The Hotel of the Three Roses

by Augusto De Angelis

  Cruni came back with the lamp. “It’s the strongest one I could find.”

  The room, sunk into darkness, was suddenly flooded with a harsh, cold light. The naked body took on clean outlines, as if it had been drawn. The doctor nodded at the nurse, who brought him the little black bag he’d put down on a chair. A very long probe gleamed in his hands and disappeared immediately into the wound.

  “The knife pierced the heart.”

  De Vincenzi was examining the clothes. Nothing in the pockets—not a thing. The jacket bore the name of a London tailor, and was no help at all.

  “Doctor, before you go, would you come and speak to me? You’ll find me downstairs.”

  The doctor made an inarticulate sound of assent.

  “Cruni, you stay here.” De Vincenzi led him to the landing. “No one must touch a thing. If someone comes up, send them back downstairs.” He slowly descended the stairs.

  Sani was in the lobby. “The two travellers are in there.” He pointed to a door at the back of the lobby, past the writing table on the right.

  “I’m going in there.” But he looked at the glass wall of the dining room. He couldn’t see anyone through the glass. What had all those people been doing in there for two hours?

  He went into the parlour, where the couple were still sitting. They watched him approach. The woman must once have been beautiful, and she still was for that matter, though her hair was completely white. A real air of distinction, a clear and penetrating gaze. The man was large, his face animated. An enormous diamond sparkled on the small finger of his right hand, which was splayed over his knee. He regarded De Vincenzi silently, responding to his bow with a nod. He then asked in English, “Are you the proprietor? Why have we been asked to come in here? Is this the custom in Italian hotels?”

  De Vincenzi had a moment of almost paralysing doubt. What if these two were the dead man’s parents? How to give them the news? What would they do?

  “I beg your pardon,” he replied in English. “I am not the proprietor of this hotel. I am a police inspector.”

  He saw a look of apprehension flash through the woman’s eyes. Her husband furrowed his brow and stood up suddenly.

  “What do you want with me?” he asked in a sharp voice. “I don’t understand!”

  What didn’t he understand—or what was it he was hastening to confirm that he did not understand?

  “A most dreadful event has taken place in this hotel. A man has been found dead, and an inquest has been opened. It will be necessary for you kindly to go to another hotel. It won’t be possible for you to have a room here for another few hours.”

  The woman stood up now as well. “A dead man!” Her eyes were brimming with terror. “But we can’t go to another hotel.”

  “Something dreadful? Ah…” The man sat back down. “We’ll wait. We must stay here in this hotel.”

  De Vincenzi breathed a sigh of relief. No. He’d been mistaken. They couldn’t be the parents of young Layng, or else the woman would already have uttered the name of her son.

  “Would you mind showing me your passport?”

  The man pulled from his pocket a small blue booklet with a large golden coat of arms stamped in the middle: the coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

  De Vincenzi read the name: George Flemington. “That’s fine,” he said. “Would you kindly stay here? You may be waiting for some time.”

  “Could someone at least bring me a bottle of whisky…”

  “I’ll see to it that they do.”

  As De Vincenzi started for the door, he heard the wife whisper, “Oh, George! What does all of this mean?”

  And then he heard the man’s laugh. The sound of that laugh—low, cruel and sarcastic—echoed in his ears long after he’d closed the parlour door to find himself once more in the empty lobby with the fibre suitcase and the overturned armchair.

  6

  The pendulum clock in the dining room tolled brightly. The new day had begun half an hour ago.

  De Vincenzi sat down on the wicker sofa under the rosy lampshade. He found a newspaper on the table and folded it in four. He was holding a short silver pencil, its lead retracted, and he played with it, batting the end against the newspaper. Bianchi had left four officers with him and they were guarding the lobby doors. Sani, in front of the inspector, occasionally turned to observe them.

  “Have the hotel owner come here,” said De Vincenzi. But he immediately got up again. “Wait!” He walked to the dining room door, opened it and went in.

  Maria was behind the front desk, placid, pale and inscrutable. Her large, bright eyes followed him as he came in and she pursed her lips faintly. De Vincenzi advanced, quickly taking in the group of tables. They were all full, and at almost every one of them he saw men gambling. Yet not a word could be heard. The cards were slapped down on the green baize and picked up by mute robots. A woman in mourning, her elbows on the table, gazed into space. De Vincenzi saw some other women. Their eyes were so bright and staring it seemed as if they were all hallucinating. The air in the room was thick with cigarette smoke—and with terror. A creepy, indescribable terror that bore down on all of them. Thus oppressed, they kept quiet and played.

  Suddenly a hoarse voice was heard.

  “A five and four kings…”

  Everyone turned. The voice came from a corner table where two men sat facing one another, their cards fanned out in their hands. A third, sitting beside them, was keeping score in the notebook he had in front of him.

  “I said, a five of diamonds and four kings… What? Good, right?”

