The Last Enemy

by Grace Brophy

  A film of dust had accumulated on the surface of the glass and she wiped it off with the bottom of her dress. The lipstick that she’d borrowed from Alba was saturated in cheap perfume, and she retched as she lavishly applied the opaque red color to her pursed lips. She peered intently at her face in the mirror, trying to see herself as he would see her. The diffused late-afternoon light filtered through the dirt-encrusted window of her apartment, revealing deep shadows under her eyes, soft bluish bruises that came after nights of restless sleep. She should have borrowed some face power from Alba. Talcum might help, she thought, and tried some, but the chalky powder only made the shadows more pronounced. She hadn’t slept deeply in months, other than in the early morning hours when, physically exhausted, she would lose consciousness, falling into dreamless death. Christina’s doctor had given her forty sleeping pills when she had visited Zagreb two months earlier. They’re very powerful, he had warned, and at first she had used them sparingly. In the beginning she broke the pills in half, but when the dreams returned she took them whole.

  It began one morning when she’d found a small yellow caterpillar on her bed. She’d killed it and dropped it into the trash. The next morning she’d found a second caterpillar, an even larger one. It was on her pillow, lying next to her right ear. It hadn’t come through the window. The window in her apartment had been painted shut, the frame welded to the sash, and couldn’t be opened. She’d tried chipping away the paint with a screwdriver, but the sash was covered by many layers of old paint, and she was afraid that if she continued chipping, she would break the sash or even the window. The rent was only two hundred and fifty euros a month, and she didn’t want to lose the apartment, so she’d left the window alone. And there was no way for even an ant to come through the front door after she had installed rubber liners around the wooden frame to keep out the cold. She checked the drains—the sink and the bathtub—but there was no way the caterpillars could have come through either opening. When she wasn’t running water, she left rubber stoppers over the outlets and she always kept the toilet seat down. The commune was working to repair the earthquake damage all over Assisi, and she’d seen large gray rats balanced like tightrope walkers on the drainpipes that lay exposed in the open ditches. Rats come into the house through the drains and the toilet, her grandmother had told her. She wasn’t stupid, either, as Christina’s doctor had implied when he’d asked about her flower arrangements. She checked the flowers for bugs and insects before she left the florist and then afterward, again, when she reached home, and she always tightly wrapped the discarded greens in newspaper before throwing them away.

  When she was ten, her best friend had told her about an insect that could climb into an elephant’s ear and devour its brain. For months afterward, Sophie had awakened in the night from bad dreams, only to have her grandmother lull her back to sleep. In the dreams that had begun eight months ago, the caterpillars were feeding on her—the small intestines, then the large, her organs, and finally her face. The dream always ended before they reached her eyes. The caterpillars would exit from her mouth and nose, carrying little bits of red flesh, and she would awake and find that her bedclothes were soaked with sweat, and sometimes with urine. She knew that she cried out in the night because her landlord had asked twice in the last two days if she’d had a visitor in her room. The screaming would have to stop, he’d said.

  Sophie refused to believe Dr. Bocic when he told her that the dreams were a delayed effect of the trauma that she had suffered six years before. Always he said the same thing: “Sophie, you must grieve. Weep, for Christina’s sake, for Sergio, but most of all for yourself. Catharsis will come if you release the pain. The pain grows and hardens every day that you refuse to acknowledge it. Christina will get better, I promise you, and when she does she’ll need a mother who can feel, not a machine to make money.”

  Then on Holy Thursday Dr. Bocic had called her, very excited. Christina had mentioned her father for the first time; she’d said very little, asked only where he was buried, but still it was a beginning. At the suggestion of an old friend, an eminent clinician, he had tried a new drug regime—divalproex, a mood stabilizer, with the usual dosage of paroxetine—and Christina had responded well. And he had other news. This same friend ran a clinic in Switzerland for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder. Acknowledged as one of the best in Europe, the clinic had had great successes with victims of war crimes, and as a kindness to him his friend had agreed to accept Christina now that she was beginning to respond to treatment. The cost would be minimal, a thousand euros a month to cover food and her bed and another thousand euros for travel expenses. And Christina would have to be accompanied to Switzerland by at least one medical attendant.

