by Aaron Elkins
“Gideon, dear,” Julie said with a sweet smile, “could you possibly just explain without asking me questions you know I don’t know the answer to?”
“Was that what I was doing?”
“That’s what you always do. I think it’s a pedagogical technique. I’m sure it’s very effective in class.”
“Sorry about that,” he said, laughing. “Pedagogical habits die hard. Anyway, one of the things about Perthes disease—which, between us, I had completely forgotten—is that its effects can sometimes be confused with the aftereffects of a broken femoral neck. So what naturally jumped into my mind at that point was that—”
“—the injury you thought you’d found in Domenico’s hip—the reason for his walking with a limp—might not be an injury at all, but the result of Perthes disease.”
“Exactly. That’s why I wanted to go back and look at the bones again. Well, the bones had been sent off to Rome, but they had a good set of photographs, which I looked at, but I still wasn’t positive, so I sent them off to O’Malley for diagnosis.”
“And was it? Perthes disease?”
“Sure enough. The call I got at the villa was from him. Perthes disease for sure. And that settled it. That was what Francesca was afraid I’d find. That was why they tried to get rid of the bones. That was why they tried to get rid of me. It had nothing at all to do with the cause of death. Ahh,” he said as the steaming plate of risotto was set down in front of him.
The waiter had also brought Julie’s veal cutlet. Thoughtfully, while Gideon dug in, she picked up her knife and fork and began to cut off a piece of meat, but then shook her head and put the utensils down. “No. Wait a minute. What did it settle? What does all this have to do with Phil? What does it have to do with anything?”
“Patience,” he counseled between bites. “There’s some pretty intricate deduction involved here. What it has to do with is Phil’s limp.”
“His limp? I wouldn’t call that a limp. He just has a sort of a . . . snag to his walk.”
“What he has, not that I ever gave it much thought before, is a very mild form of what’s known as a Trendelenburg gait, or a gluteus medius lurch, which is what you get with inadequately functioning hip abductors in one leg. The affected leg tends to be held in an externally rotated posture and the joint itself is kept flexed—”
“Are you saying that Phil has Perthes disease too?”
“Yes. The operation apparently corrected it to the point where the limp is barely noticeable. But you’re getting ahead of me now. See, hearing that he had an operation when he was five got me thinking about what kind of condition he might have had, and one of the first things that naturally came to mind was Perthes disease.”
“Why ‘naturally’?”
“Because, even though it’s rare, it is the most common of the osteochondroses, and it usually shows up right around that age—five, six, seven—and unlike most other joint diseases, it’s unilateral more often than not—and Phil, like Domenico, is only affected on one side. Umm, this is really good risotto. Now, then: once Perthes disease started knocking around in my brain, it got me thinking about Vincenzo—”
“Vincenzo? Does Vincenzo have it too? I didn’t notice any kind of limp.”
“No, he doesn’t have one, and that’s what struck me.” Sated enough to take a breather now, he put down his own knife and fork, leaned forward, and told her what O’Malley had told him. “The genetics of Perthes disease are obscure and very complex, but in general it’s inherited, and if it shows up twice among close relatives, you can bet it’s inherited, so—”
“So if anybody had it, it should have been Vincenzo,” Julie said slowly, “not Phil. Only it’s the other way around.”
“Right. Ergo: it’s Phil who’s Domenico’s son, not Vincenzo.”
“Wow.” Mechanically, she started eating again. “But . . .” She chewed and swallowed. “Francesca is Domenico’s daughter, isn’t she? Why doesn’t she have it?”
“Because it doesn’t always show up, and when it does, it’s five to one in boys as opposed to girls.”
“Oh. No, wait, there’s a big problem here. What about that whole story that his so-called father told? About how Vincenzo was really Emma’s baby, and Phil was bought from that woman, that Gia, for five hundred dollars as a . . . a consolation prize?”
“The story was true. Only he reversed Phil and Vincenzo. Phil was the baby. Vincenzo was the consolation prize.”
