“And what was that, Signor Montalti?”
“As he was bringing weapons clandestinely into Italy, having them pass through Villa Regina itself—in other words, right under the noses of the Fascist officials—Cappelletti got a rather brilliant idea. When the Germans arrived and things started to get complicated with all those soldiers around, making his work more difficult, his daughter discovered her vocation as a Red Cross nurse and moved into the villa, briefly becoming a sort of administrator of the German hospital.”
“You mean Margherita, correct?”
“No, not Margherita, but the older one. I believe her name was Maria.”
“Please continue, Signor Montalti, I’m listening.”
“The young lady in question, as I was saying, managed the other nurses, oversaw the military doctors, and provided the German commanding officers with whatever was available via contraband. As she was doing all these things, she kept an eye on and protected what already belonged to her family, and managed to keep Durand’s and her father’s business far from prying eyes and ears. In the end, when things started to go bad for the Germans as well, I think more than a few of them, too, were hidden and helped to flee the country.”
“There’s one thing I don’t quite understand. Why didn’t a shrewd man like Cappelletti try, so to speak, to set himself up on his own? His business was prospering, after all.”
“Actually, I think that that was his real masterwork. By that point old Remo was aspiring to something more: to take his family and his business to a higher social level.”
“With a good marriage, for example?”
“Precisely. I met Mademoiselle Durand in Geneva. A very elegant young lady, an only child, though rather unpleasant, in my opinion. But also quite beautiful.”
“So this is the question. Why would a beautiful, rich girl from an excellent family consent to marrying into a family of so low a social rank?”
“Who can say, Inspector? Maybe it was love. Why not?”
“Of course, why not?”
Stefania fell silent. Moments later Montalti asked:
“Was there anything else you wanted to know, Inspector?”
“One final detail, Mr. Montalti, I’m sorry. Just now, in describing your escape across the Swiss border, you used the words ‘that time.’ I was wondering, were there other times as well?”
“Yes, there were two other times. A few months later Cappelletti brought two of my uncles on my mother’s side, with their families, across the border in an entirely different area. Seven people in all, with two small children.”
“That must have been dangerous, with two small children who might start crying at any moment.”
“I imagine it was, and indeed the price was proportional to the risks.”
Again there was a lively buzz in the background, as at the start of the telephone conversation.
“Is there a problem, Signor Montalti?”
“They’re suggesting I tell you about something that happened the time after that, also in connection with the price of life.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Several months later, towards the end of the war, Durand was arranging for the escape of my uncle Heinrich, who was a colonel in the Luftwaffe.”
“Your uncle was a Nazi?”
“Absolutely not. He was a career military man. He came from a family that had provided Germany with soldiers for generations. Men of solid, upright character. He was never a Nazi—on the contrary, his career ended the moment it became known that his wife was Jewish. He was released from the army. My aunt fled to Switzerland, while he, thanks to his family’s influence, was reintegrated into the service, even though there was no longer any chance of making further career advancements. But that’s irrelevant. Anyway, once he was injured in combat he was sent to recover in Italy. First to Rome, then to northern Italy, where he ended up at—”
“At Villa Regina?”
“Exactly. But don’t think it was yet another coincidence. My aunt was in close contact with Monsieur Durand. My uncle was losing his eyesight and needed urgent care. And the fact was that Uncle Heinrich also wanted to leave the country, and so Cappelletti had him cross the border at night, exactly the way he did for us. Heinrich, his young attendant, and two ex-Fascist officials.”
“A diverse little group, in short.”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t the most pleasant company, but Cappelletti was a businessman. Politics didn’t interest him. He would work for anyone, as long as they paid.”
“And so what happened?”
“I’ll tell you exactly what I was told. It was a slower journey than usual, because my uncle and his attendant kept falling behind: the one because he couldn’t see, the other because he limped, due to an injury to his leg. At a certain point they were joined by a woman, who took Cappelletti aside to talk to him. They had an animated discussion, and the woman gestured to a point behind them, looking at the young man. At that point Cappelletti and his men told my uncle and his soldier to stop. It was because of them, they said, that the group was moving so slowly. They told them they would let the others go across first, and then come back and get them afterwards, if there weren’t any hitches. They took them to a cottage and left them there with a man on guard.”
“Was it the same cottage where they left you and your group?”
“I can’t say with any certainty, since I wasn’t there. My uncle’s eyesight wasn’t very good, but his attendant told him that at dawn he’d seen the lake in the distance. So it may have been the same place.”
“Did they ever come back to get them?”
“The following evening, but there was still the same problem. The old man and his young caretaker walked too slowly. The young man often stumbled and fell, and they would have to stop. One of the guides told him quite openly that if he didn’t hurry up, they would leave him behind to the mercy of the partisans.”
“The woman you mentioned: who was she?”
