The Last Enemy

by Grace Brophy

  Elena looked uncomfortable when the commissario entered the kitchen. She put her cup down and jumped up, a slight flush rising on her checks. The two forensic technicians also stood, but Staccioli, an older man of high complexion and inordinate bulk, remained quite at ease. He nodded to Cenni but made no effort to acknowledge that a senior officer had entered the room.

  The commissario was the first to break the silence:

  “Inspector Staccioli, I understand from Dottor Russo that you were sent here to secure the house and the murder victim’s living quarters. I would like you to show me her rooms, but first may I have the key?” he said, extending his hand, palm upward.

  The confused look on Staccioli’s face confirmed what Cenni had already guessed, that he didn’t have the key, had probably not asked for it, and in all likelihood had not even visited Minelli’s rooms since entering the house. The count intervened before Staccioli could respond.

  “There are only two keys to my niece’s rooms. One she had. I assume that she carried it on her. The second is with the other household keys in the library, which also serves as my office. One of the conditions of my insurance policy is that I keep the library locked when I’m not using it. It contains some very valuable manuscripts; three are inconabula. The library is also equipped with a highly sophisticated alarm system,” he added self-importantly. He paused for a moment and then continued, anticipating Cenni’s next question. “The key is still there.”

  “Grazie a Lei,” Cenni responded, his tone warmer than it had been in the sitting room. “I would like to talk to you further about your household arrangements. But before that, I wonder if you’d give me a few minutes alone with my staff. I need to review some aspects of the investigation with them. After that, I would like Inspector Ottaviani and our lab technicians to visit your niece’s rooms, let’s say in five minutes.”

  As soon as the count had exited the kitchen, closing the large oak door that separated it from the hall, Cenni upbraided Staccioli, his controlled anger evident to both Elena and Piero, but apparently not to Staccioli, who not only remained seated but also began immediately to make excuses.

  Cenni interrupted him after the second excuse, which, although rambling, had something to do with counts being different from regular people.

  “Inspector, you were sent here to secure the rooms of the murder victim, not to enjoy coffee and biscotti at the expense of Signor Casati. And please, stand when I address you!”

  Staccioli shuffled slowly to his feet and brushed the crumbs from the front of his jacket with studied nonchalance. Cenni observed this dissension in the ranks with mild amusement. Due for his pension soon . . . knows he’d have to murder a senior officer, at the very least a vice questore, before he’d lose it. Still, for the sake of the children, . . . he thought, looking at Elena.

  He continued, “Don’t bank on that pension quite yet, Staccioli! There are ways and ways, and I know them all! When you work on one of my cases, you follow the book, to the letter.” He surveyed the three remaining officers who, together, had inched sway from Staccioli. “I shouldn’t have to remind any of you that this is a murder investigation for which there are clearly established procedures, none of which you appear to have followed. It doesn’t matter to the police if the victim is the niece of a count or a day laborer, the procedures are the same. Perhaps you should all review the Act of 1947,” he added, ending his lecture with a conciliatory smile.

  Piero decided it was a very mild lecture, indeed. He’s given me worse for running a stop sign, he thought, although he had enjoyed that last bit about the Act of 1947. Maybe now Elena will lay off lecturing the rest of us on the blood-sucking aristocracy, had been his first thought. Fat chance, his second.

  Cenni said nothing further in condemnation of anyone else in the room, but Elena knew that her time was coming.

  11

  RITA MINELLI’S BEDROOM and bathroom were on the second floor of the house, in the back, with a view overlooking the garden and the church of San Pietro. The rooms were en suite with access through a single door into the sleeping area. Elena saw immediately that both bedroom and bathroom were equipped for someone with a handicap. They had constructed something similar in their own small apartment in Perugia for her father who had fallen from scaffolding some five years before and was now confined to a wheelchair, widening the doors to his bedroom and to the bathroom that they all shared and installing steel bars so he could lift himself onto the toilet without help. But anything beyond these simple measures was too expensive and too difficult to get approved by their landlord. She looked around the rooms, noting the ample space for maneuvering a wheelchair, the large open shower with safety seat, the furniture designed to be easily opened and closed by someone sitting down, admiring them for their potential to make life easier for the handicapped, but also resenting the privileges of the rich.

