A Murder in Tuscany Read online

  The bed had been comfortable, the room warm, but Cate had woken early after her troubled night. She had felt a sense of doom, of bad news awaiting. One of her dreams had featured the barking of the dogs from Ginevra’s farm, and now wide awake, she could still hear them baying in the pre-dawn light. All she had wanted was a bit of human company, to make the world normal again.

  To get to the kitchen Cate had to come down the quiet, dark back staircase, found herself tiptoeing in fact, so as not to wake anyone, past the closed and silent door to Luca’s office and apartments, out into the castle’s courtyard, grey and silent in the early light, and round the back to the kitchen door.

  And it had looked like she wasn’t welcome. It had seemed to Cate then that her new status – and she wished she had a clearer idea of just what that status was – wasn’t the only thing annoying Ginevra; the cook was also unhappy about having Cate breathing down her neck. She’d wondered what time Ginevra got up herself; she was in here by seven every morning, and never mind the ten-minute walk from the farmhouse where she lived.

  And it had been a cold one, this morning. Off to the north-west, Cate had noticed, looking out over the frosted fields in the blue-grey dawn, there was a bank of heavy cloud waiting on the horizon. Snow moving down from the Alps, her radio had told her.

  Nicki didn’t get in until 8.30; Ginevra had set Cate to making the paste as an alternative to sending her back to bed; a slow, time-consuming job requiring plenty of fine chopping. Onion, carrot, celery, oregano, chicken livers, oil and wine.

  When Mauro had come in she’d known it was him before he spoke from the boots being stamped on the mat, the heavy tread, the cold whiff of fields that came in with him. Cate had known without having to look that he was crossing the kitchen to the big two-litre bottle of wine that stood beside the stove; she’d heard the glug of the tumbler being filled.

  They’d stood in silence for a bit, a few muttered complaints about the cold, then they’d started.

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to clear her stuff,’ Ginevra had grumbled first. ‘I suppose someone’ll have to take it away.’

  He’d grunted. Ginevra had gone on. ‘What did the Commissario say about that? Anything?’

  At the mention of the policeman Cate had paused in her careful chopping, and listened.

  ‘Nope,’ the gardener had said with satisfaction. ‘I think they’re done with the whole business, don’t you? Foreigners are always driving into trees and killing themselves, it’s a pain in the backside for them, our poor lads having to clear up the mess.’

  And it was then that Ginevra said, with something malicious in her voice, ‘What about the husband?’

  For some reason the question came as more of a shock to Cate than anything she’d heard since the news of Loni Meadows’s death. Husband? There was a husband. Well.

  There was another grunt from Mauro. ‘What about him?’ he said with contempt.

  ‘Well,’ Ginevra said cautiously. ‘I suppose he’ll come out and collect her stuff, will he?’

  ‘I don’t suppose he’s in any hurry,’ said Mauro. ‘I mean – it wasn’t what we’d call a marriage, was it?’ He laughed sourly, and for a moment Ginevra joined him.

  ‘Do you think he knew?’ said Ginevra after a bit. ‘About her?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Mauro with bitterness. ‘Different rules for their sort.’

  They were sitting at the table now; Cate could hear the scrape of chairs, and Mauro’s tumbler being set down on the wood. Refilled. Ginevra herself would be drinking peach nectar, her sickly secret vice. She ordered the stuff by the case, on the Trust’s bill, but no one ever drank it but her. The glasses chinked.

  ‘He said she didn’t die straight away,’ said Mauro, and Cate put a hand to her mouth in the chilly pantry.

  ‘The Commissario. Said it. Said it’d have been the cold, finished her off.’

  Ginevra made a grudging sound. ‘Brutto,’ she said. ‘Nasty.’

  ‘She had it coming,’ said Mauro, his voice slowed up, almost thoughtful-sounding under the influence of the wine.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Ginevra. ‘She did.’

  As the silence persisted, the chicken livers still between her fingers, Cate realized that sooner or later Mauro and Ginevra would work out she was there, and she had no idea what she would do then. And as if on cue her stomach, empty for close to twelve hours, rumbled loudly.

  Suddenly Ginevra was in the doorway to the pantry glaring down at her. Cate got to her feet smiling, as though she’d heard nothing, and presented Ginevra with the wooden board loaded with its cargo of fresh, neat piles; glossy livers, carrot, celery, parsley.

