‘Jonathan? Santo cielo! It really is you.’
‘Hello, Contessa,’ I replied, covering my discomposure as best I could by introducing her to Jacqueline.
‘Greville’s mentioned you, Contessa,’ said Jacqueline. ‘But only as a neighbour.’ She looked curiously at me. ‘Clearly you and Jonathan are much better acquainted.’
‘We became so when Jonathan was last here,’ the countess explained, glancing towards me. ‘I have often wondered whether he would ever return.’
‘Mr Lashley has me here on a business matter,’ I said, smiling uneasily.
‘I see. Well, I am told he is … an energetic man of business. And you work for him?’
‘I do.’
‘Not so hard that you cannot find time to have tea with me, I hope.’
‘Of course not. I’d be … delighted.’
‘Will you come too, Miss Hudson?’
‘It’s real kind of you to ask me, Contessa. I’d love to join you.’
‘Tomorrow afternoon?’
Jacqueline and I glanced at each other. We could hardly tell the countess why making innocent social engagements was so difficult for us. ‘Mr Lashley and I actually have a very busy weekend ahead of us, Contessa,’ I said hesitantly. ‘It may be …’
‘We will leave it open.’ Her smile conveyed something more than her usual charm. There was a purposefulness as well, a determination. Or maybe that was just in my imagination. ‘Come if you can. Five o’clock. No one should still be attending to business at that hour. I will hope to see you both then.’
Jacqueline would doubtless have been more curious about Countess Covelli if she’d been less preoccupied. As it was, she asked me nothing about her until later that day. We hurried on to the Villa Orchis and told Lashley the good news: Thompson had agreed to cooperate.
This clearly came as a relief to him. It was one less thing to worry about. But there were still plenty of others. We had to wait for the Camorra to announce how they meant to exchange Muriel for the ransom Lashley had agreed with them. And waiting wasn’t easy.
‘I’ve told them I won’t release the money until they release Muriel,’ he revealed. ‘They have to understand we can’t be pushed around. But they have the upper hand. They know that.’ He sighed. ‘It’s one hell of a delicate balance.’
Delicate it was. And delicate it remained. The day passed with agonizing slowness. Jacqueline sat in a shady corner of the garden, trying to read. Lashley stayed close to the phone in his study. Adam headed out for a swim and returned a few hours later in a condition that suggested he’d done a lot more drinking than swimming. Elena came and went. At some point, Jacqueline persuaded me to relate Countess Covelli’s sad history. Naturally, I omitted the saddest part of all. I wasn’t supposed to know, and nor was anyone else, that her husband had been betrayed to the Nazis by the former owner of the Villa Orchis.
The call came, as all the previous ones had, in the early evening. Jacqueline and I heard the phone ring through the open French windows of the study as we sat on the terrace. Adam was up in his room. The bass rumbles of the music he was listening to suggested he was unlikely to have heard it himself. I was glad of that and suspected his father would be too.
We sat where we were, waiting in anxious silence as five minutes trickled by, then ten. Finally, we heard the tinkle of the bell as Lashley replaced the receiver. And still we didn’t move.
Then he came to the French windows and beckoned for me to join him.
‘I’d appreciate your confirmation that you’re willing to play your part in the deal I’ve struck, Jonathan,’ he said, ushering me into the room.
‘That goes without saying.’
‘Nevertheless, you should hear what I’ve agreed before you commit yourself unequivocally. Sit down.’
He returned to his chair behind the desk. I sat down opposite him. He took a cigarette he’d been smoking from the ashtray and looked at it absent-mindedly, then decided it was too far gone and stubbed it out.
‘Are you … satisfied with the arrangements?’ I prompted.
