Season of Storms

by Susanna Kearsley

  It was not a normal playful barking, but the high-pitched, continual bay of a hound in pursuit. And then all of a sudden the baying changed into a yelp that was cut off midway.

  One of the greyhounds was hurt, or in trouble. And the last time I’d seen the dogs, they’d had Poppy with them. Without stopping to debate the wisdom of leaving the lighted pathway, I turned and ran towards the sound.

  It was the actor who had telephoned up to the house. “You ought to come,” he’d said, with urgency. “Your wife . . . you need to come.”

  “Something is wrong with Francesca?” It didn’t seem possible. Scarcely an hour had passed since they’d finished with the dress rehearsal, and she had been well then, in fine spirits, so pleased that she had invited the three of them down for a drink at the villa. He hadn’t gone himself, he had been tired . . .

  “No, not Francesca,” said the younger man. “It’s Celia. She’s . . . I think she’s dead.”

  He had no memory of replacing the receiver, nor of running through the gardens. To his mind it seemed one moment he was standing in his bedroom and the next he was inside the villa, holding Celia’s body in his arms, and rocking, willing her to wake.

  Francesca watched him calmly from her corner, like a spider in her web. “You can do nothing for her, caro. She is dead. I used the cyanide your gardeners use for killing wasps.”

  “The drink,” the actor said, and pointed to the spilled champagne glass that had fallen to the carpet next to Celia. “She poured us each a drink, you see. I didn’t realize . . .”

  “Why?” he asked Francesca, numb with grief. “Why would you do this? I’ve had other women, countless others, why—?”

  “You said yourself she was not like the others,” said Francesca. “She was carrying your child. She did not say as much, but I have eyes. And you already have a son. I will not have his future threatened.”

  “I’ll ring the police,” said the actor.

  He raised his hand. “No.” Even in his shocked condition one small detail penetrated. “Wait,” he said, and setting Celia gently on the sofa he approached the actor privately. “I have a son, an innocent, who should not have to bear the shame of what my wife has done. I can at least spare him that.”

  The actor looked at him in disbelief. “You’re asking me to lie?”

  “To hold your silence. Will you do it?” He thought for a moment the man would say no. He had been Celia’s friend, after all.

  But then, “I’ll do it,” said the actor, rather coldly, “for a price.”

  xvii

  I felt for a minute as if I were back in my dream, being chased, with the trees closing in blackly on all sides . . . only this time there were no footsteps behind me, and no shadows crossed the marble pavement underneath the moonlight as I burst into the long, secluded clearing of the Peacock Pool.

  I paused to catch my breath, and look around. The tailless peacocks seemed asleep, the water lying still beneath its covering of lilies. The little mausoleum, too, appeared quite unaware of my intrusion, its row of stone sentinel dogs gazing blankly ahead in a slumbering silence.

  And then, as I stood watching, one of the carved greyhounds slowly uncurled itself, coming to life, and detaching itself from the cold marble steps it came ghost-like towards me.

  It wasn’t a ghost. Nero’s eyes held the light of the living. Giving the wide, high-pitched yawn of a dog under stress, he stopped several feet off and turned, urging me over his shoulder to follow. I looked round at the darkness, apprehensive. “Poppy?”

  No answer came, and so I raised my voice and tried again.

  “Here!” she cried. “I’m here!” Her voice echoed strangely and Nero gave a few sharp barks as though to make quite certain I had heard her. I approached the mausoleum with the greyhound at my side.

  A beam of torchlight wavered from behind the pillars, deep within the shadowed corner harbouring the entrance to the crypt. “Down here,” she called, and waved the torch again to draw me over to the square-cut hole. “I can’t get out, I’m stuck. The ladder’s broken.”

  I could hear the rising panic in her voice, although I couldn’t see her. Dazzled by the light, I tried to calm her. “Don’t be frightened, now, it’s going to be all right. I’ll get you out. Turn the torch to the side, would you? That’s better.” With the torch no longer shining directly into my eyes, I could see her some ten feet below me, standing underneath the iron ladder. She hadn’t been crying, but her upturned face was pale and blotched and frightened. Frightened enough to not care who it was that had found her.

