“I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything!” he shouted. His voice, normally frail and reedy, was now louder and sounded cracked and shrill. “I don’t know anything! Leave me in peace, for pity’s sake!”
He ran towards the dining room, seeking refuge once more in the far corner near the piquet table.
“Shall I go and get him?” Sani asked.
“Let him go. He’ll speak before tomorrow morning.”
De Vincenzi had decided not to let those people rest, not even for a second. Perhaps he’d push someone to do something crazy—the circle in which they were moving was already red-hot and the atmosphere rising to white heat—but he would uncover the truth, whatever the cost.
An athletic youth with wide, square shoulders, narrow waist and massive legs appeared at the door. His light-grey suit of fine, brushed fabric hugged his sculpted form, and his tie was a bright flame-red. With strong, regular features and a short black moustache, his face instantly seemed common.
He stopped on the threshold and looked around the lobby with a faint but marked sense of surprise. He then turned towards the dining room and saw Maria’s calm, unruffled face. He shrugged slightly, as if none of his observations made any sense, and went in.
De Vincenzi watched him. Sani moved towards him in order to stop him, and the officer on guard beside the door raised his hand.
So the youth stopped again. He looked at the deputy inspector.
“Please?”
“Where are you going?”
He answered in poor Italian, and with a strong American accent. “To lie down.”
“Who are you?”
He smiled. “Police?”
“Exactly.”
“Nicola Al Righetti.”
Sani had been questioning him, and he now turned expectantly to De Vincenzi.
“Mr Al Righetti, would you sit here with me for a minute or two? Let’s chat.”
Why had he adopted his most kindly and good-natured attitude when he didn’t even like this youth? One of the five on the list Bianchi had given him. Al Righetti went over to the table, took the chair Bardi had been sitting in, moved it away slightly and sat down.
“I don’t like to disturb guests at a hotel, keep them from their usual routines, but I must. Have you heard?”
“About what?”
“You must have heard, right? About the murder…”
The other man interrupted him. “Is this about a murder? If you’re going the long way round to get me to fall into some trap, you can save yourself the trouble. I don’t know anything apart from this: I was eating peacefully in there—I ask to be served in the billiard room where it’s quieter—and I heard shouting, plates falling, chairs being overturned. I thought the customers were fighting and I stayed put. Pietro, the waiter, told me someone had been hanged, the young Englishman. Then the police came. I stopped eating and left the billiard room to go to bed. That’s it.”
“Ah, naturally! If that’s all, then what you know isn’t of much help to us. Where are you from, Mr Al Righetti?”
“I’m from Paris. Or rather, New York. But I disembarked at Marseilles and went to Paris for a few days. From Paris, via Geneva to Milan.”
“Why Milan?”
“Why not? I like Italy.”
“What do you do? That is, what is your profession?”
“None.” He took his time, rubbing his hands vigorously. He pulled out his wallet and showed De Vincenzi a stack of banknotes. “See?” He put the wallet back in his pocket and tossed his passport on the table in front of the inspector.
“My passport’s in order. I have money. What else do you need?”
De Vincenzi picked up the passport and offered it to Sani. “Take this and put it with the others we’ll be collecting.” He then turned back to the American and said with the utmost affability, “All of this would certainly be enough if there hadn’t been a murder in the hotel you’re staying in.”
“What does the murder have to do with me? How could I possibly be involved? I came down from my room at seven and stayed in that room to talk to Mr Da Como, one of the guests, until around eight. Then I went out, because I usually eat late in the evenings, and I went to the Biffi Bar in the Galleria. Everyone there knows me and you can check up on my statement. I stayed in the bar till around ten. I came back here, went straight to the billiard room, ordered something to eat, and on account of the interruption caused by—that incident—I stopped eating only then. How could I have killed young Layng? You tell me! My alibi is rock-solid.”
So he was talking about alibis… Even if De Vincenzi hadn’t known from the information Bianchi had gathered that Al Righetti normally lived in Chicago, he would have guessed it from the way he was dealing with this police interrogation.
“And what were you doing from eleven this morning till seven?”
“You want to know that too?” But there was something more than surprise in his voice. “At eleven I was in my room sleeping, or nearly. I was in bed, in any case. I came down after twelve, ate and went out. I didn’t come back until six. I can provide an alibi for all that time too if necessary.” If he’d lost his certainty, he’d recovered it.
“Did you know Douglas Layng?”
“Know him? I saw him here in the hotel, of course, and we may have spoken. Nothing more.”
“That’s fine. That’ll be enough for now. Go ahead and rest.”
Al Righetti got up. “One of the things I hate most is to be woken from a sound sleep.”
“We’ll see to it that you’re left alone—until tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you.”
When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he heard the inspector’s voice: “Mr Al Righetti, do you know the lawyer Flemington?”
He turned, laughing softly.
“Bravo. The loaded question for last! But I’ve never heard of your—this lawyer Flemington.”
And he slowly began to climb the stairs, disappearing after the first landing.
7
Room 5 was the first on the left at the start of the corridor, immediately after the spacious landing.
