The Villa Triste

by Lucretia Grindle

  ‘When you heard from Maria—’ he said. ‘Using her was very clever, by the way,’ he added. ‘I’d like to think you were just a bit concerned, when you read in the paper that I’d been seen at Tran-temento’s building, that I was obviously involved. I imagine you raised the topic, of how dreadful it was, what had happened – and perhaps also wondered aloud if your great-niece Maria’s friend wasn’t the sister of that policeman?’

  He shook his head. ‘Saffy wouldn’t have told Maria much, of course,’ he said. ‘She didn’t know anything, and if she did, she would have known better than to mention it to anyone. But it was a useful way of keeping tabs on me, wasn’t it? And at some point, you must have seen how you could positively turn it to your advantage. I’d noticed the enthusiasm before, but not to that degree,’ Pallioti added, raising an eyebrow. ‘What did you have to do?’ he asked. ‘Point out that I was very eligible, that Seraphina would be delightful to be related to? Maria’s desperate to please you, so it can’t have been hard. Although,’ he added, ‘I’m sure you’d have found another way if she’d been uncooperative. Perhaps just offered Remember The Fallen’s services, if I hadn’t been so obliging and delivered myself into your office. In any case,’ he went on, waving aside the problem, the memory of how easily she had made it seem that she was the one being generous, the one doing him a favour.

  ‘That Sunday,’ he said, ‘when you heard from Maria that I hadn’t come to lunch, you must have worried. You had to find out what was going on. What did you do?’ Pallioti asked. ‘Have Bernardo call you, let you know when I came into Lupo again? Don‘t worry,’ he added. ‘I won’t mention it to him. It’s not his fault. I did enjoy The grappa.’ He looked at her. ‘And the company. Very much. But I also told you all about Massimo, didn’t I? That’s how you knew you’d have to do it fast. That you couldn’t wait, or I’d get there first.’

  They studied one another, their eyes meeting across the shadows that flickered from the hearth.

  ‘Dropping the gun was exactly right,’ Pallioti said. ‘The perfect way to get rid of it. But I should have known you’d know that. And about the powder burns. The gloves. That was clever.’

  He thought he saw something move, the echo of a smile, acknowledging the compliment. But the light was so low and it passed across her features so quickly that it was impossible to be sure.

  ‘Do you want to know how I knew?’ he asked finally. ‘What made me certain?’

  He waited for a moment. Then he said, ‘It was the flowers. I talked to the florist this afternoon. Just a chat. She told me that you have standing orders, and that she’s allowed to use whatever she has extra for most of the bouquets. All of them, in fact. Except two. She says you are very, very particular about it. Always have been. There must be two white arrangements. The first is primarily roses, and larger than the rest. You collect it personally, every two weeks. The other is not as extravagant, but you are, if anything, more definite about it. It’s for the Via dei Renai. She knows, because although you always place them yourself, and always on a Monday, once, when your husband was dying, you asked her to do it for you. Five white roses. Only her best. She offered once simply to give you a half dozen for the same price – it makes her bookkeeping easier. But you said no. It had to be five. She thought that was strange,’ Pallioti said. ‘But she didn’t understand, did she?’

  He looked up at her.

  ‘That six would be wrong. That it had to be five. One each – for your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, and Carlo. And that they had to be taken on Monday – because 12 June 1944 was a Monday – to the last place where you were all together.’

  If Signora Grandolo blinked, he did not see it. He took a breath.

  ‘After that, I checked,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t difficult. It never is, when you know what you’re looking for.’

  He pulled out of his pocket the piece of paper Guillermo had handed him, unfolded it and placed it on the low table in front of the sofa. She made no effort to reach for it, or look at the words that were written on it.

  ‘It’s a name. The name you used when you applied for the job at your husband’s bank. That you lived under for the next two years, until you married and became a Grandolo. Ration cards. Identity passes. They were all issued to you. And not to you. Because the woman Cosimo Grandolo married was called Donata Leone.’ He smiled. ‘And the only problem with that,’ he said, ‘as you know, is that Donata Leone died. Of pneumonia. In January 1944.’

