Mozzarella Most Murderous

by Fairbanks, Nancy

  Lorenzo Massoni gave me such a sweet, sympathetic smile that I felt like hitting him. He probably thought I was some pitiful, cuckolded wife. Although it’s husbands who are cuckolded, not wives, I reminded myself. What are wives when their husbands are running around on them? Besides angry? I couldn’t think of a word. Not that my husband even knows Professor Evers. What are the chances of that?

  “There’s a dead lady in the swimming pool,” said Andrea in his excellent English. “Murdered. That’s what Mama thinks.”

  “Aren’t you a darling little curly-haired tyke?” said Eliza Stackpole, patting Andrea on the head. “And with such good English.” Then she turned to her husband and said, “Francis, I think we should turn straight around and go back to Oxford.” She had turned pale at the thought of a dead lady in the hotel swimming pool.

  “Nonsense,” said the professor from England.

  “She’s not still in the pool,” Bianca explained to her son. “Of course she isn’t. Don’t cry, Giulia. The lady’s body has been taken away, dear, and her soul’s gone up to God.”

  “I’ll bet her body was all puckered,” said Andrea with relish, “and the police will cut her up to see how she died.”

  Giulia began to cry, which was probably her brother’s intent. Bianca said, “Where in the world is your mother, Lorenzo? She’s supposed to be taking care of the children.”

  “I have no idea, my love,” he replied. Then to me, “I know your husband’s research and look forward to meeting him, Signora Blue. And now, why don’t we look for that welcome party we’ve been invited to?”

  “Maybe I will come along to the party,” murmured Eliza Stackpole. “Bodies in the swimming pool? How dreadful! You, fellow, take those bags up to our room. I’m certainly not staying there by myself in a hotel that has dead bodies scattered about. The poor woman was probably drowned by the Mafia.”

  The Mafia? That was a scenario I hadn’t considered. Our hosts were Sicilians, and Paolina, when we stopped yesterday to watch a wedding party entering a church, said it was undoubtedly a Mafia wedding; she could tell by the tuxedoed men with hard faces who were keeping the crowd from coming too close. On the other hand, it had been a chance remark, and she had nothing to do with the meeting and the hosts from Catania.

  “You saw the dead lady in the swimming pool, didn’t you?” Andrea had edged up beside me and was staring at me with great interest. “Mama said you pulled her out.”

  Now the Stackpoles were staring at me. Jason was sure to hear about and disapprove of my brief association with the deceased. If he ever arrived.

  7

  A French Encounter

  Bianca

  “What’s a tyke, Mama?” my sweet Andrea asked.

  I couldn’t remember—if I’d ever known. “Something nice, I’m sure, sweetheart.” But I thought that it was probably something unkind. The English have always considered us either frivolous or dangerous. And Signora Stackpole thought the Mafia must have killed Paolina? What nonsense. The Mafia doesn’t throw people into swimming pools. As for the English—they’ve been sending their pasty-faced sons and horse-faced daughters to Italy to be exposed to culture and to sow their wild—what’s the phrase?—Grasses?—for decades, centuries, and looking down their long noses at us. I used to hate having them on tours. They either ignored me and talked among themselves—“Look, Wycomb, that child has a dirty face.” As if their children never got smudged. Or they wanted to argue with me and pronounced all the historical and place names wrong. Or they said disapproving things about the church and the pope. No one has the right to do that but us Italians.

  I liked the Americans much better. They were friendlier, and why wouldn’t they be? Half of Italy immigrated and bred the joy of life into them. Carolyn, for instance, was a pleasant woman, even if I did suspect her of murdering Paolina.

  At that moment, I heard her say, “What a beautiful dog,” and when I looked around, a huge black poodle let out a loud woof and launched himself at her. Poor Carolyn landed on her bottom, looking dazed, while the dog licked her face.

  My daughter, who loves dogs, cried, “Look at the doggie, Mama. He’s kissing Signora Blue.” Giulia headed their way to claim a “kiss” for herself, but I dragged her back.

  “Charles de Gaulle, stop that,” ordered the woman who had circled us in the hall.

  “Thank you,” said Carolyn to the French woman as the dog obediently backed off.

