The Malaspiga Exit (28 page)

‘You're pretty brave,' he said. ‘You don't whine when you're caught. I'll give you that much. You thought it was Alessandro who'd followed you, didn't you? I was coming along to your room when I saw you come out. What am I going to do with you, Miss Dexter?' He put his head a little on one side. ‘When Lars told me on the telephone about you tonight I was quite shocked. I liked you. I really did. I hoped you'd go home and get out of Alessandro's hair, but I never suspected for a moment what you really were. A narcotics agent. A spy. I'm going to have to shut you up somewhere while I think what to do.'

There was a second when he seemed off guard; he wasn't looking at her, he had let go of her arm, which was numb from the pressure, and there was a space between them. Fear made her incredibly quick. She flung herself sideways, eluding his sudden grab by inches, and began to race across the floor towards the stairs. Once out of the underground room, in the Banqueting Hall or the anterooms, she could scream for help. She had the advantage of surprise and she was faster than he was; she heard him bump into something as he followed and swear fiercely. She reached the stairs, and, on a quick impulse, snapped off the light in the room below. She raced up them, gasping, trembling with fear; once she slipped and came to her knees, only to scramble up again. She could hear him behind her, and then she had reached the door into the Banqueting Hall. It opened as she pushed it. Silhouetted clearly against the brilliant moonlight, blocking her path, stood Francesca di Malaspiga. She held a gun in her hand and it pointed at Katharine.

‘Don't move,' she said. ‘I would love to kill you.'

Driver was behind her then. He spoke to the girl. ‘We'll have to put this one in a safe place,' he said. His hand came and covered her mouth, pulling her head backwards. ‘You go ahead, my darling, and be sure there's nobody around. I'll see she doesn't give any trouble.'

Francesca looked at him; she held the gun down by her side. ‘Upstairs?'

‘I guess so,' Driver said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Alessandro stayed on in the little drawing room, listening to the end of the Vivaldi concerto. He felt at peace, his spirit soothed by the music. Closing his eyes, he thought of Katharine. His mother had been right when she remarked on how much she had changed. She seemed to have grown older, not in the context of age but of the indefinable wisdom and experience that denotes a mature woman.

It had begun as an attraction. Listening to the mellow cadences of the oboe concerto, he analysed the progression from wanting to have an affair with her into the consuming need to have her with him all the time, to possess her mentally as well as physically. When he said that before marriage he had had many women it was not a boast. He had believed himself in love several times during his twenties, but never with the serious conviction that would suggest marriage. That had come with Francesca. The disillusionment, the revulsion he had experienced, and then the bitter sex which he had forced upon his wife to make her pregnant, had twisted his capacity for feeling anything but lust for any woman. And if he had indulged in love affairs before Francesca he couldn't have counted the mistresses who followed after they ceased to live together. And there was the supreme irony, the illogicality of the female mind. His wife became the prey of violent jealousy as soon as he recoiled from her and announced that he would never live with her again.

When he no longer wanted her for any reason she couldn't endure the thought that he was finding happiness with anybody else. The part of her nature, not entirely perverted, which had responded to him that night cried out against being rejected as a woman. Perhaps she too had matured, perhaps the instincts seeking pleasure and fulfilment from her own sex had finally grown to normality. Alessandro sensed that John Driver was attached to her and that in her chilly way she was responding, but this aroused no jealousy. He was too deeply involved with Driver to make scenes about his emotional fumbling towards Francesca. He needed John. Until John came into their lives, his business had been profitable by standards that didn't include restoring and refurnishing Malaspiga Castle. The Castle had become an obsession with him. And the need to leave it for posterity, to erase the scars of war and poverty, began when he went there after his return from Hollywood, when, as he had told Katharine, he took shelter in his home without hope for the future, with his life ruined.

