by Grace Brophy
It crossed Cenni’s mind that Umberto Casati might be heir to more than Borghese manuscripts. In October 1607, the same year and month that Camillo Borghese, the then Pope, had deeded the Venetian manuscripts to his first cousin, five assailants from Rome had attacked Friar Sarpi at dusk along a Venetian canal for his temerity in challenging the Pope’s interdict—and winning. As Umberto Casati, the seventeenth Count, had just assiduously pointed out, he was heir to a double-dose of Borghese genes.
The count, who was not privy to Cenni’s thoughts on his ancestor’s illustrious bad temper, proceeded with the tour. The layout of the upstairs, which was reached by a different staircase from the one that they had descended earlier to reach the kitchen, was identical to the rooms below, the hall also running front to back with two rooms on either side, each with its own bathroom. The count explained that they had added the bathrooms back in the 1970s when their children were approaching adolescence. The rooms—with the exception of the one that had been used by Rita Minelli and which was still occupied by the forensic police—were empty, their occupants presumably waiting below to be interviewed. Cenni was surprised, as he had been when he’d entered the family sitting room, to find that all the chambers, including the count’s, were furnished for comfort rather than elegance: carpeted floors, large modern beds, good-looking wardrobes, and chests that were certainly not antiques. After looking at his wrist-watch, Cenni declined the count’s invitation to visit the attic rooms, which the count explained “are used by the family as storerooms and in the past housed servants,” adding with a slight frown that “servants in these days make their own hours and usually elect to live out.”
Cenni had just turned to descend the stairs to begin his questioning of the family when he was stopped by Elena. “Commissario, a minute please?” She pulled him aside to show him the diary and file folder and to tell him the gist of Lucia’s gossip: the existence of the boyfriend, the overheard argument between Rita Minelli and Artemisia Casati, the count’s open dislike of his niece. She smiled when she told him of Lucia’s gaffe about the diaries. “Probably the reason Minelli locked her door and made her own bed!”
Cenni responded absentmindedly, still thinking about the count’s fixation on his Borghese ancestors. A good dose of insanity there as well, Cenni recollected.
“Certo, Elena. Piero and I will be busy here for another two hours questioning the family. Call Perugia to see if they’ve received any responses to my earlier inquiries regarding the family’s finances, and see if you can locate the boyfriend. I’d like to get his statement today, as soon as we’re finished here.” When he’d issued his orders, he realized from the strained look on Elena’s face that she was waiting for a sign that he’d forgiven her earlier lapse. He knew how much she disliked using her sex to gain the confidence of other women, yet she’d done so with Lucia, and very successfully too. He said, this time with considerably more warmth, “I’d like you to peruse Minelli’s diary and her other papers. Call me at home tonight or tomorrow if you find anything crucial; otherwise write down the salient points so I can review them on Monday morning.” He hesitated for a moment. “And see what she has to say about the men in her life. Batori claims she was pregnant. Two months, maybe more.”
She responded plaintively, “But what about tomorrow! Don’t you want me to help Piero?”
“I don’t think so, Elena. We’ll manage. No point in ruining everyone’s Easter.”
Elena watched as he descended the stairs and wondered why men are always nice to women in just the wrong way.
13
AMELIA CASATI WAS at a disadvantage whenever there was a major crisis in her household. Her passport identified her as Italian but in all other respects, root and branch, she was thoroughly English. Whatever the circumstances—illness, death, or a fallen soufflé—she maintained an outward demeanor of calm and civility. When her only son and the person she had loved most in the world died at nineteen, she had retired to her bedroom to mourn in private. That need for privacy had greatly disconcerted Anna, her mother-in-law, who had expected some outward show of the grief that they all shared. Anna, with eyes swollen and red behind black veil and dark glasses, was the one who had fainted on the day of the funeral, falling on Camillo’s coffin; Amelia was the one who had revived her. So, it came as a surprise to them all, herself included, when she completely fell apart after hearing the news of her niece’s murder.