He pondered the question for a moment, then nodded. ‘As far as I can be, yes. I’m to travel to Naples tomorrow and stay overnight at the Excelsior. A room’s been reserved in my name. The exchange is set for Sunday morning. That’s where you come in. You’re to take the money down to Marina Grande. I’ll pack it in a briefcase. Arrive no later than eight twenty. You’re to meet a man at the boarding point for the eight-thirty ferry to Naples. He’ll ask you for a light and give you his name. Bartolomeo. You’ll open the case and show him the contents. He’ll have an accomplice somewhere on the wharf watching all this, so be careful. When the ferry’s ready to leave, give Bartolomeo the case and see him aboard. Stay until the ferry’s left. Then come back here. Bartolomeo’s accomplice will phone me and tell me where I have to go to collect Muriel, which won’t be far from the hotel.’
‘As simple as that?’
‘We must hope so. The guarantee of their good faith is that if they don’t phone, I could contact the police and have Bartolomeo arrested as he leaves the ferry in Naples. With the money, of course. But it won’t come to that, I’m sure. The money is what they want. The money is what this has all been for.’
‘I’ll gladly deliver it.’
‘Thank you. I’m going to take Adam with me tomorrow, assuming the Excelsior can find a room for him.’ Lashley smiled weakly. ‘It’ll get him out of your hair. I don’t want him to cause you any problems. I don’t want there to be any problems at all.’
‘I’ll make sure there aren’t.’
‘Excellent. Thank you again, Jonathan. This is above and beyond, you know. I won’t forget it.’ He held my gaze, determined to ensure I understood the depth of his gratitude. ‘You can be assured of that.’
Events were unfolding as promisingly as could reasonably be expected. But there would have to be another thirty-six hours of anxious inactivity before Muriel’s release. The torpid summer heat and the idle frivolity that ruled Capri made the crime being inflicted on the owners of Villa Orchis seem surreal, if not unreal. There was no outward sign of it. Its actuality was locked away in the minds of the few who knew of it. And there it took its silent toll.
To my surprise, though perhaps it was a testament to the strain he was under, Adam was up early on Saturday morning. To my even greater surprise, he challenged me to a tennis match. ‘We can fit a game in before it gets too hot,’ he said, his mood, if not overtly friendly, certainly less hostile than usual. I agreed and we headed off to the courts in town.
Adam served like a cannon, but was about as mobile as one too. I could have won a lot more easily than I did, something that didn’t escape his attention. ‘Glad to see you’ve … taken my advice,’ he panted as we towelled down afterwards.
‘About what?’
‘Keeping in with me. It’s a … good idea.’
‘Are you really thinking of going into the business?’ I asked, unable quite to credit the idea.
‘I’m not thinking about anything much … beyond tomorrow.’
I stood rebuked. ‘No. Of course not.’
‘Nor should you be.’
‘Everything will be all right, Adam, I’m sure of it.’
There was a flash of anger in the look he gave me then through his sweat-beaded fringe. He didn’t want reassurance from me. What he wanted, as he was quick to spell out, was obedience. ‘Just do what you’ve been told to do without screwing up, OK?’
There would come a time, I felt certain, when I’d have to make Adam understand that being Greville Lashley’s son didn’t give him any natural authority over me. But that time wasn’t now. I nodded. ‘OK.’
I drove Adam and his father down to Marina Grande that afternoon. Jacqueline came too. We saw them off on the 3.30 ferry. Lashley wanted to leave before the day-trippers began returning to Naples en masse. He shook my hand before boarding, but didn’t add any last reminders of what was required of me. I didn’t need reminding
. He knew that.
Their departure left Jacqueline and me with time on our hands, a good reason in itself to take up Countess Covelli’s invitation to tea. ‘It’ll do us good to talk to someone who’s uninvolved in this thing,’ Jacqueline asserted. I couldn’t disagree, conscious though I was that the countess wasn’t, in truth, completely uninvolved. There was a trail connecting Luisa d’Eugenio’s act of treachery in 1943 with Muriel Lashley’s abduction more than forty years later. And we were treading it.
