Superstitious elements believe that the blood was a sign from the Almighty. Groups of the faithful have gathered to pray beside the fountain.
The Italian authorities have not been able to identify the body. They believe that the dead man, described as being in his late twenties or early thirties, was not of Italian extraction.
Powerscourt read it again. He felt very cold. Then he read it a third time, fixing the report in his memory. He went downstairs.
‘Powerscourt, good morning to you. Wife believes you’ve got engaged to that nice Lady Lucy.’ Lord Pembridge greeted him through a mouthful of buttered toast.
‘What’s that?’ said Powerscourt, pacing round and round the fountain by the side of Perugia’s cathedral.
‘Engaged. You. To Lady Lucy. That’s what the wife says.’ Lord Pembridge launched into a plate of kippers.
‘Oh, yes. That’s quite right. I have.’ Powerscourt admitted it before he knew what he was saying. He was still in Perugia, thinking of train timetables and another long journey across Europe. He found himself submerged by congratulations. Fitzgerald embraced him. Pembridge shook his hand. His sister materialised and kissed him warmly on both cheeks.
‘You old devil!’ said Fitzgerald.
‘Congratulations. I hope you’ll be very happy,’ said Pembridge.
‘Better late than never,’ said his sister.
It’s like receiving a whole batch of simultaneous telegrams, thought Powerscourt. He wondered how he could stop the flow.
‘Please! Please!’ He banged a fork very loudly on the table. A piece of toast fell out of its rack and rolled to the floor. Reproving crumbs lay at Powerscourt’s feet. ‘Please! I know it’s very important, getting engaged and all that sort of thing. But Johnny has just brought me some terrible news.
‘You see, I thought my last investigation was over. But now I don’t think it is. I think there is another chapter waiting for me, as terrible as the first. I’ve got to go back to Italy, I think. I’ve got to go back today.’
Suddenly he looked forlorn like a child whose toys had been taken away.
‘I need to confer with my best man here.’ He managed a sad smile at Fitzgerald. His sister noticed that his eyes were far away, as if he had already left them. Pembridge had always thought his brother-in-law a bit eccentric, a good man of course, but a bit odd every now and again. Now was definitely one of those now and agains. He went back to his kippers.
‘Do I get to make a speech, Francis? Do I get to tell lots of stories about you? Do I get to kiss the bride?’
‘You do, Johnny, you do. But we must make a plan first. Why don’t we go into the drawing-room and pay homage to Rosalind’s curtains? It’ll be quieter in there.’
Powerscourt looked out at the early morning bustle of St James’s Square. It was a cold grey day. The delivery boys had thick mufflers round their necks.
Lord Johnny had brought a plateful of toast with him. ‘Do you think that’s him, Francis? The body in the fountain? Is it Lord Edward Gresham?’ He crossed himself as he spoke.
Powerscourt thought for a long time before he replied. ‘I think it might be. I think it probably is. But that’s only a hunch. Consider, though, consider what we know. We know that Gresham was going to Perugia on his way to Rome. So he could have been there. Now you have to ask yourself who might want to kill him in such strange circumstances. Even in Italy, famed for its murders and assassinations, they don’t go round cutting strangers’ throats and leaving them to bleed to death in some bloody fountain.’
‘It’s no ordinary fountain, Francis. I looked it up in a book before I came here. It’s one of the most famous fountains in Italy, like it says in the paper.’
‘Forget the fountain for now. If we don’t think it was an Italian who killed the man in Perugia, then who was it? Supposing that Gresham is the corpse. Consider who knows he was the murderer. Gresham, I mean. The murderer of Prince Eddy. You, me, Rosebery. Nobody else knows. Nobody at all.’
He looked out into the square again. It was raining now, great puddles forming on the tops of the coal carts. ‘Nobody at all. Except, that is, except Suter and Shepstone.’
He spoke the names very quietly. He fiddled with the edges of the curtains. He looked at Fitzgerald, crunching his way through the last of his toast.
‘You don’t think those two gentlemen have been taking a quick holiday to Umbria, Francis, do you?’
