The English Assassin (9 page)

She came to the village each morning to do her marketing, sweeping down the hill on her bright-red motor scooter, her blond ponytail flying behind her like a banner. In wet weather she wore a hooded anorak the color of mushrooms. There was a great deal of speculation about her country of origin. Her limited Portuguese was heavily accented. Carlos, the man
who cared for the villa’s grounds and small vineyard, thought she had the accent of a German and the dark soul of a Viennese Jew. María, the pious woman who cleaned her home, decided she was Dutch. José from the fish market thought Danish. But Manuel, the owner of the café on the village square and the town’s unofficial mayor, settled the question, as he usually did. “Our Lady is not German, or Austrian, or Dutch, or Danish.” Then he rubbed his first two fingers against his thumb, the international symbol for money. “Our Lady of the Hillside is Swiss.”

Her days had a predictable rhythm. After her morning visit to the village, she could be seen swimming laps in her dark-blue pool, her hair tucked beneath a black rubber cap. Then she would walk, usually among the jagged granite outcroppings on the ridge of the hill or up the dusty track to the Moorish ruins. Beginning in the late afternoon, she would play the violin—exceptionally well, according to those who had heard her—in a bare room on the second floor of the villa. Once, María stole a glance inside and found Our Lady in a feverish state, her body rocking and pitching about, her hair damp, her eyes tightly closed. “Our Lady plays like she’s possessed by demons,” María said to Carlos. “And no sheet music. She plays from memory.”

Only once, during the festival of Santo António, did she take part in the social life of the village. Shortly after dark, as the men set fire to the charcoal grills and uncorked the wine, she traipsed down the hill in a sleeveless white dress and sandals. For the first time she was not alone. There were fourteen in all: an Italian opera singer, a French fashion model, a British film actor, a German painter—along with wives,
girlfriends, mistresses, and lovers. The opera singer and the film actor had a contest to see who could consume the most grilled sardines, the traditional fare of the festival. The opera singer easily dispatched the actor, who then tried to console himself by making a clumsy pass at the fashion model. The actor’s wife slapped him silly in the center of the square. The Portuguese villagers, who had never seen a woman slapping a man, applauded wildly, and the dancing resumed. Afterward, all agreed that the band of gypsies from the villa on the hillside had made the festival the most enjoyable in memory.

Only Our Lady seemed to take no joy from it. To Carlos, she seemed an island of melancholia in a sea of wild debauchery. She picked at her food; she drank her wine as though it was something that was expected of her. When the handsome German painter planted himself at her side and showered her with attention, Our Lady was polite but clearly indifferent. The painter finally gave up and went in search of other prey.

At midnight, just as the festival reached fever pitch, Our Lady slipped away from the party and headed up the track alone to her villa on the hillside. Twenty minutes later, Carlos saw a light flare briefly in the room on the second floor. It was the room where Our Lady played her violin.

W
ITH
little else to do that summer, the villagers set out to finally learn the name and occupation of the mysterious woman from the hillside. Carlos and María, the two people closest to her, were carefully interrogated but could offer little help. Once a month they received a check, sent by certified mail, from a
company in London called European Artistic Management. Because of the barriers of language and class, their communication with the woman was restricted to the simplest of greetings. They
were
able to supply one piece of critical information: Our Lady was prone to sudden unexplained absences. Rosa of the market read much into this. She decided Our Lady was a spy and that European Artistic Management was nothing but a front. What else would explain her secretive nature? Her sudden disappearances and even more sudden returns? But once again, it was Manuel who settled this question. One evening, while the debate raged in his café, he reached beneath the bar and produced a compact disc recording of several Brahms violin sonatas. On the cover was a photograph of Our Lady. “Her name is Anna Rolfe,” Manuel said in triumph. “Our Lady of the Hillside is a very famous woman.”

