“Do you think your husband actually knew more than that?”
“I don’t think so. If he’d known more he would have told me, I’m sure of it. The one who might know more is Maria, but that may also be just a hunch of mine. I won’t hide from you that there has never been much common ground between the two of us. Still, one day we ran into each other at Margherita’s grave, in the cemetery of Croce, above Menaggio, a place Margherita used to love. I tried asking her for more information. All she said to me was: ‘Don’t you already know enough?’”
“What about her father? Or the other members of the family?”
“The father was simply unrecognizable, compared to the determined, almost fierce man I’d known before. He became as thin as a ghost, his clothes would hang on his body as on a coat hanger. Hollow cheeked, unkempt beard, wild eyes. He looked like a madman. Everyone at the villa kept an eye on him. He was always running away. He would go up the mountain on foot, even in the middle of winter, in the rain or in the snow, in shirtsleeves and without covering his head. He died not long afterwards. He fell into a ravine. Margherita’s mother never came down from her house up the mountain. I saw her only once, on the day of her husband’s funeral, the same day that Maria announced to her family that she’d decided to become a nun. She left the villa that same evening. The poor widow died less than three years later, after which the family put the handicapped son in a home for the mentally ill.”
“What a tragedy.”
“It was a very difficult situation. The villa itself, in those days, had become unrecognizable—deserted, ghostly. The grass had grown as tall as hay up to the front entrance. I went back to Switzerland almost immediately, according to my father’s wishes. He didn’t think it was advisable to stay in a house and a situation so fraught with problems, and so for a while even relations with Giovanni became a bit complicated. Then things changed. He was left basically alone and he came back to get me. We were together again, and we got married. And little by little, for us and our children, this place became what it is now. But none of us has ever forgotten.”
When she had finished speaking, the woman closed her eyes, as if in need of rest and silence. Stefania, too, remained silent, reflecting on everything she’d just heard. Now she needed to think it all over calmly. That was the way she was. Her brain needed to rethink things, to compare and contrast and put all the elements together again one by one. She stood up.
“I think I have taken advantage of your patience, Madame. I thank you very much. You’ve been extremely helpful.”
Madame Durand made a vague gesture with her hand. Stefania took it as a gesture of dismissal. Without saying anything else, she turned and headed for the door. She hadn’t yet reached the end of the allée when she heard herself being called.
“Inspector?”
She turned around in surprise.
“Madame?”
“You said you had something to show me. Didn’t you?”
Stefania realized what Madame meant. She walked back, put her purse down on the table, and opened it, taking the partial locket out of its bag and handing it to her. Germaine studied it for a long time, holding it in the palm of her hand and then delicately grazing it with her fingers, as in a gentle caress.
“You found this, too, among Dressler’s things?”
“Yes.”
“So they died together?”
17
Contrary to custom, Giulio didn’t say a word when Stefania finished telling him over the phone the details of her conversation with Germaine Durand. No ironic quips, no comments. Just silence. For a few minutes it seemed as if the call had been cut off.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“What are your thoughts about all this? I’ve been talking for the past half hour and you haven’t said a thing.”
“I was listening. You always complain that I don’t listen, and so this time I didn’t breathe a word, didn’t you notice?”
“Yes, thanks. And so?”
“And so I don’t know. I’m not convinced. Everyone tells the same story, apparently, but each one adds or subtracts a detail here or there, and in the end the story’s not the same. Do you know what I mean?”
“More or less.”
“Take, for example, the night of the escape. If we listen to Montalti, who has no personal interest in the matter and recounts simply what he’s been told by his uncle, the colonel and Dressler head out towards the border with the whole group, but along the way they have problems, or so he says. They walk too slowly, time passes, it gets late—better yet, dawn is on the horizon. At that point they’re brought back and left in the cottage. Next, in his account, there’s the woman who comes and apparently talks to Cappelletti. This is certainly Maria, and it’s the first night of the escape. Dressler and the colonel spend a whole day hiding out in the cottage, waiting to leave the following night. They have the same problems as before, and we know what happens next. In the end they take the colonel across, but the simple soldier is left behind, after which point we know nothing more about him. A short while thereafter, when it’s already light outside, the colonel hears some faraway gunshots, followed by an explosion. Final tally: two nights, two days, the gunshots at the start of the second day, and the final explosion.”
“It would all seem to make sense, so far.”
“No, because the nun says she went up to the hut to look for her brother and father so she could tell them that Margherita had run away. But she says she found nobody there, and so she decided to wait, until she saw them return with Dressler and the colonel. Therefore, in this second version, given by the nun, we are at the end of the first night of Dressler’s escape, with Margherita already vanished and Germaine who has already blithely slipped off to Switzerland with her chambermaid. This last part of the nun’s account, moreover, tallies perfectly with Madame Durand’s story, with just one difference. Going by what Germaine Durand says, it would seem that the nun lied to you when she said she didn’t know where Margherita was or why she ran away.”