‘No, I don’t. But they know people who might. They could have sent people. Last Tuesday I told Suter and Shepstone the identity of the murderer. This is Friday, ten days on. They were looking at a map of Italy back there in Marlborough House when I went back for my book. They weren’t expecting to see me.’
‘Christ, Francis, Christ Almighty. You know what we’re saying, don’t you?’
‘I do, Johnny. I do. I’ve been thinking it ever since I read that story in The Times.’ Powerscourt thought of the efficient Major Dawnay, of Shepstone’s special detachments, of the very effective means employed to disguise the death of Lancaster. Certainly they could have done it. But did they?
‘Johnny, until we know whether it is Gresham or not, we’re wasting our breath. I must go to Perugia and see if I can identify the body. I must make one or two calls here before I go.’
‘Francis, don’t you think I should go to Perugia? I know what Gresham looks like. I haven’t just become engaged to be married. You don’t have to do everything yourself. And they say that some of the local wine round there is worth a tasting.’
‘That’s very noble of you, Johnny, very noble. But I feel I owe it to Gresham after our conversations in Venice. I wouldn’t be happy with anybody else going. Even you.’
‘You don’t think I should come with you? Maybe this whole thing is getting dangerous now. We don’t want you ending up head down in some Italian fountain. I wouldn’t get to make my speech at the wedding then. I’ve been thinking of one or two good stories already.’
Powerscourt laughed. ‘I’m sure I’ll be all right on my own. But I would like to know that you’re in London. I could send you a cable through William’s office if I have to.’
‘That’s fine, Francis, if you’re sure. Now then, I wonder if there’s any of that breakfast left. Those kippers looked rather good to me.’
Powerscourt wrote to William Leith, Rosebery’s butler and train expert, asking him for an immediate route to Perugia, leaving today, probably in the early afternoon.
He wrote to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, requesting an immediate interview, later that morning if possible. He apologized for being so importunate. It was vital he see the Commissioner today.
Two cabs carried his notes away. A third took him to Mark-ham Square. He hoped that Lady Lucy would be at home.
Her elderly maid answered the door. Yes, Madam was at home. Perhaps Lord Powerscourt would like to wait in the drawing-room. Madam would be down presently.
‘Francis. Francis.’
Her fiance was pacing up and down the room.
‘You look terrible. You haven’t changed your mind, have you?’
‘Of course I haven’t, Lady Lucy. Of course I haven’t.’ He held her very tight. ‘It’s just that I have to go away again. Now. Today, I think. I know it’s awful when we’ve just got engaged and everything, but I don’t have any choice.’
‘I thought you said your last case had finished.’ She wasn’t angry. She just wanted to know.
‘I thought it had. I was sure it had. But it hasn’t. That’s why I have to go back to Italy.’
‘Francis, poor Francis. But why do you look so worried, so sad?’
‘I am worried, Lady Lucy. I am sad. I think there is another dead person waiting for me in Perugia. I left him in Venice about a week ago. Now I think he’s dead. There have been too many dead bodies in this business already. And I was thinking about the wedding only this morning.’
‘So was I. How nice that we were both thinking about it together. Have you made any d
ecisions?’
‘Well, I think we both have to decide where it should be after I get back. But I have found my best man. He’s very excited about kissing the bride.’
‘That must be Johnny Fitzgerald,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘I shan’t mind being kissed by him. Not that it won’t be much nicer being kissed by you, Francis.’
‘I can’t stop,’ said Powerscourt rather desperately. ‘I have to catch a train.’
‘Poor Francis.’ She held him by the lapels on his jacket and kissed him on the lips. ‘I shall be here when you get back. But you will take care, won’t you? You will keep yourself safe, won’t you? Sometimes I think your work must be very dangerous.’
Powerscourt remembered as he left that Lady Lucy was used to seeing her men go off to war. The first husband must have gone away a lot. But then one day, he never came back. He was dead.
Leith’s message was as brief as ever. He read it on his way to the Commissioner’s office.