He had found it a forsaken shell, the weeds from the once-splendid gardens creeping up to the outside walls. He had gone to the turret on the west side and climbed on to the battlements; below him stretched the plain of Tuscany, green and silver with olive trees, the blue shimmer of the sea cut into by the sweep of the Magra river, once the seaport for the great inland city of Sarzana, now marooned inside its medieval walls. Below the Castle, the little town of Malaspiga clung like a child to its mother's skirts. He had been born there, grown up with the view that had pleased the eye of generations of Malaspigas since the fifteenth century. He knew the people of the town by name, just as he knew the little paths and secret places in the olive groves where he had hidden as a child and played with the children of a poor
contadino
who lived in a hovel on the hillside. Malaspiga was more to him than an historical heritage. He had lived through the loss of his family's power and the night when the partisans searched the Castle looking for his father. The old Duke had already escaped to Florence; he had lived the rest of his life embittered and withdrawn, dissipating the family treasures to pay his debts.

His last words to his son were regret that he had only ruin to bequeath him. He had died without hearing Alessandro's promise that he would devote his life to restoring what had been destroyed. The first part of that promise had been to marry Francesca; money and continuity were what the Malaspigas needed.

By the time he met Katharine he had built a school and a child clinic for the town of Malaspiga, brought modern drainage and electricity to its people, and was enjoying the selfish, hedonistic life of a rich man with no one to love but himself. He was the master of his household and his family; his mother obeyed him and deferred to him, exactly as she had done with his father, and he had come to terms with Francesca in his own mind. His solution was to ignore her completely. The memory of the degenerate Elise Bohun's hands caressing his wife's naked back was something he could never forget. Nor the hungry, hysterical lapse into normal sexuality. He had been offered a small Poussin painting of two nymphs embracing in a landscape. The suggestion of lesbianism had so disgusted him that he refused to buy it.

He rang for the servant on duty; he told the man to put out the lights and close the main doors for the night. He went upstairs to his bedroom. It had the finest view in the Castle, with windows that looked out over the Tuscan plains and the line of the coast. It had been a dark room, stiff and oppressive, unchanged for centuries since it was first used as the lying-in room for the unhappy wife of his ancestor Paolo. She had died there, in the huge oak tester bed, leaving twin sons. He himself had been born there. The bed was huge with velvet and damask, its headboard painted with the Malaspiga arms. It looked like a dark cave, vast and uninviting for one person.

He didn't want to sleep. He wanted Katharine Dexter. He wanted her with physical pain, with passion, with tenderness. He understood the fire in the loins only too well; now he accepted that the ache in his heart was not a cliché. He had almost despaired, until the moment in the grotto when in spite of herself she had responded. Again, she had tried to escape him, slipping out of reach at the last moment. When he told her the truth about his wife and held her in his arms again he knew that he had won. He had never been so happy in his life. Or so in need. He wanted to hear her say she loved him, he wanted to wring the promise out of her that she would never leave … She had refused him that night. ‘Tomorrow.' Besides the passion in her, he had sensed a fear and a resistance to him. Perhaps it was a fear of love itself. If so, he knew the cure for that. But impetuosity was a mistake; the impulse to go to her room that night must be resisted. When tomorrow came he would remind her of her promise. And he knew that she would keep it.

Alfredo moved very slowly; he shuffled in his slippers, and it seemed that he was making a lot of noise. He paused to listen and look round in case he had been heard and anyone was coming. The corridor was empty. He came to the head of the stairs and, remembering that he had gone that way on the other occasion, took a cautious step down the stairs and then another. He had forgotten his intention to warn Katharine; memory was confusing him, reminding him that, like that other time, he hadn't had his biscuits and was hungry. He liked going to the kitchens; he enjoyed opening the cupboards and finding odd delicacies; like a child he enjoyed the feeling of innocent theft. He never opened the big modern refrigerator or went near the deep freezer. He hated the cold air which had chilled his whole head when he once opened the door by mistake. Slowly, feeling his way down, Alfredo came round the corner of the stairway on to the bottom step. And there, crossing the hallway, he saw the same scene as the last time. Only now it was the cousin who was being taken … He didn't make a sound; he held his breath and cringed against the stair wall, watching as they forced her to the same door, leading to the same place. They went inside and he gave a little gurgle of alarm. His legs were trembling; they almost gave way under his body as he turned and stumbled back up the stairs, clutching at the guide rope that ran down the steep stone wall. He couldn't think of anything but getting safely back into his own room and hiding his head under the bedclothes.