  While Carolyn searched her little silver purse for a Kleenex to wipe the dog drool from her face, the French woman said in English—her accent wasn’t half as good as mine, “My apologies, Madame. I don’t know what possessed Charles. His manners are usually impeccable.” Then she scolded the dog so sternly in French that he hung his head while swiveling his eyes toward Carolyn.

  “I believe our Charles has fallen in love,” said the French husband. “You must forgive his clumsy zeal. He was trying to kiss you, Madame, as the little Italian girl said, but perhaps you do not understand Italian.”

  The French couple was very well dressed, I’ll say that for them, but I hadn’t missed that covert insult about language. The French are as disapproving as the English, maybe more so. Poor Carolyn, covered with dog drool, and, God help us, that big lout of a poodle had bruised her cheek. I handed Giulia to Lorenzo, who was watching the scene with amusement, and went to help Carolyn up.

  “Adrien, I see you and your wife managed to make it away from Lyon despite the strike,” said my husband.

  I realized then that the Frenchies must be part of the conference. Something worse than the Stackpoles to look forward to. But no one could complain that I’d brought the children along, not when the French had their dog with them. Maybe the dog would attack our hostess, the very noble Constanza Ricci-Tassone, and the French would be asked to leave. Was that too much to hope for?

  Such were my thoughts while Lorenzo introduced everyone and explained the missing husband and wife, who had been caught up in the French air-traffic controllers’ strike.

  Madame Albertine Guillot evidently took amiss my husband’s good-natured teasing about the French propensity to call sudden, inconvenient strikes. She recalled for us the year when a new computer system had been installed in the railroad station in Rome, resulting in twenty percent of the trains failing to run at all, while others were listed for departure and arrival at the wrong times and on the wrong tracks.

  “Has a new system of air traffic direction been installed in Paris then?” I asked innocently. “Is that why no one can get here from your capital?” She glared at me.

  Professor Adrien Guillot, the French husband, said, “Well, strikes. I remember the labor strike in Rome when so many from all over Italy, wearing their red caps and carrying their red banners, prevented us from visiting the Golden Palace of Nero.”

  “Not to mention the marathon runners bearing down on those of us trying to cross streets,” said Madame Guillot.

  “Shall I mediate a truce between the French and the Italians?” asked Professor Stackpole, who had been scratching the ears of an ecstatic Charles de Gaulle. Stackpole’s wife had just returned from chasing the bellman into the elevator to give him her uprooted plant, which she wanted him to carry upstairs with the bags and put in a glass of water.

  Finally we all set out for the cocktail party, Albertine Guillot and I with our high heels clicking on the tile floors, Carolyn limping slightly in unfashionable, flat-heeled shoes, although her dress was very pretty, especially for the clothing of an American, whose country is not known for its sense of fashion. Still, Americans are much more fashionable than the English. Mrs. Stackpole was still wearing her tweeds and walking shoes. She hadn’t bothered to change, although she may have come all the way from England in that outfit. I’m told that the English only bathe once a week. How dreadful, and wearing such unseasonably heavy clothes. Lorenzo and I take a bath together every night in our large, claw-footed tub. It was a wonder we didn’t have ten children by then instead of just two a
nd eight-ninths.

  Giulia managed to reach out and pat the behind of Charles de Gaulle, who growled.

  “I must warn you that Charles does not like children,” said Madame Guillot, looking disdainfully over her shoulder.

  “How French of him,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Try to remember, my love, that we’re all one happy European Union now,” my husband whispered, his lovely blue eyes twinkling. Where did they come from? Perhaps an ancestress had been raped by a soldier in an army of a Holy Roman Emperor from Germany. Fortunately, the rape and its genetic consequences had failed to cast Germanic gloom over my husband’s happy and ardent disposition. I sincerely hoped that the late Paolina had been lucky enough to have lovers of Lorenzo’s temperament before her death.

  8

  Sicilian Hospitality

  Carolyn

  As we entered the room where the cocktail party was to be held, I hung back to avoid the dog. My cheek ached miserably where Charles de Gaulle slammed into it with his hard head. Avoiding the dog left me in the receiving line beside Hank and just in front of the Stackpoles. Mrs. Stackpole dithered on and on in a high voice about whether the bellman could be trusted with the uprooted plant she had been forced to leave with him. Professor Stackpole seemed to take no notice of his wife’s concerns.