“Gideon, the more you explain, the more confused I get. I am getting really frustrated here. What reason would Franco have to lie like that?”
The waiter came to take Gideon’s plate and to ask what he wanted for his second course. “I’ll have another plate of this,” Gideon told him, earning a tolerant shake of the waiter’s head. These Americans.
“He wasn’t lying, Julie. Emma fooled them both—Franco and Domenico. I’m doing a little surmising here, but what I figure is that her maternal hormones kicked in as she got into her pregnancy, and she didn’t want to give her own baby up—her own baby being Phil. So, overcome with remorse, she works out a plan with Gia, who’s also at about the same stage: a switch. When the babies are born, she’ll give Gia’s child—”
“Vincenzo?”
He nodded. “Vincenzo—to Domenico, leaving her own child—”
“Phil.”
“Yes, Phil—with Gia for the time being. Then she finesses Domenico into suggesting that she adopt a child—and paying for it—and she pretends to adopt Gia’s son . . . who’s really her own, her own and Domenico’s.”
“And how do you finesse someone into suggesting that you adopt a child?”
“That I don’t know, but I don’t doubt it’s possible.”
“Well, maybe . . . but wouldn’t Franco know—”
“Franco wasn’t there for the last month.”
“But the mother—the other mother, Gia—she seemed to think Phil was hers.”
“Julie, you didn’t get to meet this woman. She’s so zonked out she’d believe I was her kid if Franco told her so.”
Julie had eaten only half of her cotoletta, but with a shake of her head, she pushed the plate aside. “Well, I suppose it’s all possible, but ‘surmising’ is putting it mildly, wouldn’t you say? You’re taking quite a leap here.”
“No, I don’t think so. I haven’t told you yet about what happened when I went up to Gignese this afternoon to look at Luzzatto’s records.”
She laughed. “You’ve had yourself quite a day, haven’t you?”
Over his second helping of the risotto Gideon told her about Luzzatto’s journal, with its angst-ridden references to the mysterious “secret buried in my heart” that was kept from Domenico for twenty-seven years, and then finally revealed to him . . . two days before he was killed.
Julie listened, sipping her second glass of wine and nibbling at a cheese tray they’d ordered. “I think I finally see where you’re going. Luzzatto was in on the baby switch too, correct? That Vincenzo wasn’t the real son—that was the secret. And when he finally told Domenico, Francesca must have found out too, and to prevent him from disinheriting Vincenzo, she . . . No? I’m not right?” she said when she saw Gideon shaking his head.
“You’re almost right. That was the secret, all right, but Luzzatto wasn’t in on the switch. He only found out years later.”
“How can you possibly know that, if it wasn’t in the journal?”
“Luzzatto told me, or rather his medical records did. See, twenty-seven years ago wouldn’t have been when the babies were born. Twenty-seven years ago would have been 1966, five years after that. And in 1966, according to his files, he took five-year-old Filiberto Ungaretti in to the Gaetano Pini Institute for an operation to correct an incipient case of . . .” He waited.
“Perthes disease!” Julie said. “And since he was also Domenico’s doctor, he already knew that Domenico had it, so he came to the same conclusion you did: Emma had pulled a fast one to keep her own baby. Phil
was really his son, not Vincenzo.”
“Now you’ve got it. He then kept it to himself all those years, but when he thought he was dying, he went to Domenico with it, and Domenico, with his unshakable belief in the importance of good blood, probably would have disinherited Vincenzo—”
“Hold on. So why didn’t Vincenzo kill him, then? No, I didn’t put that right. I meant, why would Francesca be the one to murder him over that? She was still his legitimate daughter, wasn’t she? It wouldn’t affect her. And for that matter, why was she skimming money? Why would she have had Achille kidnapped? Why did she need so much money anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know which?”
“Any of it, any of the ‘whys.’ Neither does Caravale at this point. Francesca’s the only one who knows, and she wasn’t exactly forthcoming at the police station. She’s a pretty tough cookie, Julie. She just might never explain. We might never find out.”
