Vita Nuova (4 page)

Tread carefully, he warned himself. She looked as much like a frightened child as her mother did, but a rich family has expensive lawyers. This was a minefield. There had to be a man in this story. . . .

‘Do you mind if I sit down here?’ He pulled up a sturdy-looking chair. The furniture in here was austere, solid stuff that looked as if it belonged in the stone watchtower, but the fine rugs and white chair coverings, the book-lined walls and the shaft of sunshine softened the effect. The marshal had an eye for solidity in chairs. Better not to loom over her, in any case. ’You don’t mind?’

‘No. But—do you have to wear those dark glasses? It bothers me.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s only because I have a bit of a problem with my eyes.’

‘You weren’t wearing them yesterday.’

‘No. Down in the kitchen, no. Up here, the sunshine. . . .’ She was observant enough, despite being upset, but that didn’t mean she’d tell him what she observed. ‘If you wouldn’t mind just closing the shutters a little.’

She set the jewel case aside and got up to pull the brown shutters inwards at the open window.

‘Thank you.’ He slipped the sunglasses into the top pocket of his blue shirt. ‘Is that better?’ A good idea, anyway, he thought, as she sat down again. The shadowy room might be more conducive to a confidential talk. ‘Your sister must have been very clever, judging by all the books in here. Were most of her friends from the university? I suppose she brought some of them home?’

‘No. When she wasn’t studying, she spent her time with me and with my parents and looking after Piero.’

‘Of course. She must have been very busy.’ Kept him a secret from the family, then. Somebody at the university was sure to know.

‘What about Piero’s father? Did you know him?’

‘She would never tell us who it was.’

‘But I expect you had suspicions? You would have known if she had a boyfriend, wouldn’t you, even if you never met him?’

‘No. She always kept secrets from us. Mummy sometimes called her The Lodger, because even though Daddy insists we all have supper together every evening and she took turns with me cooking it, she never really talked to us.’

‘No? Well . . . chemistry, you said. They say scientists do live in their own world, that they’re absent-minded.’

‘She was like that when she was ten.’

‘Showed early signs, then. . . . You didn’t think it might be a married man who was the father, and that was why she never talked about him or brought him home?’

Silence. Looking down at the necklace which she was winding more and more tightly round her fingers, she seemed to be giving the idea some thought.

‘Maybe . . . ,’ she said at last.

‘And what about you? What did you study?’

‘Music. I went to the conservatory. I was going to be a singer, but then I was seriously ill. I was in hospital for over a year and I had to give it up.’

‘That’s a pity. Do you still sing, though?’

She shrugged. ‘Sometimes. My voice is still good, but I wanted to be a first-class professional. I’m not interested in being a talented amateur.’

‘I can understand that.’ Would she now become the family drudge, helping in the office, bringing up her sister’s child, caring for her mother?

‘Your father is going to be all right, you know that?’ Something the prosecutor had checked on with the doctors before telling him the bad news. There was one advantage, then, in a case involving rich people. The prosecutor did some of the difficult jobs usually left to the marshal. ‘And you know that there’s a patrol car outside the gates, so you’ve no reason to be frightened. They’ll be inside the grounds at night.’

‘They weren’t there this morning when I took Piero.’

‘No, but they’re there now and they’ll stay. You may see some journalists out there, too. Just ignore them. They won’t be allowed to bother you. I imagine you’ll need to go out later to pick the little boy up.’

‘I collect him at four. I haven’t told him. He keeps asking me when she’s coming back, and I don’t know what to say to him.’

Her face flushed red again, her eyes glittered.

‘Try to breathe quietly. . . . ’ Tears began to roll down her blotched cheeks, but she made no move to dry them, just continued to gaze at him. Having nothing else to offer her, he gave her his clean white handkerchief.

‘Thank you. He’s my responsibility now. I’ll have to tell him sometime.’

‘Yes, you’ll have to tell him. The main thing is that he has you. I do think, though, that you need to calm down yourself before you can explain that she’s not coming back. You can’t do it when you’re in this state. In the meantime, do you have any help here? Someone to watch the child if you have to be elsewhere? A housekeeper, a maid perhaps?’ There hardly seemed to be any point in mentioning her mother as a possible help.