  First he asked me about the woman I had discovered in the pool, so I gave him a brief description of Paolina’s death. “I wonder whether the pool water killed her,” he speculated, as any chemist interested in toxins would. Jason might have said the same thing. I assured the Englishman that I did not think toxic water had been the problem.

  He then looked about him with interest and obvious surprise, which I could understand. The Victor Emmanuel room was so much different from the Roman villa feel of the hotel with its tiled floors and its doors, windows, and balconies opening onto gardens and pools. In this room the walls were covered in red brocade (perhaps red for the flags of Garibaldi, who united Italy and put the King of Savoy on the throne?), and the floors were marble and littered with gilded furniture. Heavily draped windows screened out the sunshine and the grandeur of the natural world outside and lent a claustrophobic feel to the space.

  But more than the room, our hosts mesmerized me. Constanza Ricci-Tassone was a tall woman with generous breasts, but otherwise starkly thin, her tanned skin stretched tightly across her bones. She had blonde hair, natural blonde but rinsed to control any darkening brought on by maturity or the encroaching white of age. I knew this because I rinse my own hair periodically for just those reasons. A blonde Sicilian. I later learned that she claimed descent from the Norman, Robert Guiscard, who marched his army north to Rome in the eleventh century to rescue Pope Gregory, looted the city, and made off with his prize, the pope himself—Guiscard and his amazonian Lombard wife, Sichelgaeta, who rode into battle with him, hair unbound and streaming from under her helmet. Was the haughty Constanza wily, like Guiscard, or warlike, as his wife had been? Or both?

  Her husband, Ruggiero Ricci, owner of the chemical company hosting the meeting, was dark skinned, perhaps with the blood of the Saracens who had ruled Sicily before the Normans, with dark hair, whitened at the hairline. He was shorter than his wife, and stocky. My mind jumped back to a church in Sorrento I had visited with Paolina. It contained an altar to Saint Giuseppe Moscati, who wore, in his portrait, a pale green lab coat and round spectacles. A handsome man from the early twentieth century, he had taught in the medical school in Naples, where his chastity and his good works among the poor, to whom he gave money rather than accepting fees, and his miraculous medical cures both before and after his death earned him sainthood.

  A priest in the Sorrento church had told us about him. After I said he looked like a chemist, Paolina inquired and translated the priest’s reply. She had almost laughed aloud when she saw the saint’s portrait above the candles that lit up with electric lights when one put a coin in the slot. However, she wouldn’t explain her amusement beyond saying that the saint looked like a very unsaintly friend of hers. I had taken a prayer card with his picture to show to Jason.

  Now I noticed a resemblance between Giuseppe Moscati and our host, although Signor Ricci did not wear a green lab coat, but rather an expensively tailored suit, and he did not have round spectacles, which might not have been fashionable enough to suit his wife. I had only a moment to wonder if he had been Paolina’s friend. Then it was my turn to be introduced. The dog, thank goodness, the French couple, Bianca, Lorenzo, and their children, who had been petted and smiled upon by Constanza, had moved on to be served drinks.

  “But where are your spouses?” Signor Ricci demanded after the introductions, as if cheated by the absence of Jason and Hank’s wife. Once Hank had explained the problem in Paris, Ricci said, shrugging expressively, “Ah, the French. Their workers have no loyalty to the bosses, unlike our good Sicilians. Well, I must wait a bit longer to meet these two scientists for whom I have such great respect. But not too much longer I hope. Signora Blue, your husband is a very lucky man.” Then, much to my astonishment, he leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Lovely, is she not, Constanza?”

  “Delightful,” murmured our hostess, who then introduced us to Dottore Valentino Santoro, a fine-featured man in his thirties with sad eyes and an expertise in toxicity. “Do have drinks and antipasti,” said our hostess, and waved us in the direction of an ornate cabinet presided over by a dashing waiter. We moved on, making way for the Stackpoles.