  On Good Friday Sophie had asked the countess if she would lend her the money. She had agreed immediately and then five days later she was dead. Sophie thought briefly about asking the count for the money, particularly after he’d read her Amelia’s suicide letter. “Please help Sophie as she’s helped me,” Amelia had written, almost her very last words. But Sophie was afraid that the count might ask for more in return than she was willing to give. And she would need money every month, maybe for years, if she were to pay a thousand euros a month for Christina’s keep.

  The truth was in that letter. The American had been lying face-up when Sophie had found her in the Casati vault. In her letter, Amelia had written that she’d left Minelli lying face-down. And then Lucia had confirmed Sophie’s suspicions. She’d stopped Sophie yesterday, on Corso Mazzini dying for a gossip. “Rita Minelli was suffocated,” Lucia told Sophie, not waiting for the prefatory chitchat before launching into her explosive news. “The countess didn’t kill her. Someone else did!” she added, without trying to lower her voice. “I just happened to overhear Commissario Russo talking to the count,” she added in explanation. If Amelia were not the killer, then Sophie knew who was. It all made sense, finally. Everything that had happened on Good Friday fell into place. Anything that had seemed strange or oddly distorted had an explanation.

  On Good Friday, midway through creating bouquets for Easter, with flowers and greens everywhere, on the kitchen table, in the sink, the tub, on the floor, even on the bed, Sophie’s bell rang. It was the countess. Sophie buzzed her in and watched silently as she stumbled up the steps, holding on to the hand railing, her legs almost too weak to support her shaking body. She was completely distraught, out of breath, sobbing, yet trying to talk at the same time. Sophie had tried to calm her, urged her to sit on the bed and drink some water, but the countess shook her head, and instead grabbed Sophie’s hands for support. She wouldn’t let go. Sophie still had faint thumb marks on the insides of her wrists where the countess had squeezed too hard. It took the countess a few seconds before she could summon breath to speak. When she finally could talk, it was in hoarse whispers.

  “I killed her,” she said twice and began to cry, but quietly this time, not sobbing wildly as before.

  “Who did you kill?” Sophie asked insistently, but the countess didn’t seem to hear. She stared blindly in front of her and then her eyes widened in horror.

  “The baby, Sophie. I killed Rita and she’s having a baby.”

  Finally she sat—on the edge of the bed—and made a conscious effort to calm herself. She inhaled deeply, drank a few sips of the water that Sophie had offered earlier, and recounted what had happened. At first she asserted that Rita was dead and the baby was dead. “I’m a murderer!” she cried. “They’ll send me to prison!” And the next moment she was begging Sophie to return with her to the cemetery. “Remember that night when the count’s mother almost died, Sophie, when she’d stopped breathing. You saved her life! You can save the baby’s life, too!” she pleaded.

  Sophie was sure that the countess was mistaken and she told her so. “A little whack on the head never killed anyone. Your niece is still alive. Perhaps she was unconscious for a minute or two, but she’s fine now. She’s probably back at the house looking fo
r you.” They agreed finally that Sophie should go to the cemetery. “You stay here,” she told the countess. “I can walk faster if I’m alone.”

  She grabbed her cloak from the peg and the keys that were hanging underneath. She remembered Sergio’s words the time that Christina had tumbled from her bicycle and knocked herself out. “Heads are designed to take blows, Sophie; otherwise most of us wouldn’t enjoy life past the age of five.” Sophie was certain that Minelli was all right, and that the countess was needlessly hysterical. She reasoned that when Minelli came around and found herself alone, she’d have left the cemetery, probably locking the vault and the side gate behind her. Sophie knew that the American had keys to both.

  A few weeks earlier, a potential client had asked Sophie to visit her family’s mausoleum to give her a quote for a flower arrangement. Sophie had visited in early evening after the front gates were locked and had seen Fulvio Russo leave the Casati vault, followed minutes later by Rita Minelli. She watched from behind one of the larger mausoleums as Rita locked the vault gate. Sophie wasn’t surprised. It was no secret—at least not to her—that Russo used the cemetery for sexual liaisons. During his interrogation of her the previous summer, over the question of Irene Rapaic’s passport, he’d suggested that she might meet him in one of the vaults. “A little charge of blackmail can easily be dropped,” he’d hinted with a smirk.

