As soon as he hung up, the manager called a friend of his, an editor at the Dolomiten-Tagblatt der Südtiroler, Bolzano’s main newspaper, in German. Herr Silbernagl and Inspector Ghedina arrived almost simultaneously at the hotel. The manager told them: for the last two days, the Baronessa had not returned. Yet her clothes, her cosmetics were in her room. She had left no message or instructions to the staff. Ghedina asked to be taken to her room, while he rang Bolzano’s prison, and asked if she had come to visit her husband. The clerk checked the register and eventually answered: “Not for the last day and a half.” Ghedina knitted his eyebrows and entered the room.
The manager was anxious to explain: “The bed has been made because the maid tidied the room after the Baronessa left it, two days ago. Since then, nothing has been touched.”
Orsina’s fragrance was still in the air, all the more so when the Inspector opened the closet and took a look at her few clothes. On the dressing table were her cosmetics and a couple of perfumes. On her night table, a box of tissues and what seemed to be her cell phone.
“Is it possible that someone from the staff has left their cell phone here?”
“I don’t think so, Inspector. I’ll find out at once, but that may be the Baronessa’s.”
Ghedina quickly appraised the situation as Herr Silbernagl took notes. His investigation needed this development like a hole in the head. It was not enough to be investigating a nearly clueless murder case involving an underage heiress; now her sister had vanished. Was that a fact, or was he jumping to conclusions? His findings were telling: not so much the presence of her clothes and cosmetics, but her cell phone. She might have forgotten it, but would have already come back to get it; or, would have called for somebody to forward it to her wherever she might be. In her current predicament, being reachable at all times was simply too important. No, the Baronessa had probably gone missing.
Silbernagl had reached the same conclusions; both men were writing them down, Ghedina in the police report, the journalist in the sketch of an article for the next day.
For a provincial paper, the Baronessa’s vanishing was a scoop, and the other Italian newspapers were quick in cannibalizing it. But, as it transpired privately, it was more than a vanishing.
The Baron, already back at the villa, had received a phone call. A stranger’s voice had told him: “Prepare to pay dearly if you don’t want to find your niece in another car trunk.” The man had hung up before the Baron could say anything. Gasping for air, the Baron had managed to call Inspector Ghedina straightaway, and tell him the horrible news: his niece had been kidnapped, for ransom.
The Inspector pretended to be surprised. He knew about the phone call anyway, as he had been tapping the Baron’s phone since the beginning of the investigation. It seemed logical to him to say: “Baron, let’s not lose heart. We’re already investigating this case too, and we shall leave no stone unturned.”
“And a fat lot of good it’ll do us!” Emanuele snapped. “You still don’t have a clue about my poor niece, and now the other one is kidnapped. You’re an incompetent idiot!”
There was more despair than anger in his voice. Ghedina did not comment, but said: “Your phone will be tapped from now on, Barone. The kidnappers will call you back to give you details. Try to keep them on the line as long as possible. Oh, and another thing,” he added as an afterthought, “it’s standard procedure: your assets will be frozen. Gallorini will be at the villa within an hour or so. Please, make sure that your secretary puts at his disposal the exact information concerning all your bank accounts, holdings, stocks, bonds, etcetera. It’s in your best interest to cooperate.”
“Go to hell!” The Baron hung up.
“Right on the money,” thought Ghedina, “the standard reaction to the standard procedure.” He had already taken care of Mr. MacPherson, in case the kidnappers tried to contact him about the ransom for his wife. No calls were allowed in to him in prison, except from his lawyer. And those calls were monitored and recorded.
****
The whole Italian Department at Georgetown had read the Italian newspapers by the time Professor Kavenaugh reached his office at ten in the morning. Mrs. Reed handed over the papers to him, but thought it indelicate to let him find out on his own. Perhaps she should sweeten the pill. She had worked at the department for twenty years, and for almost a dozen of them she had been his assistant. Professor Kavenaugh had always behaved in an exemplary way to her, the other staff, his colleagues, and the students. She owed him, she thought, a little tact, as she realized that he was an unusually sensitive man.