De Vincenzi had a moment of hesitation as he put his hand to the brass doorknob. But he shrugged his shoulders and, smiling sceptically at Sani, grasped the handle. “This isn’t a fingerprints sort of crime, and if I phoned forensics at this hour, they’d think I was mad!”
The window was wide open, and both men shivered as they went in. It was still raining outside and fog had entered the room, so when they flipped the switch, the light from the lamp looked veiled and gave off a smoky halo.
“Close it. What does this window look out on?”
“The courtyard.” Sani bit back a curse—there was a little table in front of the window and, leaning out, he’d caught his finger in the shutters.
A small white bed… it was the first thing De Vincenzi saw. It looked as if the sheets and bedcover had been pulled right over the pillow, but the bed had not been remade. Someone had simply covered it like that. He pulled back the edge of the sheet. Exactly what he’d expected.
However, he could never have imagined such a horrible sight. God, how the young man had bled. The blood must have soaked through the mattress. A pair of white pyjamas, hidden under the blankets at the foot of the bed, were also dark with blood. Someone had torn them off the victim after the killing and they’d served to staunch the wound and then to rub the body dry. He quickly pulled the covers up again.
The modus operandi now appeared all too clear. But why hadn’t the killer feared being surprised by one of the maids? If the doctor’s calculations were correct, the young man had been killed yesterday morning, or in the early hours of the previous night. He would verify Layng’s movements from four in the afternoon until he’d gone to the dining room, probably to gamble. They’d given him a passion for baccarat—it was in his blood—and they’d been fleecing him. A thousand lire in one go, for someone who had to live on ten pounds a month, was really a sensational loss. W
ho’d gained from it? He would find out, but then what? One thing seemed certain: that the person who’d won the money was not the killer. You don’t strangle the goose that lays the golden eggs… Unless young Layng had noticed that such a person was cheating and had threatened to expose him, insisting that the money for his debt be returned to him, and then that person had shut him up for ever. The theory was plausible. Plausible, but foolish in this particular case. It didn’t square with the macabre mise en scène featuring the hanged man. Not at all. Things couldn’t have been that simple, and it couldn’t have been the motive for the crime.
De Vincenzi’s mind was wandering. He took up the thread again. Layng, therefore, had been killed at an unspecified time on Monday morning, and in any case not later than early afternoon, even if the doctor was mistaken. So how could the body have been kept hidden in that room without anyone discovering it? Was it credible that the maid had not entered the room all day, that no one had noticed Douglas’s disappearance or gone to look for him? He hadn’t gone down to breakfast. No one had seen him, as usual, and no one was worried about it. But even allowing that this was actually the case, how could the killer have made his calculations before it happened, and how could he have been so confident as to risk the stabbing?
De Vincenzi’s gaze lingered over the small bedside tray with its empty cup and small spoon. Someone had brought him a coffee in his room. He held the cup, wrinkling his brow. It had been carefully washed—there was no residue. Therefore? Therefore, a narcotic or some poison must have been added to the coffee. Simple. And the killer had taken care to rinse the cup. An unnecessary precaution, as it happened. The autopsy…
Sani was rummaging in the suitcase, in the trunk, in the drawers. Nothing of any interest. Everything was very tidy. The undergarments were those of someone who was comfortably off. A silver shaving kit.
“Look how he kept the letters he received.” Sani pointed to the top dresser drawer, where there was a packet of letters still in their envelopes, tied with a ribbon. He picked them up and went through them. “They’re from England. They must be from his parents.”
“I’ll look at them later,” said De Vincenzi, and he pressed the bell.
Sani gazed at him in surprise. “Who do you think will come up? They’re all locked in the dining room, being guarded by the officer.”
“You’re right. Go and get the two maids and the porter. I believe there’s one of those in this hotel.”
Sani went out and left the door open. De Vincenzi followed him into the corridor. There, at least, the lamps shone brightly. At the end, the corridor turned round a corner. He counted two doors on the same side as Room 5 and four on the opposite side. The line of doors continued down the other part of the corridor. Just in front of Room 5 was Room 1. Beside it, Room 6. The numbering went up to 4 on the right and continued with 5 on the left.
He went over to the landing, leant over the balustrade and called the officer standing guard at the bottom of the stairs.
“Have the owner give you a plan of the hotel with everyone’s names and room numbers. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Sani returned with the two chambermaids and the porter. De Vincenzi went back into the room where Layng had been killed. The others followed. The maids were haggard, yellowed miseries, ageless, almost sexless. Sisters, the manager said, from his mother’s own village. It was obvious that they were from the country. They came into the room slowly and circumspectly, as if urged on by the big, dark-haired young man behind them in shirtsleeves and a turquoise-striped apron.
“Which of you works on this floor?”
“Both of us,” the taller one answered. Her nose was long and yellow like a duck’s beak. “This is the only floor.”
“What about the rooms upstairs?”
“Oh, those! We do those when we finish down here, sometimes even in the evenings.”
“So yesterday morning you were both on this floor?”