  That was probably the reason for Minelli’s visit to the vault on Good Friday, a liaison with Russo! Why else would she be there, with it so close to dark? If Minelli had locked the gates after her, Sophie would need her keys to get in, the larger one to the side gate and the smaller one to the vault. It was already ten to 6:00 and would be dark very soon, no point fumbling around looking for the right key among twenty-odd ones, she reasoned. She removed the two keys from the ring. “I’ll be back in less than twenty minutes. Stop worrying,” she’d said to the countess. “Your niece is fine.”

  When Sophie got to the side gate, she found it unlocked and for just a moment she panicked. What if it were true? What if the countess had killed her niece? She thought of turning back, of calling the police, but she didn’t trust the police; she was a straniera. Even before she reached the vault, she saw the gate swinging in the wind and from the porch, in the waning light, she saw the body stretched out on the stone floor, the head resting on the first altar step. She knelt beside the body and felt for a pulse but she knew it was useless. The eyes were open, staring up at her but without sight. The countess was right. She had killed Rita and her baby!

  It was the baby that put the idea into Sophie’s head to create a diversion, something to draw attention to Minelli’s pregnancy and to direct the police to look at the men in her life. She knelt beside the body and gently closed the dead woman’s eyes, and then she crossed herself. Sophie hadn’t liked Rita Minelli, but they were both devout Catholics, and even one’s enemies deserved reverence in death. When Sophie lifted the dead woman’s hips to unhook her stockings, she spied the pen with its silver pinstriped cap lying under the body. Sophie had seen the countess write checks many times using the same pen. It must have fallen out of her pocket when she’d struck her niece with the statue. She slipped it into her own pocket. Then, catching hold of the bottom of her cloak, she used it to hold the statue of the Virgin while she wiped it clean of prints using the bottom of her dress. Minelli’s purse was lying partially open on one of the altar steps. Holding the purse with her cloak, she removed the billfold. Eight hundred euros were inside. If she took the money, it would create another diversion. Who would accuse the countess of murdering someone for a measly eight hundred euros? And it would almost pay for Christina’s trip to Zurich. She slipped the bills into her pocket and wiped the billfold before returning it to Minelli’s purse. The peonies, still wrapped in their florist paper, were on the altar, the perfect alibi for the countess if someone had seen her outside the house. I took them to Sophie to put in the Easter arrangement, the countess would tell the police. She dumped the water from the vases and wiped their surfaces with her dress.

  Sophie was exhilarated when she locked the vault gate. She’d thought of everything: the diversion, the flowers, the finger-prints, even the money. It was sheer luck that she’d found the pen! But she wouldn’t have found it if she hadn’t thought of the diversion. It wasn’t until she reached the side gate that she stopped congratulating herself. She’d locked the vault out of habit. Only someone with a key could have locked the vault.

  She stayed calm. She reached into her cloak pocket for the key, but it wasn’t there, just the larger key to the side gate. After five minutes of searching along the path, she gave up. It was now dark, and she could barely see her feet in front of her. She had to get back to the countess. She’d said twenty minutes and it was now closer to thirty. She’d figure something out later.

  Amelia was eerily calm when Sophie told her that Rita was dead. “I knew it,” she said. Sophie also told her that she had worked everything out. “The police will never suspect you.” Amelia accepted this, too, without question but she denied that the pen was hers.

  “Mine is a fountain pen, Sophie. This is a ballpoint. Isn’t it just like Rita to buy a Mont Blanc ballpoint?” They reasoned together that it must have fallen out of Rita’s purse.

  Sophie didn’t find the key, so she borrowed her assistant’s the next morning and pretended when she inserted the key that the gate was unlocked. There was no way that the police could disprove her story, that she’d lost the key on Saturday morning. She’d slipped the pen back into the American’s purse before they reached the police station, while Alba was distracted. It had disappeared after that! Commissario Cenni had shown her the list of items found in Rita’s handbag and it was not on the list. But it was clear now.