‘There are two girls who work here. They don’t live in, but Daddy phoned me last night and told me one of them should stay here now. She slept in the main house last night, but now that—now she’s to sleep here in Daniela’s bedroom so that Piero can stay in his own room next door. I have to stay with Mummy.’

‘That sounds sensible, but you’ll have to wait for the prosecutor to give his permission for anyone to use the tower. It may not be for a while yet.’

‘Why, as I’m here now?’

‘Yes. But you’re not here alone. We needed your help to check that nothing was missing, and you’ve been very sensible, but now the doors will be sealed and you must all stay in the main house. Please don’t worry. It’s only until the investigation’s over.’ He was conscious of treating her as though she were a child or a delicate invalid, or perhaps, to be honest, more like a bomb that might explode in another paroxysm of hysterical tears. But she was drying her eyes and waiting quietly for his next question. A pigeon fluttered, trying to land on the windowsill, frustrated by finding the shutters pulled to. What had the technicians been checking there yesterday? Did they think the man had been secretly climbing up to the princess in the tower?

‘Did your sister feed the birds?’

‘No. I don’t know. Maybe she did. I never came up here. She always brought Piero down to the car, and when she wasn’t studying we spent the afternoons by the pool. Daddy was going to start teaching Piero to swim and now . . . and now. . . .’

‘He will teach him to swim. He will. You can’t believe it now, I know, but life will go on. It does for us all. It will be all right.’

‘No.’ She said it in a low voice with a dreadful, black certainty and he saw her body hunch, curling in on itself as if rigid with pain. ‘No, it won’t. It’ll never be all right, and he’ll blame me.’

All of a sudden, the room was too dark. The gloom spared his eyes, but she needed sunshine. If she went to pieces, there’d be no witness in this case. This wouldn’t do at all. He shouldn’t have sent that carabiniere down, either. The last thing he needed was for the prosecutor to arrive to talk to the mother and find he’d sent the daughter into a fit of hysterics. That would be the end of his affability.

‘Why don’t you open the shutters now? I’ll sit out of the way of the strong light. I won’t put my dark glasses on, don’t worry.’

She stayed where she was, hunched and rigid, eyes fixed on the chain pulled tight between her reddening fingers. He got up and went behind the sofa to close the window. The only light came from the small bare windows of the landing and staircase. He had to get her out of here.

‘I think we should go down. You’re getting upset.’

‘I want Daddy to come home! I can’t manage by myself!’

‘I’m sure he’ll be home in a very few days, but he won’t want to find you in this state. He’s going to be all right, but he has been ill and he’ll need your help, your comfort.’

‘He won’t! He’ll blame me! I don’t want him to come home!’

‘Why should he blame you? You weren’t even here— and if you had been, what could you have done against an armed man?’

‘No, I wasn’t here. I wasn’t here . . . I was—do you want to know where I was? Trying on shoes! I didn’t tell you that yesterday, did I? I forgot—no, I didn’t . . . I was ashamed to tell you I was trying on shoes at Gucci. Yes. Trying on shoes when—when—Oh, God! Oh, God!’ Her face was pale now.

‘No, no, no. This won’t do at all. It’ll do no good to start blaming yourself. Breathe deeply. Breathe.’

Thank heaven she responded to orders. He must get her downstairs and out into the open.

‘Come with me now. We’re going to go down and walk in the garden until you feel calmer.’

He went down the steep stairs in front of her, still afraid she might faint, sure she would follow him. When calm, she was docile enough.

Outside, slipping on his hat and dark glasses, he felt safer and was relieved to see the carabiniere he’d sent across the road coming towards them.

‘Walk with us a moment and tell me how it went.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve nothing to report, even the other matter you mentioned. . . .’ He glanced at the victim’s sister in embarrassment.

‘That’s all right. I just thought we should take a look at the garden, get our bearings.’

The young carabiniere was confused. He was ingenuous and enthusiastic and clearly itching to get back to the search for the weapon with the other men, perhaps hoping he’d be the one to find it. It was easy to see he couldn’t understand what the marshal wanted.