  “How on earth did you get down there?” I asked. “Did you fall? Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head no. “It was Max. He jumped, you see. And when I climbed down here and tried to help him out, the ladder broke.”

  For the first time I noticed the shining eyes beside her leg, and saw the darker figure of the dog, who wagged his tail in greeting. Ignoring him for the moment, I crouched for a better look down at the rusted iron rungs of the ladder. “Can you show me where it’s broken? Shine the torch. Oh right, I see.” It wasn’t bad, I thought—a foot or so above her reaching hand. I could easily lift her that high, and then climb out myself. “That’s no problem, then. I’ll just come down there and give you a boost, all right?”

  “What about Max?”

  “Well, I’ll try giving him a boost, too, but if that doesn’t work we can go and get some of the others to help. Watch yourself, now. I’m coming down.”

  She took a step back from the ladder as I started my descent into the crypt. The ladder protested my weight a little, vibrating against the bolts that held it anchored to the stone, and I was glad to let it go and drop the final distance to the floor, landing with a thud that jarred my spine.

  I’d only ever been in a crypt once before, and that had been on a school trip to Canterbury Cathedral, and this one smelled nothing like that one. This had a definite smell of decay and of death, and the walls breathed a bone-chilling damp. I was grateful for Max’s exuberant welcome. Stroking his ears, I looked round, but I couldn’t see much. The torch that Poppy held, still angled sideways, caught the corner of a wall niche that appeared to hold a smallish stone sarcophagus—one of Galeazzo’s greyhounds, I presumed—but beyond that I saw nothing but the darkness.

  Poor kid, I thought, turning back to Poppy. She must have been frightened half out of her wits, being down here alone. I reassured her with a smile. “Here, take the torch and I’ll give you a leg up. Just put your foot there,” I said, lacing my fingers to make a firm step for her. “That’s right, like you’re getting up onto a horse. Now hang on to my shoulder . . .” I hoisted her upwards as high as I could, until I could feel from the change in her weight that she’d managed to grab hold of the ladder. As her foot left my hands I warned, “Be careful going up,” but it was rather a pointless warning as by then she’d already scrambled up and out and was kneeling on the marble beside Nero, who had kept a patient vigil by the opening above.

  “Let’s see if Max can do the same,” I said. I had my doubts. The dog, although lighter to lift than Poppy, was somewhat more unwieldy and I couldn’t make him understand exactly what I wanted him to do. In the end I had to crouch and persuade him to rest his front paws on my shoulders while I hugged his back end tightly to my chest, and then by straightening and shoving him straight up towards the ladder I managed to get him to shift his front paws to the rungs, more for balance than anything else; but he didn’t like it. The unsteadiness, I think, made him nervous, and it took a few scrabbling tries before I finally got him heading upwards. Supporting his hindquarters with both my hands, I called to Poppy, “Lie down, if you can, and try to grab his collar; help him up.” He didn’t like that either, but it worked. With one great lunge his back legs and tail vanished over the rim of the hole.

  Poppy pushed herself upright, excited. “I’ve got him.”

  “All right. Now if you’ll just shine the torch down here on the ladder . . . thanks.”
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  I had to stretch my full height up to grasp the lower rung and pull my body up after, a move I hadn’t practised since my childhood days of playing on a climbing frame. My shoulders, unused to the strain, gave out after a few rungs and I had to drop and start again. This time, it was the ladder itself that gave out—with a crack of complaint the rusted metal snapped several inches above my hands, sending me once again plummeting down.

  I landed hard and lost my balance, rolling to the side. The torch beam followed me. “I’m fine,” I called, as I righted myself to a sitting position, massaging my knee. “I’m not hurt. But now I’m stuck, I’m afraid. I’ll need another ladder, or a length of rope, or something, to get out. You’ll have to fetch one of the others to help.”

  The torch held firm, unwavering, and pinned me in its glare.

  “Poppy?” I shielded my eyes with one hand, looking up. “Darling, everyone’s probably still at the theatre. Just go and get Rupert or Bryan, they’ll know what to do.”

