by Derek Hansen
‘And Colombina?’
‘Yes, Ramon, I will tell you more about Colombina. And now I must invoke our convention. I refuse to tell you any more until we have eaten our lunch. Any objections?’
There were none, nor did Lucio expect any. The whole tone of conversation seemed contrived to put him at ease. They knew he was treading on unfamiliar ground and were making things as easy for him as they could. But it was a honeymoon that wouldn’t last. As the story developed and they adopted their positions, the questions would come. There’d be no going easy then.
Chapter Twelve
True to her word, Colombina prepared another German meal for Heinrich Bose the following Sunday. She did all the preparation at home and all the cooking in his little kitchen. This time she chose something a little kinder to his stomach, something more compatible with the bland food which for years had been his diet. Heinrich had loved the Blumenkohlsuppe and the Rouladen, but he’d paid a heavy price for his pleasure. Indigestion had kept him awake all night and the unaccustomed richness had kept him running to the toilet. He hadn’t complained. Quite the contrary. In explaining Colombina’s unexpected generosity to a stunned John and Edna, he’d not only described every dish in great detail but also the aftermath claiming that, had he known what the effect would be, he still wouldn’t have missed a single mouthful.
Colombina learned all this from John and Edna who, while praising her Christian compassion and charity, made it quite clear that they resented her intrusion upon what they regarded as their people and their territory.
‘At least now the old bugger has something to look forward to each week,’ Colombina had replied, shocking them with her language and her intention to continue her visits. John and Edna had marched off in a huff, their decency affronted and their faint trust in their fellow workers clearly vindicated.
But Colombina knew she was the real loser. She hadn’t thought things through clearly enough. In hindsight, John and Edna’s reaction was quite predictable, as predictable in fact as their future actions, should misfortune befall the old man. If there was the slightest suspicion about the manner of the Oberstleutnant’s death, Colombina knew who would be first to point the finger and at whom it would be pointed. It was a complication she didn’t need, but it didn’t change anything. Still she’d learned something of value. Heinrich Bose might put up with indigestion and diarrhoea one Sunday, but nobody would put up with it Sunday after Sunday. Where would she be then, if he decided he didn’t want her meals any more? No, she had to win his trust and put herself beyond anyone’s suspicion before she acted, and that could take many Sunday lunches.
So Colombina flicked through her German cookbook until she found a dish from Hamburg which was both light and flavoursome. She bought two salmon steaks to bake in dry white wine and vermouth. The only tricky part would be blending in a créme fraîche, made the night before, with the juices from the baking tray. She decided to serve the salmon with julienned carrot, celery, beetroot and leeks. She’d begin with a carrot soup and conclude with simmered red berries and custard. Provided she kept the serves relatively small she felt Heinrich would have no problems digesting the meal.
When Heinrich answered the door, it was clear he’d dressed for the occasion. He wore a tie, and what hair he had left was plastered to his scalp. His excitement was obvious and he’d waited like a small boy promised a bike for his birthday. While Colombina prepared their lunch he chose the music. His collection of classical and opera records occupied three shelves that ran the width of the room. Books on opera and biographies of its better known performers occupied another two. His taste in music hadn’t changed in the slightest.
While Colombina cooked and while they ate, she set about establishing the pattern for subsequent visits so that she could win his confidence and make him drop his guard. Whenever she could, she talked food—different food and different methods of preparation. She didn’t want to discuss her past and asked no questions about his. They discussed opera at length, books, the weather, and the European soccer. Occasionally, Heinrich would reminisce and describe a particular dish and the places he’d enjoyed it. Colombina had to work hard to suppress a smile. It seemed there wasn’t a single Saxon dish that couldn’t be made to perfection in Switzerland. He even made it sound as if Streuselkuchen and Bienenstich, the sweet Saxonian yeast dough cakes, were Swiss creations. Colombina had heard these dishes described before and even helped the Oberstleutnant prepare some of them, a long time ago in another country, in another lifetime.