With Francesca gliding ahead of them, Katharine was hustled through the Banqueting Hall, her arm twisted up behind her back, Driver's hand tight upon her mouth. When they left the armoury and came into the entrance hall, she tried to resist; he jerked her arm upwards. The pain was so intense she nearly fainted. He gripped her tightly against him and half lifted, half dragged her after Francesca to a door on the right of the entrance. It was partly hidden by a leather screen. It led into a long stone passageway, lit by the moonlight. He eased the pressure on her arm and pushed her to walk forward. At the end of the passage they passed through another large room, filled with furniture shrouded in dust-sheets; at this point Francesca switched on lights. Katharine stumbled on, propelled by Driver, following the slim figure ahead, still holding the gun in her right hand. If they turned on lights they must be very confident that there was no one near to see them.

Out of the room, which was musty-smelling with disuse, down another corridor, shorter than the first, and up a small winding stair which ended on a landing.

‘Why don't you wait here?' Driver called out, and Francesca di Malaspiga turned back. He took his hand away from Katharine's mouth. ‘You can scream your head off now,' he said. ‘Nobody will hear you here.'

‘Go on,' the Duchess said coldly. ‘Scream. See if anyone comes!'

Sick, and feeling her strength failing, Katharine shook her head. They would have derived some sadistic amusement if she'd taken them at their word. She wasn't going to satisfy them.

‘You make a pretty couple,' she said. The Duchess stepped forward quickly, and Driver snapped a warning.

‘No! Leave her alone. You stay behind, darling. It's a long climb. I'll take her upstairs.'

Katharine turned her head to look at him. ‘Where are you taking me? Why didn't you let her shoot me?'

‘I'm taking you to a place where you can't make any trouble,' Driver said. ‘Just till we decide what to do with you. Come on, through here.' There was another door; Francesca opened it for them, dragging the heavy iron latch up with difficulty. She reached inside and switched on a light. Rising ahead of them, Katharine saw a spiral stair, so steep and narrow that unless she had both hands free she couldn't hope to climb it. From the shape and the angle of the curve, she knew they were at the foot of one of the Castle towers.

‘Uncle Alfredo!' Alessandro caught the old man by the hands. He had rattled the door handle and then flung it open; he stood leaning against the lintel, gasping for breath. Somewhere on the way to his own room, he had changed direction. He was extremely frightened, but in spite of his mental infirmity, he possessed a simple integrity. His generation used to call it honour. He couldn't run and hide a second time. Even if Alessandro were angry with him for leaving his room, he had to go to him and tell what he had seen. The Duke brought him inside and closed the door. He tried to steer him to the bed and sit him down, but his uncle resisted, pulling away from him.

‘Are you ill, Uncle—what's the matter?'

‘They're going to kill her!' he said. He caught the Duke by the shoulder and feebly tried to shake him. ‘They're going to murder her! Stop them—for the love of God!'

‘You've been dreaming,' Alessandro said gently. ‘Be calm, Uncle, you've just had a nightmare. I'm going to take you back to bed and send Stefano up with a hot drink. A little brandy in it and you'll go to sleep again.'

‘No!' The Prince turned on him, suddenly furious. ‘I wasn't dreaming anything—I haven't been to bed! I went downstairs … I wanted a biscuit! And then I saw them. Taking drat poor child to the East Tower! Just like the other one. It wasn't my business what happened to him … But I like her, she's our cousin! Stop them, Alessandro, stop them!' He turned away, shaking one fist in the air. ‘You mustn't blame John,' he said. ‘It's all
her
fault, she made him do it, she's the wicked one …'

‘Kadiarine? What are you talking about—who's taking Kadiarine to the East Tower? Uncle, if you're making up some story …'

The old man grew calm, and said quietly, ‘Your wife and John; I saw them dragging her across the hall. He was holding his hand over her mouth. They went into the eastern wing. This is the second time I've seen them do it; it was a man they took there last time, and John was pointing a gun at him. You were in Florence. I never saw him again. They are going to take her up to the tower, and kill her. They didn't see me; I was hiding by the stairs.' He opened his mouth to explain in more detail, but his nephew brushed past him and was running down the corridor. Alfredo lowered himself on to the bed and sat down. Alessandro had believed him. He hadn't reproached him for wandering about at night, and he would know how to stop them hurting the cousin. Also the enemy who had wanted to return him to the convent would be punished at last. His head dropped on to his chest and he dozed.