The Last Enemy (28 page)

Apparently, the count was helping Zangarelli to become a Knight of Malta, which Cenni thought extremely funny. “Zangarelli could buy and sell the Vatican twice over, and he’s down on his knees begging to be a Knight of Malta! The biggest fools in Italy parade around in those moth-eaten costumes. They’d be pathetic if they weren’t so dangerous. Casati’s helping Zangarelli to ‘resurrect’ his family’s three hundred-year-old coat-of-arms; creating one is more like it. Is there anyone in this country with a little money who doesn’t claim at least one duke in the family tree? Or a pope?” he added, thinking of Umberto Casati. “What’s your guess, Elena? How much is a Knight of Malta worth on the open market?”

Elena had stayed in the room the full time during the interview with the countess and had been surprised to hear the commissario announce, deadpan, that he intended to arrest Sophie Orlic for the American’s murder. The countess’s eyes teared up a bit at that. Elena was surprised that she could still see out of them, they were so pink and puffed up, but she held steadfast to her story that she’d been out of the house no more than fifteen minutes, twenty at the outside, just long enough to bring the peonies to Sophie. “It was foolish of me to say that I had been home all afternoon, Dottore. I certainly see that now, but you made me quite nervous on Saturday. I’m not used to being interrogated,” she added, throwing the blame back onto the police.

The first real slip in her attitude of
noblesse oblige
came when the commissario quoted the beggar, Guiseppe Guido, to her. “Why, that nasty, ungrateful drunk! When I think of the money I’ve thrown into his lap over the years! He’s lying,” she said flatly and refused to discuss it further.

The interview with Lucia was all nervous giggles and excuses. “But if I’d told you I left the house at four-thirty the countess would have docked me four euros. What difference can thirty minutes make to the police?”

The interview with Artemisia was the strangest of all. She was supremely unruffled, even more so than she’d been on Saturday. Artemisia was even polite to Elena, although on Saturday she had looked right through her. The most bizarre moment in the interview was when Artemisia openly flirted with the commissario, suggesting that he was using Rita’s murder as a pretext to see her. The commissario had laughed good-naturedly in response, but Elena sensed his extreme discomfort in the subtle shift of his body away from Artemisia and toward her, and his asking a question to which he’d already had the answer.

Then Cenni told Artemisia that she’d been seen late on Good Friday on via Fontebello. She denied it immediately. “Oh, I don’t think so, Dottore. Surely that was my cousin. Some people say . . . said,” she amended, smiling in recollection, “that we looked alike—never could see it myself. What do you think?” she asked him sweetly. And when the commissario asked Artemisia how her ankle was healing, she beamed with pleasure. “You noticed,” she said. “
Sei molto gentile!
It’s fine now,” and she held it up for him to admire. “I twisted it on a loose stone walking up to the Piazza del Comune on Good Friday.”

Later, on their walk back to the Piazza del Comune, the commissario had been very quiet. Elena spoke to him twice before getting a response.

Elena got up from her desk and walked over to the small mirror that hung over the file cabinet that she shared with Piero. Her cousin Fausto had nicknamed her
The Tractor
when they were children, referring to her short, muscular stature. But Elena knew that he also meant the way that she ploughed through life, never looking sideways. It’s not easy for a tractor to compete with a skinny platinum blonde. Elena had dark curly hair, cut very short so she didn’t have to worry about it, and decent enough features, nothing out of the ordinary, although she was rather vain about her short, slightly uptilted nose. If she wasn’t in competition with Miss Congeniality of the spectacular breasts, she’d do fine, though she had to admit that she was a bit lacking in the cleavage department.

Well, no matter. She still thought Piero a fool. He’ll never lose a pound, let alone twenty, and she didn’t care. But with Sergeant Antolini, he’d always be thinking about his paunch, worrying if it offended her blonde sensibilities. Elena didn’t mind his complaining, either. Most of the time she thought it rather funny, that he always had something to moan about and, really, it was mostly about his mother. More important than any of that, he was kindhearted and gentle, and even good-looking in a non-Italian sort of way, like a misplaced Irishman. Tourists were always stopping him on the street, asking him questions in English. When she’d first joined the force, he had covered up most of her mistakes, teasing her about them afterward. And he’d kept the woman-haters in the department—and there were plenty of those—off her back, particularly after the commissario had given her a coveted spot on his team. They would have been good together—she knew that—but if Antolini is what he wants, well too bad for him. She brushed her hair back from her face and stuck out her tongue. “Idiot, don’t embarrass yourself like that again,” she said to the woman in the mirror, and went back to work.

