The Light in the Ruins (9 page)

“A somersault is nothing new,” Massimo reminded them all.

“No, but three in a row? Your little sister has never done that,” Francesca told her son. “I’m proud of both of you.” Then she brushed the dry grass from her daughter’s shoulders and the back of her bathing suit. She pulled a strand of lavender from the girl’s hair and replaced it with a rose from the nearby trellis. Meanwhile, Massimo decided he would drown his disgust: he pinched his nose shut with his thumb and forefinger and jumped back into the pool, trying to make as large and as annoying a splash as he could. In the distance they could see two farmhands tending to the grapes at the edge of the vineyard.

“I thought Vittore sounded good on the phone this morning,” Cristina said to Francesca. He had grown testy when she’d pressed him about the officers’ visit to the villa, because he was still piqued that they had gone there without him, but he was excited by the prospect of seeing his family today. Instead of Florence, however, they were going to meet in Arezzo, a smaller city than Florence but no more than thirty-five kilometers from Monte Volta. He was going to be there with the contingent from the Uffizi, showing the Germans the Etruscan art—including, he’d said, the relics from their estate. He didn’t believe he would have time for a meal
with his family, but he was confident that he would be able to steal away with them to a café for perhaps an hour in the middle of the afternoon.

“He sounded a little annoyed to me,” said Francesca. “And he should be. Coming to his home without telling him? That’s infuriating.” When her daughter looked up at her, curious, her tone softened. “We should change out of our bathing suits. Your grandfather wants to leave for Arezzo by noon. You’re going to see your uncle Vittore.”

Cristina smiled at the child. Then, overhead, she heard engines. In a moment they all did, even Massimo as he slapped frantically at the water with the palms of his hands. Almost as one they glanced up at the cirriform sky: another flock of German planes was motoring its way to the south.

1955

LATE WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Paolo Ficino sat across from this aging marchesa from a village southeast of Siena in which he had not set foot once in the forty-eight years he had been on the planet, and tried to empathize with what she was experiencing. There was the grief that her son’s wife was dead—not merely murdered, but eviscerated—and now there was the indignity of having to sit across from a homicide inspector in the police headquarters in Florence. She told him she was sixty-four years old, and certainly she had earned the deep lines around her eyes and her mouth. She had outlived her husband, one of her two sons, and a pair of grandchildren. And now Francesca. But Beatrice Rosati was still beautiful: courtly and elegant and serene. Her daughter, Cristina, was sitting beside her, and he could see the resemblance in the shape of their eyes and the austere chiseling that marked their cheeks.

“Are you sure you would not like some coffee?” he asked the two women now.

“No, I’m fine,” Beatrice said, her hands folded demurely on the small red leather purse in her lap. “It’s too late in the day for me to have coffee.” She was dressed for mourning in a black skirt and blouse and a modest string of pearls. Her daughter was in a rather cheerful sleeveless summer dress; it was white with lavender flowers.

“If you change your mind …”

“Thank you.”

“Serafina will be joining us. She is the detective who interviewed Cristina yesterday,” he said, directing his remark to the marchesa. “She’s on the phone with America.”

The older woman nodded but remained quiet.

“So,” Paolo began, “any idea of who did not particularly like your daughter-in-law?”

“I’m sure there were lots of people,” Beatrice said. “My daughter-in-law had an acerbic tongue and she did not suffer fools or foolishness.”

“Okay. Can you give me some names?”

“I could, but it would include almost everyone she ever met.”

He thought about this. “Did you not like her?”

“No, I loved her. It’s just …”

Cristina patted her mother on the knee and jumped in. “It’s just that Francesca was always a little difficult. Opinionated. After my brother was killed and the children died, it got much worse. I think that’s understandable. She was always angry and always judging. Everyone. Everything. Before, it had just been a dark sense of humor. But after the war? She was a different person. My mother hadn’t seen her in years.”

“How many years?”

“Four and one half,” Beatrice answered. “I last saw Francesca over Christmas 1950.”

“But you continued to see her,” Paolo said to Cristina.

“Yes. When I came to Florence, sometimes we would have lunch or dinner. We’d get manicures and pedicures together—the way we did when I was a teenager and she was a young mother.”

“Were you planning on visiting a salon this time? Did you have other business in Florence?”

“No, I didn’t. We didn’t. I was just coming to visit Francesca.”

He reached into a folder, pulled out the photograph of Mario Spagnoli, and placed it at the edge of his desk so both women could see it. “This is the person Francesca had dinner with Monday night, a few hours before she was killed. He read about her death in the newspaper and immediately came forward.”

“So this is the man who might have murdered her?” Beatrice asked, gazing almost in wonderment at the image.

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. He’s a lawyer, forty-four years old. Lives and works in Bologna. Never married. Knew Francesca because he once bought a dress for another woman from her shop. He says he took her to dinner at Il Latini and—” He stopped midsentence. Spagnoli had been upfront about the fact that he and Francesca had made love, but did the marchesa need to know that? Probably not. Apparently, however, the woman knew enough about her former daughter-in-law that she was able to finish the sentence for him.

“And then they went back to her apartment together,” Beatrice said.

“Yes.”

“That was her way. It wasn’t, of course, her way when she was married to Marco. When she lived with us. But it was how she was at the end.”