As the Sundays came and went she gradually succeeded in her first objective. He relaxed and seemed to trust her. The aging processes slowed and appeared to reverse. A younger man would have been accused of having fallen in love, for he exhibited all the signs. Perhaps he had fallen in love. Colombina made it easy for people to love her. Now all she had to do was figure out a safe way to kill him.
Colombina was no stranger to sudden and violent death. She had been instrumental in the deaths of many men, some no more than boys. She had witnessed its randomness, its suddenness and also its cruel, lingering slowness. But that is the price war exacts on all who engage in it, and those who survive it best learn to harden their heart and disassociate. Like doctors and undertakers.
Colombina only had to look at the old, faded photograph of her mother she kept in her locket to find the bitter, hard part within her and make herself immune to the charms of the likeable old man. She coldly considered her options. The Oberstleutnant had a gas heater and a gas cooker. It would be the easiest thing in the world to leave the gas cooker on, knowing that he always fell asleep in his chair after she left him. By the time the leaking gas found its way to the pilot light on his heater, there would be enough to blow the house apart. Gas was a definite possibility. Then there was the flex on the electric kettle. It was so worn it looked like it may also have been in service during the Second World War. It would be easy enough to contrive a short. The carpet was also worn in places, badly enough to catch a shoe and trip its occupant. Yet the Oberstleutnant seemed to have a sixth sense in negotiating these patches. She would have to trip him herself and somehow ensure the fall was fatal. Nonetheless, a definite option. Colombina realised killing the Oberstleutnant would present no real difficulty, provided she did her homework and her planning thoroughly.
But there was one major problem. The Oberstleutnant would be dead before he realised she was killing him, and consequently would have no idea why. What kind of justice was that? It is always the sentence of death and the waiting that causes the most agony, rather than the event itself which is over in an instant. The Oberstleutnant had to be made to face up to his past, to his crime, and he had to be made to face the certainty of his death just as his victims had. He had to know fear. And remorse. He had to suffer. Yes! Remorse. Horror. Terror. Guilt. Fear. Fear of death. Fear of eternal damnation. Yes! He had to suffer first. The swift sword of retribution would be too kind, a denial of justice.
Perhaps the way to a man’s stomach might also be the way of his death? Colombina began to consider poisons. She’d heard that the juices from one squeeze of an oyster that had been buried for a week would kill anyone, but it might also raise awkward questions as to how the old man came to ingest them. Given that the bulk of his meals were provided by Meals-on-Wheels, there’d probably be an inquiry to protect the other recipients of the service. Colombina had no doubt where such an inquiry would lead. John and Edna would see to that. Perhaps shellfish gathered around an outfall mixed with others bought from a fish shop? Yes, this had possibilities. Rampaging salmonella and very probably rampaging hepatitis. If by some miracle he survived the first, he would never survive the second. But there was no guarantee that the shellfish would carry the bacteria and, even if they did, she would be left exposed. She would have time to inform the Oberstleutnant of his fate but, equally, he would have the opportunity to inform on his murderer. She needed something that would kill in minutes not in hours or days. He didn’t need to suffe
r long, just long enough. Long enough to know why.
The cooking of Saxony tends to be homely and hearty with an emphasis on meat. While pork and ham tend to dominate, from ancient times Saxons have shared the German passion for hunting, and the spoils of the hunt are welcome supplements to their diet. Heinrich Bose was no exception and one Sunday he regaled Colombina with descriptions of meals he’d enjoyed. Roast saddle of venison with red wine sauce, braised hare, and pheasant with giblet stuffing. Colombina thought no more about it until, one day looking through her German cookbook for inspiration, she came across a recipe for hare. She wondered if she could make the same dish with rabbit. And as she thought about rabbits, it occurred to her that she may have stumbled upon the perfect way to kill the Oberstleutnant.