  In the silence that followed, with the torch still shining full upon my face, I knew a moment of uncertainty, and less than pleasant thoughts began to creep into my mind. I was, after all, in a rather vulnerable position, and Poppy was only a twelve-year-old girl who had already more than demonstrated her ability to hold a grudge. She hadn’t spoken to me for a week, and likely would have gone on not speaking to me if she hadn’t been in trouble, hadn’t needed my assistance. Now that she was safe, I thought, what motive did she have to help me out? What if she chose to simply leave and take the dogs and leave me down here in the crypt all night, with nobody the wiser?

  “Poppy?”

  This time the light moved. “I’m going,” she said. Not the most reassuring of answers, really, but before I could think to say anything else she had turned from the opening above and I could hear her footsteps cross the marble floor and fade into the night sounds of the gardens.

  I felt colder in the dark. Hugging my arms I stepped forwards to stand in the paler square of moonlight slanting indirectly down into the crypt. Slowly, my eyes began to make the adjustment, and I could see the nearest wall, although the other three were shrouded thick in blackness, their location only guessed at from my memory of the mausoleum’s size. The wall I saw was smooth and finely faced with marble blocks that fit so perfectly they seemed to need no mortar. I expected Galeazzo must have put his finest artisans to work on this, his final gift to his beloved greyhounds, and the place where he himself had planned to seek eternal rest—his own sarcophagus, according to what Alex had told us, was somewhere down here, lying empty because of his son’s refusal to have him buried in it. No doubt it had been beautifully made as well, and at any other time I might have been in a mood to appreciate the craftsmanship; but not tonight.

  Not standing here and shivering alone, trying not to dwell on where I was and what surrounded me. I was trying especially hard not to think of what might have enticed Max to jump down here in the first place, trying not to remember Edwina’s voice saying, “He’s likely got wind of a rat.”

  Standing in my little square of moonlight I strained my ears to catch the sound of anyone approaching.

  At first I heard only the wind in the trees and the watery murmur of the Peacock Pool. A leaf scuttled over the floor of the mausoleum overhead, startling in its unexpected loudness, and then skidded to a stop against a sheltered wall. Close by, some kind of night-bird called, a softly furtive cry; and then at last I heard the sound of mingled footsteps drawing nearer.

  My breath rushed out in pure relief. She hadn’t let me down, I thought. She’d actually gone and found someone to help—maybe more than one someone. It sounded as though there might be a few of them, walking with purpose. The lighter, more rapid steps, those would be Poppy’s; the others were heavier. Men, I decided. I didn’t hear the dogs, but . . .

  One man made a sudden comment, in Italian, and was answered by a female voice—a woman’s voice. Not Poppy’s, but Daniela’s.

  I clamped my lips around the breath that I’d been drawing in to call to them, and started shrinking back into the shadows, moving cautiously, my hands behind my back to feel for anything that might stand in my way. Bumping the side wall, I used it as a guide, backing from niche to niche in search of a hiding-place.

  The niches, more for ornament than anything, were too shallow to shelter a person, and the sarcophagi that held the bones of Galeazzo’s greyhounds were neither long enough nor tall enough to be much help. If I’d known where Galeazzo’s own sarcophagus might be, I’d have made a beeline for it, but as it was I could do little more than to press myself into the very back corner and hope that the darkness would keep me from being discovered.

  I couldn’t explain, later, why I’d reacted the way that I had, like an animal going to earth at the first sign of danger; but an instant later I knew I’d made the right decision, when I heard Daniela call the second man by name—‘Pietro’—and heard him answer in a rough, unpleasant voice.

  They were much closer, now. Their footsteps climbed the mausoleum steps and crossed to stop at the edge of the opening. I heard a strange metallic scrape as something dragged across the marble. So much for my hoping they wouldn’t be able to come down because of the break in the ladder, I realized—they’d brought their own, a sturdier aluminium model that settled on the crypt’s floor with an ominous finality. A torch switched on, its bright light shafting downwards as a pair of boots—a man’s boots—appeared on the topmost rung.

