“Because I promised.” I couldn’t tell from his voice whether his impatience was directed at me or at the situation. “Giancarlo asked, and I promised.”
It seemed an odd sort of request for an employee to make, and an odder one still for an employer to grant, but then I didn’t know how long the two men had known each other, or on what terms. I didn’t know much about Alex at all, really. Certainly I’d never seen his face take on this particular expression, the skin at the sides of his mouth and his eyes etched with weary lines that told me that Giancarlo’s death had hit him on a level that was personal.
I didn’t press the issue. I simply sat there, head down, stroking Max’s head, and felt the distance spread between us.
Alex took a breath as though he meant to make a statement, and then let it go again without a word. He flicked a sideways glance at me, too quickly for me to read any emotion in it, but I felt his hesitation. He was measuring the risk, I thought, of telling me a secret.
At length he drew another breath and said, “It’s rather a long story.” But his tone of voice implied he was prepared to tell it to me, so I waited. He stretched himself out on the hill, leaning back on his elbows. “The night Giancarlo first came home, the night you saw us talking on the terrace, he was explaining to me where he’d been all day. I was angry with him, you understand, for not having done what I’d asked him to do; for leaving the three of you stranded at Desenzano. I assumed he’d been drinking—something he hadn’t done for a long time, or else I never would have sent him down to fetch you in the first place—but he swore that this wasn’t the case. He’d been playing detective. You have to understand,” he said, “Giancarlo is a very loyal man.” And then he caught himself and paused, rephrasing in a quiet voice: “He was a very loyal man. Loyal to me, and to Il Piacere. He was born here, he’d lived his whole life here, he hadn’t ever gone away like I had, so I imagine he felt more connected to Il Piacere than I ever did—more protective of the house and what was in it. He wasn’t overly pleased with my decision to give the estate to the Forlani Trust. Seeing Il Piacere pass out of my family was not a thing that he looked forward to, but on the other hand he was happy to see the place finally restored, and to know that the furniture and artworks would be kept intact and cared for by the Trust. He was not an educated man, Giancarlo, but he had a connoisseur’s soul. He was born with it, born with a passion for beautiful things.”
He paused again, but because I sensed that he was leading up to something I said nothing, only nodded once to show that I was following.
He said, “A while ago, about a week before you came, Giancarlo got it into his head somehow that things were being taken from the house. He said a few objects had been moved or were missing, and that he wasn’t the only one who had noticed. I took a look myself, but I saw nothing out of place. Giancarlo, of course, blamed the Trust, but I tried to make him see how unlikely that was. The Forlani Trust is a highly respected organization—I couldn’t see that they’d risk their reputation stealing items that would, in a few months, belong to them anyway. Still, just to set my mind at rest, and on the theory that you can’t ever be too careful, I phoned my friend—the one who put me on to the Trust in the beginning—and I asked him if anything had gone missing during the work on his villa, and he said no, he hadn’t had a problem. And of course, none of our own staff would have done a thing like that.”
I arched a speculative eyebrow. “Not even the maid that took off for no reason, and went to Milan?”
“Especially not her. She was very religious, that one—never said anything bad about anyone, never told lies. And she’d never have stolen. Her conscience would not have permitted it.”
My eyebrow, of its own accord, moved higher. “And she was going around with Pietro?”
“Yes, well, I was just coming to Pietro, actually. He was the reason you didn’t get met at the station. Giancarlo was on his way to the car, ready to leave for Desenzano, when he saw Pietro going into the garage—‘skulking,’ in Giancarlo’s words—looking as though he didn’t want to be seen, and carrying a bag, a kind of rucksack. Giancarlo,” Alex told me, “didn’t like Pietro.”
I didn’t blame him, and said so. “Pietro isn’t exactly a likeable man.”
“They’d had words before, on more than one occasion. Over what, I don’t know, but Giancarlo didn’t like him. So when Giancarlo saw Pietro with the bag, it made him instantly suspicious. He was sure he’d found his thief. And instead of driving down to Desenzano to meet your train, he took the car and followed Pietro. They ended up in Sirmione.”