So, she herself told him of Orsina’s kidnapping. Leo looked nonplussed. Finally he said, as he looked at the papers, “This would not be sensationalistic speculation, would it?”
“I wouldn’t know, Professor, but I don’t think so, unfortunately. Poor family, all these tragedies.”
“It’s not another tragedy yet,” Leo shouted, but only in his mind, “you bird of ill omen!”
The class he was to teach was about Foscolo’s epistolary novel, Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, in which the poet bears his soul by mirroring, letter after letter, his restlessness in both love and politics. Normally, the Professor would put down Foscolo’s nearly demented fervor to the excesses of Romanticism; that day, his students were treated to such an impassioned rendition of some excerpts from the novel, that for the first time it came alive.
Was this Professor Kavenaugh? they wondered as they watched him quote passage after passage from memory. “I knew not how to comfort her, how to reply to her, how to advise her,” he was quoting Foscolo.
“… Oh, angel! Yes, yes! Would that I could forever weep, and thus dry up your tears! This miserable life of mine is yours, utterly; I consecrate it to you; and I consecrate it to your happiness!” All but one among the young women welcomed the change—he looked so handsome when he recited those lines; the young men wondered, in their minds: “What the hell is he getting so worked up for?”
For the next class he had to teach, Leo’s romantic fervor was replaced by a trancelike state. As soon as he could, he took refuge in his apartment. The news of Orsina’s kidnapping had made him sick. In the bathroom, he retched until he succeeded in vomiting, mainly bile, as he had skipped breakfast and lunch. What had happened? What was going so terribly wrong? Why?
He took a long unsparing look at himself in the mirror, then moved to the living room overwhelmed by books, hating every one of them and above all himself. Galileo and Garibaldi had been happy to see him home early, yet never had they been so ignored.
“What am I?” he was thinking. “A perfect idiot. What have I made of my life? What have I accomplished? I’ve ruined the life of a woman, and terminated that of her unborn child, our child. Then I’ve lived as a diligent automaton for many years. I was a promising young man, too promising and too self-confident.” What had he made of all that promise, and of his brilliant mind? Nothing but a couple of books and a sheaf of articles that no one wanted to read. And the one time he had had the opportunity to redeem himself, with Orsina, he had thrown it away. He had been such a fool, and such a coward too, he could not stand himself.
Jumping out the window offered itself as a suitable end to a life less than mediocre. But with his luck, he probably wouldn’t die; instead, he’d land on his landlady’s thickly mulched rose garden and be paralyzed as a consequence; great—more misery in store. Orsina’s confession in Italy had made him realize his enormous stupidity. To cope with it, and above all with the loss, he had sworn to become her protector. He had made a vow, then offered to rush to her side, but had done nothing. And now she had been kidnapped, and her life might well be at risk.
He had read and reread the Italian press. The Inspector in charge of Angela’s murder so far had proved ineffective. All he had was Nigel as the chief suspect. Much as Leo was jealous of him, he could not bring himself to believe that he had anything to do with Angela’s death. And now, the same Inspector was also in charge of Ors
ina’s investigation. What would he do next? Apprehend the manager of the Hotel Greif because he might have been the last one to see her?
No paper had mentioned the finding of Orsina’s cell phone in her hotel room. The only journalist aware of that all-important detail was Silbernagl, who had the good sense to omit it from his article in the Dolomiten. He did hope that it would lead Inspector Ghedina to a fast solution of the case. As South Tyrol depends heavily on tourism, he dreaded the consequences of two back-to-back tragedies, both in the province of Bolzano.
Leo could not know that Inspector Ghedina had checked all the calls Orsina had received and made, all the way back to her coming to Italy with her husband. Leo’s number in Washington had come up many, many times, and stuck out. It was the only number in the US she had dialed, and with what frequency! For several weeks she had dialed that number, and always late at night, Italian time. Sometimes very late. She had stayed on the phone for a long time, half an hour usually, sometimes more. Then, shortly before her vanishing, she had called this person many times, short calls each. Finally, when she was already in Bolzano, a very long phone call and two shorter ones, late at night.