The news had come that morning, shortly after 8:30, in a telephone call from Fulvio Russo of the Assisi police. Amelia was sleeping in after a late and tedious dinner with family and close friends at one of Assisi’s notable restaurants. All except Amelia were smokers, and the private room they had reserved was close and airless. They had arrived home shortly after midnight, she with a splitting headache and Umberto still complaining of Rita’s lack of courtesy in missing the dinner without a word to anyone. It was not that he regretted her absence—quite the contrary. But his dislike of Rita took the form of petty indictments of whatever she did or said: She spoke English with a Brooklyn accent, she used Neapolitan slang when speaking Italian (it had happened only once), she had taken over his mother’s rooms without asking, and so forth.
Amelia had finally snapped as they were getting ready for bed. “You never consider anyone but yourself,” she’d thrown at him. “I’m the one who has to act as peacemaker between the two of you. And in this family, peacemakers are not blessed! It’s constant tension, waiting to see what she’ll do to annoy you and then what you’ll do to retaliate. Can’t you let anything go? She told me only yesterday that she’s planning to marry John Williams. When that happens she’ll have to find another place to live. Please try to keep the peace until then.”
He had brightened up considerably after that. She could hear him singing show tunes in the bathroom and when they turned the lights out, he’d kissed her firmly on the mouth and immediately fallen asleep. She lay awake for another hour, listening to him snore.
After Amelia’s collapse, Umberto had called their doctor, who had come immediately and given her a sedative, with the promise that she’d feel better in a short while. But she didn’t feel better. She was consumed by guilt. From the day that Rita had arrived in Assisi, Umberto and Artemisia, even the servants, had treated her niece as an outsider, a scavenging bird pecking off scraps from the Casati name. When Rita was not around—and sometimes even when she was—Artemisia ridiculed her. She laughed at Rita’s hair, her clothes, her thick eyebrows, and even her piety. When Rita started dressing and wearing her hair like Artemisia, Artemisia had grown crueler, calling her la Americana grottesca.
Amelia blamed herself. She had not been a perfect mother. Camillo had been such a beautiful child, with flaxen curls and large blue eyes—so like her own dear father, always kind to everyone. And when he laughed, it was infectious. They all laughed with him. He was her golden child, filling those parts of her that until his birth had been empty. She would have been content with Camillo, but Umberto had wanted two children. Artemisia had been born three years later. It had been a difficult pregnancy and Artemisia proved to be a difficult child. Amelia had been sick the full nine months that she carried Artemisia, and Artemisia had been sick another nine months with colic. Where Camillo had taken after Amelia’s English family in looks, Artemisia was wholly Italian. As an adult, she had an arresting, almost disturbing beauty. As a child, she had looked and acted like a gnome. Possessive and greedy, she’d had temper tantrums whenever Amelia had denied her anything. Only Marie, their housekeeper, could manage Artemisia and, as Amelia now acknowledged to herself, love her.
Rita had also grown up without a mother’s love. Amelia had met Umberto’s sister only once, forty years earlier, when she had returned to Italy with the five-year-old Rita in tow. Newly married and passionately in love with Umberto, Amelia had wanted very much to be friends with her husband’s only sister, but try as she might she had found Livia impossible to like. Her sister-in-law had all of her brother’s faults and
none of his virtues. She was arrogant, inconsiderate, physically vain, and to the distress of the entire household, a hypochondriac. Livia and Rita lived with them for one year, and during most of that time, Livia fancied herself ill with whatever disease was prominent at the time. She’d lain in bed until noon, smoked incessantly, and alienated the servants with her relentless demands. During that year she’d left the care of Rita to Amelia and Anna.
Little Rita was always underfoot, though what in later life would be considered officious, in childhood was endearing. She followed the housekeeper about with a duster in hand, offering to clean the bric-a-brac. She sat with her grandmother for hours holding her wool while Anna knitted, chattering away about her dolls. If permitted, she would fetch and carry for hours without complaint: Umberto’s glasses, Amelia’s book, her grandmother’s rosary beads. At the end of a year, Salvatore Minelli arrived in Italy to take Livia and Rita home to Brooklyn. What Amelia didn’t find out until much later was that Umberto had paid for the trip.