20

“DO YOU THINK Italians are liars?”

Alex looked up quizzically. He was eating a shrimp and egg tramezzini. “Why?”

“There’s a survey here in the paper. It says fifty percent of Italians are liars.”

“Does this question have a philosophical or a personal basis?”

“Both, I guess. Genine said on Easter Sunday that she liked me a lot. She said she was going to introduce me to her mother. And today when I asked her out for Saturday night, she said it’s impossible, that she has a family birthday to go to. It says right here in
La Repubblica
that sixty-five percent of Italians think it’s okay, even necessary, to lie to family and friends, and particularly to lovers.”

“Must be true. Says so right there in
La Repubblica
!” Cenni responded.

Piero said with extreme irritation, “I don’t like to think we’re a nation of liars.”

“Would you rather be English or German? And tell people to their faces when they look terrible. Or French? And tell people to their faces when you don’t like them? You worry too much about such things. All people are liars. Italians are just better at it than most. Consider it a sign of superiority.” He pushed his half-eaten sandwich away from him. “I think they’re trying to poison me. We’d better go,” he said, making a face.

Their waitress stopped them as they were walking out the door. “Commissario, you didn’t finish your tramezzini. Was it okay?” she asked.

“Better than okay. Absolutely delicious! Watching my weight,” he said.

21

AFTERNOON TEA WAS beautifully arrayed on the rosewood pie crust table. Dainty little triangles of white bread spread with smoked salmon, almond thins, and ginger snaps—the last from the Christmas tins that her great nephew Erik had sent from Stockholm—and on the top tier of the lazy Susan, three different chocolate desserts from Pasticceria Sandri. As a special treat, at the end, they would have wild strawberries with dollops of whipped fresh cream. The berries, delicately sweet and deep red, looked quite wonderful piled high in the Chinese blue-and-white porcelain bowl. She and Renato had always served berries in that bowl; their favorites were lingonberries, which they’d loved for their tart sweetness. Renato had often compared them to her, and every year at Christmas Hanna would find a jar at the bottom of her Christmas stocking. Hanna didn’t believe in God, or an after-life, but she wished she could; she wanted so much to see Renato again. She was so lonely. Lately, she seemed to miss him even more than she had immediately after his death some forty years earlier.

Madeleine, her housekeeper, was very secretive about her sources and wouldn’t tell Hanna where she’d found wild strawberries at the beginning of April. She had never been talkative and hated to gossip, saying it was a sin. She had become even more reticent in the last year, insisted on addressing Hanna as
Signora Cenni
and keeping a proper distance. She was very religious, praying even while she dusted. Hanna wondered if Madeleine felt prayers were necessary to ward off the evil of working for a woman who had lived in sin for thirty years. Hanna’s daughter-in-law also had concerns in that respect, but more for what her friends might think—or say behind her back—than any fears that her mother-in-law might burn in the fires of eternal damnation. Hanna doubted if anyone even remembered any more that she and Renato had never married. Everyone referred to her as Signora Cenni. Protesting against conventions is such a bore if no one notices, Hanna thought, and then laughed at herself.

She drummed her fingers on the tea table, then finally picked up one of the ginger snaps and bit into it. She consulted her watch. Of course the silly woman would be late. It was ten after 4:00. Italians are always late, so she probably won’t arrive until 4:30 or worse, and Hanna was hungry. And then she heard the peal of the bell. She counted slowly to see how many seconds would pass before it rang again. Five seconds, then two more peals. Anxiety or hunger? she wondered.

“Signora Russo,
madame
,” Madeleine announced lapsing into her native French, which she always thought more appropriate for social occasions.

The woman rushed across the room before Hanna could get up. “Please, Signora Cenni,” she said, “please don’t get up,” and almost fell into Hanna’s lap in her anxiety to please.