She was also a woman prone to accidents. There was the afternoon she lost control of her motor scooter and Carlos found her by the roadside with a pair of broken ribs. A month later she slipped on the edge of the pool and cracked her head. Just two weeks after that, she lost her balance at the top of the stairs and tumbled down to the landing, coming to rest in María’s dustpan.

Carlos concluded that, for some reason, Our Lady simply lacked the ability to look after herself. She was not a reckless woman, just careless, and she seemed to learn nothing from her previous mistakes. “It will be very bad for the reputation of the village if something happened to so famous a woman,” Manuel concluded gravely. “She needs to be protected from herself.”

And so quietly, carefully, Carlos began to watch her.

In the mornings, when she swam laps in her pool, he would find work to do close by so he could monitor her progress. He conducted regular clandestine inspections of her motor scooter to make certain it was in good working order. In the tiny hamlets along the top of the ridge, he created a network of watchers, so that whenever Our Lady went for her afternoon expeditions, she was under constant surveillance.

His diligence paid off. It was Carlos who discovered that Our Lady was hiking on the ridge the afternoon a powerful gale swept in from the sea. He found her amid the wreckage of a rock slide with her hand pinned beneath a hundred-pound boulder, and carried her unconscious down to the village. Had it not been for Carlos, the doctors in Lisbon said, Anna Rolfe would surely have lost her famous left hand.

H
ER
rehabilitation was long and painful—for everyone. For several weeks, her left arm was immobilized by a heavy fiberglass cast. Since she was no longer able to ride her motor scooter, Carlos was pressed into service as her driver. Each morning they climbed into her white Land Rover and rattled down the hill into the village. Our Lady remained silent during these trips, staring out the window, her bandaged hand in her lap. Once, Carlos tried to brighten her mood with Mozart. She removed the disc and hurled it into the passing trees. Carlos never again made the mistake of trying to play music for her.

The bandages became progressively smaller, until finally she required none at all. The severe swelling receded, and the shape of her hand returned to normal. Only the scars remained. Our Lady did her best to conceal them. She wore long-sleeved blouses with lacy
cuffs. As she moved round the village doing her marketing, she tucked her hand beneath her right arm.

Her mood darkened further when she tried to play the violin again. Each afternoon for five consecutive days, she walked up to her practice room on the second floor of the villa. Each day she would attempt something elementary—a minor scale over two octaves, an arpeggio—but even that would be too much for her ruined hand. Before long there would be a scream of anguish, followed by shouting in German. On the fifth day, Carlos watched from the vineyard as Our Lady lifted her priceless Guarneri violin over her head and prepared to hurl it to the floor. Instead, she lowered it to her breast and hugged it as she wept. That evening, in the café, Carlos told Manuel about the scene he had witnessed. Manuel reached for the telephone and asked the operator for the number of a company called European Artistic Management in London.

Forty-eight hours later, a small delegation arrived. There was an Englishwoman named Fiona, an American called Gregory, and a dour German called Herr Lang. Each morning, Gregory forced Our Lady to do several hours of punishing exercises to regain the strength and mobility in her hand. In the afternoon, Herr Lang stood over her in her practice room, teaching her how to play her instrument again. Slowly her skills returned, though even Carlos the vineyard keeper could tell that she was not the same musician she had been before the accident.

By October the delegation was gone, and Our Lady was alone again. Her days assumed the predictable rhythm they’d had before the accident, though she took more care when riding her red motor scooter and
never set out for the ridge without first checking the weather forecast.

Then, on All Souls Day, she vanished. Carlos took note of the fact that, as she climbed into her Range Rover and headed toward Lisbon, she carried only a black-leather garment bag and no violin. The next day he went to the café and told Manuel what he had seen. Manuel showed him a story in the
International Herald-Tribune.
The vineyard keeper could not read English, so Manuel handled the translation.

“The death of a father is a terrible thing,” Carlos said. “But murder . . . this is much worse.”

“Indeed,” said Manuel, folding the newspaper. “But you should hear what happened to that poor woman’s mother.”