And now Rita was dead, murdered, and Amelia felt a profound sadness, in some ways even beyond what she’d felt when Camillo had died. He had been only nineteen, but he had lived as though there were no tomorrows—five broken bones before he was fifteen! He had skied in Cortina, hang glided off Mount Subasio, driven cars with abandon, had a child when he was eighteen, defying his father and everyone else to practice his own beliefs. But Rita was just beginning. . . .
A soft knock on the door roused her to control herself— for Umberto’s sake, she thought. It was Lucia, who looked guiltily around the door. “Scusi, Countess, but the police have arrived. The count asks if you’re feeling any better. The police want to talk to everyone in the house. The count asks if you’ll come down, or should he bring them up?” she asked, her barely repressed excitement apparent from the high pitch of her voice.
“No, I’ll come down, Lucia. Please tell the count that I’ll be with him in fifteen minutes.”
14
WHEN CENNI OPENED the sitting room door, five women looked up expectantly, each as different in appearance as possible in a country as homogeneous as Italy. The count, who followed immediately behind him, made the introductions: his wife Amelia, his daughter Artemisia—who acknowledged their previous meeting with a slight nod of recognition—his granddaughter Paola, their maid Lucia Stampoli, and their cook Concetta Di Gennari—the last a jolly-looking fat woman and the only one to smile. And such a smile! Wide and happy, it gleamed with gold.
At Amelia Casati’s request, Cenni interviewed the cook first. It seemed that Concetta had made special arrangements so that she could come in to prepare their Easter dinner. Normally she had Saturdays off and worked Sundays, but tomorrow was Easter. It was now almost three, and she had two young children at home who needed her attention. At the count’s insistence, the interviews took place in the library, with two additional chairs brought in to accommodate Piero and the person to be interviewed, although as Cenni later conceded to Piero, with Concetta he did more listening than interviewing.
Cenni had concluded years earlier that people’s dispositions, like most things in life, exist in a continuum. A small number of people by nature are always unhappy; an even smaller number are always happy; and the rest occupy the great in between—with some tears, some laughter, and much tedium. Concetta was on the extreme edge of the continuum. From the moment she sat down, she radiated happiness, her gold tooth always on display. The dead American, God rest her soul, was a wonderful woman; the Casatis were wonderful employers; her Tony was a wonderful husband; their two little girls were gifts from God. Even Lucia was wonderful, although it would be better if she rinsed the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher. Somehow, in among the wonderfuls, she revealed that she rarely ventured out of the Casati kitchen into other parts of the house. She worked six days a week, from ten to four, and had little contact with the family beyond the countess who paid her salary every week. She prepared their midday meal, three courses and a sweet, which was served by Lucia in the dining room at one o’clock. She also prepared dinner, which was usually something light, cold meat and a salad or a casserole. Lucia or the countess would heat what she’d prepared in the microwave. The family usually dined at seven, eating in the kitchen. As Lucia finished at seven, the countess would put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. If there were any heavy pots to clean, Concetta did them when she came to work the next day. She never cooked for them on Good Friday—they always ate out.
Signora Minelli had eaten with the family when she’d first come to Assisi but had stopped some time ago. Concetta couldn’t remember exactly when and didn’t know why. The countess would probably know. The Americana was very health-conscious and ate lots of fruit and yogurt, which she kept in the refrigerator. Sometimes they would talk together when she came into the kitchen. They were both devoted to St. Rita. She explained, “Giulia, she’s my baby. She’s two now and very healthy.” She beamed: “And very beautiful! But when she was born, we thought we’d lose her—four months premature and so tiny, less than four pounds. Tony—he’s my husband— and me, we made a pilgrimage to Cascia, to pray to St. Rita. Now we go regularly, to say thank you, the last Saturday in every month. We made a sacred promise!