“Well, it may only have been a partial lie to say she didn’t know why Margherita had run away. As for not being aware of where she had run off to, she was probably telling the truth. How could she have known?”
“So she only half lied. Okay. But why did she do it? If she did indeed, as she says, go all the way to the hut to look for her father and brother, she can only have done so in the certainty that Dressler and the colonel had already crossed the border the night before, as had been planned. In other words, her father and brother should only have returned to the cottage once they’d finished their work, before dawn. And, of course, if she didn’t go to the cottage but joined back up with them on their way to the border on the first night, well, that would change things.”
“Why? What does it matter whether she was at the cottage or somewhere between the cottage and the border? How does that change anything? At any rate, she did succeed in finding her father and informing him that Margherita had run away, which was what she was most anxious to do at that moment.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. And in any event it does change things, and a lot. Whatever the case, when she found her father still with Dressler, she probably felt quite relieved, but not, in my opinion, because she was hoping he would have news of her sister, or know where she was, but because she imagined that as long as Dressler was still around, Margherita couldn’t be very far away. Whereas if the meeting with her father took place, as Montalti says, as the group was laboriously making their way towards the mountain pass, there may even be a connection between her arrival and the father’s decision to take the colonel and Dressler back to the cottage, postponing their escape until the following day.”
“In what sense?”
“Do you remember that map you showed me? The one with all the huts and the border line? Could you go and get it?”
“Of course not. It’s Saturday morning and I’m at the lake. But why are you so interested in it?”
“Do you remember the position of the ruined cottage with respect to the border line and the old customs police barracks?”
“Of course.”
“Do you remember the aerial distance between the cottage and the border? It was a very short distance, almost nothing, as the crow flies, maybe five hundred meters or so. We can even say a kilometer if we had to calculate the path traveled on foot through the woods. Agreed?”
“A kilometer through a dense wood, or even just five hundred meters, at night, on a bum leg that hurts, can seem very long.”
“Fine, whatever you like, but we’re not talking about tropical rain forests here. You’re not going to trip on lianas. We’re talking about one of our familiar mountain thickets at the very start of spring, with still rather sparse foliage. And they, moreover, were already past the cottage, they’d almost reached their destination.”
“And so?”
“And so, in my opinion, Cappelletti intentionally had them turn back. There is no other explanation.”
“And what about Maria and the others?”
“He had his men accompany the other refugees to the border, while he went back to the cottage before dawn with his son and Maria, who was with them—just as Montalti said—and not waiting for them, as the nun claimed. Whatever the case, from that moment on, there are no other witnesses outside the family to what happened, except for the colonel.”
“And so what do you think happened afterwards?”
“First of all, they’d already brought home one result: they’d gained time. They had a whole day to think about what to do.”
“That doesn’t seem like such a great result to me. A night of wasted effort, having to do the same thing all over again the next night. More effort, more risks. The colonel still to be taken care of, the young guy only a hindrance, not being able to walk or, as you say, not wanting to walk. Since the colonel absolutely had to be taken to safety, given his relation to the Durands, all they’d done was waste time.”
“That the colonel had to cross the border at all costs is clear. Durand would never have forgiven Cappelletti otherwise. But Dressler was another matter altogether. He was a nobody, a kid, and the only reason he was still around was because the colonel had grown so fond of him that he didn’t want to be separated from him, even at the cost of compromising the success of their escape. He risked a great deal, did the colonel, just so as not to abandon the young man. And this definitely complicated things for Cappelletti.”
“Both of them had to be escorted out, therefore, even though one was worth a lot less than the other, so there was no need to think things over for a whole day to reach this conclusion. And in my opinion there was another good reason to get things done quickly: Margherita. Let’s not forget that she’d run away with a precise goal in mind: to try to meet up with Dressler. So the sooner they got the soldier off their hands, the better. In fact, from this perspective I really don’t see why they delayed things for a day, given the risk that Margherita might succeed in finding them and create further problems.”
“Right.”
There was another long pause. Giulio seemed not to have anything more to say. He distractedly said good-bye and hung up. Stefania sat there thinking, turning her cell phone over and over in her hand.
Every time she seemed to be on the verge of understanding, of sorting out the tangled skein, she suddenly had to start over. Some detail would undermine her reconstruction and she had to resume the hunt. A tabby cat lay lazily in the sun atop a high wall, grooming itself beyond the view of the other cats. It seemed to be looking at her haughtily when her cell phone rang again.
Ready to lay into whoever it was daring to violate the intimacy of her Saturday morning, Stefania answered, surprised to see the name GIUILO on the display.
“How could I not have thought of it sooner? It’s so obvious.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The trap. It’s so clear.”