“Hanna,” she corrected her, with her brightest smile. Signora Russo was a silly woman, but she might like her anyway. Alex had asserted that Grazia Russo would do anything for her husband, who was a fool and a murderer, but Hanna had always preferred people who had wild passions, so much more interesting than those who wrote their lives on ruled tablets, keeping within the lines. But she had promised Alex to use her charm—“your greatest gift,” he had said with outrageous flattery— to find out where Russo was on the night of the American’s murder.

Grazia Russo was new money, and lots of it. Her family owned the largest fish-packing business in Italy, and that was only what they told the tax collector. Her brother, now head of the family, was a member of parliament and had once been a close advisor of the PM’s. Grazia was Giorgio Zangarelli’s baby sister for whom nothing was too good. Grazia, who was neither beautiful nor ugly, tall nor short, skinny nor fat, witty nor dull, could have had her choice of husbands because of the money, might have chosen someone who liked her or even loved her. Instead, she had fallen for blond good looks and arrogant pretensions, for a northerner who looked down on Grazia’s good southern roots. “He cheats on her with every attractive woman who comes his way, laughs at her to every man who’ll listen, and she continues to protect him,” Alex had said in amazement. “I’m sure she’ll give him an alibi for the time of the murder if she thinks he’s implicated, but see what you can find out.”

Hanna and Grazia had finished the salmon canapés—and their discussion of Grazia’s proposed gift to the Galleria Nazionale—eaten all but one each of the ginger snaps and almond thins, so as not to appear greedy, and shared the chocolate desserts, one and a half each, when Hanna finally got around to talking about the murder. She began with the usual exclamations of horror, and glee! Gruesome, frightening, terrible to be alone with murderers on the loose, rape, no woman safe in her own bed. Hanna was eighty-eight and wondered if perhaps she had gone too far on the last one. And then she did go too far. She told Grazia that it was just by sheer luck that she’d not visited the Assisi cemetery on Good Friday, where she had wanted to copy some tombstone legends for a new book she was writing on the Etruscans, forgetting for the moment that her frailties alone would give the lie to her last statement.

“That’s strange!” Grazia said puzzled, helping herself to another dollop of cream. “I always thought the Etruscans hadn’t ventured any farther east than Perugia and that the Assisi cemetery is relatively recent, dating from the seventeen hundreds!”

How embarrassing! Grazia seemed to know things, Hanna realized.

“
É vero
, Grazia. But some scholars contend that the cemetery is built over an older burial site, and the Etruscans were a very difficult people, you know. They never could stay put!”

Grazia looked at Hanna, blinked, and attempted to swallow the last mouthful of whipped cream that she’d been savoring, but couldn’t quite contain it. She burst out laughing and some of the cream landed in Hanna’s lap. It cemented their burgeoning friendship.

After the cream cleanup, Grazia looked at her watch. “Oh I really must go, Hanna. It’s nearly six.”

Hanna asked if she had to be at home to get her husband’s dinner, and Grazia responded sheepishly that he was working on a murder case and wouldn’t be home until late. She lowered her eyes for a moment, gulped, and then proceeded to tell Hanna very straightforwardly, without any beating of the breast—Hanna hated breast-beaters—that her husband rarely came home to eat: only on Sundays, when her brother Giorgio came to dinner.

Hanna interrupted her for a moment to ring for Madeleine, using the little silver bell that Madeleine insisted was the only proper way to get her attention.

“
Madame
, shall I bring the Signora’s coat?” Madeleine asked. Signora Russo was still comfortably settled in her chair and it was well past teatime.

“A bottle of Prosecco, Madeleine, and two flute glasses, the red ones from Murano, I think.”

“But
madame
, the dottore said. . . .”

“We have a guest, Madeleine,” Hanna interrupted. “Signora Russo would like some Prosecco!”

22

THE COLD CUT into her exposed flesh and she thought longingly of the sitting room fire below. Umberto hated high heating bills. Even on frigid days, he insisted that she set the temperature no higher than sixty-eight. She sat on the edge of the bed, staring transfixed at the thermostat. Just this once, she thought, getting up. Perched once again on the bed, she smoothed the chenille counterpane, poured herself another glass of wine, and waited for the sounds of water guzzling in the pipes, and the warmth to follow. Seventy-five degrees; he’d have a conniption! She picked up the pillbox that Camillo had given her, his last gift, and fingered its delicate ornamentation, a filigree of silver snowflakes. She opened it again and closed it immediately. The number of sleeping pills would be the same as before: twelve.