  He paused.

  ‘What I don’t know,’ he added, ‘what I suppose I am hoping you might tell me, is whether you knew that because you were with her – because you nursed her, and sat with her, and held her hand? Or because you heard about it from your sister?’

  If she was going to say something, he thought, it would be now. He looked at her, at the perfect bones, the extraordinary eyes. The way she stood, the elegant lines of her hands with their two simple rings.

  ‘I wasn’t sure, at first,’ he said, ‘exactly how you managed not to be recognized. But once you put your mind to it, you managed. And of course,’ he added, remembering what Eleanor Sachs had said earlier, ‘circumstances were with you. We see what we expect to see. And no one expected to see you back here because you were dead. A little hair dye, different clothes. A shorter step. The same thing, more or less, that Isabella did after the shooting at the Pergola. Did you suspect them then?‘

  He leaned forward, fixing her with the gaze that had worked so often in interrogation rooms. ‘Was there something strange about it? About their stories? The escape. Was there a smell, something not quite right? Something you never forgot but could never prove? Until you saw them that night on television.’

  He didn’t know if he actually expected her to answer. He supposed, in some vastly exaggerated part of his ego, that he did. That age, loneliness, the desire to confess – the desire, if nothing else, to share the story – perhaps even to boast about it, would kick in.

  But even as he thought it, he realized he should have known better. With lesser adversaries, it might have happened. Not with this woman.

  Pallioti looked around the room. At the soft pools of light and hollows of shadow. At the dense carpets and the polished furniture. He wondered whether, if he listened, he could hear the echoes of conversations that had taken place here, the running of children’s feet, the whispers of discontent, the old jokes and repeated refrains that made up a family. There was no television. Probably, it was upstairs, in a study or a library, where it could not disturb the perfect symmetry of this house. She had been watching, he thought, perhaps with her sick husband beside her, or perhaps alone, probably considering turning it off – possibly only half paying attention. Until the woman in the blue dress squawked out another question, and shoved the microphone into Massimo’s face.

  The silence in the room deepened and thickened until Pallioti thought he could hear the snow falling outside, drifting against the walls, fingering its way into the slats of the shutters. In the fire, a flame cracked and guttered. He reached out and fingered the edge of the paper that lay on the table. The black characters of Guillermo’s neat, even hand flickered in the firelight, as though they might come alive and jump off the page.

  ‘I may have found your son,’ he said. ‘Or your nephew. But probably I haven’t. Probably,’ he said, smiling sadly, ‘I just wanted to help someone.’

  Pallioti got to his feet, feeling old, as if time had defeated him. He picked up his coat.

  ‘He lived in Cleveland, Ohio. In the United States. And then in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He died a year ago of lung cancer. His parents were Italian, Victor and Catherine. Their last name was Faber. Shortened from Fabbionocci. I don’t know if that means anything to you. But if it does, he had a daughter. Her name is Eleanor Sachs. She taught at Exeter University, in England. She’s going back to America.’ Pallioti nodded at the paper on the table. ‘It’s all written down there.’

  He finished buttoning his coat. Then he
looked into Signora Grandolo’s face, knowing that this was the last time he would see her. He realized that he would have liked to have touched her again, to have felt the warm firmness of her hand, and smelled just once more the exotic sharp note of her perfume.

  He reached into his pocket. His fingers curled around the worn cover of the little red book. Giving it up was like giving up a lover.

  He leaned over and gently placed it on the table.

  ‘I believe,’ Pallioti said, ‘that this is yours.’

  PART SIX

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  It was only a few days later that Pallioti heard that Marta Buoni-faccio had returned to her apartment in the palazzo where Giovanni Trantemento had been killed. He was busy at the time, and his first instinct was to forget about her. He had already started the process of checking Signora Grandolo’s whereabouts. Not that it mattered. He knew he would find that she had been in Apulia, staying with her family in the hotel Maria had been so enthusiastic about. Possibly he would find that she had had reason to be in the countryside south of Siena from time to time as well, and that no one had seen her on the afternoon Roberto Roblino died, or the morning when Piero Balestro was killed. He would look, but he would not see her car on the security tapes from the garage near Giovanni Trante-mento’s apartment, or on Balestro’s cameras. Nor would he find a licence for a Sauer 38H, or a purchase receipt for a box of ammunition, or any record of her buying men’s gloves.