‘We’re going to search an empty cottage, Marshal, just inside the wall. There’s a gate down there and a track. The lieutenant says somebody could have got in there easily and that—’

‘Walk with us,’ insisted the marshal, silencing the carabiniere. ‘It’s very pleasant here. . . . A garden this size, now,’ the marshal pretended to look about him, ‘must be a lot of work. And a pool to look after, too.’

‘Daddy likes doing that. There’s a robot thing.’

‘Ah, yes. I know what you mean. I think there’s even one that mows grass by itself—does your father like gardening, too? No, I suppose you have a gardener.’

‘No.’

‘And you’re not interested in gardening yourself?’

‘No.’

Not interested in this line of questioning either, that was evident. Not a flicker of reaction. If little Piero had been fathered by a sprightly young gardener, she didn’t know about it.

‘All these hedges to cut. And watering in this heat. So, who does it?’

‘Contract gardeners cut the hedges, once a month. The watering system’s automatic. We did have a man once. . . .’

‘How long ago was that?’

‘I forget. A few years ago, but Daddy had to sack him.’

‘Can you remember why?’

‘I think because he was stealing. There was a quarrel, anyway. Daddy was furious with him, said he was ungrateful.’

‘I see. Shall we go along here—this didn’t used to be a vegetable garden, by any chance, did it?’

‘I think so. Why?’

‘Oh, no reason, just that I saw one like it once, divided up with these little hedges. Why should he have been grateful? The gardener.’

‘Because he was an ex-prisoner and Daddy gave him a job as a favour.’

‘I understand. Well, we have to consider anyone with a grudge against your father as under suspicion. I’ll talk to him about it once he’s home. What about the two girls you mentioned? I imagine they were here when . . . when you left with the little boy yesterday. I’ll need to talk to them. You said yesterday you didn’t see anybody around the villa or coming away in a car when you returned, but they might have noticed something. I didn’t see them here yesterday.’

‘Because they weren’t here. I told you there was nobody here except Mummy and me. They don’t come until lunchtime. They bring the shopping and prepare lunch. Then, in the afternoon, they do the housework and leave everything ready for supper. They usually leave about nine, only now Frida has to stay. Are we going down to the vineyard?’

‘No, no . . . we’ll turn back. The sun’s hot and you have nothing on your head.’

‘I never wear anything on my head.’

‘Well, of course, you have lovely thick hair. Even so, you can’t be too careful, eh, carabiniere?’

‘What? Oh . . . no, Marshal.’

‘Unusual hours. The two girls, I mean.’

‘It’s because of Mummy. She’s not well and she always has trouble sleeping. She takes something for it and she never gets up until late.’

‘Except yesterday, of course, when all the noise—but no, you said you woke her, didn’t you? You understand that I’d rather not have to press her too much. She’s very upset and, if you say she’s not well, anyway—but I do need to know whether she heard anything.’

‘She didn’t. She couldn’t have. I told you she takes sleeping pills and she wears earplugs as well. I didn’t wake her, it was the woman across the road when she came back here with me. It took her a long time to wake Mummy at that hour.’

‘Ah, yes. Signora Donati. Let’s walk down this path. The carabiniere here has just been chatting to her. Do you know her well?’

She didn’t answer right away. Her gaze shifted away and up. He followed her glance. The tower. It was going to be a long time before she could look up there without that image coming back. It had been hard on her to expect her help today, but then who else was there to ask? Not the mother, that went without saying.

‘I’m sorry. What did you ask me?’

‘I was asking if you knew Signora Donati well.’

‘Who is she?’

‘The neighbour who helped you yesterday.’

‘I don’t know her at all.’

Of course not. How much easier it was to investigate a crime in the poorer parts of the old city where everybody knew everybody else’s business.

‘You went to her for help, though.’

‘No, I didn’t. I was just running away. I was frightened and he was out there and—and I was screaming. . . . I’ve been thinking about what you asked me yesterday—I mean about whether I saw anybody. . . .’

‘You’ve remembered something?’

‘I’m not sure. I just thought—I was upset and I couldn’t remember anything clearly. I’ll try. . . .’

‘The person you thought you saw, was it somebody you recognized? Don’t be afraid to say. Even if you’re mistaken and remember more clearly later, it’s all right.’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course. I’m not writing anything down, am I? And the carabiniere here is not writing anything down, either, are you?’