“Which of those in this hotel could have told me?”
“You’ll meet them.”
“Who? Give me their names.”
“Their names? How many? I don’t know. It’s the truth—I don’t know. Everyone who has an interest in hearing Major Harry Alton’s will.”
“And you, his widow…”
“Yes, me. His widow, however, will perhaps be the only one not to inherit.”
“Go ahead. Tell me.” De Vincenzi was feeling impatient. By now, he was afraid himself. He had the impression that every minute lost could make this tragedy worse.
“My husband is dead. He’d turned seventy-four… When he went to the Cape, which was then Transvaal and Orange, he was under thirty. That was 1880.” She paused.
“And?”
“I don’t know… don’t know. I’m ignorant of everything that happened down there. I know that Harry went there fairly poor. He had his army pay, and it was then that he started his career.” She wrung her hands. “When he died in Sydney—two weeks ago—he left a legacy of five or six hundred thousand pounds.”
“And Douglas Layng?”
“Not yet, not yet! Yes, Douglas Layng… but don’t rush things.” She stopped. “Why did you mention Julius Lessinger? Is he really in Milan too?” She bowed her head, talking to herself: “And who’d have killed Douglas Layng like that if not him?”
“Do you know Julius Lessinger?”
“Know him? No. I know his reputation—it’s unspeakable. But what did he do to earn it? Not one of those who fear him today knows him any more. Julius Lessinger was with my husband in Transvaal as one of his soldiers.”
“Just a moment,” growled De Vincenzi. He got up and stared at her, his voice clipped: “Who was down there in Transvaal with your husband?” He held his breath for her reply. Whom would she name?
The woman felt the gravity of his question, and the importance of her reply. Her pallor, if anything, had increased. Slowly she said: “Major Alton commanded a light battalion. He had two officers with him.”
“Names!” hissed De Vincenzi.
“—William Engel—”
He was not startled, but asked in an icy voice, “How is that possible? A German?”
“An Englishman of German origin.”
“Go on!”
“—Dick Nolan—”
“Who else?”
“The soldiers… a hundred or so, and Julius Lessinger was one of them.”
“Fine,” said De Vincenzi, suddenly calm. He sat down again. He was tranquil now. “Go on.”
Mary paused for some time. When she began to speak again, it seemed as if she were reciting a lesson—or, more likely, recounting a fable. Even her voice was the same: monotonous.
“The Vaal crocodiles, between Kimberley and Johannesburg…” She raised her violet eyes to De Vincenzi, as if expecting him to interrupt. But the inspector did not speak. “It’s a story about crocodiles!”
“Go on.”
The woman slowly rose. She went to the corner where she’d put her suitcase on a small table. She looked around for the key, rummaging in the drawers of the dresser, and found it in her handbag inside the wardrobe. She opened the suitcase. Silk, see-through linens. Soft colours. A silver box, the silver tops of bottles kept in place against the lid with leather straps… She took out a letter from under folded linens. The oversized envelope bore franked blue and red stamps; on the back, a large impression in black sealing wax. She held it out to the inspector.
De Vincenzi read the woman’s name and London address. He looked at the postmark: Sydney.
“Read it,” and she fell back into the armchair.
The letter was typewritten—in English, of course—on a large sheet of heavy paper which bore the signature of Harry Alton. A military man’s signature—large, firm, with rounded, exaggerated capital letters and a great flourish on the N of Alton. My little Mary… Yet after that affectionate phrase, the tone changed and became terse, almost angry.
My little Mary,
There’s no further need for you to consider joining me in Australia. I’m about to leave. It’s true! The doctor, whom I ordered not to lie to me, has given me one or two months to live at most. In any case, my ongoing suffering is such that I will cut things short myself. I’m writing to the lawyer, Flemington, to give him all the information necessary to look after things when I’m gone. He’ll invite you and a few others somehow linked to my fate to gather in Milan in a certain hotel I have specified and which Flemington in any case knows. There you’ll learn your destiny; by which I mean the financial destinies that await you.