“What trap? For whom?”
“For Margherita, of course. Listen, it’s all very simple. Maria is aware that Margherita has run away. The older sister, however, is only a few hours ahead of her, probably only a few kilometers. Maria knows perfectly well that Margherita will do everything within her power to join Karl, but doesn’t know whether the two have already made plans and have decided to meet on the other side of the border. She’s also well aware that if Margherita wants to cross the border by herself she is capable of doing so, since she knows those places and those woods at least as well as she and her father do. And if that’s the case, there’s nothing Maria can do about it. But if the two lovers do not have a plan, and Margherita is merely trying to reach Karl in desperation, then Maria knows what road they’ll have to take to cross the border. She thinks about this and realizes that if Margherita is still on this side of the border, she cannot in any case approach Karl as long as he is in the middle of a group, together with her father and the other men. She will wait for the right moment to try. Maria fears that her sister might try to do in fact the most logical thing, which would be to follow the group, while remaining unseen, from a short distance away, and then cross the border herself at a point close by, so that she can join up with Dressler on the other side.”
“That could have been very dangerous.”
“Of course, but Margherita had already chosen her destiny the moment she ran away, and she cannot go back, in every sense of the phrase. Maria at that point decides to do the only thing that can still prevent her sister’s escape, wherever she might be: to stop Karl Dressler and watch his every movement. And so she rushes up the mountain, reaches the group, talks to her father, and succeeds in persuading him to stop the young man’s escape. It probably was she herself who gave her father the idea to break up the group, have the others go on to the border, and bring the colonel and Dressler back to the cottage. Her gambit is clear: if Margherita is nearby, she will realize what is happening and she will stop. And with a bit of luck, she might even come out into the open. If Margherita is not in the area, she won’t notice anything, and will continue on her way. And so everyone goes back to the hut, and from that moment on, they alone will manage things.”
“Aside from the colonel . . .”
“Right. He, in a sense, intervenes. And since he’s a big cheese, a friend of Durand’s, they don’t dare cross him, at least not beyond a certain point. And so they backtrack and all remain in the area of the hut, to wait until the following night. Twenty-four hours to resolve three problems: Margherita, Dressler, and the colonel.”
“And what happened next, in your opinion?”
“I wasn’t there.”
Giulio remained silent for a moment, then, in a tone unusually placid for him, he ended the discussion.
“Much as I would like to, I can’t write or direct the final act of this drama. The stage is yours now, if you want it.”
18
Stefania was puzzled.
The tone Giulio had used, and the fact that for once he was interested enough in a case of hers to seem almost caught up in it, got her thinking. She appreciated her colleague’s analytical gifts, his ability to synthesize, his investigative acumen.
Giulio had been able to spot contradictions that had escaped her attention. And this bothered her in a way. Maybe he was right that she’d let herself get too emotionally involved in the case, to the point where she could no longer distinguish those who told her the truth from those who told only half-truths. Sister Maria, for one.
But now all the pieces of the puzzle were there. Many were already in the right places. What didn’t fit in the overall picture were the details. Small details, though ultimately decisive.
She felt as if her hands were tied. After all that effort, she finally had the solution within reach, but now she had very little
time left. As in a game of chess. An anomalous game, however, one in which only a limited number of moves were still available. She could no longer afford to make any mistakes. She would have to weigh the pros and cons of every decision. And she still had to bear in mind that the investigation had officially been shelved.
She decided to take a few days to study the situation.
Santa Maria del Tiglio was a twelfth-century Romanesque church not far from the old center of Gravedona.
When Stefania pulled up in front of the churchyard, she saw Valli’s figure in the distance, busy taking photographs of the façade. As usual, he had arrived before her.
“Do you know the legend of this church?” he asked, smiling, after pointing his camera at her.
“I would guess it has something to do with Atlantis or the Templars,” Stefania replied.
“Luckily, no. You should know, Stefania, that this church was built in the twelfth century on the remains of an ancient place of worship from the pre-Roman age. Built with local materials, such as white Musso marble and black stone from Olcio, it has an unusual central-plan structure more typical of baptisteries. Legend has it that in the late Middle Ages there was a huge fresco of the Adoration of the Magi on one of the interior walls. This detail is even cited in a text of the Carolingian epoch found in The Annals of Fulda in Germany. According to tradition, in the distant past a bizarre event occurred and gave rise to tales of miraculous cures: during a storm the fresco started to glow with its own light, emitting luminous beams without interruption for several days.”
“Do you like legends, Luca?”
“No, to tell you the truth, I prefer miracles created by human beings,” he replied. “Like this church, for example.”
They approached the church, over which soared a splendid belfry with an octagonal base. They entered in silence, admiring the three semicircular apses and a large wooden crucifix.
Shadows on the Lake Page 24