  He was an elephantine character, with a pointy head sunk between two shoulders rounded like the lid of a trunk. His huge body, ridiculously perched on a chair too small for him, slumped over, solid and bulky. De Vincenzi looked at him in profile. The man was staring at his cards with small, bleary eyes under his huge greying thicket of eyebrows. His earlobes were heavy and red like wattles and his nose jutted out imposingly above purplish lips. It seemed as if he’d been modelled in grey clay and set out to dry in the sun.

  He began to put the cards down slowly, one after the other, each gesture accompanied by a loud huffing that distended his lips with every puff. A mischievous, mocking smile flitted through the bright eyes and over the fleshy lips of the opponent sitting across from him. It had gone quiet again and, for a few more minutes, everything around them was still. It seemed as if the projector had stopped, with the figures on the screen frozen mid-gesture: a foot raised, a hand held out, a face at three-quarter view. Then someone let out a deep sigh and the figures moved. The machine had resumed its movement.

  De Vincenzi turned on his heel and went back into the lobby. “Ask the proprietor to come and see me.”

  Virgilio was trembling and flapping about in order to control his panic. He cast a pitiful look at the inspector, his round eyes bulging from his head.

  “How long had Douglas Layng been in your hotel?”

  “A month… a month…”

  “Which room?”

  “Number 5, on the first floor.”

  “Did he eat in the hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did he eat breakfast here today—or should I say yesterday, since it’s now past midnight?”

  The hotel manager struck his forehead with his hand.

  “But of course! You’re making me think, now. He didn’t come down to breakfast today; his table was empty. In fact, I said as much to my wife and she replied that he’d probably gone to see some village near the lakes. Over the past few days, I recall him mentioning that he was going to take some excursions. He could only stay in Italy a few weeks longer and wanted to see as much as possible. Absolutely—I remember it perfectly now.”

  “So neither you nor your wife bothered to send someone to see if he was still in his room?”

  “No. It’s true, we didn’t. But why would we think of doing that? In any case, wasn’t it that evening he was killed?”

&n
bsp; De Vincenzi went on with his questions.

  “Did your wife see him go out that morning?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. She would have told me.”

  If he had to, he’d question that stony woman behind the desk later and watch her lose some of her imperturbable calm. It was better to wrap things up with her husband for now.

  “Who lives in the rooms on the top floor?”

  “You mean… where the bo—”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh! Carlo Da Como in the one at the end… in the first one, Signor Engel.”

  “A foreigner?” He was thinking about that doll.

  “Yes… no… I mean, he must be German, but he’s been in Italy for years.”

  “And this Carlo Da Como?”

  “From Milan. He has family here. He was rich, but now…”

  “Now?”

  “He manages to keep going. But he’s a gentleman. He’s looking for some occupation. Commendatore Besesti has promised him a position in his bank.”

  “Are they in there, those two? In the dining room?”

  “Yes, they’re gambling. See? The ones playing piquet. There are three of them, along with Captain Lontario. He was injured in the war. Very respectable, really, comes every evening, lives with his mother. Yes, a real gentleman.”

  “Enough about the captain! What about the other two rooms?”

  “Which? Oh, yes. Mario—the factotum—sleeps in the first one. There he is, behind the counter. The two maids sleep in the other one. Sisters, from the same village as my mother.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “Bardi, the hunchback. He sells watches. He’s lived in this hotel for at least ten years. He was here when I took over the business, and he feels at home here, although his intrusiveness sometimes bothers me. Not to say… But the fact is that with the old owners he was almost like family.”

  “Which is his room?”

  “Number 19, at the end of the second corridor.”

  “And what was he doing on the top floor? What reason would he have had for going up there?”

  “Reason?” The man smiled in that slimy, unctuous way of his. “But that man never has any reason for sticking his nose into everyone’s business. Who knows why he took it into his head to go up there? He knows everything that goes on in here. He must have wanted to spy on the maids.”

  So the hunchback knew everything that went on in the hotel: the devil is grinning from every corner…

  “Does this Bardi have a typewriter?”

  “How did you know? He does, in fact.”

  “Is he the only person to have one in the hotel?”

  “I can’t say for sure. I just manage the restaurant, right? It’s my wife who looks after the rooms. You can ask her or the maids. Bardi has a typewriter—it’s a really old one, and he’s the only one who can actually manage to write with it—that much I know, because from time to time he’ll type something for me.”

  This, perhaps, was a point gained, and easy to confirm straightaway. He had the anonymous letter in his pocket. But he held back. It would be significant only if Bardi consented to tell everything he knew. Maybe he’d speak more freely if he didn’t think anyone was fingering him as the author of that strange missive. But why, after all, would he have written it? Well, given his sort, there wasn’t really any need to look for a reason. Some hysterical woman, he’d immediately thought. And if the letter had really been written by that unfortunate man, he hadn’t been far off. He looked at the hotelier.

  “There’s all-night gambling in your hotel.”

  “Oh, we’re all one big family! No one plays for much.”

  “Is that right? We’ll talk later about this gambling for small beer. Right now, go and send Signor Bardi to me.”

  Virgilio vacillated somewhat, as if building up the momentum to move.

  “He’ll hardly want to come, you know. If you make me close the hotel, it’ll ruin me!”

