The Light in the Ruins (38 page)

“Good morning.”

When she turned, she saw that Piredda had sidled up beside her. “I saw you wander outside,” he said. “I thought I’d join you.”

“Oh?”

He shrugged. “That’s a beautiful dress.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course, fashion is a rather brutal taskmistress. You are expected to wear a black dress to the funeral, despite the heat. Me? I’m a man. I can get away with light gray. You must be sweltering.”

“I’m fine.”

“And, alas, you need—or at least believe that you need—an especially high collar.”

“I hadn’t realized you thought so much about fashion.”

He raised a single finger professorially. “I think about beauty. I imagine you once had a swan’s neck before something happened to you in the war.”

She shook her head and watched the smoke from the tip of her cigarette. “Nope. You would have been disappointed.”

He smiled down at her but changed the subject. “I’m going to visit the tombs after the burial. I’m looking forward to that. It’s such a fascinating site. I expect it will bring back for me very fond memories of the excavation.”

“Are you looking forward to seeing Vittore?”

“I am, I am—though, obviously, I wish it were under different circumstances.”

“Let’s talk later today, after you’ve visited the site.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps the tombs will trigger memories that will help me.”

“Help you?”

She rubbed her eyes at the bridge of her nose. “I phrased that badly,” she said. “Perhaps seeing the tombs again will make you recall something that might help with the investigation. Maybe you’ll think of someone we should talk to.”

“You—you and your inspector and your prosecutor—have absolutely no idea who killed the Rosatis, do you?” he asked, and there was an edge to the question that she hadn’t heard from him before. Not quite disgust. More like condescension. Incredulity. He was squinting into the sun.

“No,” she admitted, curious to see where he would lead the conversation if she was passive.

“Don’t you people always go back to the basics when you’re stumped?”

“Go on.”

“You know—motivation? You sat across from me in my office just the other day and asked me this: Who hated the Rosatis enough to kill them?”

“And …”

“You seem to think it all has something to do with the Second World War. You wanted to know about the people Vittore and I knew a decade ago. Maybe your story goes back to the war, but I’m not sure this one does. It seems to me, if any of them—if any of us—wanted to kill them, we would have had ample opportunities in the midst of the battles that raged between Rome and Florence. We would have had plenty of chances in the first months after the Germans retreated north. It was chaos, absolute chaos.”

She snuffed out her cigarette on the balustrade and then wiped the ashes over the side. “Meaning?”

“Maybe the Rosatis did something last month. The marchesa or Vittore or that first girl who was killed.”

“Francesca.”

“Yes, her.”

“What could they have done?”

“As I’ve told you, I’ve not seen them in years. I have no idea.” He walked to the center of the empty street and gazed in the direction of the villa. “Why, you ask, do people hate them? Maybe it has nothing to do with the Villa Chimera. Maybe it has everything to do with Rome.”

“Rome,” she repeated.

“It is where they all live, isn’t it?”

“Not Francesca. And she hadn’t had anything to do with the Rosatis in years.”

“Well, you’re the detective,” he said, and suddenly he took two quick steps back toward the wall and leaned into her. He stared at her brooch so intently that for a moment she thought he was going to touch it. “A replica, of course,” he said, “but lovely. Inspired by work from the third century B.C. Intelligent use of filigree and enameling. An eagle. Very well done.” He looked up from it and added, “A brooch is perfect for you, Serafina. It draws a man’s eyes precisely where you want them.” Then he did touch her. With the gentleness of a parent he pressed his fingertips against the side of her head and added, “Skin grafting has come so far since the war. You know that, don’t you? It’s too bad they didn’t know then what they know now.” Then he parted her hair to stroke the ruin that had once been her ear.

Father Silvio Mancini had been the priest in Monte Volta since 1928 and once had known the Rosatis well. He had performed Francesca and Marco’s marriage. Serafina guessed he was in his fifties, but he was completely bald and might have been considerably older. Still, his face was weathered, not geriatric, and he moved
and spoke with great energy. Serafina had been outside the church with Piredda when the Rosati family cars had arrived, and she had watched the priest greet Cristina and Vittore and then Vittore’s wife and children. There was an older woman among them, too, and Cristina guessed this was Elena, Beatrice’s sister from Naples. The priest escorted the family into a narrow alley beside the church, no doubt planning to take them inside through a side door so they could discuss any last-minute details in an anteroom prior to entering the sanctuary. She noted that one of the two uniformed officers from Rome accompanied the Rosatis while the other went straight inside the church. She knew that Paolo was supposed to take charge of them before the service began. She nodded good-bye to Piredda and then returned to her pew in the rear of the sanctuary beside Paolo.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming back,” Paolo whispered, rising to convene with the police officers. “I was beginning to think you’d gotten bored and gone exploring.”