“My uncle told me that when they were still in the cottage, the young man told him that another person might be joining them. He was always looking around impatiently. As for the woman, my uncle didn’t say much else, except that he’d already seen her at Villa Regina.”
“And then?”
“At a certain point everything became a mad rush. The sun was rising. Time had been lost due to the two Germans’ slowness, and it was getting late. Two guides grabbed my uncle by the arms and practically dragged him along, while the young man stayed behind. My uncle never saw him again.”
Stefania held her breath inadvertently, as though waiting for the epilogue.
“When it came time to cross the border, they told my uncle to walk always straight ahead, because there weren’t any more obstacles. When he asked about the young man, they answered that he was a short distance behind them and would cross over shortly after him. And so he crossed. Waiting for him on the other side was my father, who’d been expecting him since the previous evening. You can imagine the situation. My father wanted to leave at once, but my uncle wouldn’t hear of it. Seconds later they heard shots in the distance, and then deep silence. My uncle stayed there, waiting. An infinity seemed to pass, my father said. When the sun was already high in the sky they heard an explosion, a big one, and then saw a column of smoke rising. At that point they decided to leave.”
There was a very long silence.
“Inspector? Is there anything else you want to know?”
“No, Mr. Montalti. Thank you for everything. You’ve been very helpful, too helpful.”
Stefania sat there looking out the window, an elbow on the desktop and her hand under her chin. It was a gorgeous spring morning, and if she looked up she saw only sky. She thought of her mountains and the trails through the woods, those known only to people who were born in the area. A scent of stables with hay and the sound of rushing
mountain torrents came back to her.
Montalti had seen the lake and heard the sound of the waters from the barn in which he’d spent the night before his decisive escape. He’d walked through woods that didn’t even have a path all the way to the border. K.D. had also seen the lake from afar, perhaps for only an instant.
Many details were still missing. She needed to think the whole thing over calmly. She knew those places well. Every trail, every footpath.
She thought of when it rained heavily at the lake in summertime.
In an instant the trickle of water in the stream became a river of mud and broken branches rolling on down to the lake, carrying everything it encountered along with it. Then the rain would stop, the torrent would slow, and the ripples on the lake would, little by little, carry everything that floated back to shore.
And whatever was there you could see very clearly.
11
There was a discreet knock at the door.
“Inspector?”
“What is it, Lucchesi?”
“The fax from Lanzo came in.”
“Well done.”
She snatched the pages from his hands and started reading them carefully.
The first two were a copy of Margherita’s death certificate with what looked like the medical report attached:
Margherita Luisa Cappelletti, daughter of Remo Cappelletti and Caterina Novi, born at Lanzo d’Intelvi on December 13, 1923 . . . deceased there on March 6, 1945. Multiple bullet wounds in the abdomen and side with profuse hemorrhaging . . . given the condition of the mortal remains, it is recommended that the casket be immediately sealed.
Stefania sat there staring at the elegant loops of the handwriting used by the records office clerk.
Margherita hadn’t reached her twenty-second birthday at the time of her death.
Stefania then started examining Remo Cappelletti’s death certificate:
. . . death occurred in the Prati di San Primo zone on November 20, 1946. . . . Bone fractures of the neck and cranium from accidental fall.
Caterina, Remo’s wife, died in 1949 of natural causes, from “acute heart failure.” Someone had affixed to her death certificate another document dated three months later. It told the story of Battista Cappelletti, twenty-seven years old, handicapped, interned at the Santa Maria della Pietà Institute for the Mentally Disabled, near Bergamo, with the consent of his brother, Giovanni, and his sister, Maria. In front of Maria’s name there was a little mark whose significance was unclear; it may have been only a stain or a stray stroke of the pen. Upon more careful observation it seemed to look like a small s.
Stefania stopped to contemplate these latest developments.
Caterina hadn’t made it, and so Battista had been left on his own. Caterina had always said that Villa Regina was cursed, and to judge from what happened to her family, she was clearly right.
Along the way to Selvini’s office, a unit of the forensics police that also housed a photography department, Stefania kept thinking about the wake of death that had engulfed the Cappelletti family in the space of just a few years. Meanwhile it had gotten late: it was almost one o’clock, but she still hoped to find somebody at the office.
They were still there. Selvini came out to meet her.
“Inspector, you should start looking at those we’ve already printed. That way, hopefully, we can better home in on the details you need. We can print more limited fields and bigger enlargements. We can’t exactly work miracles with an old photo, but we can certainly improve it. So you can take your time. We’re going out for a sandwich and will be back in an hour.”
Stefania sat down at the window so she could examine the enlargements in the best possible light. The details had now become clearly distinct: the flowers in the large vases beside the staircase, the groups of palm trees, the details of the soldiers’ uniforms. Everything looked completely different.