  And in the end, he would not apply for a warrant. Because there was no point. The winking eye of a security camera could not capture her any more than he could. She had come and gone leaving no evidence, nothing at all. Except one black crumbling piece of Bakelite. That was it. The rest was nothing but a story. And Signora Grandolo was just an old lady.

  Like salt, the case left a dry taste in his mouth.

  So, his first instinct was to forget about Marta Buonifaccio. To put the past behind him and, in the dreaded parlance of the day, ‘move on’. But he had agreed to have dinner with Enzo, to talk over the constraints of the budget, and the prioritization of cases for the new year, and the palazzo was only a minor detour, a few blocks from the new restaurant where he had had Guillermo book a table. For some reason he could not quite put his finger on, he no longer gravitated to Lupo.

  It was 6.30 when they arrived at Giovanni Trantemento’s building. The street lamps glowed a sulphurous yellow, throwing shadows upwards onto the rusticated surface of the facade. If anything the canyon between the palazzos seemed steeper, the doorways darker. Enzo, having usurped Pallioti’s driver yet again, scanned the entrances of the alleys as if any number of hazards might be lurking in them. Then he pulled up in front of the door.

  ‘Shall I come with you?’

  Pallioti shook his head and opened the car door.

  ‘I’ll be five minutes,’ he said. ‘Well, perhaps ten.’

  He could not envision that his conversation with Marta would be anything but short and to the point. Looking back on it, he realized he should have known better.

  The entrance hall was unchanged. Stepping into it still felt like diving into dirty water. The light was not only low, it seemed to be actually murky, as if the centuries had collected and blossomed like algae. The lamp cast the same halo of light onto the mail table, where Marta’s presence was immediately evident. There was not a stray envelope or flyer in sight. Those that were present were stacked in neat little piles, their corners perfectly aligned at ninety-degree angles. One of them would be from the taxi firm Pallioti had used as an informant. Taking Cara Fratto’s advice to heart – that flyers would not be wasted on houses where there was no business – he had dropped by the office of First Class Taxis and confirmed that they had, indeed, delivered Marta Buonifaccio to Peretola Airport at four o’clock in the afternoon exactly three days before he made his last visit. This lunchtime they had called to inform him that they had just collected her and delivered her home. She had, apparently, been in Rimini.

  At first, it had struck Pallioti as a strange place for an out-of-season visit. Then he had realized that the once-grand seaside resort still had two distinctive draws. Prices – it was ‘once grand’, and thus cheap, especially at the end of November. And a casino.

  Marta’s apartment door did not have a bell. He knocked, his knuckles rapping the polished wood. The door opened before he could lift his hand again.

  ‘Ispettore.’

  The greeting, if you could call it that, was issued with something less than enthusiasm.

  ‘Signora Buonifaccio. Welcome home. Do you mind if I come in for a moment?’

  She looked as if she would have liked to have said yes, she did mind, very much, but couldn’t summon the courage to do it. Instead, she simply nodded and stepped back. Entering the tiny sitting room, Pallioti felt like a bully. He told himself not to be stupid, that he was just doing his job. He turned to her and smiled in an attempt to make up for it.

  The effect was the complete opposite of what he had intended. Marta Buonifaccio paled visibly. When he added, in what he thought was his kindest voice, ‘I am so sorry to disturb you, but I wondered if I could ask you a few questions?’ her small, solid figure became still.

  ‘Please,’ she said, when she finally remembered to breathe. ‘Sit. What can I get you, Dottore?’

  Pallioti sat, in the same chair he had occupied before, not because he wanted to, but because he hoped it would put her at ease. He didn’t approve of what she’d done. But he didn’t want her to drop dead of fright.