Our earlier encounter with the countess had left me with the disquieting sense that she was in some way stringing me along. It was possible she’d deduced that I’d sent her Luisa’s letter. But I had to behave as if she hadn’t, especially in Jacqueline’s presence. I’d have preferred to meet her alone, with Muriel safely back home at the Villa Orchis. Then we might have been able to speak freely. As it was …
Countess Covelli was nothing if not a practised and courteous hostess. We sat on the terrace of the Villa Erycina as the late-afternoon sun stretched its golden swathes across the garden, talking idly, or so it seemed, of Capri and Cornwall and Georgia. She’d given Jacqueline a brief tour of the house beforehand. The sad fate of her husband, whose silver-framed photograph still stood on the mantelpiece in the drawing-room, had been lightly touched on. Jacqueline had responded with an account of her own family’s tragedy. The human cost of warfare had been lamented. And the countess hadn’t mentioned Luisa once.
It was Jacqueline, in the end, who introduced her name into the conversation as we drank our tea. She knew from me that the countess had been a friend and contemporary of Luisa’s and asked, quite naturally, if she missed her.
The countess took so long to reply I thought she meant to ignore the question. But she was merely choosing her words carefully. ‘I miss the friend I once believed she was,’ she said at last.
‘Pardon me?’ Jacqueline was clearly bemused.
‘I did not speak to Luisa for the last nine years of her life. I had no … communication … with her at all.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I discovered that she had done something terrible – something unforgivable – during the war.’
‘What?’
The countess gave a pained smile. ‘I did not accuse her when she was alive. I will not accuse her now she is dead. I never told her why I ended our friendship. But I am sure she knew. That was enough for me.’
The fleeting glance she cast me as she spoke removed all doubt in the matter. She was addressing me, not Jacqueline. And she was answering the question I wanted to ask but couldn’t. She hadn’t allowed the truth to consume her. She’d dealt with it in her own dignified way.
‘It’s a sad thing … to lose a friend,’ said Jacqueline hesitantly.
‘Si. It is. But I think it would be sadder to be deceived by someone for your whole life.’
‘I guess so.’
‘Do you think Paolo knew that Luisa had done this unforgivable thing, Contessa?’ I asked. I needed to say something if my silence wasn’t going to become conspicuous and it had occurred to me that I might be able to glean some valuable information in the process of changing the subject.
‘I do not think Luisa told anyone, Jonathan,’ the countess replied in measured tones.
‘I gather Paolo’s left Capri.’
‘I believe he has.’
‘Do you know where he’s living now? I’d like to contact him, while I’m here.’
‘You would? You surprise me.’
I shrugged. ‘He did me … a few favours. If he’s fallen on hard times, I’d … like to help.’
‘A kind thought. But … purtroppo … I do not know where he has gone.’
‘He has relatives in Naples, I’m told.’
‘Ah. Perhaps Naples, then.’
‘It’s a big city.’
‘Si. Bigger, it seems to me, every time I visit it.’
‘Sounds like you don’t give me much chance of finding him.’
‘None at all, on your own.’ She smiled. ‘But if you like, I could ask … Valerio Salvenini. You remember him?’
Salvenini. Luisa’s gossipy acquaintance in Anacapri. Yes, I remembered him. ‘I certainly do.’
‘He knows many people in Naples. He is a man with … many connections.’
‘Really?’
‘It is very simple. If he does not know, he will probably know someone who knows.’
‘In that case, Contessa …’ I exerted myself not to sound too eager. ‘Please do ask him. I’d be very grateful.’
She smiled at me. ‘I will ask, Jonathan. And we will see what he can tell us.’
Fortunately, it didn’t appear to have crossed Jacqueline’s mind that I might know what the ‘something unforgivable’ was that Luisa had done during the war. I was glad not to have to deny it. Instead, when we left the Villa Erycina, all I had to do was echo her sentiments where Countess Covelli was concerned. ‘She’s a great lady, don’t you think, Jonathan?’ I assured her I thought exactly that.
Another assumption of Jacqueline’s I didn’t bother to correct was that Lashley had put me up to asking the countess about Paolo. ‘Greville’s not going to let him get away with this, is he?’
‘No. He isn’t.’
‘What will he do? He can hardly go to the police after telling them nothing about Muriel’s abduction.’