  “Go and do what I asked.”

  The man moved on, his eyes bulging more than ever. Through the glass, De Vincenzi saw him go into the dining room and walk towards the back. Only two guests lived upstairs: Carlo Da Como and Vilfredo Engel. That macabre mise en scène was therefore the work of one of those two. Which one?

  Slowly dragging legs disproportionately long for his childlike body, the hunchback Bardi reached the wicker table and stood in the light of the rosy lamp.

  “Sit down,” De Vincenzi said affably. Bardi sat down immediately. He must have felt his legs giving way. “You were the first to see the body and to raise the alarm, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you go all the way upstairs? Your own room is in another part of the building entirely.”

  It was the last question the hunchback expected at that moment. Why had he gone up there? He looked almost ashen. His nose was thin, sharp and so delicate round the nostrils as to seem like transparent membrane. His nostrils were quivering. But the fact that he had no eyelashes at all was simultaneously comic and disconcerting. His troubled grey eyes appeared to issue from two holes, without any support; they were naked. His entire face, for that matter, was so smooth, so furrowed with tiny lines at his temples and the corners of his mouth as to give the impression of an almost obscene nudity.

  “Why did I go upstairs?” He was panting. He must have been suffering from asthma, like almost everyone with a thoracic deformity. “I wanted to… It’s hardly a crime for me to have gone up there… I wanted to…”

  He was searching, and desperately—though without success—for an acceptable lie. He was a sly one. In ordinary circumstances he’d never have hesitated so much, but he’d received an extreme shock. It had literally driven him mad.

  “Signor Bardi, very strange things are going on in this hotel. Did you expect to find a dead man when you went upstairs?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A dead man… or woman?”

  “What are you saying?”

  Were his bright eyes dancing with terror, or was it only indignant surprise?

  “Did you know young Layng well?”

  A vague gesture. “He hardly spoke. All the more so because he couldn’t yet express himself correctly in Italian. And for several days he did nothing but play cards. Someone taught him to play baccarat and he caught the gambling bug.”

  “Did he lose?”

  “A lot. Too much.”

  “So he had money?”

  “Poor man! He received ten pounds a month from London. Or so he told me. He was a methodical young man, careful to the last cent. He’d ask the price of every dish before ordering it. It was obvious that this was the first time he’d been away from his family, from his… mamma. He must have been brought up well; he had sound moral principles. And then—”

  He interrupted himself, wetting his lips with his tongue.

  “Go on.”

  “The other night, he lost more than a thousand lire.”

  “Did he pay up?”

  “The next day, with a cheque drawn on the Banca Commerciale. He came down to the dining room at midday holding the cheque. Before he handed it over he asked his creditor if… if it would be possible for him to pay only half. He was all choked up and seemed ready to cry.”

  “What about his creditor?”

  “He replied that in Italy gambling debts are debts of honour and honour is non-negotiable. Idiot!”

  He was outraged, and his long, monkey-like hands trembled on very thin wrists.

  “To whom did he give the cheque?”

  Bardi hesitated. He looked at De Vincenzi with a sardonic smile. “Does that have anything to do with the murder? You’re questioning me about matters relating to the crime. As for the rest, I am obliged neither to know anything nor to tell you what I know,” he said with a wicked smirk.

  “I’ll find out in any case, whether you tell me or not.”

  “That’s as may be. It’s easy enough. But if I reveal it, t
hey’ll call me a gossip. They already accuse me of being an old woman. And then, why should I help you find out about all these people here? Why me? Ask them about their criminal records. You’ll learn a lot.”

  He laughed like a naughty, spiteful child. If De Vincenzi hadn’t asked him the question, he might have come out with it himself. He was upset about the dead man because he was dead. But he hated the living because he was a hunchback with an inferiority complex who was always having to suffer humiliations from his peers.

  “Will I also learn that a gathering of addicts and degenerates meets here?”

  Bardi held the inspector’s gaze without lowering his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  But he knew all right. The letter was undoubtedly his.

  “So you didn’t know, either, that the devil is grinning from every corner of that house.”

  He shrugged. “Just words…” But he was shaking.

  “Signor Bardi, anyone who withholds from the law information in his possession is considered complicit in a crime and will be liable to serious precautionary and coercive measures.”

  “What do you know about what I know?”

  “Was there someone here with whom Douglas Layng was particularly friendly?”

  “You mean, his killer? If only I could imagine who killed him in that way.”

  “How do you think the young man was killed?”

  “What the deuce! He was hanged! I saw him.”

  “You saw a body hanging from a rope. But Douglas Layng was killed by a stab in the back. Someone hung up his body, and they did so at least fifteen or sixteen hours after he died.”

  “No…” He seemed deflated. He put his head between his hands, trembling all over. “It’s terrible! Oh…” He wasn’t feigning.

  De Vincenzi got up and went over to stand beside him. “Yes, it’s terrible. That’s why you must help me find his killer. Do you want another crime to be committed here? Tell me everything you know.”

  Bardi leapt to his feet, holding his hands in front of him as if to defend himself.