by Grace Brophy
“No, but you’re hoping it!”
“You have nothing to back it up, other than a stray comment by Artemisia Casati that the piece of thread you found on the victim was attached to her left earring. You insist that only you and the murderer could have know this, but this Croatian woman has an entirely different story. She gave a sworn statement to the carabinieri tonight that it was Fulvio who tried to kill her. And the reason she gave makes perfect sense. In her statement she claims that Fulvio murdered Minelli, and that he tried to kill her to keep her quiet. She even wrote a letter to this effect for her protection before leaving for the cemetery— addressed to you, I might add.”
Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled, Cenni muttered to himself. “Now you’re taking the Croatian’s word over mine. Yesterday, you wanted me to lock her up and throw away the key. Think on it, Carlo! Fulvio goes to the cemetery with the intent to murder Sophie Orlic, but he’s not carrying a weapon. If I’m lucky, he thinks, I’ll find a stray brick along the roadside, or perhaps I can smother her with my coat sleeve. Even Fulvio wasn’t that much of a fucking fool!”
“Language, Alex. The wife may be listening.”
“I hope she is. She usually agrees with me,” Cenni added caustically.
“No doubt, but I run the questura, not Romina and not you. There is another point of view, Alex. The count concedes that his daughter acted irrationally tonight. He apologizes profusely for Sergeant Antolini’s injury; he’s even volunteered to pay her medical expenses and a nice sum in compensation. His story is that Artemisia is having a nervous breakdown and even threatened to commit suicide. Who can argue with that? The cousin is murdered, the mother takes her own life, and her married lover tries to kill her, all this in the same week. Listen, Alex. You’ve been fighting to keep this Croatian woman out of jail. You’ve succeeded and that’s all you’re going to get. And don’t forget to release Williams. All we need now is the Canadian Embassy breathing down our necks.”
Finally, and with great reluctance, Cenni had agreed to adopt Sophie’s version, that Artemisia Casati had attacked Fulvio Russo in defense of her own life. He doubted that the police would ever learn the full truth about tonight, but most of what he knew, or suspected, he had promised Carlo to keep to himself, for now. “Forget for now,” Carlo shot back in anger. You wanted Il Lupino. You got him, and without lifting a finger. Case closed.”
9
DO WHAT YOU will shall be the whole of the law! Artemisia said the banishing words to herself repeatedly as she looked out the hospital window. The parking lot was directly below, and she could see the last of the visitors returning to their cars. Visiting hours ended at 9:00 and her father had stayed until the final warning bell sounded before kissing her on the cheek. In the five days that she had been in Assisi hospital, it was the first time that he’d stayed so late. He usually arrived at 6:30 and left promptly at 8:00, for his dinner. His habits were set in stone, Assisi stone, Artemisia thought to herself. Even her mother hadn’t been able to budge him: breakfast at 7:00, lunch at 1:00, drinks at 7:00, dinner at 8:00. But this visit he had waited until the very last minute to leave. The first warning bell had sounded before he broached the subject on his mind. He began tentatively, reminding Artemisia of their obligations to Sophie. “We owe Sophie a great deal. Think of all that she did for your mother.” And then, after a slight pause, he added, “And for you, Artemisia. A great deal!” he emphasized, observing his daughter carefully to see her reaction. She said nothing, sitting silent and watchful, waiting for him to continue.
“Sophie needs financial help for her daughter. She’s transferring Christina from the public hospital in Croatia to a private clinic in Switzerland in three days, and I’ve promised to accompany her on the trip, and to help with the expenses,” he added, sheepishly. “After the trauma that Sophie’s been through—that we’ve all been through as a family,” he amended, “she needs our support.”
Sophie’s not family—she’s not even Italian, Artemisia thought without change of expression.
He hesitated again, walking over to the nighttable where Artemisia kept a framed picture of her mother and brother. He nervously fingered the frame, avoiding her eyes. “That apartment she lives in near Porta San Giacomo, it’s a disgrace. I had no idea that anyone in Assisi still lived that way. It has no central heating, just one of those portable gas heaters to use in the winter. You know how dangerous they are. We should outlaw them. Now that I think of it, that apartment may be the very one that Paola lived in with her grandmother before she came to us.” He was still gazing at the picture of his wife and son; then he placed it face downward on the table. Artemisia knew what was coming.
