The Devil in Music (46 page)

"Do
you recognize any of these men?" he asked.

She
looked back briefly at the three of them. "Perhaps. Perhaps
not."

De
la Marque smiled. St. Carr eyed Lucia indignantly. Fletcher's lips
parted, and he gazed at her with all his eyes.

"This
isn't a child's game!" said Grimani. "Answer me! Is any
of these men Orfeo?"

Lucia
stared straight ahead, saying nothing.

Grimani
turned to Zanetti, who was sitting on the end of the bed, his
writing-desk on his knees. "Translate all that passes between
us. I don't want these gentlemen to miss a word."

"Yes,
Signor Commissario."

"Lucia,"
said Grimani in a cold, quiet tone, "I want you to understand
precisely the danger you face. At present, you have it in your power
to help me. You have only to give me Orfeo, and I'll show my
gratitude by letting you go. The longer you resist, the greater the
risk that I may find him on my own. Maestro Donati may suddenly
recognize him by some trick of manner or speech. My men may track
down Tonio. If that happens if Orfeo is in my hands, and you haven't
helped me find him your fate is sealed. Don't delude yourself that
Marchesa Malvezzi can protect you. In less than three days, you will
be mine, and no one and nothing shall come between us."

He
walked slowly, deliberately toward her. "You will come back to

Milan
with me and be put in the women's prison. You will be the only girl
of your stamp there. The other women are all harlots and thieves.
You will live with them day by day, and week by week. How long do
you suppose it will be before you become like them?"

Lucia
backed away before him until she bumped against the wall behind her.
He stood over her, continuing in the same soft voice, "I am
thirty-six years old, Lucia. In the ordinary course of nature, I can
expect to live twice that long. And while I live, you will not come
out of prison. You will never see another festival, never marry,
never be a mother unless of such bastards as may be got on you behind
prison walls. We try to enforce chastity within the prison, but we
don't always succeed."

Lucia's
chest heaved. She flattened herself against the wall to keep from
brushing against him.

Fletcher
sprang forward. "This is inhuman! I won't stand by and see
it!"

Two
soldiers pulled him back and held him by either arm. Grimani
regarded him coolly. "Have you something to confess, Signer
Fletcher?"

Fletcher
looked at Lucia helplessly, then at Grimani. "I'm not Orfeo. I
wish to God I were!"

St.
Carr half stepped forward, opened his mouth, closed it again. De la
Marque made no movement, only watched Lucia intently, and no longer
smiled. Lucia glanced quickly at Fletcher, then averted her eyes
from all three men.

Grimani
turned back to her. "Tell me what I want to know, and you'll be
released. The police will never trouble you again. Is one of these
men Orfeo?"

She
wet her lips. "Perhaps. Perhaps not."

Grimani's
eyes kindled, and he clenched his fists. "Do you doubt I can do
all I say, Lucia?"

"No,"
she whispered.

"It
can happen to you, Lucia. It has to many others. Every prisoner
weighted down by chains in the Spielberg once deluded himself he
would somehow escape never dreamed he could be immured for the rest
of his life in that anteroom to Hell. And yet you go running to meet
that fate and all for the sake of a coward who stands by and lets you
suffer, when a word from him might save you!"

"He
isn't a coward!" She flung up her head. "Whatever he
does, whatever he may seem, it costs him his heart's blood to let me
do this for him. He suffers far more than I do. But he understands
why I

want
to do it he honours me by letting me protect him! I will never
betray him never, never! I don't care that! for your threats!"

"Then
God have mercy on you, Lucia," said Grimani, "for no one
else will." He demanded of Zanetti, "Why does she still
have those pins in her hair? They're potential weapons. Take them
from her at once."

Zanetti
hastened to Lucia and plucked out her silver hairpins. Her glossy
brown hair fell down around her shoulders.

"Write
her out a receipt for them," said Grimani.

Zanetti
sat down once more with his portable desk on his knees. The soldiers
eyed Lucia's tumbled hair appreciatively. She looked toward a hook
on the wall, where a blue kerchief was hanging, but the soldiers were
blocking her way.

De
la Marque moved suddenly, took the kerchief, and presented it to her
with a respectful bow, as if she were a lady. She curtsied and
murmured a word of thanks, but did not meet his eyes.

She
tied the kerchief around her head. Zanetti gave her the receipt,
which she looked at with blank, illiterate eyes. Grimani went out
without a backward glance, Zanetti at his heels. When they had gone,
Lucia suddenly lifted her eyes and looked directly at Fletcher, St.
Carr, and de la Marque.

Fletcher
took a step toward her, then checked himself. St. Carr reddened and
looked at the floor. De la Marque bowed to Lucia again, gravely.
The soldiers ushered them out.

They
emerged into the piazza. The soldiers followed Grimani, leaving the
three young men alone. They stood silent, not looking at each other.
The piazza was largely deserted, thanks to the intimidating presence
of the gendarmes outside Ruga's house. Birds dipped and frolicked
around the fountain where the village women usually congregated.

St.
Carr asked in a small voice, "What is the Spielberg?"

"It's
a fortress in Moravia," said de la Marque, "where the
government of Lombardy-Venetia sends eminent poets, philosophers, and
other independent thinkers, to be chained by the ankle, sleep on bare
boards, and knit greasy, foul-smelling yarn into stockings."

St.
Carr stared. "Why would the government want poets to knit
stockings?"