‘3 o’clock from Victoria, my lord. Dover Calais. Express connection to Paris. Suggest station hotel above Gare de Lyons for the night. 7 a.m. express to Milan. Arrive Milan 4 p.m. 4.30 connection to Florence. Arrive Florence 9.30 p.m. Reservation at Hotel Rivoli, close to station. Former Franciscan convent, my lord. Train to Perugia, 8 a.m. Arrives 12.15, my lord. Mountainous terrain. Reservation at Hotel Posta, Corso Vannucci.’
‘Lord Powerscourt. My dear Lord Powerscourt.’ The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was looking old and tired and rather frail. Maybe it’s been a bad week for crime in London too, reflected Powerscourt. The four large maps on his wall were still there, great blobs of criminal red marking out the East End.
‘Sir John, I shall be brief. And let me say before I begin how much I value the assistance you have already provided. It has made my life much easier.’
‘I wish we could have been more helpful.’ Sir John shrugged. ‘All our information was in the negative. As far as we know, there are no blackmailers operating in Society at present. Then there were five people checked for their whereabouts on a certain night in January this year.’ He looked closely at Powerscourt as though he suspected the true reason for the requests. ‘All of them have been lawfully accounted for. How can we help on this occasion?’
‘Two things, Sir John. Forgive me if the first sounds fanciful. How easy is it to hire a professional killer in this country? How long would it take? And would they, the professional killers, be willing to commit murder outside this country? And, following on from that, how easy would it be to hire a killer abroad? In Italy, in particular. And finally, do you by any chance have a contact in the police force in the Italian city of Perugia? Somebody you could recommend me to in pursuit of my inquiries.’
‘The last part is the easiest.’ The Commissioner rose from his desk and selected a thick file from his shelves. ‘You’d be surprised how often we have contact with other police forces. Runaway children, stolen jewels, thieves believed to have fled their country of origin. We keep records of all the policemen we have to deal with. And I am sure they keep records of our own officers.
‘Padua, Palermo, Parma, Pavia, Perugia. Here we are. Perugia. The man you want is called Ferrante, Captain Domenico Ferrante. He speaks very good English. I shall cable him that you are coming and that we request him to assist you in your inquiries.
‘You ask about hiring killers like you would hire a cab. It is very easy, far too easy. But I don’t think British assassins would happily operate outside these shores. Maybe Captain Ferrante could help you with the Italian end of your business. And I presume you would like us to listen at the doorways and find out if any of these killers have been approached in the last few weeks? Weeks or months, would you say?’
‘Weeks,’ said Powerscourt firmly. ‘Definitely weeks. In the last ten days to be precise.’
26
Mountainous terrain, my lord. Leith’s phrase came back to Powerscourt as his express toiled its way through the tunnels towards Perugia. Down there on his right he saw a great expanse of water, Lake Trasimene with its three islands and the olive slopes above. Hannibal, over a thousand miles from home, his elephants trampling across the Apennines, had waited there for the Roman army in the mist and fog of an early morning. Fifteen thousand Roman soldiers were slaughtered between the hills and the lake, the carnage going on for hours. The little river flowing into Lake Trasimene was named the Sanguinetto in memory of the blood it carried two thousand years before.
A very young Italian policeman greeted Powerscourt at Perugia station. He drew himself up to his full height and gave his best salute. His jacket was at least two sizes too big for him, only the tips of his fingers visible at the bottom of the sleeves. The trousers, freshly pressed, drooped over his shoes. His mother thinks he’s not finished growing yet, Powerscourt suspected. No point in wasting good money on a uniform that’ll only last a year. Even a policeman’s uniform.
‘Lord Powerscourt? Welcome to Perugia, sir. I am to send your bags to the hotel. I take you to Capitano Ferrante, sir.’
The Capitano was in a little cafe, drinking coffee and staring moodily at a long report on his table. More coffee, strong and black, arrived as Powerscourt sat down.
‘Lord Powerscourt, how very nice to meet you. I have the long message from the Commissioner about your visit. How is the Commissioner?’