She shook her head no and gazed at the lit candles at the front of the church, losing herself for a moment in the rows of small, beautiful, featherlike flames. She touched her ear where Piredda’s fingers had been.

After the service, once the caskets with Beatrice and Francesca Rosati’s bodies had been loaded back into the two hearses, Serafina watched the mourners start together down the hill to their cars. Ilario, his pregnant wife on his arm, nodded politely at her, and she thought the pair was a rather handsome couple. His wife was pretty. Ilario wasn’t wearing a jacket, but his white shirt and necktie were as crisp as anything Milton ever wore.

She waited outside the church because she wanted to be sure that she saw the officers from Rome escort the family into their own vehicles. She wasn’t precisely sure why; after all, this wasn’t her job and she didn’t believe the killer was in fact present. But here she was.

“Coming?” asked Paolo.

“You go on,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“You want to see the Rosatis get into their cars.”

“I do.”

He smiled, adjusted his homburg, and stood beside her. A moment later a young man wearing a tan suit and carrying a notepad approached them. A reporter, but probably not from Florence, because neither she nor her boss recognized him. He introduced himself, and indeed, he was from Rome. She listened as Paolo talked to the fellow, answering some questions honestly and being charmingly evasive on others. Soon she saw the Rosatis emerge. She watched as Cristina and her aunt Elena climbed into one vehicle and Vittore and his wife and children climbed into the other. A police officer took the wheel behind each, and they started the long, slow process of turning the automobiles around in the thin cobblestone street. And then they gave up: someone had arrived late and parked beside the wide hearses, effectively penning the two family cars in. And so the vehicles started up the hill instead, farther into the labyrinthine warren of cobblestone roads atop Monte Volta. Quickly Serafina turned back to the reporter and Paolo, raising a finger to interrupt.

“What do you think about that?” she asked.

Paolo shrugged. “The family cars couldn’t get around that new vehicle and the two hearses.”

“I know. Should we follow them?”

“The cars with the Rosatis? I don’t think so. Remember, this is their village. I say that metaphorically, but once upon a time, it practically was. I’m sure Cristina and Vittore can tell the drivers exactly how to return to the center. Besides, how many roads can really be up there?”

“You’re not worried?”

He seemed to think about this. In a moment, however, it didn’t matter. The automobiles were out of sight.

“Come on,” he said to her. “We should head up to the villa, too.” Then he shook the reporter’s hand and they all started down the hill to their cars.

The two black hearses pulled into the weedy white gravel parking square just outside the villa, and so did the automobile with Cristina, her aunt, and Father Mancini. A moment later Serafina and Paolo arrived, climbing from the Fiat and joining the mourners who had left before them. Serafina watched the police officer emerge from the first family car and open the back door for the Rosatis and the priest. Then the young fellow glanced down the winding road that led to the estate. Like everyone else, he assumed the second car was somewhere behind him. It would appear any minute. It had to. And so they all waited and wondered as Cristina whispered something to her aunt and as Father Mancini said something to the guard. Finally Serafina turned to Paolo. He was staring down at his watch, but she could see he was worried.

“I presume Luciano is down at the cemetery,” she said.

Paolo nodded. Then he motioned for her to follow him as he ventured over to the officer. “The best thing you can do right now is stay here with Miss Rosati and her aunt,” he said to him. “Okay? I’ll have Serafina go get our man down at the cemetery while I backtrack to the church. It’s probably nothing, but let’s be sure.”

The young man said he would wait and, along with Cristina, peered anxiously at the road behind him. Then Paolo walked briskly toward his Fiat while Serafina started down the hill to the Rosati family plot. Behind her a reporter called out to Paolo, but she recognized the sound of his engine as he started his car. She told herself, as she had over and over that morning, that the killer wasn’t here, he couldn’t be.

But the truth was, she no longer believed it.

IT WAS A land where men ground rocks to make pigments and transformed tree sap and egg yolks into binders. The sky from a stone: lapis lazuli. They studied the way the world changed at morning and dusk and imagined how the sun might fall on the skin of a goddess. They painted their deities onto canvases and wooden slabs, onto their walls and ceilings and domes. The Son of Man and his virgin mother, the saints and martyrs and popes
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And before the monotheists, there were the polytheists with their temples and sculptures. Their Pantheon
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The church in Monte Volta, where the marchesa and her daughter-in-law were eulogized, had frescoes dating back five hundred years. There, fading but still impressive, was a mural along one plaster wall depicting the life and death of John the Baptist. Along the other was the story of the Annunciation. There were doves on one side, a decapitation on the other
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The cemetery at the Villa Chimera, where they were to be buried, had a temple modeled after the Minerva facade in Assisi and an angel that was, in my opinion, amateurishly derivative of the winged guardians along the Ponte Sant’Angelo in Rome. You could see the angel from the entrance to the Etruscan chambers; you could see the temple from the hillside above that opening in the earth
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