On to something at last, Ghedina had stopped himself from dialing that number at once. It would have been clumsy to let the person know he was on to him, or her. No, he had the police trace the number.
Leo picked up the receiver, and dialed. He did not have the phone number for the palazzo in Venice, so he was calling the villa. Dumitru answered. Leo introduced himself, and the butler recognized him. Could he speak to the Baron? It was urgent. Much as he dreaded it, he must speak to him. Was there something he could do to help? Were the police making any progress? Should he come to Italy and try to help them?
The Baron gave him an earful. “How could you intrude when one tragedy is heaped on another? Have you no shame, you American bastard? And who do you think you are? Never call again and get lost. Go to hell!” More than hanging up, the Baron had probably smashed the phone, judging from the “thud” Leo heard.
His pride was not involved; in some perverse way he had enjoyed being insulted, as he had spent hours insulting himself. He rushed back to the bathroom for another bout of vomiting. He wiped his face, returned to the living room and let some time go by. Then he called back the Baron.
This time, Marianna answered. She recognized him, although she was beside herself with grief. In a very emotional way, she mumbled one thing too many for Leo to grasp fully, as she spoke half in Italian and half in dialect. He did understand that she refused to pass him on to the Baron. It would have been no use, and then: “La polisia l’è ciula.” The police are dumb. Only he could help la Baronessina. “El Baron l’è furbo come ’na volpe, e te sì orbo come ’na talpa e sordo come ’na campana.” The Baron is as sly as a fox, and you’re as blind as a mole and as deaf as a post. Leo listened gravely without saying a word. Marianna concluded: “Mai sveiàr el can che dorme,” let sleeping dogs lie.
She then broke into tears and was no longer capable of speaking.
What did he have? A freaking bestiary! He jotted it down for clarity’s sake: a fox, a mole, and dogs. He had never cared for the peasant wisdom of proverbs, but this was no time to be a snob. What was Marianna trying to tell him? That he had been as blind as a mole and as deaf as a post. What had he failed to see and hear? And she had also warned him: the Baron was as sly as a fox, and he should let sleeping dogs lie. What did she know? For a moment, he felt that she might have guessed much more than the Inspector and his minions had. Or were these merely the rantings of a desperate octogenarian whose Italian he could scarcely understand?
Leo debated within himself for the rest of the day. He tried to pray, but for the first time since his reconversion found it impossible to turn his mind in that direction. He was at his wits’ end when he lay down on his bed. Perhaps he fell asleep, perhaps he was delirious. But eventually he awoke. His mind was made up.
****
Mrs. Maria Reed, gray-haired, gray suited, and indispensable to the Italian Department, checked into her office precisely at nine in the morning and switched on the answering machine. The first message was from Leo, who had left it at 5:47 a.m. In a voice that sounded already distant, he said that he was going to Italy on an urgent matter, and that his classes were canceled indefinitely.
“Indefinitely? What?” wondered Mrs. Reed. She listened to the message again, to make sure that she had heard it correctly. She had, and yet it was so atypical of Professor Kavenaugh. What could be so urgent? The other messages were claiming her attention. Three of them, increasingly more insistent, were from one Inspector Ghedina, from the questura of Bolzano. He was practically ordering her to call him back. It was a police investigation.
Mrs. Reed had married an American, but her parents had come from Italy and she spoke Italian fluently. As she dialed the phone number in Bolzano, she remembered having read the Inspector’s name in the newspapers.
“Mrs. Reed?” asked Inspector Ghedina.
“Speaking.”
“Thank you for calling back. We were about to call you again. Now, we don’t have much time, so I’ll be brief. I am investigating the death of Angela Riviera della Motta and the kidnapping of her sister, Orsina Riviera della Motta. I hope you won’t mind my asking you a few questions. They concern Professor Leonard Kavenaugh.”