With the help of a magnifying glass she studied the people in the group. Now she could even see the expressions on the different faces. She focused first on the candy stripers, then on the nurses. Her attention was drawn by the young one, then by the other one, the tall, dark woman.
She grabbed the telephone.
“Marino, get me Lucchesi or Piras, would you? Whichever one you find first. Quick. I’ll stay on the line.”
A few moments passed.
“What is it, Inspector?” asked Piras.
“Go into my office, and on the desk you’ll find a folder with the letters K.D. on it. Bring it here to me at once. I’m in Selvini’s office. Come as quickly as you can.”
She lit a cigarette and looked out the window. She’d had an intuition, and she was quite sure about it—that is, almost. She needed confirmation. But she was certain she was on the right track. After all, she had an exceptional visual memory.
The workers in the office, meanwhile, had all left, one at a time.
Some twenty minutes later, Piras arrived, all out of breath and with beads of sweat on his brow. He had the green folder with him.
“At last. Thanks. Let’s have a look.”
She took the folder from him and pulled out the photo of the Cappelletti family made by the town photographer. She then put the two pictures beside each other and began to compare them. She sighed.
“It’s them, there’s no doubt about it. It’s them.”
“Who’s ‘them,’ Inspector?” asked a curious Piras.
Her first impulse was to call Giulio.
She dialed his cell phone number, and without waiting for him to say anything, she said all in one breath:
“Did you know that Margherita was killed—that is, she died from gunshot wounds in 1945? The autopsy report doesn’t specify how, but I think she was killed. She and her sister, Maria, were living at Villa Regina during the German occupation period.”
There was silence for a moment at the other end.
“You don’t say,” Giulio commented.
Swept away by enthusiasm for her recent discovery, Stefania paid no mind to Giulio’s tone of voice.
“I do say, actually. And Paolo Montalti, the son of the former owner of Villa Regina, has a clear memory of Maria, the older sister, and remembers seeing her in the mountains with her father on the night they escaped.”
“Incredible.”
“And I’ve become convinced, though I have yet to prove it, that Maria was also the girl that Uncle Heinrich noticed during the following escape as well.”
“Ah, Uncle Heinrich, of course.”
“Giulio! This is important information! It’s a major turn of events!”
“I don’t doubt it. As long as you tell me who the hell Margherita and Paolo Montalti are. That might help me to understand a little better, don’t you think? And who, while we’re at it, is Uncle Heinrich?”
“But, Giulio, Margherita is the center of the whole affair; everything revolves around her.”
“Well, I guess I missed a few episodes of the plot. I think I remember that the main character—or better yet, the only character—was a young man. Am I wrong?”
“But the family, all those deaths, and Margherita, her presence in that house . . . It’s as though everyone still felt her presence . . .”
“Ah, a ghost story, my favorite.”
“Something terrible must have happened in that family, something nobody wants to talk about.”
“The Montalti family?”
“The Cappelletti family, of course.”
There was a silence, which meant that Giulio was putting his proverbial analytical powers in gear.
“I’m having trouble following you, Stefania. This is no longer a police investigation that you’re running; it’s a systematic delirium, and it makes no sense.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Of course I don’t understand, how could I? Y
ou spend your days ruminating over imaginary stories and spinning plots worthy of Agatha Christie. You shouldn’t expect people to understand. And anyway, you’re no good at explaining yourself; you take for granted names and details that only you know.”
“If you could somehow manage not to make snide remarks for five minutes straight, maybe I could actually tell you a few things, seeing that you are, after all, an intelligent person.”
“How kind of you. And so?”
“And so I was thinking that maybe we could have a panino together at the bar behind the station. Right now, even, if you haven’t got anything better to do.”
“What a romantic setting. But seeing that I haven’t got anything better to do, let’s have that panino. Since, with you, it’s catch as catch can.”
“See you in three minutes.”
“Mayonnaise?”
“No, thanks.”
“Pink sauce?”
“No need to read me the entire menu. Just tell me what you think.”
“Didn’t you just say I should keep my mouth shut for at least five minutes? I’ve been listening to you for a good half hour now, and in the meantime I’ve eaten two panini while you’ve eaten nothing at all, cappuccino aside. I was just trying to be nice.”
“And you are. But what do you think?”
Giulio looked at her through the beer foam still in his glass. Officers weren’t allowed to consume alcohol while on duty. Apparently civilian police officials were.
“You said it yourself. It’s fine, it’s interesting, it’s intriguing, whatever you like: but it has nothing to do with the investigation. That’s the real problem. There’s nothing connecting the different elements. At this rate you’ll keep wasting time and you’ll lose the case. Arisi’s coming back next week, don’t forget.”
“Is that all?”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“Don’t you have any ideas? Any advice to give me?”
“I think you have enough ideas of your own for both of us.”
Shadows on the Lake Page 15
