, and my parents would have hated that.”

I felt a spurt of anger. “So a lot of other women had to pay the price?”

Gerry looked away. “I suppose that was selfish of me. But your lot—you can’t cast stones. I gather Amy was far from the only one he treated that way, and yet nobody else ever came forward.”

He had a point: we all shared the blame. So many had fallen victim to Gilbert’s charms; so many others had heard the rumors and done nothing. But those were the times back then, indefensible though they might seem now.

“You waited a long time to do anything about it,” Cynthia said. I wondered if she was feeling what I was.

“I did. Sometimes I thought I’d laid my anger to rest. And then your group came to stay, and it seemed like a sign. Perhaps it was shallow of me, but it seemed like an ideal way to distribute the blame, so to speak. So many of you could have done it, and had a motive for it, if anyone cared to look.”

“You’ve had the police here?” I asked.

“Of course. They were very polite, and very unsuspicious.”

“The wine in the professor’s room—that was for you?”

“It was. His way of thanking me for inviting him. He apparently had a delightful time—although he’d failed to snare any of your number for one last fling. He made do with talking to me.”

“Did you talk about your sister?”

“No. He hadn’t even recognized my surname, so why should he connect it with her? It was a long time ago. We had a glass of wine, we talked about Renaissance philosophy. He drank more than his share of the bottle. We went outside to look at the stars, and I pushed him over the edge. And that was that.”

“Did you feel better for having done it?” Cynthia asked.

“Not really. I didn’t feel much of anything, just empty. And then I walked away and went to bed.”

We sat in sad silence for several minutes. Gerry looked drained and stared into space; Barbara’s gaze never left him. Cynthia and I exchanged glances. I was at a loss; I really hadn’t planned anything beyond the initial face-to-face meeting. I had no idea what to suggest, much less tell him what to do.

A wordless exchange went on between Barbara and Gerry, and then Barbara turned to me. “I know this must have been difficult for you, and I appreciate both your candor and your discretion. I’d like to request that you give us a little time to consider our options now. We can offer you a place to stay for the night, but you don’t have to see us again. And perhaps our minds will be clearer in the morning. Will you agree to that?”

I looked at Cynthia, who shrugged. Up to me, then. If Gerry had planned to bolt, he had had ample opportunity before now. I had to admit that I was ambivalent about the whole situation: there seemed to be no clear right or wrong. Professor Gilbert had deserved to be punished for the pain he had caused so many women. Gerry had taken it into his own hands to punish him, but somehow I didn’t feel compelled to penalize him for it. “Thank you. It’s very kind of you to offer.” Maybe it was strange, to accept the hospitality of a confessed killer. But I doubted that he would murder us in our beds, and I wanted one more night with the spectacular view, even knowing what I did now.

“It’s the least we can do,” Barbara said. “Forgive me if I don’t offer you a meal, but I can direct you to a nice restaurant in Borgo San Lorenzo.”

So Cynthia and I ended up staying one last night in Capitignano. The restaurant was fine, if not memorable, and we returned to the villa on the hill before the sun had left the sky—it was, after all, nearing the solstice. We walked up to the church on the hill above the estate and sat on a bench watching the sun set and listening to the flock of sheep below.

“So, what now?” Cynthia asked.

“It’s up to me?” I protested. “I’m not good at playing judge. I can’t make up my mind whether to forget about the whole thing, now that we know the truth, or to go straight to the nearest police station and try to explain it—which could take days, given my Italian.”

“I feel badly for Barbara,” Cynthia said. “She and Gerry built a nice life here, but this one event from the past had blown that to bits. I don’t know what I’d do in her place. Leave him? Stand by him?”

I shook my head. I had no answers. In the end we walked back down the hill and went to bed early.

In the morning we went back up to the main building to find Barbara alone there. She looked tired but at peace. “Gerry’s gone to the police, to tell them what happened.”

He’d taken the choice from me, and I was relieved. “I’m glad—it’s the right thing to do. But I’m sorry you have to go through this, Barbara. It can’t be easy. Look, if there’s any way I can help Gerry, I will. What he did, he did out of love for his sister. And if the others knew—and they don’t at the moment—they would probably be grateful to him.”

“I know. Thank you for offering, but we’ll just have to wait and see. And, believe it or not, I’m glad you came back. It’s like we’ve finally tied up the last loose ends that have been dangling for decades. We did truly enjoy having you and your classmates here.”

“And we enjoyed our time here as well. Good-bye, Barbara, and good luck.”

And we drove away, in our borrowed car, leaving Barbara to grieve.

“What now?” Cynthia asked.

“Well, we’ve obviously missed our flights. And we have to arrange to get this car back to Loredana and her family. You have any suggestions?”

“I do. How about we treat ourselves to a week in Florence?”

“Perfetto.”

Acknowledgments

This is a book I never planned to write.

A year ago, at a Wellesley College reunion, two classmates proposed a trip to northern Italy, where they both have family and friends. They asked if anyone would be interested, and most of the hands in the room shot up, including mine. They could accommodate forty women (no spouses, partners, significant others or offspring invited), and all we had to do was get ourselves to an airport in Florence or Pisa, and they would take care of everything else. There were so many people who wanted to go that they had to hold a drawing to reduce the number to forty. I was one of the lucky ones.

In June we all came together in a small hill town north of Florence, and so began a wonderful ten days, rich in sights and food and wine and scenery and museums and out-of-the-way artisanal shops and more food.

I wasn’t going to write about it. I was going to indulge myself in a pure vacation. I didn’t have to organize anything, and I was going to sit back and enjoy everything. And then a few classmates realized that I wrote mysteries, and somebody decided it would be a lot of fun to write a mystery wrapped around our trip. This book is the result. Please note: no one died on our trip, and the murder victim is a figment of my imagination.

When we all came together at Wellesley College it was a moment of extraordinary social change, and I wanted to capture something of that era—and also show the impact those changes had on everyone’s lives, even in the present. Some of us were friends back in the day, and some of us barely knew each other, but we all shared a very special four years. This book explores the perspectives of the people who were there.

First and foremost I have to thank Sandra Ferrari Disner and Sarah Phelps Smith for working so hard to make this whole trip possible, and for showing us parts of Italy that none of us would have found on our own. They persuaded Lynn and Michael Aeschliman of Capitignano in Tuscany, and Loredana and Luigi Grillo of Monterosso in the Cinque Terre, to arrange for spectacular lodgings (including the one in the Buranco vineyard); they found wonderful restaurants, including one in a castle, that could handle us all; they took us into the heart of a mountain of marble in Carrara; and so much more. Sandy and Sally created an unforgettable experience, enhanced because it was shared.

I won’t mention everyone who was there, save to say that it was a pleasure to get to know all of you better. In case you’re worried, no real individual is depicted, even disguised, in this book, with the exception of one: Mee-Seen Loong, who was the main cheerleader for this book and who captured images every step along the way.

My years at Wellesley were happy ones, and I hope that I have not maligned the college in any way. The times we all spent there were turbulent, and both innocent and oblivious, and all colleges struggled to adapt to rapid changes. There is no model for the victim in this book, but we all heard stories that may have held some truth. At least no one turns a blind eye anymore.

So here’s my tribute to the Fabulous Forty women who made the journey together. I hope I’ve done you proud and you enjoy the result!