  ‘Mamma mia,’ she said brightly, ‘I’m starving.’

  Behind Ginevra the door banged and in came Nicki, with Anna-Maria hard on her heels, overcoated and grumbling.

  But Ginevra didn’t turn at the sound; instead she leaned down to Cate’s ear. ‘Now you listen, my girl,’ she said in a low, fierce voice; ‘we both know what you heard. And if you breathe a word – ’

  Cate shook her head, mesmerized. Ginevra went on, muttering fiercely. ‘She did have it coming, there’s no one would disagree with that. There’s not one of us – and I mean none – she hasn’t accused of stealing or lying or drinking on the job, except you, and she’d have got around to it, believe me. Mauro, Gallo, Nicki – accused Nicki of stealing an earring!’ Her eyes bulged with outrage. ‘A single earring! And it had got caught in the bedspread all along.’

  Cate’s words fell over each other in an attempt to placate Ginevra. ‘No – I – I wouldn’t – ’ Then something crept into her mind, and wouldn’t leave. ‘I didn’t think – well, it’s just – he did have a row with her, didn’t he? That very day.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Ginevra, hands on hips, then something dawned. ‘Don’t be silly. Like I said, not a day passed she didn’t row with someone.’

  ‘And then he was out all day,’ said Cate, half to herself. ‘Hauling cows out of a stream, he said.’

  Ginevra’s eyes were black as currants. ‘Oh, you stupid girl, of course he was. Besides, she was alive and kicking the whole day, wasn’t she? He doesn’t need an alibi, he wouldn’t – ’ She looked momentarily bewildered, and when she spoke again her voice had lost some of its certainty. ‘It was an accident. Well, even if he did need an alibi, yes, he was off with the cows, then he came back in time for the bitch to bawl him out all over again, for helping a friend in need, as if she’d have understood. But one thing’s for certain, when she drove into the river and killed herself, he was tucked up in bed beside me, snoring his head off.’ Looking her age, Ginevra took a breath.

  ‘Look,’ she hissed, ‘he thinks there’s something funny about it. We all do. Something not right. But it’s nothing to do with us.’ And her small black eyes glittered.

  ‘Did he tell that to the Commissario, then?’ asked Cate. Ginevra turned her back by way of answer.

  At the stove Anna-Maria and Nicki were still grumbling between themselves, but looking over the old cook’s shoulder Cate saw they were beginning to take notice, and Ginevra turned to glare at them.

  ‘And what are you looking at?’ she snapped.

  ‘He’s said I’m not to clean the rooms,’ said Anna-Maria. ‘Some story about not wanting anything thrown away by mistake? Couldn’t make head nor tail of it. No one’s complained about me, have they?’

  There was a story, Cate had always thought it a myth, that Anna-Maria had incinerated a piece of artwork in progress that one of the guests had left out on their kitchen table; something made out of sprouting green potatoes and bleached chicken bones. Or was it congealed blood? The story varied.

  Anna-Maria was still complaining. ‘Well, I don’t know, they’ll be pigsties by the time I get back in. The girl from Florida’s freaking out already. The Englishman doesn’t know how to keep anything clean – but then, they never do, the English. Don’t know a dishcloth when one’s laid out for them.’ Cate shushed
her; if she was caught badmouthing the guests so loudly she’d be out on her ear. ‘And that northerner – Swedish, is he?’

  ‘Norwegian,’ said Cate.

  ‘Well, whatever he is, he hasn’t let me inside his door in a week anyway, just glared at me the first few days, then wouldn’t answer when I knocked.’ She plonked herself at the table, puffed with outrage.

  Nicki was hanging up her coat. ‘Mr Gallo said you can start on the library,’ she soothed. ‘He didn’t say he was going to dock your pay, either, so come on. No harm done. Oooh,’ she moved on, without a pause, eyeing the slice of pandoro that Cate had cut herself, ‘can I have some of that?’

  Nicki was greedy, for a skinny little thing. Cate cut another piece of the sweet yellow yeast-cake and pushed the plate across the table to the girl, who parked herself at a chair and began to wolf it. And what with Mauro looking like thunder at the sink, Nicki stuffing her face and babbling and Anna-Maria still padded in her layers of coats and taking up as much room as a water-buffalo at the table, the kitchen suddenly seemed very crowded. Cate stood up.