  ‘Nothing, thank you. Nothing,’ he said again. ‘I just have a couple of questions.’

  Marta nodded. She did not sit down, but stood before him playing the Russian doll again, disappearing inside herself, again and again and again, hands folded, eyes dropped to her feet.

  Pallioti shifted uncomfortably, almost wishing he had not come, that he was not compelled, like a bitch in heat, to seek out the answer to every question – to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was right.

  ‘Signora Buonifaccio,’ he said, now wanting to get this over as quickly as possible, ‘I am afraid that you took Signor Trantemento’s wallet, when you found his body.’

  She looked at him, expression draining out of her face.

  ‘I suspect that it was on the desk, beside his keys,’ Pallioti said. ‘Probably where he had placed it the last time he came in, the afternoon before, just after he had cashed a cheque for five hundred euros.’

  She neither agreed nor disagreed with him.

  ‘I don’t think you went through his pockets,’ Pallioti added, trying to make this sound better, as if merely stealing from the dead was somehow more acceptable than fleecing them.

  ‘I suspect you just saw the wallet and took it. Then, once you had called the police, you realized that you didn’t want to be found with it. So you removed the cash and went outside and threw the wallet into the alley. That’s why you were wearing a headscarf inside, so we wouldn’t see that your hair was wet. And that’s when the letter got wet, too, wasn’t it? The mail had arrived earlier, before it started to rain. But the letter was still in your apron pocket when you went out to get rid of the wallet.’

  He looked at her for a moment.

  ‘I don’t think you meant to steal the letter,’ he said. ‘And you didn’t. You gave it to me, which was entirely proper. But you did that after you had opened it. After you had removed the money orders for three thousand British pounds’ worth of euros. It must have felt thick. The paper for those money orders is quite stiff. And perhaps you knew, or understood, that given the nature of Signor Trantemento’s business, he sometimes received money orders, perhaps even cash, in the mail?’

  He looked at her, waiting for at least some acknowledgement. Or even a sign that he had spoken. None was forthcoming. Marta Buonifaccio just stood there, in the middle of her sitting room, facing him like a statue.

  Pallioti was beginning to have an unfortunate sense of déjà vu. Signora Grandolo, at lea
st, had been listening to him. He was quite sure of that. He had had the sense, even if she had not replied, that they were in a sort of silent conversation, that the tension in the air could have been plucked like a finely tuned string.

  Here, however, the air was dead. If he did not know better, he might have thought that the woman standing in front of him, in her flowered apron and olive-green cardigan, with her cap of curled hair and new felt slippers, was stone deaf.

  ‘Signora Buonifaccio,’ Pallioti said. ‘Is there anything you would like to tell me?’

  Nothing had been stolen from either Roblino or Balestro. It was the anomaly that had driven him here. Now he wished that it hadn’t.

  The news came on the television. The talking head of a news-reader, who might have been the blue-dress lady, yammered silently.

  ‘Anything at all you would like to say?’ Pallioti asked.

  This time, at least, she shook her head. Then she looked down at her feet again.

  Pallioti began to feel ridiculous. Finally, he pulled the cuffs of his shirt, aligned his cufflinks – little ovals of shiny black onyx set in a thin gold rim – and got to his feet. With the two of them standing in it, the little space felt like a cell. In his black suit and black overcoat, Pallioti towered over her. Marta Buonifaccio did not look up.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ he said, finally. ‘I’ll let myself out.’

  ‘Holy Mother of God! What is it with me and old women?’

  Enzo raised his eyebrows as Pallioti slid into the passenger seat of the car.

  ‘She wouldn’t speak to me,’ Pallioti said. ‘Not a word. She let me in, all right. She didn’t really want to, but she did – invited me to sit. Then stood there and didn’t say a word.’

  ‘She didn’t deny taking the wallet? Or the money?’

  ‘No. She didn’t say anything. Nothing.’

  Pallioti raised his hands and dropped them on his knees.