Where we’d been today. I found that I was curious myself about Pietro and his rucksack. “And what happened?”
Alex shrugged. “Giancarlo wasn’t sure. He saw Pietro go into a shop, a jeweller’s shop, and come out again, still with the bag, but Giancarlo said he thought the bag looked different somehow, emptier. He couldn’t prove anything, though. That’s what he wanted to talk to me about, that night. He wanted me to let him have some time to investigate, to look for evidence. I’ve known Giancarlo for a long time, and I knew he wouldn’t let this go until he’d done it, so I said all right. It seemed harmless enough, for a few days, to let him pretend to be off on a binge while he played at being a detective.”
Interpreting his tone, I said, “But you didn’t expect him to find any evidence, really?”
Again the shrug. “There’s nothing missing from the house that I can see. And this thing between Pietro and Giancarlo, it was personal, so no, I didn’t take his accusations very seriously. I figured he’d be back in a week or so, when he didn’t find any proof.” Beside him Nero shifted, and laid his head along his master’s thigh, his dark eyes rolling to regard me with a studied lack of interest. Alex went on, “But he didn’t come back. Only that one time, the day that you saw him coming to the Veranda della Diana, and that was only to ask me for money so he could rent a room in Sirmione.”
They must have had a very close relationship indeed, for an employer and employee, I decided, for Alex to humour Giancarlo to such an extreme. “So it was Giancarlo you were meeting today, then—it was him you went to see in Sirmione.”
“I meant to. He’d phoned me yesterday; he wanted me to come and see the jeweller’s shop, the one he’d seen Pietro going into. He said it was important. I went . . . the shop was closed for Easter Sunday, and Giancarlo never showed. I waited outside in the street for an hour, and then I gave up and came looking for you at the grotto. No point wasting the day.”
I was frowning. “But he was there.”
“Who was?”
“Giancarlo. He was there in Sirmione. I saw him myself. I bumped into him, actually.” And I told him about the outdoor restaurant in the open square, and how I’d collided with Giancarlo as he’d passed.
Alex frowned in his turn. “And which way was he heading?”
“Towards the dock, I think, but I’m not really sure . . . there were so many people coming off the hydrofoil, the square was pretty full. He might have turned off down one of the alleys.”
“Either way, that would put him going in the opposite direction from the jeweller’s shop. I wonder why?”
The only person who knew the answer to that, I thought, was Giancarlo, and he was beyond telling anyone. I’d been trying not to think about that body in the dust, but I thought of it now. It was hard for me to picture someone running down a man along the road like that without the driver knowing . . .
Shattering the silence, I asked, “Alex, what sort of car does Pietro drive?”
“A Fiat Panda. Why?”
“I just wondered. A red Mercedes passed me on the road a minute or so before I . . . well, before I found Giancarlo. It was going awfully fast. I wondered if it might have been the car that knocked him down.”
“You told the police this?”
“I mentioned it, yes.” They had noted it down before leaving. They hadn’t stayed long at the scene.
“It wouldn’t have been Pietro,?
?? he said, very sure. “A tourist, maybe. Lots of people come down here for the Easter weekend—you can tell them by the Audis and Mercedeses and the Porsche 911s.” His mouth quirked. “If Pietro started driving a Mercedes, on his salary, even I might be convinced that he was up to something.”
When I didn’t respond to that, he changed the subject, looking out across the rise of land opposite, towards the distant mountains. “We’re losing the light,” he said.
The evening was settling down into dusk with a creeping inevitability, stealing the colour from all that it touched as it spread out its mantle of flat bluish-grey. Another half-hour would bring darkness.
The breeze blew past me, stronger, colder. At my side Max raised his head and sniffed.
“I suppose that we ought to head back,” Alex said, sitting upright.
“Yes, I—”
Max interrupted by springing alert to all fours with an ear-splitting bark. Nero, taking the cue, rose as well, pointed nose to the wind as though testing a scent. His low growl was much more unsettling to me than Max’s barking.