“But you said you hadn’t seen her since 1950,” Paolo said, not precisely sure why he was challenging her and defending the dead woman’s honor. It was almost a reflex.

“I know what she had become,” Beatrice said.

“So you were aware of her … habits.”

“We all were,” Cristina said. “It was how Francesca coped. That’s all.”

The marchesa glanced briefly at her daughter and then stared out the window behind him, her face absolutely impassive.

“Why don’t you think this lawyer might have killed her?” Cristina continued.

“I’ve done this awhile, I can tell. He doesn’t seem the sort to own or borrow bone saws. He doesn’t seem the type to cut out a human heart. And it may be as simple as the fact that he came in well before we found him ourselves. He volunteered to give us fingerprints, which will of course be all over the apartment. And his alibi is good—though far from airtight.”

“And that is?” Cristina asked.

“His alibi? He says he left your sister-in-law’s apartment around eleven p.m. and drove back to Bologna. Got there about twelve-thirty.”

“That’s not an alibi at all. Serafina told me that my sister-in-law was killed sometime after midnight.”

Paolo couldn’t help but smile. The prosecutor in charge of the case had said the exact same thing. “And, of course, he lives alone with his dog,” Paolo added. “So there isn’t even anyone to confirm when he arrived in Bologna.”

“Then he might have killed her.”

“We asked to look at his car. It was clean.”

“Do you mean there was no knife?” Cristina pressed him.

“I mean it was clean. There was no blood. And whoever killed Francesca would—forgive me—have been a mess. But clearly the car hadn’t been … sanitized. It was absolutely covered with dog hair.”

“Do you know for sure he drove that car that night? Maybe he took the train.”

Paolo sighed. He was confident that the worst thing Mario Spagnoli might have done was corroborate Francesca Rosati’s belief that men were after but one thing. But since clearly Francesca was after that one thing as well, he doubted that Mario had done even that.

“I assure you, we will look into it,” he said.

Over the marchesa’s shoulder he saw Serafina approaching and he stood. He introduced her to Beatrice and pushed his chair around to the side of the desk so she could sit, too, but she shook her head and leaned against the wall by the window. So he sat back down. He decided it didn’t matter if the Rosatis were present while Serafina shared with him what she had learned from the Americans.

“I don’t have much to report,” she told the three of them. “The FBI is going to send us a list of museum executives or curators in New York whose first names are Richard or Russell. If one has been in Italy this week, we’ll pursue that lead. I’ve started calling
hospitals to see if any are missing a bone saw or scalpel, but I don’t think we’re going to learn much. They really don’t inventory such items.”

Paolo noticed that Beatrice was staring intently at Serafina and assumed it was because the marchesa had never before seen a female detective. Then, however, he noticed that the woman was focusing on the side of Serafina’s head and her neck. After a moment Serafina sensed the attention. She met the marchesa’s eyes briefly but then glanced down at her notes.

“Serafina,” Beatrice said, not so much speaking to the young detective as rolling the name around on her tongue as if she were tasting a new wine. “That’s a beautiful name.”

“Thank you.”

“I presume you know what it means.”

“The burning one,” Serafina answered.

“Interesting,” Beatrice said. “I would have said the fiery one. I guess it’s a small difference.”

“But a meaningful one,” Paolo said. He regretted the offhand remark instantly. Already Serafina was looking down at him, her eyes a little wide with anger.

“You can spend all the time you want on jilted lovers,” Milton was saying to Serafina after dinner, leaning against the restaurant’s brick wall at their corner table. Before them both were small blue glasses filled with limoncello. “A jilted lover doesn’t cut out a human heart. That’s just … depraved.”

“But what about a jilted depraved lover?” she asked, only half kidding. “Think of what the heart means. It’s a message.”

“It’s a message, all right. It’s a message that you’re dealing with a crazy person.”

“So if it’s not a lover, where would you look?”

He sipped the liqueur and smiled. “Seriously, if I am ever asked to transfer back to the United States, I’m quitting. I’m sorry, but you cannot find alcohol like this in Pelham or New Rochelle.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said to him.

“Well, she knew whoever killed her. You said that she let him into her apartment.”

“That’s what we believe, yes.”

“And nothing was stolen?”

“We don’t know that for a fact, but it doesn’t look like anything was. There was a jewelry box on the vanity, right beside the ashtray with the heart, and nothing appeared to have been taken.”

“Appeared?”

“There was a pair of beautiful ruby earrings right there. Extremely valuable. Also a diamond ring she had worn when she was married to Marco Rosati. If this were a robbery, they would have been gone.”

“Well, then, devil worship, perhaps? Satan? I’m kidding, but not by as much as you think.”

“Wouldn’t they have taken the heart if it were for a ritual?”

“Damned if I know.”

She looked around at the other couples that remained in the restaurant. It was after eleven and the women and men who were still there all struck her as young and in love. She counted diners at four other tables, each with but two people. She tried to decide which couples were married and concluded, in the end, that none of them were. Two of the pairs were holding hands across the tablecloth.

“But it does seem to me,” Milton was saying, “it’s someone who clearly feels that Francesca wronged him—and who is not especially good at managing his temper.”

“So you’re positive the killer is a man.”