  ‘I’ll check on the dining room before I go, shall I?’ she said.

  ‘You’d better,’ said Ginevra, giving her a beady look. ‘I’m sure we didn’t have a proper chance to clear yesterday. And before you go where?’

  ‘Well, to check in with Lu – with Mr Gallo,’ said Cate cautiously. ‘If he’s up and about. Anna-Maria?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about up and about,’ said the cleaner huffily. ‘He just leaned out the window to shout at me, and if you ask me he was still wearing what he’d slept in.’ She sniffed.

  Poor Luca, thought Cate. What was Anna-Maria’s problem? His alternative lifestyle, maybe; poor Luca, fighting this lot’s prejudices all these years. He must be made of strong stuff. Cate swallowed the halfcup of lukewarm coffee Ginevra had grudgingly poured her, and left.

  By the light of day the dining room looked sad; Ginevra was right, they had all wanted to get out of there in a bit too much of a hurry, last night. The table was smeared and there were crumbs on the floor, so Cate got the cleaning materials from the cupboard in the kitchen and set to.

  It might look sad this morning, but last night had been something else. Once out of the library, with its dark, echoing corners, where voices seemed muffled and whispering acceptable, and into the modern wood-and-glass dining room, the guests had simply stopped talking.

  Whether it was the cheerful lighting, the effort of looking – or not looking – each other in the eye around the great oval table, or the fact that Loni Meadows’s absence was most unavoidable here, her place literally empty, Cate couldn’t have said. The memory of the night before – the Dottoressa in green silk telling a dirty story about Fellini; I knew him, you know, she’d said, sweeping the table with her flirtatious gaze, so you couldn’t tell who her look was meant for.

  She had her favourites; who’d said that? Probably Tiziano. Per, Tina; they were her favourites.

  Last night they hadn’t even complained about the baccalà, traditionally the most disliked meal of the week, Friday’s fish supper, salt cod stewed in sauce. They hadn’t got noisily drunk and bickered or pontificated or embarked on impromptu poetry readings, although Per had worked his way steadily and without obvious effect through two bottles of red wine and Michelle had been woozy on prosecco even before she sat down. Tina had drunk glass after glass of water, as if purging something from her system, and pushed the food around her plate.

  ‘Did they say – did she suffer?’ Cate had heard Tina say at one point, in her high, light voice, looking around with spaced eyes. The question had seemed deeply shocking; certainly no one had answered.

  Anna-Maria thought there was something wrong with Tina. Her room smelled bad, said Anna-Maria; it smelled sour. Maybe she was ill. Maybe she was just unhappy.

  In fact, no one had eaten much at all; when Cate had risen to help Nicki clear she had noted that most of the plates had hardly been touched. Tiziano, bless him, had cleared his, but even he had been far from his usual boisterous self. Each one of them had seemed determined to keep their thoughts to themselves. Why? The thought popped into Cate’s head that they were afraid to say the wrong thing. Afraid to incriminate themselves.

  Cate had set out the tray of brandy and liqueurs, and Per and Alec Fairhead had poured themselves big slugs in silence; it was only after his third, or maybe fourth, that Per had sat up and said something, his voice ragged. The first thing he’d said all through dinner. ‘Where was she going? Does anyone know where she was going?’

  At the door, Cate hadn’t been able to see their faces in the sudden silence. Then Michelle had said, ‘Jeez, Per. We all know. Don’t we?’ And there’d been movement then, clearing of throats and chairs moving. Their cue to go.

  Under the table collecting crumbs and warm with the effort, Cate sat back on her haunches and for the first time she really thought about what Mauro and Ginevra had said.

  She deserved it.

  Really? Did they really think that? What could Loni Meadows have done to deserve to die? Smashed to pieces; Cate closed her eyes as she thought about that. Her face, all bruised and broken. The long, delicate fingers, the fine ankles, caught in a horrible snarl of metal and rubber. The life leaving her; how long would it have taken? Face down in the river, or face pressed against the frozen earth.

  Where had she been going? On the road to Pozzo Basso. Even Cate knew Loni Meadows made regular, late-night visits to Pozzo, Thursdays, Fridays, returning at all hours. And once, early one morning a month or so back, Cate herself had seen the Monster in town, parked outside a hotel.