  Because I was an American, I was encouraged to drink bourbon, evidently provided specially for my husband, who was not here, and for me, although I don’t like it that much. I had to argue for wine. However, I had no argument with the antipasto and held a small plate of shrimp crostini, mushroom pate on toasts, and little fried zucchini sticks. They were lovely. Had our hostess arranged to have them brought in? Surely the plastic-duck chef had not provided them.

  While I nibbled and sipped happily, I endured another round of questioning by inquisitive young Andrea Massoni. Then our host, who said he had overheard me mentioning a woman named Paolina, drew me aside. “May I ask her last name?”

  “Paolina’s?” I blinked. “I was speaking of Paolina Marchetti.”

  “And you know this woman?” His wife had glided up beside him with Santoro in her wake.

  “I did, briefly, yes,” I replied.

  “Could you tell me where she is?”

  “Well, not exactly. The police took her body away this morning.”

  “Her body!” Ruggiero Ricci all but glared at me. “Could you clarify that phrasing to me, Signora Blue?”

  “She’s dead,” I explained. He was making me nervous. “Drowned in the swimming pool. I pulled her out, but it was too late. I think she’d been dead for some time. Did—did you know her?”

  My host had paled, but more astoundingly, the chemist who worked for him exclaimed, “Paolina is dead?” and began to weep.

  Constanza, who didn’t seem the sympathetic type, tried to comfort him while saying to me, “This is quite a shock. Most unfortunate.” She patted their weeping employee on the shoulder. “You must excuse Valentino’s emotional outburst,” and she handed him a handkerchief from her own beaded handbag. “Do control yourself, Valentino,” and to me, “I fear that our young friend suffered an unrequited love for Paolina, who was my husband’s secretary.”

  I was dumbfounded. If she worked for the company that invited Jason to this meeting, why hadn’t Paolina mentioned it to me? Her week’s reservation here was now explained, but not her failure to mention that she was the secretary of the man I had speculated about in her presence, the man who looked just like the saint, who had been described by her as resembling an unsaintly friend. Had Signor Ricci been more than a friend, more than an employer to Paolina? And what about the grief-stricken Valentino Santoro? Would his unrequited love or jealousy of the lover she had come here to meet have caused him to arrive early and kill her?

  “You say she was here in So
rrento yesterday?” Constanza asked.

  I nodded, wondering if Signor Ricci might be the lover who told Paolina he couldn’t meet her.

  “How strange that she came a day early. You didn’t mention that, Ruggiero,” said his wife.

  “She was making arrangements for the meeting,” he muttered.

  “She told me that she expected to meet a—er—friend here last night,” I said, watching them both closely for their reactions, especially Signor Ricci’s. “But he cancelled.”

  “By friend do you mean lover? How disappointing for her,” said Constanza. “Perhaps she committed suicide.”

  Perhaps your husband came after all and killed her, I thought. He looked more stunned than guilty, but that could be an act.

  “In Paolina’s unfortunate absence, I think we must call Gracia to take up her duties.”

  “We don’t need Gracia,” said the husband sharply.

  “I can’t believe she’s dead,” mourned the devastated Valentino, and blew his nose into the dainty handkerchief provided by Signora Ricci-Tassone.

  I slipped away to whisper the news to Bianca, who said she’d be sure to sit next to our host and see what she could find out. I had to agree that she might be a better interrogator than I since she spoke Italian. On the other hand, I’d had more experience in the investigation of murder, if this was a case of murder. I didn’t say that to Bianca, as it’s rather embarrassing to admit that my path has been strewn with corpses since I started traveling with Jason. So many murders. Obviously I’d led a sheltered life until recently.

  Canapés, in the style of the Campania, are often based on vegetables because, since Roman times, the rich volcanic soil has made the area the vegetable garden of Italy. Interestingly, Neapolitan mushroom pate uses butter, rather than olive oil, which was the oil of choice in Roman times. Butter was introduced by invading Germanic tribes prior to the Middle Ages but was prohibited on fasting days for many years by the Roman Catholic Church. The recipe was inspired by the Monzu (corruption of Monsieur) cooks favored by the nobility in Naples, and, of course, the Marsala is from Sicily, which was joined politically with southern Italy from the time of Norman rule in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.