  “These rooms belonged to the count’s mother when she was alive. She was in a wheelchair for three years before she died two years ago,” volunteered Lucia, the Casatis’ maid, who had escorted Elena and the two technicians up to the rooms.

  The maid seemed curiously unaffected by the murder although she obviously wanted to gossip about it and, after unlocking the bedroom door and handing Elena the key, she waited rather conspicuously in the hallway. Elena was aware that most women were more relaxed around women officers and so more likely to provide information that they’d normally withhold from the police. She also knew that the commissario recognized this and used it—and her—by placing her in situations where she was likely to gain their trust. The feminist in her rebelled at this tactic, but the police officer used it to advantage. Although Elena knew she was rationalizing, she soothed her conscience by telling herself that the same women who revealed more than what was good for them did so only because they really didn’t respect women as police officers.

  The forensic technicians had started dusting the room for prints when Lucia, peering into the room, interrupted. “What are they doing with that black powder?” she asked.

  “They’re dusting for fingerprints to see who else has been in the room,” Elena answered, smiling warmly to suggest that she was open to further talk.

  “Oh, they won’t find anything. She locked her door whenever she left the house. I never clean in there, not since Christmas anyway, when she asked the countess for the key.”

  “She cleaned the rooms herself!” Elena responded, feigning disapproval. “How strange! But Americans are strange. They’re always afraid people are trying to rob them. We found that out last year when we were investigating some hotel robberies in Perugia. Many Americans won’t leave their keys at the front desk.”

  “I don’t know what she thought I’d want that belonged to her. My clothes and jewelry are a lot better than anything she has,” Lucia responded indignantly. “When she first came here in June she dressed like an old lady. Bruta! She always wore sneakers when she left the house, even with her mink jacket! I’d be ashamed to go out looking that way.” She glanced furtively at the technicians and then lowered her voice. “In January, right after the New Year, she started dressing better, a lot like Signora Artemisia, even had her hair cut like hers and had her eyebrows tweezed. They were like bushes before. My friend Romina—she waits tables at Il Duomo—said that the Americana used to come in there with a man. Romina said she treated him like a boyfriend. He’s a lot younger,” she added triumphantly, providing this last bit of gossip as conclusive proof of Minelli’s execrably bad taste.

  “But I’m sure the family is devastated. It’s obvious they thought a lot of her. Look at the rooms they gave her, with such beautiful views,” Elena said admiringly, hoping to draw the maid out further.

  Lucia lowered her voice even more, looking around before speaking. “The count hated her! He was furious when she took over his mother’s rooms, but the countess said they should let her be, that she’d be leaving soon. And Signora Artemisia, she hated her, too. She was always making fun of the way s
he dressed. We used to laugh together.”

  “I guess that stopped in January when Signora Minelli started dressing like her?”

  “Oh, no! Yesterday, they had a big row. I was cleaning the stairs and heard them talking very loud from Signora Artemisia’s room. Bada ai fatti tuoi! I heard Signora Artemisia say to the Americana.”

  “Mind your own business. That’s pretty brutal. I wonder why?”

  “Something about a book, I think. When I passed the room, the Americana was holding this large book, like one of those moldy books in the count’s library. I dust in there every Tuesday and Saturday,” she added, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Signora Artemisia started talking in English when she saw me, so I don’t know what she said after that, but I could tell she was very angry.”

  “And the countess! She liked her niece?”

  “Non lo so. But she’s a very nice lady, very kind to everyone. She used to sit with the count’s mother for hours talking to her and holding her hand, even when the old lady was gaga. She was very sick, you know, had that disease where you shake all over. I had to help Sophie put her into the shower.”