Both dogs, as one unit, erupted into motion, bounding uphill at a breakneck pace that blurred them into shadows. Alex called out a command that stopped them just shy of the pines.
They waited, whining and impatient, till we joined them.
There was nothing there, no danger in the pines that would seem to have warranted such a great show of alarm. But looking down at my own feet I saw that someone had dropped a cigarette end—it had rolled to the edge of the path, still smouldering, the filter stained bright red with lipstick.
Seeing it and knowing that Daniela had been spying on us made my temper surge. She could watch all she wanted, and think what she liked, but I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d come down to the theatre alone, for some privacy—Alex had come after me. And as for thinking she could threaten me with tales of poisoned dogs . . .
Max and Nero whined again, and, “False alarm,” said Alex.
I didn’t tell him differently. It wasn’t up to me to tell him what sort of woman Daniela was—I was not at all involved in their relationship.
He smiled a faint apology. “It must have been an animal.”
“A cat, perhaps,” I said, and ground the cigarette end underneath my heel as we walked on.
xiii
POPPY met us as we came in from the terrace. From the way she knelt to greet the dogs, I gathered she’d been waiting more for their return than ours. The girl was mad about the greyhounds. And they, in the face of so much adoration and affection, consented in an almost lordly manner to be petted, standing patiently with long tails moving slowly side to side, the greyhound version, I suspected, of the royal wave.
“They like you,” Alex told her with a smile.
“I used to have a dog,” said Poppy, rather wistfully. “I’d like to have another one, but Mummy says we can’t while I’m at school, because there wouldn’t be anyone home to take care of him.”
Alex agreed that dogs needed a lot of attention, companionship. “These two are angry with me now, because I’ve been away all day.”
Caressing Nero’s neck, Poppy said, “They don’t like being left in the kennels.”
“No, you’re right, they don’t,” said Alex. He tilted his head as though thinking. “Perhaps next time I need to go out for so long, I’ll let you look after the dogs, keep them company. How would that be?”
“Would you really?” Her eyes glowed. “Oh, that would be brilliant, I’d love to. D’you hear that, boy?”
Nero’s response was subdued—just a tolerant twitch of one ear—but it seemed enough for Poppy. She gave him a passionate hug. And then, with the ease of a twelve-year-old, changed from a child to an adult in one breath. Straightening, she looked at me. “We saved you some dinner. Shall I heat it up for you? Rupert showed me how to work the microwave,” she said.
She looked so keen to please that I found myself nodding in spite of the fact that I still had no appetite. “I’d like that. Thank you.”
“And afterwards, maybe,” she said, “we could play Snakes and Ladders? You said that you might, after dinner. Unless there’s another game you’d rather play . . .”
“Snakes and Ladders,” I assured her, “will be fine.” And even preferable, I thought, to sitting round with all the others going over the details of Giancarlo’s death. Having witnessed the event, I had no great desire to speak of it. I wanted to forget.
I had the feeling Alex understood. He said, “I’m not much good at games,” and with a quiet nod to both of us excused himself and walked off down the corridor, with Max and Nero padding at his heels.
Poppy’s obvious pleasure at having me all to herself was quite touching. Seating me rather decorously in the dining room, she went off to reheat my meal in the kitchen and returned bearing my plate before her with such proper form one might think she was serving the Queen. I was careful not to smile because I still remembered how, at Poppy’s age, I’d been in awe of my headmistress; how I’d longed for her to see me as an equal, not a little girl. Remembered, too, the day I’d served her tea, and just how desperately I’d tried to play the perfect hostess. Everything that could have gone wrong did—the tea was far too strong, the biscuits stale—but my headmistress hadn’t once let on. She’d endured the whole thing graciously, and in so doing had made my twelve-year-old self feel wonderfully special.
She was very much in my thoughts now as I swallowed a mouthful of chewy cold pasta and assured Poppy that it was lovely, just right. My reward was a shy smile that made me at last understand why my headmistress had not only suffered through my awful tea, but had asked for a second cup.