  Standing unprotected in my corner, I again felt that sensation of being awake in a nightmare. My dream may not have gone like this exactly, but the setting was the same, as was the pulse-pounding fear that went hand in hand with hiding in the darkness, desperate not to be seen.

  The man with the boots didn’t keep to my side of the crypt. He crossed to a spot in the opposite wall, where his torchlight found a large, arching niche, elaborately carved with images of saints and angels, that held a man-sized sarcophagus cut from white marble and topped with a recumbent figure—Galeazzo, I presumed.

  I couldn’t tell who the man with the boots was, though. His back was to me now, and he showed only as a shadow in the light from his own torch, too short to be Pietro, with an unfamiliar walk.

  The ladder creaked and clanged again, and two more shadows crossed the floor to join him—Pietro’s first, his bulk unmistakable, followed a few paces back by the smaller, more delicate shape of Daniela. She’d brought a torch, too, and as she lifted it to sweep the wall ahead of her it caught the two men squarely from behind. I saw Pietro’s bear-like shoulders, and the first man’s head, bent forward to expose his heart-shaped bald spot . . .

  Not that that really surprised me. I’d already suspected the stranger might be Daniela’s mystery man, but having never seen him from the front I was surprised now, when he turned to make a comment to the others, that his face should bring a flash of recognition.

  I had seen him before, I realized—in the little square in Sirmione where I’d sat and had a bite to eat. He’d been the man in the red shirt who’d made me so nervous. The man who’d been watching the crowd when I’d gone back to fetch Poppy’s necklace.

  My mind went racing back to that night in the Veranda della Diana, after Alex and I had come back from Teresa’s house down in the town, and I heard again Alex explaining to me why Giancarlo had failed to keep their planned meeting in Sirmione . . . The jeweller’s assistant was sure they were both being watched.

  Was this the man who’d been watching them? I wondered. The man who had possibly followed Giancarlo to Mira, and left him for dead at the side of the road?

  I narrowed my eyes on his face as he smiled and extended his hand to Daniela, expectant. Because she stood behind the light I hadn’t noticed that she was carrying anything besides her torch, but now I saw her swinging something forwards. It looked like a suitcase, one that might have served well as a prop for a play set in the sixties—sleek and hard-sided and covered in powder-blue leathery stuff that app
eared to have suffered a few knocks and scrapes. Hardly the sort of case that I’d have associated with a woman like Daniela, yet she handled it with care and passed it over with reluctance.

  Pietro stepped between them, intercepting the transfer. For a moment I thought that the man with the bald spot might protest the action; he frowned and drew breath as though meaning to speak, but in the end he let it pass, even raising one hand in a gesture of invitation as Pietro set the suitcase down on top of the sarcophagus and undid the clasps.

  Both torches angled downwards to illuminate the contents of the case. At first I saw only some kind of a puffy white packing material. Pietro moved to pull it back but Daniela’s more careful hand intervened, pushing the white stuff aside to uncover a series of objects that glittered and shone in the strong beams of light. She made a comment to Pietro, then, and if I’d had to translate from her tone alone I’d have guessed it meant something like: “You see? What did I tell you?” but still he reached forwards and picked up an item before she could stop him.

  Immediately, both Daniela and the other man spoke out in urgent voices. It was easy to see why. Pietro’s huge hand held a yellowish vase that appeared to be fashioned from jewel-studded glass, and looked fragile enough to shatter at the slightest pressure. Shrugging, he replaced it in the packing fluff and let Daniela fasten down the suitcase with a click.

  So she was involved in stealing things, I thought, for all Edwina had imagined that Daniela wouldn’t want to jeopardize her status with the Trust. From what I’d seen of Daniela I rather suspected it might have been that very element of risk that had appealed to her—she did like playing games. And of course, there was always the lure of the money. The vase that I’d just seen was very similar in style to the Byzantine chalice that Giancarlo had recovered from the jeweller in Sirmione, and must also have come from Galeazzo’s Fourth Crusade collection—objects that would doubtless bring a high price on the clandestine market.