The Malaspiga Exit (27 page)

She went outside, gently eased her door shut and began to walk very quickly and lightly to the stairwell. It was so dark she couldn't see beyond the first step. The stairs curved in a wide spiral downwards to the lower floor. A rope guide rail ran down the inside of the wall. She felt for this, held tight to it and stepped down. Feeling her way and following the curve of the rope, Katharine climbed downwards; once she slipped on the edge of the stair, and saved herself by grabbing the rope with both hands. At a turn in the stair she suddenly saw light.

The hallway was only a few steps below; the light came from two electric sconces set in the stone wall on either side of the iron-studded entrance doors. She waited by the bottom step, listening for any sound that might indicate another human presence. There was nothing. Slowly she stepped down into the hall; it was cold and she shivered. There was very little furniture in it, except a massive iron-bound wooden chest, so old that it was black, two chairs on either side of the fireplace which was so wide and tall that, according to Alessandro, it burned a waggon-load of wood, and a huge marble urn filled with potted plants. It looked larger and bleaker than she expected in the gloomy light. She walked across, raised on her toes with the instinctive tread of the intruder, opened a door leading into the armoury, fortunately lit by the bright moonlight through the arched windows, and hurried past into the Banqueting Hall. It was silver and grey in the light from its great central window, a place of deep shadow where the tapestries moved imperceptibly against the walls, stirred by some secret draught, and the long table could have been the feasting board of ghosts. The silence, the atmosphere, heavy and moist with the sweat of ancient stone, made it seem larger still and full of menace. She crossed at a run and came to the wall and the door to the store-room. There was a small iron loop, and she pulled. The door opened. Here it was impossible to see. Katharine felt with her hand to the right, up the wall, and when her fingers touched a switch, she snapped it on and there were the stairs she had gone down with Alessandro that morning. She pulled the door closed behind her and hurried down to the room below. Fluorescent lighting flooded it; for a moment she blinked at the contrast. There was the furniture, ready for packing. She shouldn't have run, but she did, hearing the sound of her shoes on the stone floors and not caring, because in a few moments she would have uncovered the picture, marked the back of the canvas and be on her way upstairs again. The picture stood on its easel, shrouded in the green cloth. Someone had been back and covered the corner of frame which she had noticed. The marble children stood side by side on a table; they too had been moved since she had seen them that morning. She took the marker out of her pocket, slipping the cap off, and as she did so, she dropped it. It rolled under the table. She bent to pick it up, and decided that she had better mark the little marble busts since they were part of the consignment. She lifted the girl with both hands and slowly turned it on its side. She made a cross on the base, and as she did so, a hand fell on her shoulder and a voice behind her said.

‘Well, now … I thought I'd find you here …'

She turned with a cry of terror, knocking the marble off balance, and she was face to face with him.

Pisa had a very small airport. There was none of the streamlined bustle common to the big air terminals of Carpenter's experience. He came down the steps and hurried across the tarmac towards the main building; inside he was swallowed by a throng of people. It was late at night, but the plane had been full. There was a Hertz office with a sleepy girl sitting behind the counter. Carpenter hired a car, watching in a sweat of impatience while she laboriously filled out the forms. It was a Fiat 127, small and fast. He checked the tank and found that it was full. He had begun to expect any factor which could cause delay. The night outside was warm and windless, bright with moonlight; over his head the Milky Way swept in a shimmering arc across the sky.