“Paola is going back to Rome in a few days time to continue her studies. We’ll need someone to act as housekeeper. Sophie has agreed to work for the family again, but more as a member of the family than as a servant.” He added, “I thought I would give her your grandmother’s room.” The final bell had sounded. “Of course, when you come home, we’ll have to make other arrangements.”
When she failed to respond, he continued, “You’ll need time to heal and to forget, and you can do that better in the hospital.” He turned to look at her directly, and for a moment Artemisia thought he was going to say something else, something profound, but instead he bent and kissed her briefly on one cheek, English fashion. At the door, he paused for a last look. “Ciao bella,” he said, and left.
His anxiety to let her know what was on his mind without stating it directly had been apparent. He hadn’t mentioned marriage, but she knew her father too well to assume he intended anything else; he was far too conventional to live with Sophie without the blessings of church and law. And Sophie? She certainly understood Sophie, perhaps even better than she understood her father. A clever woman, Sophie! Too clever to agree to any arrangement other than marriage to the seventeenth Count Casati. Her mother’s title, countess, would pass to Sophie when her father remarried, and she, Artemisia, would be a mere signorina again, a signorina at thirty-seven! Artemisia was well versed in the rituals of Italian nobility and knew that her mother’s title had not actually passed to her, but she had enjoyed being called countess by those who didn’t know. Sophie was still young enough to have more children. Her father would be pleased to have another son, a son to whom he could pass his title, another Camillo! Artemisia had seen the way her father’s eyes had followed Sophie through a room when the Croatian had been her grandmother’s caretaker. Sophie must have been aware of his interest. Women were always aware of such things. With the wife dead and the daughter safely tucked away in hospital, Sophie had played her hand just right. Clever Sophie!
She saw her father by the streetlights’ illumination as he emerged from the portico. He had osteoporosis and his tall slim figure with rounded shoulders was unmistakable. A woman walked next to him, and she recognized Sophie’s blonde hair. She must have been waiting for him in the lobby, Artemisia thought. Sophie wore a sweater lightly thrown over her shoulders, and as they walked it slipped down one arm. Artemisia watched as her father helped his housekeeper to secure it again, and then with his arm still around her shoulders they walked toward the parking lot.
“Domestica!” she exhaled softly. A cleaning woman! And not even the equal of Lucia, who was at least Italian. Not to despair, Artemisia thought. Her father was very conventional. He would never marry Sophie before a year of mourning had passed. Plenty of time. Of course, she would have to be careful. Sophie must have realized who had attacked her. Fulvio had been at least five feet in front of the Croatian when Artemisia had hit her from behind with the brick that she’d found lying along the dirt track. Sophie had to have seen Fulvio before she went down; she had to know that he couldn’t have been the one who hit her. Clever Sophie, lying like that! She wondered if her father knew, if Sophie had confided in him? But even Sophie couldn’t know for sure who had killed Rita Minelli. Not even Cenni knew for sure, no matter what he said.
Good Friday, that fateful day! She
had waited at the top of the stairway until she heard Lucia slam the kitchen door, and then crept down the back stairs. It was just after 4:30, plenty of time to get to the cemetery. To avoid meeting anyone in the street, she left by the garden steps, turning her ankle in the process. At her urging, Fulvio had called Rita in the morning to demand that she meet him one last time to talk about the baby’s future, at five o’clock in the cemetery. But he’d lost his nerve. Shortly after 4:00 he called Artemisia, insisting that he had to be at home with his wife to meet with Giorgio. Giorgio terrified him and now with Rita pregnant, he had a terminal case of paralysis. “If he finds out about the baby, he’ll have me killed,” he’d said repeatedly. “Grazia wants to have a child and Giorgio would consider it a double insult if I got another woman pregnant and not his sister.” Giorgio was an excuse. Fulvio was a coward. He was leaving it to her to solve his problem.