‘He is well. He looked tired the last time I saw him in London.’
‘Everywhere the policemen are tired, I think. There is too much crime, there are too many of the criminals. Not enough time to catch them all.’
Captain Ferrante was a well-built man in his early forties. His hair was greying at the temples. He looked cheerful, in spite of the prevalence of crime.
‘This Commissioner and I, we work together, three or four years ago. The English milord, a very stupid young man, he steal a painting from one of the churches in the city. Maybe he think he hang it on the walls of his palazzo back in England. I have to go and bring the painting back to Perugia. The Commissioner, he is very helpful. He is fond of paintings, I think, the Commissioner. Yes?’
‘He is. He is.’ Powerscourt remembered the reports of gruesome watercolours of the Thames, painted in his spare time.
‘We bring back the painting. The Commissioner says that if it was painted to hang on the walls of San Pietro in Perugia, that is where it belongs, that is where it must live. But come, Lord Powerscourt. I believe you think you may be able to identify the body in the fountain? Bodies without names, they are so difficult. Our procedures for the dead people, they are very proper, very respectful, but they all assume that we know who they are.
‘We have our coffee here, because the body is in that building over there.’ Ferrante pointed to a large imposing building across the street. ‘That is the hospital. The morgue is at the far corner of the hospital. That is where the body is. The nuns, you know, the nuns who found him by the fountain, they insisted on washing the body, cleaning it up, all that sort of thing. The Mother Superior, she insists.’
The Deposition of Lord Edward Gresham, thought Powerscourt, a companion piece to all those earlier depositions, weeping women removing a limp body from a bloodied cross under threatening clouds, the air thick with meaning.
‘Come,’ said Ferrante. ‘We can have some more coffee when we come back. Then I will take you to the fountain.’
They made their way across the street and into the hospital. Sick patients were being wheeled along the corridors for their operations. Legs in plaster, arms in plaster made their first experimental journeys out of the surgeries and tottered on to the main thoroughfare. Doctors checked their notes as they went from ward to ward.
‘It is down these stairs. Down quite a lot of stairs.’
Their boots echoed back up the stairwell. The walls were an antiseptic pale green, adorned at regular intervals with paintings of the Virgin. Two men, dressed in black, undertakers of Perugia, passed them going the other way, their faces locked in the piety of their profession.
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‘I must find the attendant. He has the key.’ Ferrante disappeared through a side door.
There was no natural light at all down here, just the flickering of the lamps. Powerscourt wondered if he had come to the end of his journey, watched over by a beatific Madonna, fifty feet underground.
‘This way, please.’ The huge door creaked slightly. Ferrante and the attendant made the sign of the cross.
The room was very cold. There were no windows. The walls were white. A couple of lamps threw long shadows of the living against the walls of the dead. The morgue was about fifteen feet square with tiers of bunks reaching up towards the ceiling. But they weren’t really bunks, Powerscourt noticed. They were shelves. On each shelf lay a corpse.
‘Questo. Si, questo. Per favore,’ Ferrante whispered to the attendant. This one. This one please.
The attendant pulled the second shelf on his right out from the wall. The body in its box came out slowly, as if it didn’t want to be recognized.
It was the cravat he noticed first, the same cravat he had worn that last morning in Venice. A silk cravat. A bloodstained silk cravat marked the presence of Lord Edward Gresham. His face was calm, in spite of the great cut running across the throat. The nuns had cleaned him up well, Powerscourt thought, prayers washing the blood away from Gresham’s wounded face. He saw the marks on the hands, the knife forced in and twisted round with great force. He noticed the thick dried blood all the way down his jacket. Maybe they weren’t allowed to clean that up until the body had a name. Something in Gresham’s face reminded Powerscourt of those earlier Greshams, hanging on the wall of the Gresham family home, maybe even something of his mother. Aristocrats embrace their ancestors, even in death. Especially in death.
Ferrante coughed very quietly. ‘Lord Powerscourt, do you know this man?’
‘I do.’
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