TWENTY-SIX
THEY found out the following Sunday, four days later, back home in Port Angeles. Phil had come in from Italy on a red-eye at 7:50 A.M. and had driven straight out to Port Angeles, having promised to fill them in on everything. The idea had been to take a picnic brunch down to Dungeness Spit, the hump-backed, six-mile ribbon of sand and driftwood that angled out into the stormy strait like a sheltering arm, protecting the quiet waters of Dungeness Bay within its curve. It was Phil’s favorite spot on the Peninsula, and he thought the salt air, the sense of space, the cries of seals and gulls, and the grand, ever-present backdrop of the Olympics might help him decompress.
But Sunday, like the previous three days, came up rainy and glowering, a typical Pacific Northwest spring morning without a “sunbreak” in sight, and so they’d settled for a brunch of scrambled eggs, lox, bagels, and cream cheese at home instead. Phil had been taciturn and a little grumpy when he’d walked in, and Gideon’s greeting of “How goes it, padrone?” hadn’t helped matters. “This is nothing to joke about,” had been the querulous reply.
But a bagel sandwich of lox and cream cheese smeared with cherry jam (“That’s the way we Armenians like it,” he’d said defensively. “You want to make something of it?”) had helped him unwind, and with the pouring of his second cup of coffee, he began to open up.
“I had a talk with Francesca, you know,” he said, stirring in sugar. “Yesterday. They’re holding her in Turin. I drove up there to see her.”
“And she talked to you?” Gideon said. “I’m surprised.”
“So am I, to tell you the truth. But I had to at least ask her some questions—you know, to try to make sense of things. They’ve got her in a kind of a . . . not really a cell, but like a dorm room, only the door is metal, and it has a window in it. Somebody stood outside and watched us the whole time. They said I couldn’t see her at first, but I called Caravale and he got me in.” He was stirring, stirring, his mind 7,000 miles away, back in a dorm-like room in Turin.
“How did she seem?” Julie prompted.
“Like Francesca. Nasty. ‘So you’ve come to gloat, eh? Go ahead, have your fill.’ Those were her first words to me.”
He had spent half an hour in her company, he explained, unable to get her to say anything. She had sat on her cot in silence, with her arms folded, and her eyes half-closed, and a distant half-smile on her face, while he pleaded with her to shed some light on what she’d done. And then, when he had already gotten up and was about to leave, he had stopped just before signaling to get out and had said, in bafflement and frustration: “He was stabbed in the back, Francesca! I can’t even make myself imagine that. That you would stab Domenico . . . your father . . . in the back—”
She had jumped up from the cot on which she’d been sitting, her dark eyes alight for the first time. “Yes, in the back, the way he stabbed me in the back!”
“She confessed to you?” Gideon said, astounded.
Phil nodded. He’d finally finished stirring his coffee and lifted it to his lips, but it was obvious he hardly knew he was drinking it. “She got carried away; she couldn’t hold it back. I mean, it just poured out of her. It was horrible—this flood of bile, of resentment . . . it was like I wasn’t even there. I was, like, paralyzed . . .” He put the coffee down, stared out at the gray murk, and in a quiet, neutral voice told them what had burst from her with so much passion.
When Dr. Luzzatto had finally told Domenico the truth (Francesca said)—that her supposed younger brother Vincenzo was neither her brother nor Domenico’s son—but that Phil was—Domenico had made the mistake of coming to her for advice, for guidance—to Francesca, his own natural daughter; Francesca, whose own husband had been banished from the villa. As she had sat there in the kitchen of her gloomy Modena apartment, watching him wring his fine hands and debate with himself about the proper thing to do and the proper way to do it, it had struck her with terrible clarity that his concerns were all about what this might mean to Vincenzo, to the brat Achille, to the de Grazia bloodline. Not for a second did it cross his mind to concern himself with what a change in heirs might mean to her.