  Tiziano had been the last to leave, as he often was; Cate supposed the wheelchair must have taught him patience. She’d noticed over the weeks that he liked the others to go ahead of him out of most situations; she assumed because he didn’t like feeling he was getting in the way, blocking the door, people exchanging words over his head. Though he never showed it.

  She thought somehow, though, that the night of Loni’s death he had not been the last to go. Had he been upset by something too? Had he been tired? She couldn’t remember.

  ‘Am I keeping you up?’ he’d asked gently, there in the dining room. Cate supposed she might have yawned; certainly at that point she’d been thinking longingly of her bed.

  She’d shaken her head, with a sleepy laugh. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ Tiziano had said. ‘And you’re a late bird at the best of times, I know you. Always another little job to get done. It’ll be even worse now you’re living in, won’t it? Always on duty.’ He’d held out a hand, taken hers. ‘Don’t work yourself too hard, sweetheart.’

  Cate had felt embarrassed and pleased at the same time, shaking her head. ‘I’m lazy, really,’ she’d said. ‘You should see me when the alarm goes off.’

  He’d rested his eyes on her then, the hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. ‘What time did you get to bed last night?’ he’d said. ‘You didn’t leave here till gone eleven.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’ She’d looked at her toes.

  Getting to her feet in the dining room, which was now pristine, even by Ginevra’s exacting standards, Cate flushed at the memory.

  So Tiziano kept an eye on her, did he?

  She thought of the Venetian sitting at the window of the apartment that had been modified for him, on the ground floor. Sound-proofed, with a piano, ramps and a customized bathroom. Sitting at the window and watching.

  She had indeed left at about eleven. The dining room had been empty, Ginevra and Nicki gone. Why did it suddenly seem important to Cate to get those things straight? Loni Meadows had died in a car accident, simple as that.

  But it had been her last night on earth, and it had to matter.

  And now Cate wondered if there was anyone out there asking questions about Loni Meadows’s death, or if she was going to have to ask them herself.

  By the time Luca Gallo phoned him back, somewhere
around nine in the morning, Sandro was one coffee down, the paper open in front of him, and he already knew what the man was going to say.

  If Luisa had been there, she’d have made him explain; she’d have helped him sort his thoughts.

  ‘What do you know, exactly?’

  She would have challenged him, looking over his shoulder at the newspaper spread out in front of them. They’d be sitting at the kitchen table together; he’d have gone out early for the paper and some pastries, Luisa would have had coffee going on the stove, ready for his return.

  This is all wrong, Sandro would have said, not meaning him and Luisa because in an ideal world that conversation last night would never have happened. No, he’d have tapped the paper and said, This is all wrong. I knew something funny was going on, back then, last summer.

  He was hungry, but he didn’t feel like eating.

  Luisa and he hadn’t exchanged a word this morning. When Sandro had got back at nearly three in the morning from following Carlotta Bellagamba safely home to Galluzzo, let himself quietly into the apartment and come to bed, Luisa’s overnight bag had been inside the bedroom door, packed and ready to go, even though she wasn’t leaving for New York until Monday morning.

  When Luisa left for work, close to eight, Sandro had been lying silent in the bed, feigning sleep; it seemed to him that if he didn’t know what to say to her, he’d be best not saying anything at all. But he couldn’t sleep, however much he needed it; as he lay there a hundred questions pressed in on him. The nagging, insinuating ones about Luisa’s trip (Why didn’t she tell me before? How long has she known? Has she got a visa, is her passport up to date?) he pushed aside, but others crowded in on him. And what most of them boiled down to was simple: was he ever going to be any good at this?

  So, within minutes of the door closing behind Luisa, Sandro was out of bed, his head thumping, and by 8.30 he was in the Oltrarno. Not for him this morning the marble and glass of Rivoire, and the knowing glances of the barmen and Luisa just around the corner. He had texted Giuli to tell her he was sitting in a dingy bar called the Caffè Medici, off the Piazza Santo Spirito, not far from Giuli’s rooms in the Via della Chiesa. It was a place where no one would come up to Sandro, clap him on the shoulder and ask how Luisa was. At the bar one of the square’s glassy-eyed and shivering addicts gulped caffè latte, and in his booth Sandro was reading La Nazione.