She remembered the tales her late husband had told of his first days in Australia, working on the farm. He’d always kept in touch with the Dwyer family who’d fed and sheltered him. Mario had sent them a card every Christmas with a note inside, and occasionally they’d driven south to stay with them over a weekend. When Charlie Dwyer had died at the age of eighty-one they’d attended his funeral. Even then, they’d not lost touch and had sent Christmas cards to his son. After Mario’s death, she’d continued the practice and now she wondered if her relationship with the Dwyers was strong enough for her to impose upon them. Above all, she hoped the rabbit problem was still as severe as it had been, and their method of dealing with it unchanged. Yes, she had found the perfect way to exact retribution on the Oberstleutnant, if only she could acquire the means.
Domestic rabbits were first brought to Australia from Britain as a food source for the starving colonials. But it wasn’t until the introduction of twelve wild rabbits at Barwon Park, near Geelong in Victoria, that the devastating spread of rabbits began in earnest. With few natural enemies to control their numbers and an abundance of fodder, they spread north and west. Within twenty years they’d spread into South Australia and New South Wales. More and more rabbits were liberated independently ahead of settlers, to provide food for them as they pushed deeper into the hinterland. Within thirty years, the threat they posed to agriculture and the land degradation they caused was recognised, but it was all far too late. In the area around Cowra where Mario Galli served out the war shearing sheep, sinking posts and baling hay, rabbit pairs were producing an average of twenty-five kittens a year, more than any other region in Australia.
Mario had often spoken of the time when drought had hit the south-west and it was commonplace to see a furry ring of rabbits four and five deep around the dams, all desperate for a drink. Even when their mortal enemies, wedge-tailed eagles, joined them at the waterholes, they didn’t scatter in panic. This had surprised Mario until he noticed the birds’ swollen bellies. They’d already gorged themselves on rabbits too weak to make it to the dam.
Mario helped the Dwyer family control the pests by ploughing in and digging out burrows, but their hard work gained them little more than breathing space. Breeding female rabbits can dig up to thirty metres of burrow in a single night. Those which escaped the assault on their homes, soon established others. It was clear the farmers needed to take more drastic measures, and to do this they set up a regular and systematic routine of poisoning. At the time, three poisons were in wide use; strychnine, arsenic and sodium cyanide. Of the three, the Dwyers chose sodium cyanide.
They mixed the crystals in with dough made from pollard, bran and molasses and spread it around the warrens. Mario hated the necessity of killing rabbits in this way because the poison was anything but selective. Over the following days they also found the carcasses of kangaroos, wallabies, goannas and native birds alongside the dead rabbits.
‘Sodium cyanide kills everything that eats it,’ he used to complain. ‘One pinch will even kill a grown man in five to ten minutes. Imagine that.’
Colombina couldn’t imagine anything more ideal, though obviously she needed to find out a lot more about the poison and its dosage. But first she had other duties to perform—her Thursday stint with Meals-on-Wheels. She curbed her excitement, picked up her friend Ann, and set about delivering meals in her normal calm manner. Anyone privy to her inner thoughts might have found irony in this latterday Lucretia Borgia handing out meals, but it eluded Colombina. The following day she drove to the library and learned all she needed to know. Two to three hundred milligrams would kill an adult in five to fifteen minutes by interfering with the body’s oxidative processes. But she would have to disguise the bitter almond smell and whatever taste it had in a suitably spicy dish. The books informed her that twenty to forty per cent of the population were genetically incapable of smelling hydrocyanic acid or its salts, but she wasn’t prepared to take any chances. Every time she’d taken the old man a meal, he’d delighted in smelling it, enjoying the odours and the meal they foreshadowed. Whatever other failings he had, there didn’t appear to be anything genetically wrong with his nose.
But therein lay the problem with sodium cyanide. Technicians in the Coroner’s Court were tested and excluded if they were among those who were incapable of detecting the bitter almond odour. So the chances of the agent of the Oberstleutnant’s death going undetected were remote. Unless … unless she could muddy the water and obscure the real cause of death behind another which was more apparent. In his weakened state, she could drag him to the bath, undress him and drown him. If there was an autopsy, would busy technicians then look beyond the obvious, particularly when they considered the age of the deceased? Or could she contrive to make it look like a suicide?