C
ARLOS
was working in the vineyard, preparing the vines for the onset of winter, when Our Lady returned from Zurich. She paused briefly in the drive to unclasp her hair and shake it loose in the sea wind, then disappeared into the villa. A moment later Carlos saw her flash past the window of her practice room. No lights. Our Lady always practiced in the dark.

As she began to play, Carlos lowered his head and resumed his work, his pruning shears snapping rhythmically, keeping time with the beating of the waves on the beach below. It was a piece she had played often—a mystical, haunting sonata, supposedly inspired by the Devil himself—but since the accident it had eluded her. He braced himself for the inevitable explosion, but after five minutes his shears fell silent, and he looked up the terraced hillside toward the villa. So skillful was her playing tonight that it seemed there were two violinists in the villa instead of one.

The air had turned colder, and a gauzy sea haze was creeping up the slope of the hill. Carlos set his pile of rubbish alight and squatted next to the flames. She was approaching a difficult section of the piece, a treacherous run of descending notes—a
devilish
passage, he thought, smiling. Once again he braced himself, but tonight only music exploded, a blistering descent that ended in the quiet resolution of the first movement.

She paused a few seconds, then began the second movement. Carlos turned and looked up the hillside. The villa was bathed in the orange light of sunset. María the housekeeper was outside on the terrace, sweeping. Carlos removed his hat and held it aloft, waiting for María to see him—shouting or noise of any kind was forbidden while Our Lady was practicing. After a moment María lifted her head, and her broom paused in midstroke. Carlos held out his hands.
What do you think, María? Will it be all right this time?
The housekeeper pressed her palms together and gazed up toward the heavens.
Thank you, God.

Indeed,
thought Carlos as he watched the smoke of his fire dancing on the evening wind.
Thank you, God. Tonight, things are good. The weather is fine, the vineyards are ready for winter, and Our Lady of the Hillside is playing her sonata again.

F
OUR
hours later, Anna Rolfe lowered her violin and placed it in its case. Immediately she was overcome by the unique combination of exhaustion and restlessness she felt at the end of every practice session. She walked into her bedroom and lay atop the cool duvet, her arms spread wide, listening to the sound of her own breathing and to the night wind rustling in the
eaves. She felt something else besides fatigue and restlessness; something she had not felt in a very long time. She supposed it was satisfaction. The Tartini sonata had always been her signature piece, but since the accident the wicked string crossings and demanding double-stops had been too much for her hand. Tonight she had played it exceptionally well for the first time since her recovery. She had always found that her mood was reflected in her playing. Anger, sadness, anxiety—all these emotions revealed themselves when she placed a bow against the strings of a violin. She wondered why the emotions unleashed by the death of her father would allow her to again play Tartini’s sonata.

Suddenly she required activity. She sat upright, pulled off her damp T-shirt, and slipped into a cotton sweater. For several minutes she wandered aimlessly through the rooms of her villa, here switching on a lamp, here closing a shutter. The smooth terra-cotta floors were cold against her bare feet. How she loved this place, with its whitewashed walls and comfortable sailcloth-covered furniture. It was so unlike the house on the Zürichberg where she was raised. The rooms were big and open instead of small and dark, the furnishings unpretentious and simple. This was an honest house, a house with no secrets. It was
her
house.

In the kitchen she poured herself a large glass of red wine. It was from a local vintner; indeed, some of her own grapes had been used in the blend. After a moment, the wine took the edge off her mood. It was a dirty little secret of the classical music world: the drinking. She had worked with orchestras that had come back from lunch breaks so medicated with
alcohol it was a wonder anyone could play at all. She peered into the refrigerator. She had hardly eaten in Zurich and was famished. She sautéed mushrooms and tomatoes in olive oil and fresh local herbs, then stirred in three beaten eggs and added some grated cheese. After the nightmare of Zurich, this simple domestic task gave her an inordinate amount of pleasure. When the omelet was finished, she sat on a tall stool at the kitchen counter and ate it with the last of her wine.