He started the Fiat and swung out on to the Pisa road. There was a lot of traffic leaving the airport and not until he had reached the perimeter of the town was he able to accelerate towards the outlet into the autostrada. He calculated that Malaspiga would be twenty minutes' drive if he went flat out, and then at last he saw the way clear and his foot went down on the pedal until it was slammed against the floorboards. He blessed the straight, two-lane Italian highway, remembering from somewhere that they were said to be the best engineers and builders in the world. In the opposite lane cars flashed past him, their headlights blazing; there was a distant howl of a horn that was like a phantom wailing, only to fade out seconds later. He was touching 180 kilometres and the little car was shuddering under the strain. A glance at the luminous dial of his watch showed that it was close to midnight. A big blue-and-white sign said ‘Massa 2 kilometres' on the right, with an arrow for the turn-off. He began to slow down. The back of his shirt was sticking to him with sweat, and his hands were greasy on the wheel. He wouldn't consider what he might do if he didn't find Katharine at the Castle. It was the first time in any operation when he hadn't planned ahead. The gun in his shoulder holster was fully loaded. He brought the little car round and out through the exit lane; he stopped at the toll-booth, flung a five-thousand-lire note at the duty officer, who shouted after him to collect his change as he drove on. Now it was difficult to drive fast; the country road was narrow and twice the lights of other cars bisected the darkness from a crossroad and he had to halt. There was a sign saying Massa, but no indication of where Malaspiga lay. He pulled into the side, and looked at the road map he had bought while he was waiting for the car. Massa lay close to the autostrada on the line of the coast. Further inland, and up a rising gradient of mountain roads, he found the town of Malaspiga. He had miscalculated the time. Five kilometres on roads that wound as sharply upwards as the road to the Castle and the town could take as long as twenty on the arrow-straight highway. He let in the clutch and set off. He could only trust that no lorry or slow-moving vehicle appeared ahead of him. Years of experience had warned him that murders were usually committed at night.

Alfredo di Malaspiga couldn't make up his mind to go to bed. He had undressed, putting on pyjamas and dressing gown, examined himself for some time in the looking glass to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything, and then began sorting through his collection of night-caps. There were a dozen little round caps, some made in linen, others in wool; plain, decorated, with tassels and without. He tried on several before he made a choice. His earliest memory was of seeing his grandfather Duke Piero, sitting up in bed with a satin cap on his head, and the child had been enchanted to find that men wore hats in bed.

Alfredo had always considered the head the most important part of the human body. The soul must surely be inside the skull, allied to the brain. Hair was one of God's miracles and Alfredo considered that it must be protected against climate and changes in temperature. His obsession had sound reasoning as a base; he cared for the most vital part of himself and adorned it at the same time. It seemed perfectly sensible to him, and when the well-meaning nuns had tried to regulate his changes of hats and caps, he had reacted first with violence and then with miserable apathy. He didn't think of the convent, except when he saw Francesca. She had wanted to send him back; he knew that and he had never forgiven her.

He had enjoyed his dinner; he felt stimulated by the company, instead of relying solely on looking at his hat collection for amusement, and trying everything on a dozen times a day. He was quite happy during the time his family were in Florence, which he detested—the noise and bustle confused him—but he was happier when they were all together in the Castle. He sat on the edge of his bed, and wondered for a moment whether a yellow woollen night-cap might not be a better choice. He liked the beautiful blonde cousin. Hats had not been his only interest in youth. He gave a sly little grin. He had liked blonde hair; there was a girl in Malaspiga who had true Titian colouring, the golden red made famous by the painter … Long, long ago. His mind flitted, restless, touching on one subject and then another. He frowned. He did like the cousin; not just because she was beautiful to look at, but because she had made him feel important. And most of all because she had admired his hats. He was worried about her. That was why he hadn't gone to bed. She should go away from the Castle. He didn't want anything to happen to her …

He re-tied the cord on his dressing gown and wandered to the door. He was not supposed to leave his room at night; Alessandro would be angry. There was a danger he might trip and fall. He opened the door; there was light in the corridor. Once, some time ago, he had left his room and pattered through the empty passages, creeping downstairs. He had been going to the kitchen. He remembered that. He wanted something to eat and the maid had forgotten to put biscuits by his bed. He had gone out and downstairs and he had seen—he stopped, one hand cupped to his mouth. He gave a little groan of fear and distress. Never mind what Alessandro said.

He hadn't found out about the last time. He had to go and tell the nice girl with the lovely hair that it wasn't safe for her to stay at Malaspiga. He wasn't such a fool as everybody thought. He knew things he wasn't meant to know. And he had seen things. He began to creep down the passageway towards the stairs.