  The pen was Fulvio Russo’s. He must have dropped it when he’d smothered the American. When Russo signed her release papers on Saturday he’d used a pen very like it, but she’d thought nothing of it at the time. As the countess had said on Friday, Lots of people own Mont Blanc pens. Fulvio Russo was the father of Minelli’s child; he’d pay to keep his wife from finding out.

  A thousand euros a month would mean nothing to him; he was rich. But she wasn’t stupid like the American; she knew how to protect herself. She’d write a letter and address it to Commissario Cenni. She’d give one copy to Lucia and swear her to secrecy; the other copy she’d leave in her room. She’d tell Russo about the letter even before she asked him for the money. She had it all worked out. She wouldn’t become a victim like the American.

  Russo was to meet her behind the Casati vault at seven o’clock. There would still be some light. She looked at the hands of the small desk clock that Sergio had given her for her twenty-fifth birthday. Six forty-three. The plainclothes detective was still slouched against the restaurant door. He observed everyone who walked by, mainly the young girls, but he rarely looked up at her window. She had watched him now for five days and knew his habits, probably better than he knew hers. At precisely 6:45, he would go inside the restaurant for a coffee, more likely a grappa, and would stay inside for ten minutes. She could walk from her door to the cemetery gates in less than ten minutes. She’d worry later about how to get back into her apartment without being seen.

  4

  Artemisia watched as the workmen removed the painting from the wall. They worked slowly and with great care, aware that she stood within two feet of them, paying jealous attention to their every move. She was the curator of the Gentileschi show and had labored for more than a year to get the Uffizi to agree to lend Judith Slaying Holofernes. She wouldn’t breath freely until the painting was in the hands of the shippers, at which point her responsibility toward it was over. The director of the Galleria had insisted that she not return to work, that she take time off to be with her father, to mourn her mother’s passing. She knew what he was thinking when she’d arrived at work mid-afternoon, that she was cold-blooded. Not that she cared much what he thought. She never cared what other peop
le thought of her, which in Italy put one on the outside looking in, but which also gave one a great deal of freedom. It was wonderfully liberating not to be always seeking approval.

  She walked alongside the painting as they carried it down the corridor toward the museum’s packing room, observing again the look of great deliberation on Judith’s face, the furrowed brow, the lips set firmly together. She had spent hours looking at the painting in the Uffizi when she was writing her critical biography of Gentileschi and knew every splatter of blood as the bright red liquid flew up to cover the hands and the arms of Judith and her maidservant, Abra. “The true genius of Gentileschi,” she had written, “is not reflected in the look of horror on Holofernes’ face as the cavalry sword slices through his jugular or in the blood that permeates the painting, but in the mood that Gentileschi conveys, of intense concentration, distaste, and of sisterhood on the faces of Judith and Abra as they go about their work.” It could easily be a mistress and her maid performing a particularly burdensome household task, Artemisia had often thought, rather than two women slitting the throat of a common enemy. Her fascination with the painting, something she had not discussed with anyone, lay in her wish to be Judith. Judith had had the courage to kill without pity or hesitation. Artemisia had always feared that when her time came, she might slip into cowardice.

  Two evenings ago she had watched as they carried her mother’s body out the back door and through the garden that she had tended so lovingly for forty years, to the Assisi hospital for the requisite autopsy. There had been no blood when her mother had died. She had slid quietly into a coma and then to her death after swallowing a pillbox of Seconals, but there would be blood when they cut into her flesh to examine each of her organs. Not even her father’s title and influence would exempt her mother from that final violation.

  Their last day together had followed its usual routine. She had spent the morning at the museum and returned home early, as she did every Wednesday, for lunch. Artemisia couldn’t remember anything unusual about lunch that day. Her mother rarely joined in the conversations about art that she and her father carried on, and she didn’t like to gossip, so she didn’t join in those conversations either. When they’d finished lunch, her mother told them that she had a headache and would take a nap. Her father had remarked caustically, “Three glasses of wine and I’d have a headache, too.” Artemisia never drank at lunch, and when her mother bent down to kiss her before retiring to her room, she’d turned her head aside, away from the sour smell of wine on her mother’s breath and away from her last words: “I love you, darling.”