“The last time, two Saturdays ago, we saw Signora Minelli and Signorina Paola sitting together in a café near St. Rita’s Basilica. I wanted to stop and talk, but Tony said they looked very serious. He said I shouldn’t bother them. We both thought that Signorina Paola had been crying.”
She paused, and Cenni thought she wanted to say something more. “Is there something else?”
“I was surprised to see Signorina Paola there. Lucia says the Signorina’s a communist, and everyone knows that communists don’t believe in saints.” She sighed. “Lucia is a terrible gossip and doesn’t always tell the truth.” Cenni suspected that if Concetta’s happiness had an Achilles heel, it might well be Lucia.
15
AMELIA CASATI WAS so different from her husband in manner and appearance that they could have been the poster couple for the questionable truism that opposites attract. Where he was tall and distinguished, she was short and plain; where he bullied, she acquiesced; his arrogance was countered by her diffidence. Unlike the count, who had managed for the most part to ignore Piero and his substantial presence, she acknowledged both detectives with a weak smile before taking her seat. Her blotched face and pink-rimmed eyes suggested to Cenni that at least one person in the Casati family had experienced some pain at the news of Rita Minelli’s murder.
Cenni began by offering his condolences on the death of her niece. “I understand from your husband that you’re under the care of your doctor. Inspector Tonni and I will have you out of here in no time. Just a few routine questions.” At his last statement, she looked down at her fingers, still noticeably ink-stained from recent fingerprinting, her gesture a silent reproach.
Cenni responded by explaining that the police needed to distinguish between prints expected to be found in the burial vault—those of the Casati family—and prints of people who could not be accounted for. He then asked her to describe her previous day’s activities with an approximate timetable.
She told him that she’d been to her doctor in Perugia in the morning—a routine checkup—and had returned a few minutes before one o’clock. She had lunch with the family in the dining room, finishing at 1:45. Immediately after that, she had gone to the garden room, located at the back of the family sitting room, where she had arranged some flowers that had been delivered while they were eating. At around two o’clock, she’d carried the arrangement, a bowl of yellow roses, into the hall and had seen Rita letting herself out the front door. For the remainder of the day, until six o’clock, when she retired to her room to bathe and dress for the evening, she had been in the sitting room, writing letters and reading. The doors had been closed to retain the heat and no one had come in during that time. She also told Cenni that she had not been near the cemetery since the previous Su
nday, her usual day to visit, and that she had no idea who could have murdered her niece, although she did suggest that the motive may have been robbery. When he’d questioned her further in this regard, she indicated that her niece frequently carried large sums of money on her, a habit she’d tried to discourage but without success.
Cenni found her surprisingly unemotional in recounting her activities on the day of the murder. Umberto Casati had said that his wife was crushed by the news of her niece’s death, that she had been so traumatized, her doctor had given her a sedative and had suggested that they not tell her of the rape. Yet, in reciting her timetable, she was composed, articulate, and precise. Rehearsed, he wondered, or just a reflection of the punctilio that Italians find so irritating in the English. If her account was rehearsed, it didn’t unduly concern him. Most people have an atavistic fear of the police—the innocent as well as the guilty—and most people, if handed the gift of time, which Russo had allowed the Casati family, are likely to prepare their statements in advance.
Early in his career, Cenni had learned the hard way that the successful interrogation of suspects is a balance of thesis and antithesis. You ask the expected questions to gain their confidence, then counter with the unexpected to confound and intimidate. In one of his early murder investigations more than twelve years earlier—the brutal maiming and killing of a five-year-old child— one of the suspects, a gentle motherly woman in her late sixties, had answered all of his questions with assurance, prefacing each response with a gentle smile and a mio figlio. He couldn’t believe that she might be the killer and had shown great sensitivity in framing his questions. She had gone on to kill again, another child, even younger than the first. The face of the second child, slashed beyond recognition, had haunted him for years. He still lived with that failure and the knowledge that no one is exempt from suspicion.