She had chosen the day with care, waiting for Good Friday when the streets and cemetery were sure to be empty in the late afternoon. “If we put it off we’ll lose the moment. Once she tells one person about the baby, it’ll be all over Assisi,” she’d responded, hoping to buck him up. It would also give Rita time to execute a new will. Her cousin’s lawyer had called from New York on Holy Thursday and left a message with Lucia that the will was in the mail and Rita had written in her diary that she was planning to disinherit the family. That item she had kept to herself. Fulvio didn’t know about the will and wouldn’t care. Money was the one thing he didn’t need—and was the only thing Artemisia could think about since she had seen the figure of two and a half million scribbled in Rita’s diary.
After their trysts, Fulvio always left first. Artemisia would wait five minutes, giving him time to get away. His arrangement was the same with Rita and it was in those five minutes that Artemisia would kill her cousin. What Fulvio didn’t know was that the weapon of her choice was his cashmere scarf. She would leave traces of it on Rita’s person and then hide the scarf where it was likely to be found. After Rita’s death, rumors of her unborn child would spread like wildfire and just as quickly her name would be linked to Fulvio’s. The incomparable Lucia would see to that. Giorgio would move heaven and earth to shield his sister from public shame: no police, no courts, and no trial, just an execution. She relished the irony of using the scarf that Rita had given Fulvio for King’s Day. He had taunted her with it, asking her to feel its softness, a reminder that he and Rita were lovers. As though she would care who he fucked.
He didn’t know that she had his scarf. He never wore his coat when he went out to lunch, even in the coldest weather. It appeared macho to walk around Assisi in shirtsleeves in the middle of winter. She had stopped at the station during his lunch break and asked to leave a note in the commissario’s office. She walked away with the scarf tucked under her coat, and no one the wiser. The pen was a stroke of luck. It had fallen out of his pocket on to the floor of her car the last time they were together. She had handled it carefully, wrapping it in her handkerchief to preserve his prints. If the scarf didn’t work, the pen would. She’d leave it lying under her cousin’s body. The caribinieri would be first on the scene when the body was found; they were only a few minutes from the cemetery and they all hated Fulvio, who liked to throw his weight around. They’d find the pen and think it had been dropped, unnoticed, by the killer. Each Mont Blanc pen had its own serial number; it would be traced to Fulvio. At Rita’s funeral, he had taken her aside and whined about that, too. He couldn’t understand how his pen had gotten into her purse. The fool thought Rita had stolen it from him.
In the end it worked even better than she could have hoped. She had taken the dirt track behind the mausoleums to avoid being seen and came upon her mother and Rita quarreling. Their voices were raised to an agitated pitch of accusation and denial and twice she heard her own name. She hid in the shadows of the towering cypress and watched as her mother, her arms swinging wildly, rushed toward the front gate and then returned almost immediately, out of breath and talking to herself. She reentered the vault for just a moment and rushed off again, passing so close to Artemisia she could have touched her daughter’s hand.
Artemisia had waited outside the vault but heard no sound. She entered and found Rita lying face-down at the bottom of the altar steps. She knelt on one knee and covered her cousin’s right hand with hers; she felt it tremble with life. She rolled her over and watched as Rita slowly opened her eyes. She smiled up at Artemisia and Artemisia smiled back.
It proved strangely easy to kill. She’d pressed the scarf down over her cousin’s mouth and nose and held it there until Rita stopped breathing. Rita’s eyes were huge pools of fear and pleading, but she didn’t struggle, probably because she was still weak from the blow to her head. Artemisia watched as the light left her cousin’s eyes and wondered if there were any truth to the tale that a murder victim imprinted the killer’s image on his retina. It was an old wives’ tale and Artemisia doubted that there was any truth to it, but the thought fascinated her. Was her likeness permanently etched on Rita’s retina? It gave the cousins a special bond—almost like sisters, she thought.
Artemisia had hated Rita while she was alive—hated that Rita was rich and independent, hated when people said they looked alike—but now that Rita was dead, Artemisia remembered that her cousin had been kind to her when she was a child, kinder to her than her own mother. She had hated her mother, too, but now that she was dead, she had begun to miss her. Strange that she should miss her mother when she hadn’t even liked her. Perhaps, later, she would miss Sophie in the same way. Ciao bella.