"Monsieur
de la Marque means they're Carbonari," said Fletcher. "The
Spielberg is an Austrian prison."

"Hugo,"
said St. Carr, "you don't look at all yourself."

"Perhaps
Mr. Fletcher is thinking that whichever of us is lucky

enough
to be chosen as Orfeo may spend the rest of his life in that charming
abode. But don't be downcast, Mr. St. Carr it's far more likely
the winning candidate will be hanged out of hand."

"Hugo,"
said St. Carr shakily, "I should like to go back to the inn."

Fletcher
seemed not to hear. "It's a damned outrage, the way Grimani is
treating that girl!"

De
la Marque shrugged. "Grimani has a good deal at stake. Lucia
has the information he needs to solve this murder, and so gain the
trust and recognition he needs from his Austrian masters. But she
has proved to be a locked chest. What wonder if he will go to any
lengths to break her open?"

"You
sympathize with him?" said Fletcher, staring.

De
la Marque smiled. "To understand is not to sympathize."

"Hugo!"
St. Carr urged. "I want to go back to the inn. I want some
wine."

"We'll
be stared out of countenance there," Fletcher warned. "Everyone
will have seen us marched off by the soldiers. And Signora Frascani
will be waiting to comb our heads with a three-legged stool."

St.
Carr poked the ground with the toe of his boot. "If that girl
can bear to be locked up and threatened with prison, and all the rest
of it, then I daresay I shan't mind too much being stared at."

Fletcher
looked at him in surprise. Then he asked de la Marque, "Will
you crack a bottle with us, monsieur?"

"Ordinarily
I should be delighted. But just now I have a reckoning at the
church."

"A
reckoning?" said Fletcher.

"Yes."
De la Marque smiled wryly. "I have to light a hundred candles
to Santa Pelagia."

"I'm
glad to see you in better spirits," said MacGregor.

Julian
congratulated himself on seeming so. The truth was, he had never
been involved in an investigation that had appeared so hopeless. He
had suspects aplenty, but nothing to link any of them to the murder.
He had theories, but they were insubstantial as easily unwoven as
spun. The girl he admired was in danger; the woman he loved might be
the criminal he sought. He was failing in his task; what was worse,
he now felt he had been mad to undertake it. His friend Sir Malcolm
Falkland, the classical scholar, would have had a name for what had
possessed him. Hubris: the overweening pride that makes a man think
he can tilt with gods.

He
rose and walked to the parapet of the loggia of Villa Pliniana. From
here he could gaze north up the smoke-blue ribbon of water to the
frozen summits of the Alps. The villa itself was little better than
a ruin. Behind it rose terrace upon terrace of dark cypresses,
broken by a waterfall casting itself from the topmost crag into the
lake. It was a scene of stark beauty, but not one to lighten the
heart.

Julian
returned to sit with MacGregor by the famed intermittent spring,
which had ebbed and flowed every three hours since the days of
ancient Rome. The spring emerged from a cleft in the stone at the
back of the loggia. Julian and MacGregor watched the water creep
toward Julian's onyx ring, which Julian had placed on the ground. It
was a game all travellers played here: waiting for the spring to
submerge an object and then withdraw, leaving it dry again. But at
present Julian and MacGregor had the place to themselves. It was an
ideal spot for the tete-a-tete that Julian had meant to have with
MacGregor, but had not yet begun. The devil fly away with all this
melancholy, he thought. If I'm to be defeated, at least let it be in
a battle and not a rout.

He
said, "Do you remember when we discussed the investigation the
evening you arrived in Milan, and I said that, if Marchese Lodo-vico
was killed by Carbonari, it couldn't have been merely as an
incendiary gesture?"

"Yes.
Because if they were trying to set off a rebellion, they would have
made the murder public."

Julian
nodded. "So Marchese Lodovico must have had it in his power to
do them some specific harm most likely by exposing their identities
or plans. The Milanese secret societies were plotting an
insurrection to coincide with the Piedmontese revolt. Betrayal might
well have meant the end, not only of their rebellion, but of their
lives. The question is, how might Marchese Lodovico have come by
such dangerous knowledge?"

MacGregor
thought it over. "He could have overheard a conversation, got
hold of a letter meant for somebody else, been approached by one of
the rebels who offered to take money for informing on his friends."

"If
he was approached by a complete stranger, we shall have the devil of
a time finding out anything about it. But if he came upon the
information by chance, through eavesdropping or intercepting a
letter, that means someone in his circle was privy to Carbonaro
secrets, and thus almost certainly a Carbonaro himself."

"Who
do you think it was?"

Julian
got up and took a turn about the loggia. "We know from
Grimani's interrogation of de la Marque that he suspects Orfeo
belonged to a Milanese Carbonaro sect called the Angeli. Raversi
told me about them: he said the police call them Diavoli, devils, in
part because they escaped detection in '21, when so many other
Milanese Carbonari were exposed. Let's take a leap in the dark and
assume that someone close to Marchese Lodovico belonged to the
Angeli, and that this person gave him information about them, whether
willingly, unwillingly, or inadvertently."

"Then
why didn't Marchese Lodovico go straight to the police with it?"

"I
should guess that either he hoped to gain still more information from
the same source, or the information he had wasn't complete or clear
enough to make use of."

"But
it was complete enough for the Angeli to kill him in order to stop
him revealing it?" MacGregor said sceptic ally

"On
this hypothesis, yes. They were playing for very high stakes. They
might have been unwilling to take the chance that the information
could incriminate them."