“All three of us,” the porter interrupted. “I was with them. We do the rooms together.”
“Who brings coffee to the rooms?”
“Whoever. When someone rings, whoever is closest to the room responds.”
“Try hard to remember: which of you three brought coffee to Signor Layng in this room yesterday morning?”
The two girls looked at each other but didn’t hesitate.
“She did,” said the first one to speak.
“I did,” confirmed the other.
“At what time?”
“It must have been eight.”
“Did he ring?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find him?”
“In bed, as usual.”
“Was he awake?”
“Of course. He told me to open the shutters.”
“Did he ring every morning at eight?”
“Yes.”
“You got the coffee downstairs. Where?”
“Well, at the counter. Mario made the coffee in the machine, one by one as we ordered them.”
“And you brought it straight up here?”
The woman seemed confused. She had no idea what the coffee had to do with it.
“Yes, of course.”
“Think carefully! You took the coffee from Mario’s hands and brought it here.”
“Well, of course.”
“You’re sure of that?”
Her sister and the porter looked at her. They, too, were bemused.
“Absolutely. What do you mean?”
“I’m asking if you’re absolutely certain that you didn’t put the tray down somewhere before taking it to Signor Layng… if you were called to some other room.”
“I don’t think so. I remember having brought two trays, one with a full breakfast and black coffee for Room 1 and the other with a black coffee for Room 5.”
“And?”
“Oh yes! I put the tray for Room 5 on the table on the landing, out there, and went into Room 1. Then I picked it up again and came in here.”
“How long did you stay in Room 1?”
“Only a couple of minutes—just to open the window, give the cup of coffee to the signore and put the breakfast tray on the signora’s nightstand.”
“Who’s staying in Room 1?”
“A journalist and his wife.”
The intense questioning continued. The two women and the man spoke with evident sincerity, but they didn’t know anything. The coffee tray, therefore, had remained for a few minutes on the table on the landing. Was that when the killer—or an accomplice—had dropped in a sleeping tablet? A sleeping tablet, or poison? But they could set aside the possibility of poison, since there would then have been no need for the stabbing.
Had they seen the Englishman leave his room?
No, not one of the three had seen him.
“Why didn’t one of you come into this room to clean it?”
“But we did come in, sir,” exclaimed the taller of the sisters, who must have been the elder.
De Vincenzi started. “You came in here? Which one of you?”
“I did,” the woman replied, “and Luigi.” The porter agreed.
“What time was it?”
“How should I know? It would have been sometime around eleven… must have been a bit later, but definitely before noon. We’d finished all the other rooms. The door to Room 5 was closed. I knocked, then opened the door. The room was empty. We cleaned it and left, closing the door as usual.”
If those two weren’t lying—and it was unlikely they were—Douglas Layng had not yet been killed by eleven. But in that case…
“Just a minute here,” De Vincenzi shouted impatiently. “How can you have cleaned up in here if the tray and the coffee cup are still there on the nightstand?” All three turned to look at the objects. All three showed signs of the greatest surprise. No one spoke for several moments. Then Luigi shrugged.
“It must have been brought up later—in the afternoon.”
“By whom?
Which one of you remembers having brought it to him?”
Not one of them remembered doing so. The two women and the porter insisted in no uncertain terms and with every appearance of truth that they hadn’t seen the Englishman at all that day. No, they hadn’t gone into his room again; they’d had no reason to do so. And the evening? Yes, the chambermaids had gone into some rooms between eight and nine to turn down the beds; but not in all of them, and almost never in Layng’s, and in any case not that evening.
De Vincenzi was about to continue his questioning when the officer he’d sent for the hotel plan appeared at the door with several sheets in his hand. He seemed bashful.
“So? Give them here.”
The officer held out the papers. “One of the people in the locked room downstairs is asking to speak with you right away. He seems obsessed and he set to, making the devil of a racket, screaming that it smacks of a veritable imprisonment of his person, he has nothing to do with the crime, he has an urgent appointment…”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know. He’s a thin, gangly sort, dark as an Abyssinian.”
The two women laughed. “He’s the one with all the tricks.”
“He’s a chiromancer who predicts the future.”
De Vincenzi knew that he was a sales rep for articles from the bazaar, of German make. He kept them in a suitcase, always ready to show his astonishing tricks to the first person to stumble by: ducklings gliding over water, shells that bloomed in water with branches of coral, meadow flowers that turned into pink piglets when inflated. But what really drew the girls was the magical quality of his person. He was a palm-reader—a chiromancer, they said—able to predict the future. And he must also have been a hypnotist, because “when he stared into a woman’s eyes, she’d fall asleep”. Not one of the three could say where he came from, but they all agreed he couldn’t be Italian.
“Fine,” De Vincenzi cut in. “Bring him up.” He sent the two chambermaids and the porter back downstairs, convinced they’d told him everything they knew… maybe. Maybe. Because the coffee story was completely inexplicable at the moment. The young man had undoubtedly been killed in his own bed, in that room. But when?
The Hotel of the Three Roses Page 5