She brought me wine, as well, that she had poured into a pitcher, and a buttered roll. And then, at my insistence, took the seat across from mine.
From her look of concentration I guessed she was trying to think of something suitably grown-up to say to start a conversation. “It’s terrible what happened to Teresa’s husband, isn’t it?” When I agreed it was, she carried on, encouraged. “Alex said she’d better stay with relatives the next few days—you know, until after the funeral. He said he’d find somebody else to cook till then. That’s really nice of him, I think, don’t you?”
“I do, yes.”
“Very rich people aren’t always so thoughtful with their servants, are they?” she said, in a tone that had travelled the world and met hundreds of very rich people. “But Alex is. And he’s like that with everyone, too. Even us.”
“He’s a very considerate man,” I said, spearing another forkful of pasta.
“He was really worried about you.”
“Oh, yes?” I glanced up, keeping my expression casual, and Poppy nodded.
“Yes, at dinner, when you didn’t come. Rupert tried to tell him that you sometimes liked to be alone when something had upset you, but Alex said finding a body was more than upsetting and that someone ought to look for you to see you were all right.”
She had, I thought, a parrot’s ear for dialogue. I made a mental note to watch what I said in her presence in future.
“Mummy said she’d go and look, but Alex told her no, he’d go himself.” And then she added, as an afterthought, “Daniela didn’t like that.”
Reaching for my wine to wash down a largish lump of noodles, I said, “No, I don’t imagine that she did.”
Poppy studied my face for a moment with eyes that were very adult. And then, in the tones of an ally, she told me, “I don’t like Daniela. I don’t like the way she talks to Mummy. And she’s nicer to men than to women. Some women are like that, I know, but I think that it’s stupid.” She frowned. “Men don’t notice it, though, do they? Nicholas doesn’t.” She stopped there; caught herself as though afraid she’d said too much. I couldn’t help but wonder what the girl had seen, how much she knew about whatever had been going on between Daniela and Nicholas. She was clever for her age. I had the feeling that she didn’t miss much. Sitting up straighter, she tossed back her h
air. “Nicholas,” she said, “is such a jerk. I don’t know what my mother sees in him.”
I shrugged, careful not to offer any opinion that might find its way back to Madeleine. “They’ve been together a long time,” was all I said.
“Not really. Only since last summer. And only because Nicholas was being thrown out of his flat for not paying the rent. He didn’t pay too much attention to Mummy till then,” she said. Her exhaled breath was cynical beyond her years. “He’s just like all the others. He doesn’t want Mummy at all, only what she can give him.”
Astute as well as cynical, I thought. I was trying to think of what comforting bit of advice I could offer when she carried on without me.
“Den’s not, though. He’s rather different, don’t you think?”
I nodded. “Quite different from Nicholas, yes.”
“I like Den.”
I could have told her that I thought her mother liked him, too, but I kept my observations to myself. No point in getting the child’s hopes up, I thought. Besides, given Poppy’s own powers of observation I had a feeling she’d start noticing things herself, before long, if she hadn’t already.
Forcing my last bite of food down with wine, I pushed my plate away. “That was very good, Poppy. It did hit the spot.”
“It’s really only the first course, you know. There’s ham still, and vegetables . . .”
Holding my stomach with a protective hand, I shook my head and smiled. “No, honestly, I’m full.”
“I’ll just make the tea, then,” she said, jumping up to clear my plate, “and we can start our game.”
Her tea, to my relief, was infinitely better than the stuff I’d served my poor headmistress all those years ago. I took a long sip while she set up the game board between us. It was an older board, well-creased and scuffed with use.
“There’s a whole cupboard full of games, under the stairs,” Poppy said, when I asked her where she’d found it. “Teresa showed Den, after lunch. She said she didn’t think that Alex would mind if we played them. This one’s a baby’s game, I know,” she put in, a bit self-consciously, “but all the others were Italian, and I didn’t know the rules.”