  “The information you just gave me about the quarrel between the Signora and the Americana, you must tell that to the commissario when he interviews you.”

  “Oh, I can’t!” Lucia responded, apparently forgetting that Elena was the police. “She’ll kill . . . be angry with me!” Lucia amended with a suppressed giggle, realizing the significance of her first choice of words.

  “You needn’t worry. Your interview with the commissario and Inspector Tonni is private. They won’t repeat anything you tell them unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  The mention of the commissario redirected Lucia to warmer thoughts. “Il commissario é molto bello. Is he married?”

  Elena smiled, but before she could respond, one of the forensic technicians interrupted to tell her they were finished. He was carrying a large see-through plastic folder containing loose papers, and a sealed manila envelope. “We found these hidden under the mattress,” he said, handing them over to Elena. “We’re finished dusting them for prints. These, too,” he added, and handed her two small diaries, bound in black leather.

  “So that’s where she hid them!” Lucia exclaimed. “Oops,”

  she added, and giggled again at her blunder.

  12

  WHILE INSPECTOR OTTAVIANI and the two technicians were in Rita Minelli’s rooms finally performing the search and secure operation so necessary to a murder investigation, the count gave the commissario and Piero the grand tour. They moved first to the outside of the house, to the area directly beyond the kitchen door. A neatly arranged vegetable garden was located to the right of the door, and it appeared that someone had recently been cleaning out the winter debris; a hoe had been left standing upright in one of the raised beds. A large merry-go-round of a clothesline was located to the left. Toward the front hung two pairs of women’s panties (red with black lace edging) while further back a few bedraggled dishtowels flapped in the wind. Cenni suppressed a smile when the count, who had also spied the skimpy undergarments, pushed the line vigorously until the dishtowels came to the front.

  The kitchen garden was enclosed on all sides, in part by a brick wall some five feet high and in part by a small stone structure located at the bottom of the garden. From where Cenni stood, the structure appeared to be in use as a gardening shed. He wondered if in less grand times it might have been a pigsty and walked down the gravel path to take a closer look. He circled the pighouse, and at the back came upon a very steep stone stairway without a handrail. It was in considerable disrepair. The count, who was highly proprietary, followed Cenni to see what he was looking at.

  “Nobody uses that stairway any more, too dangerous. It leads to a vicolo below the house, which connects directly to via Fontebella. Our old gardener tried to keep the steps in repair, but he died a few years back. The new man can’t be bothered,” he added, in disdain. “You’d take your life in your hands trying to get down those steps.” The count then agreed with the commissario’s supposition that the garden stairway was the only exit from the house that did not lead directly to via San Francesco.

  From the servants’ floor, Umberto Casati’s term for the kitchen area, they returned to the street floor, the main living area of the house. The floor contained four large rooms: the family sitting room; a dining room directly across from the sitting room, heavily formal and filled with antiques; a drawing room, also formal, and used only when the family held parties and receptions, as well as a small bathroom whose door was discreetly hidden behind a velvet curtain. The fourth room, the library, which fronted via San Francisco, appeared to be the most important room in the house, if Cenni were to judge by the highly sophisticated alarm system that the count had to deactivate before they could gain entry.

  It was an impressive room, perhaps the most impressive that Cenni had yet seen in a private dwelling. Octagonal in shape, the room was lined with ceiling-to-floor cabinets with doors of hand-blown glass. The cabinets were filled to capacity with morocco-bound manuscripts, the bindings on most suggesting great age. But the real beauty of the room was its vaulted ceiling, which was frescoed with motifs in the grotesque style of painting that had been common in the late 1500s. The ceiling was a profusion of exotic birds, flowers, and forest animals, all intertwined in rich dazzling color. The count told them with great pride that the ceiling was attributed to the Florentine, Alessandro Allori, who had also worked for the Medici on the Uffizi ceiling.