10
THE SUN, HIGH above the Medieval city, cast a radiant light on the massive stone buildings that dominate the great central street of Perugia. Even the soft shadows in front of the majestic Piazza dei Priori were luminous with light. Some children were playing hide and seek, skipping in and out of the shop doorways, touching the shining widows as they passed, leaving fingerprints as mementos. Yet no one shooed them away or looked upon them unkindly, not the shop owners who came out afterward with spritzer bottles of ammonia water nor the ample pedestrians whose bulk served as hiding places for the smaller children. The adult world was benevolent, even when a child forgot to say scusi. It was that sort of a day.
Alex could not support spending the whole day sitting in his office in Foligno and was taking an afternoon off. In addition, he had a lettera raccomandata to collect at the central post office. The notice in his mailbox was clear, he must sign for the letter himself. The police, he recalled, were always sending out lettere raccomandate, and until today he’d had no idea how annoying they could be. The return address was unknown to him, some place in Valle d’Aosta. He decided not to open it until he was seated with a coffee in front of him.
A waiter standing outside the Pasticceria Sandri recognized Cenni as he approached and pointed to a desirable table to the right of the front door, although there were plenty of tables to be had without undue influence. The city of chocolate was not yet one of the great tourist attractions of Italy, which for Cenni was clearly to its advantage. He could still enjoy a quiet stroll down Corso Vannucci and find an empty table in his favorite café, where he would read his letter at his leisure without encountering the icy stare of an impatient tourist waiting for his seat. He nodded yes to the waiter and ordered his coffee with an extra kick, a doppio corretto.
The contents of the lettera raccomandata were two sheets of fine linen bond, written on one side only, an extravagant use of paper for an Italian, he reflected. He didn’t recognize the handwriting, but he admired it immediately. The letters were beautifully formed, long and slanting to the right, without any display of squiggles, flourishes, or smiley faces. He settled down to read, curious to know who had wasted four euros to send a letter that might easily have been posted for fifty cents. It was written in English.
My dear Dottore,
How deeply disappointing for you when they sent me to a sanatorium and not to a prison for the crimi
nally insane, as I hear from my father you had urged. It’s a very nice sanatorium too, with lovely views of the surrounding mountains. An excess of fresh air, I find, but then northerners have such a fetish for the outdoors, even to bringing it inside. The food is a bit excessive as well, very heavy in the use of cream and butter. You’d hardly know me. I’ve gained five pounds in the five short weeks I’ve been here. But, thank God, it won’t be very long before I return home and resume a healthy Mediterranean diet. The Board of Governors met yesterday about my case, at the insistence of my father and with the intercession of Giorgio and the PM. Giorgio’s political fortunes have changed for the better, Italian politics being what they are.
My psychiatrist agrees with my father that my mental state has improved dramatically. Dr. Missani attributes my confusion after Fulvio’s death to the stress of my mother’s suicide and to the knowledge that Fulvio was responsible for the murder of my dear cousin. The board agreed, and I will be home again in a few short weeks.
I wanted to be the one to give you my good news and to suggest that we let bygones by bygones, as the English might say. We Italians are too much driven to vengeance, but perhaps the two of us can break that cycle. I forgive you, Alex (may I call you Alex?)—I forgive you, even now when I hear from my dear father that you are still working to have me imprisoned, and from Foligno of all places. How very impolitic of you, Alex, and how very unkind! We’re all better off without Fulvio, particularly his wife. He was a coward and a bully. Georgio tells me that he not only beat Grazia, he enjoyed it! He was also a murderer, as the magistratura clearly ruled, but then I don’t suppose I need remind you of that.
Giorgio has asked me to marry him and I’ve accepted, so we’ll be spending much of our time in Rome, but we’ll often visit Perugia, where, no doubt, we will meet from time to time. (The position of director of the Galleria Nazionale is still vacant. Giorgio and I expect to add considerably to its collection of old masters. I thought acquisition of Judith Slaying Holofernes, the one currently in the Naples museum, would be a good beginning.) I certainly hope we do meet again, Alex, and that when we do, we’ll greet one another as friends or, at the very least, friendly enemies.