‘Oh God,' Katharine said. His hand was still on her shoulder, he was looking down at her and there was a slight smile on his lips. ‘Thank God,' she whispered. ‘It's you—I thought …'

‘You thought it was Alessandro, didn't you?' John Driver said. ‘What are you doing down here?'

He had pale grey eyes; in an ordinary, even ugly, face they were his best feature. Katharine saw the look in them and under the hand pressed on her shoulder she went stiff with terror. There was murder in his eyes, although he was smiling at her.

Her reply was incoherent, stammered out wildly before she had time to think. ‘I lost something—this morning … I was looking for it …'

‘You were looking for the “stuff”,' he chided her gently. ‘I know all about you, Miss Dexter, so you needn't try to lie. You've been very clever; I congratulate you. You deserve to solve the mystery. There's what you were looking for: right by your feet.'

She looked down, and there lay the little sculpture of the girl; its nose had broken off and a stream of white dust lay on the ground.

‘It's made in two halves,' Driver said. ‘You'd never see the join; it's in the carving of the hair. That's clever too, don't you think so? I'd say there was twenty pounds of heroin inside that one head. The other one's full of it too.'

For a moment Katharine thought she was going to faint. There was pain in her shoulder where his fingers were pressing harder and harder into the skin.

Angelo. Firelli's clue. But only half of it, misheard down a crackling telephone line. Michelangelo, the sculptor.

‘Don't pass out on me,' he said. With his free hand he slapped her face. ‘Don't faint.' The blow shocked her; she raised her arm to defend herself, and immediately he caught it, twisting it up and backwards. ‘What were you doing besides looking?' he asked. ‘How much did you find out?'

‘Nothing,' she gasped, fighting the pain as he bent her arm backwards. ‘I thought it was Alessandro … Oh, God, you're breaking my arm!'

He let her go so suddenly that she staggered; she reached out for the table to steady herself and the marker fell out of her clenched hand. He looked at it and the smiled widened. ‘Ah,' he said. ‘You were identifying the pieces—that's very clever too. But since my little children won't be going now, it won't do any good. There's nothing in the other things. Only in my sculptures.' He gave her a little push. ‘They may not be great works of art, Miss Dexter, but they've made me a millionaire. That's surely something for a poor hick Canadian who learned to carve whittling sticks on a farm.'

Katharine didn't want to look at him. The plain face with the frank expression had become cruel and watchful; his right hand was opening and closing as if he were going to hit her again. She had almost confided in him in the garden, asked him to help her … it was like a nightmare. ‘Why did you do it?' she whispered. ‘Why did you work for him? You could have been a great artist …'

‘Work for him?' He suddenly snarled at her. ‘The arrogant bastard thinks he owns me! He figures he's some kind of twentieth-century Medici … You talk about talent!' He reached forward and seized her arm; she shrank back, held by the table. He stepped close to her, so close she could feel his breath on her face. He was hurting her, but almost unconsciously. ‘I wanted genius,' he said, ‘not talent. The world is full of talented people; crawling with mediocrities who can paint and sculpt. I've seen work exhibited that I'd have smashed up with a hammer! Rubbish, daubs—I didn't want that! I wanted to create beauty. Great art. When I was a kid I borrowed a book on Michelangelo from the travelling library. I saw what he sculpted, what he painted. I knew that's what I had to do.' She tried to pull away from him, but he gave her arm a savage twist. ‘I have the vision,' Driver said. ‘I have it here, in my head. But not in my hands. I can see it, but I can't create it! Do you have any idea what it means to spend your whole life reaching towards something and to fail? To be so full of beauty that you could burst because you can't get it out?'

His eyes were feverish, blazing; she thought in terror and confusion that in some part he was insane.

‘No,' she said. ‘I don't know what it means. I don't know how anyone could smuggle drugs and make money out of murder. You had a talent, even if it wasn't the great thing you wanted. What you've done is obscene.'