Suddenly the task of killing the Oberstleutnant no longer seemed as simple as Colombina had imagined it would be. Perhaps she would be better off if she simply confronted him with her knowledge and provoked him so that she would be forced to defend herself. He’d know then that he was about to die and he’d know why. Of course he’d panic and he’d fall, and in falling he’d suffer a fatal injury. Again, she would see to that. But Colombina had never actually killed anyone before, not with her own hands. When the time came, she wondered, could she hate him enough?
She decided to keep her options open while she formulated her plan. For the first time she felt sickened by what she had to do. She opened the locket she wore around her neck, removed the picture of her late husband and looked at her mother’s faded image beneath it. The eyes that had stared apprehensively into the lens of the camera all those years ago now seemed to stare back at her, and bore with them a reminder of all the misery and suffering the poor woman had endured. Colombina could have rescued her, brought her to Australia and given her a taste of a life that had been denied her. She thought of her mother growing old gracefully and peacefully in the little cottage on Pittwater, surrounded by water, flowers and birds more beautiful than any Maddalena had ever imagined. She thought of all the things her mother had deserved which the Oberstleutnant had denied her. That place within her that neither her late husband nor any of her friends had ever suspected existed, grew harder and more resolute.
Perhaps if she had not lost her ability to cry; or discovered the comfort of confiding in a friend and sharing her burden; if she had found and accepted any such pressure valve for her emotions, she could have put the past and all its burdens behind her. But life is not fair. It wasn’t fair to her mother and it had not been fair to her. Both were victims, prisoners of events over which they’d had no control. She returned the photograph of her husband to its rightful place and snapped the locket shut.
That evening she wrote to the Dwyers expressing a need to get away from Sydney for a while, and her desire to revisit the farm where her late husband had been so happy. How could they refuse?
Chapter Thirteen
Cecilia adapted well to life at the Villa Carosio. While others might have complained at the regime she was obliged to follow, Cecilia accepted it with enthusiasm. The hours were long but no longer than they had been when she’d lived at home, and the work was nowhere near as hard. At the beginning the cook, Signora Fiorella, had
ordered Cecilia to scrub all the benchtops and shelves, and wash the kitchen walls. Clearly it was just the cook’s way of letting Cecilia know who was boss, for the kitchen was already spotless. Nevertheless, Cecilia had set to work with a will, knowing full well that it wasn’t so much the job but the manner in which she carried it out that was important. The cook had grudgingly accepted that Cecilia wasn’t just ‘another good-for-nothing, lazy village girl’ and allowed her to get on with the work she’d been assigned. But there was one part of her routine from which she was excused. Every evening, instead of helping to clean the kitchen, she joined the Count at the long table and read to him over dinner.
Cecilia had much to be grateful for. Her life had changed substantially for the better and she had no hesitation in expressing her gratitude to the Holy Mother when she attended church each Sunday. But along with her thanks came an urgent plea for the well-being of her mother. Cecilia had not set eyes on Maddalena since she’d glimpsed the tired, retreating figure through her bedroom window the day she’d arrived at the Villa Carosio. Nor had she heard word from her. Cecilia’s problem was threefold. She no longer attended the local church in Ravello where she could expect to see her mother every Sunday. Instead, the entire staff were driven down to the Sanctuary of the Madonna of Peace in Menaggio in which the Count’s family had worshipped for centuries. Furthermore, Signora Mila had forbidden her to talk to boys and the edict had included her brothers. That left her sisters, but only Paola was old enough to get any sense out of or to entrust with a message. But that course was denied her as well. Her brothers had forbidden Paola to speak to her on pain of death, or at least a savage beating.
Alfredo and Elio had accepted that their father was a hero after all, and would not allow anything to reflect badly on his—or their—newfound status. Therefore Cecilia had to bear the blame for the events that had led to her being thrown out of their home. Cecilia was their shame and their shame had been cast out. She was no longer their sister. Her name no longer had a place on their lips. She was no longer an Ortelli and would not be recognised by them.