  The few pieces of furniture—the count’s desk, which was placed directly in front of the windows to capture the little natural light that entered the room, and four display cases—were antiques, seventeenth-century, according to the count, and irreplaceable. The single touch of modernity in the room was the count’s chair, which although disguised in cracked leather, was of an ergonomic design, no doubt a concession to his arthritis. The reasons, however, for the elaborate alarm system and the expensive insurance policy were the books and a curious display of Venetian daggers.

  Cenni stopped to admire one of the daggers. Its placard described it as a misericorde, circa 1560, the blade forged in Damascus. It was a straight, very narrow dagger with a deadly edge. The hilt, which was out of proportion to the blade, was unusual: an elaborate twisting of silver and gold wire in the shape of a mermaid, its pommel a gold ball inset with a large bloodred ruby. The count leaned over Cenni to see what was attracting his attention.

  “It’s called a misericorde,” the count explained, “because it was used to give the final mercy cut to one mortally wounded.” He mimed a cutting action across the throat. “It would kill instantly, although it’s not a fine example of that particular weapon,” he added derisively. “Its proportions are all wrong, but the ruby is rare, a star ruby of unusual size and quality and quite valuable. But I think you’ll find that the books are of more interest, Dottore.” He went on to tell Cenni—and Piero when he acknowledged his presence—that the majority of books were legal documents: “One of the finest libraries of its kind in Italy,” he said with great pride. “Three of the books are incunabula, printed before 1501,” he explained, for the benefit of Piero. Cenni lingered over one of the three manuscripts, admiring its binding, which appeared to be original, until rather vigorously nudged by the count toward a different display case.

  “As a jurist, I’m sure you’ll find these books of more interest, Dottore,” he said in a surprisingly affable tone, even including Piero in its circle of warmth. “They’re the original case histories of the Venetian schism. They were presented to Umberto Casati, my ancestor, when he was made Count Palantine in October 1607 by Pope Paul V—Camillo Borghese—in gratitude for legal services rendered to the Roman Curia. I’m a descendent of the Borghese family on both sides of my family,” he added proudly. “The Pope and the first Count Casati, my namesake, were second cousins. They studied jurisprudence together in Perugia, even played together as children,” he
said, unable to contain his enthusiasm for family namedropping. “It’s not widely acknowledged by historians, but the first Count Casati effected the compromise between Rome and the Venetian Republic, saving Venice from the grip of Protestantism.”

  “Helped, no doubt, by the good offices of the other principals, France and Spain,” Cenni said with gentle asperity.

  Not bothered by the suggestion that his eminent ancestor may have had substantial help in bringing Venice back into the Catholic fold, the count responded in kind. “With the terribile frate, Paolo Sarpi, as one’s adversary, even the help of France and Spain would not always have been sufficient.”

  Cenni laughed at the reference to the friar who had defied Rome and the Borghese Pope and, recalling to mind the wording of the self-serving non-compromise, said, “The Republic agrees to conduct itself with its accustomed piety.”

  “As the Republic is still doing,” the count rejoined.

  When they’d stopped laughing at the allusion to the luxurious, licentious, and always refractory Venetian Republic, the count remarked on the commissario’s obvious knowledge of church law.

  “I studied church law at the University of Bologna,” Cenni replied, which drew them deeper into a discussion of the relative merits of the combatants of 1600, with Cenni arguing the case of the Venetian Republic, that the clergy were not exempt from the jurisdiction of the civil courts, which position, as he reminded the count, was now codified in Italian law.

  Their lively but friendly discussion helped to blunt some of the antagonism that had been building between them, and Cenni hoped the uneasy peace would last, at least until the family interviews were over. Somehow he doubted it. The noticeable absence of a computer in the library, which also served as the count’s office, coupled with the count’s fixation on his family’s history and eminence, suggested a man who, if given the choice, would have preferred to live in a less democratic age, one in which policemen lacked the temerity to come calling on counts with warrants in hand.