Until that moment she had never, except in occasional moments of pique, begrudged her father his stiff-necked adherence to the old-fashioned view that the entailed de Grazia estate was properly passed from son to son, with daughters—even elder daughters—given no consideration. That was a tradition. But now, for the first time she understood that to Domenico she counted for nothing at all, she was a woman, a zero, someone who might provide a reasonably intelligent sounding board, but whose views, whose own interest in the matter, were of no concern.
And the fact was, she did have an interest in the matter. If Phil actually became padrone, a time of unthinkable retribution would descend on her. She would no longer be mistress of the estate, she would be treated like dirt. It was true enough that Phil had many snubs, many disparagements, even many cruelties for which to repay her. She was ready to admit that. But whose fault was it that she had been brought up to look down on the Ungarettis? Couldn’t her father see it was his, no one’s but his?
No, he couldn’t see. Nor, apparently, could he see that the weedy, churlish Phil, regardless of his precious genes, was a cafone through and through—a boor, a vulgarian—whose commonplace manners and lack of breeding would mean the end of the house of de Grazia as they knew it.
But as they talked—as he talked—it had become increasingly clear that for her father one thing mattered above all else: the de Grazia blood line. There had never been any real doubt in his mind about what course he would pursue. He would convene a consiglio as soon as possible, as soon as Phil could fly to Italy; tomorrow, if possible. He would . . .
As he spoke, a reddish cloud had come down in front of her eyes like a blood-tinged cloth. He was so proud of himself, of “sacrificing” the man he had always thought of as his son—with tears in his eyes he actually compared himself to the Abraham of the Bible, giving up his only begotten son for the greater good—so completely oblivious to Francesca’s needs that, in a fit of shuddering, uncontrollable rage, she had snatched a knife from the block on the kitchen counter . . .
“And that’s it,” Phil said with a shrug. “She didn’t tell me how she faked the boating accident, but what’s the difference?”
“I don’t understand,” Gideon said. “Why would she confess to you when she wouldn’t to the police?”
“I’m telling you, it gushed out of her like water. She was white, she was shaking. When she got control of herself, she told me I was obligated—as a de Grazia, no less—to keep it to myself. And if I told anyone, she’d just deny she’d said it anyway, and what proof did I have?”
“And what did you do?”
“I called Caravale first thing, of course. But she’s right. What proof of anything do I have? Still, it ought to be useful to him.”
Julie was shaking her head from side to side. “My God, the whole thing sounds like an opera.”
“Well, we are Italian,” Phil said with his f
irst smile of the morning.
“What about kidnapping Achille?” Gideon asked. “And skimming money from the company all those years? What was that all about, do you know?”
“Yeah, more or less. She kind of touched on some of it obliquely and I think I can put the rest together. From what I can tell, she was pretty confident right from the first that she’d gotten away with it—with the murder—but after a while, she started to worry that somehow, somewhere, I’d eventually find out who I really was and I’d come down on Isola de Grazia like Attila the Hun, claiming my birthright, sowing strife and destruction, and making life hell for everybody, but especially her.”
“I don’t blame her for being worried,” Julie said. “Dr. Luzzatto could have told you anytime he wanted.”
“No, she was pretty comfortable about that once she saw that he was going to sit by without saying anything and let Vincenzo inherit. Who knows, maybe she talked to him about it.”
“But she did kill him in the end.”
“Yes.”
“But only after Luzzatto found out that Domenico’s death was murder and started muttering to himself,” Gideon said. “And that took ten years.”
They carried the dishes into the kitchen and took fresh coffee into the living room. “Go ahead, Phil,” Gideon said. “She was afraid you’d find out you were Domenico’s son sometime, so . . .”
“So she started skimming in order to be ready to take care of herself when the time came.” He had perked up with the food and coffee and was looking better, despite a little haggardness from the overnight flight. And his new position in life seemed to be having an effect on him, whatever he claimed. He was wearing a nice, new knit shirt, decent trousers, and new oxfords. Gone were the T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers he’d flown out in.