‘I don’t know what he’ll do. But he’ll think of something. You can be sure of—’
I broke off as we reached the gates of the Villa Orchis. They were standing open and, to my horror, I could see a police car parked on the drive.
‘Oh my God,’ said Jacqueline. ‘What’s that doing here?’
TWENTY-NINE
MY FIRST THOUGHT was that Thompson had broken his word and gone to the police. A second thought, which I didn’t express, was that something altogether more terrible had happened.
In one sense at least, though, it made no difference. Jacqueline and I had to play it cool. We had to be sure we gave nothing away. ‘Don’t volunteer any information,’ I whispered to her as we hurried along the drive. ‘Stick to our cover story until or unless it becomes impossible.’
‘Do you think Thompson’s told them everything?’
‘I don’t know. But we’ll soon find out.’
Patrizia’s voice was the first we heard as we entered the villa. She was in the kitchen, talking at a pitch that suggested she was on the verge of hysterics. There were three men with her, two in police uniform, one in plain clothes. Patrizia saw us first, setting her off on a manic gabble we’d have had little chance of following even if it hadn’t been in Italian. Her rudimentary English tended to desert her at moments of crisis and this was clearly such a moment.
As far as I could gather, our return was anticipated. The officers nodded their understanding in response to Patrizia’s arm-waving explanations. The older of the two in uniform flashed a warrant card and wearily introduced himself as Tenente Bianconi. His younger junior went unnamed. Bianconi laboriously confirmed we were who I’d already heard Patrizia say we were several times, then gave way to the third man.
He was about the same age as Bianconi, grey-haired and handsome in the Italian style, dressed in a well-cut pale-blue suit. He had an authoritative bearing and a pair of disconcertingly piercing eyes. He too produced some kind of warrant card. ‘Commissario Gandolfi, Polizia Guidiziaria, Napoli.’ He sounded as if he was used to taking charge of any situation he found himself in. And he proceeded to do just that.
‘Where is Signor Lashley?’ he asked me directly.
‘He’s, er, gone to Rome for the weekend. With his son.’ This, I knew, was what Patrizia would have told them, because this was what we had told her.
‘And his wife – Signora Lashley?’
This was a trickier question. Patrizia believed Muriel to be in Cornwall. But Thompson – and probably therefore Gandolfi – knew better. ‘What exactly is this all about?’
‘We have received information
that Signora Lashley may have come to harm.’ Patrizia began a babbling interjection which he cut off imperiously before returning his attention to me. ‘Your housekeeper has told us that Signora Lashley is visiting her aunt in Santa Ostel. We have telephoned her aunt. Signora Lashley is not there.’
‘I see.’ What Harriet would have made of such a call was hard to imagine. But we could worry about that later. ‘Look, do you think … we could talk about this in the drawing-room? It’s a little … difficult.’ Jacqueline caught my eye. She knew just how big an understatement this was.
Gandolfi’s glance at Patrizia suggested he could see the merits of my proposal. He spoke to Bianconi in Italian, then nodded to me. ‘OK. We will go to the drawing-room.’
Jacqueline and I led the way. Only Gandolfi and Bianconi followed. The young policeman was left in the kitchen, to mind Patrizia. I heard him say, ‘Caffè, signora?’ in a hopeful tone as we headed along the hall. I was thinking hard as we went, balancing what I had to withhold and could afford to admit. Gandolfi was quite cunning enough to let me tangle myself in contradictions if I wasn’t extremely careful.
The way he merely smiled enquiringly at me when we’d gathered in the drawing-room reinforced the point. If I wanted to hang myself, he’d feed me the rope.
‘The fact is, officer …’
‘Si?’
‘Well, the fact is that Mr Lashley told Patrizia his wife had gone home to Cornwall because … he thought that’s where she’d gone.’
‘But she had not?’
‘No. They’d had some kind of row, I gather.’
‘A … row?’
‘An argument.’
‘Ah. An argument.’
‘A serious falling-out. Mrs Lashley left. They were both … upset … so … exactly where she was going was unclear.’
‘And where did she go?’
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