“I don’t mind,” Mrs. Reed said somewhat anxiously.
“And you don’t mind if we record them? Good. Now, as far as you know, is there any sort of relation between Professor Kavenaugh and Orsina Riviera della Motta?”
“She worked here, as an intern, a few years ago.” She gave him all the details.
“I see,” said the Inspector. He sounded disappointed. Why, was he expecting some gossip? Apparently he was, since he next asked: “Is there anything that would lead you to believe that there might be more than a professional relationship between them?”
“Not at all!” Mrs. Reed snapped. “Professor Kavenaugh is a man of impeccable ethical and professional standards. I’m even surprised that you would ask.”
“Oh no,” thought Ghedina, “she’s a fan.” Aloud: “Is there anything else you can tell me about the professor?”
Should she tell him? she asked herself.
“Pronto? Mrs. Reed? Are you there?”
She was. With some misgivings, she finally told the Inspector that the professor had left, bound for Italy on a very urgent matter.
“Really? And when?”
“A few hours ago, I should think.”
The Inspector thanked Mrs. Reed, and said that he might call her again. “And don’t hesitate to call me should you have anything to add.” He hung up, turned to Colucci and said: “Si viene a cacciare nei pasticci da solo?” He’s coming to get himself into a tight corner?
Ghedina instructed both Colucci and Gallorini to send a circular, by e-mail, to all points of entry as well as to all police headquarters in Italy: should the name “Leonard Kavenaugh,” US passport number so and so, turn up, it should be reported immediately to them in Bolzano. “Immediately” was repeated twice. This was a double filter. Even if Leo should somehow manage to slip by unnoticed at an airport, in Italy any sort of hotel, even the humblest pensione, is expected by law to ask the guest for his passport, which is photocopied. The copies are then faxed to the local police headquarters.
“Colucci and Gallorini: get a clerk, somebody we can trust, and instruct him to resend the same circular every other hour until we catch the professore. Capito?”
A few minutes later a young, bespectacled man knocked on Ghedina’s door, and entered the office saying: “May I have a word with you, Inspector?”
“Who are you, exactly?” The face looked familiar.
“I’m the clerk who’s going to be e-mailing your warning on Leonard Kavenaugh round the clock.”
“And what do you want?”
“To caution you, if I may.”
“To caution me?” Ghedina was already put off
.
“Yes. I’ve been following the Riviera investigation, and with all due respect I must point out that Kavenaugh is not wanted for murder, kidnapping, or even any known crime. He is merely a suspect. So, our warning will receive very low priority, especially by the local police headquarters, should he manage to get through passport control at an airport or another point of entry.”
Ghedina was fuming, but said nothing. The young clerk mistook his silence as a cue for him to elaborate. “As you know, hotels routinely fax the passport details to the police headquarters, where a few bored clerks shuffle them from one pile to another; eventually, they take the time to punch the data into a computer. I think—”
“That you should get the hell out of my office, and do exactly as you are told! Is that clear?” Ghedina had roared his rebuttal, and the clerk was already hurrying back to his computer. “That young prick,” he thought, “what nerve! Of course, he has a point, but what else can I do?”
****
The only female student who had not enjoyed Professor Kavenaugh’s fiery rendition of Foscolo’s words of longing was Claire Staines. Now a graduate student, she had been a sophomore when Orsina had been an intern at Georgetown. Even as a freshman she had had a crush on the professor. The year after, she had chosen her major—Italian—and taken all the classes he offered at her level. She often visited him in his office, after class, and he patiently indulged her. She was a good student. Pretty too, in a cropped, boyish way, though that did not matter to him; what did matter was that she would willingly take on extra-curricular projects such as the Italian Club and Italian Movie Month. She had not welcomed the arrival of Orsina, who often took over the Professor’s duties as his teaching assistant. Not that she wasn’t a capable teacher, that was not the point: Claire considered her a rival.
The Forbidden Book: A Novel Page 16