I have nothing against you. In the five years during which you’ve been my wife, I have had to recognize in you the great virtue of adaptability. You accepted the hand of an old man for personal profit, but you have loyally maintained our agreement. I, for my part, intend to maintain my family, and I’m taking every precaution so that someone I know does not frustrate my wishes after my death.
Don’t be surprised at the journey you must make or the people you’ll meet in Milan. It’s necessary for everyone to convene in that city and in that hotel.
I don’t want to tell you anything else. Anyway, life’s only interest is in the surprises it has in store for us, and I have reserved one for you that’s not the least bit banal. When you learn the other, less edifying details of the life of old Harry, you’ll just say that all men are swine, fighting each other to get their snouts in the trough.
This was followed by his signature and a postscript written in pen:
You must take the porcelain doll with you on your journey.
De Vincenzi sat holding the sheet of paper for several moments. The woman raised her head to look at him. An unhealthy fear continued to preoccupy her, and it was exhausting her. The inspector looked at the porcelain doll on the dresser.
“How does Julius Lessinger come into this?”
“I know nothing, or very little about Harry’s life. I know only that Julius Lessinger was a soldier with him down there in 1900, during the Boer War, and that afterwards Major Alton was afraid of him.”
“Flemington was the major’s lawyer?”
“Yes, but more than that, a friend. They shared many interests.”
“And some inadmissible secret?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Flemington also fear Lessinger?”
“How did you know?”
“Flemington is in Milan, in this hotel.”
“Oh! Then—” But she stopped herself.
“Well?”
The woman shrank still further into the chair, shaken with trembling, which couldn’t have been from the cold.
“And?”
“And now Douglas Layng is dead!”
“Are you saying that things are going differently from the way your husband intended?”
“Flemington will know.”
“Who was Layng? How did he figure in this story—which seems as if it’s been going on for years—the poor kid? He’d hardly begun to live!”
“Flemington must know.”
“And you?”
“No.”
“How long ago did your husband leave for Australia? Why didn’t he take you with him?”
“The major left a year ago. He had a lot of business there.”
Her reply was vague and reticent.
“Was he facing some danger in England?”
“The lawyer, Flemington, will be able to tell you.”
“Was it because of this danger that he went on his own, leaving you behind in London?”
“What more can I tell you? I don’t know—I don’t know anything either. I’ve tried to understand, to find out. But why go on now? Five days ago Flemington gave me notice to leave for Italy, to come to this hotel and wait for his arrival. The meeting with all the people Major Alton mentioned will take place on 6 December, or so the lawyer told me.”
“Today.”
“Yes.”
De Vi
ncenzi looked at his watch. It was about four in the morning, and he’d told himself he’d solve the puzzle before dawn.
“Did you know that a doll just like this one is in the possession of a man in this hotel? A man called Vilfredo Engel?”
She opened her eyes and batted her eyelashes. “No.”
“Do you know Vilfredo Engel?”
“No.”
“And yet you know that one of your husband’s officers had that name.”
“William Engel, yes. But I never met him.”
“You say he’s English?”
“I believe he is.”
“Tell me the story of your porcelain doll.”
“My husband had it when he married me.”
“Since we’re on the subject, how did you meet Major Harry Alton?”
“It was in London, in 1914. I was dancing in a music hall.”
De Vincenzi looked at the woman, who now more than ever had an air of ethereal innocence and fragility. How different she was from Stella Essington. Perhaps more dangerous, however. In any case, she had succeeded in marrying a major. Tomorrow she would be inheriting five or six hundred thousand pounds. Would she, though? What the devil could be the meaning of this meeting in Milan at The Hotel of the Three Roses? Would the reading of the will contain some surprises for her as well as for the others gathered here? Who were the others? Layng—who’d been killed, probably to get him out of the way… And then there was Nolan, Carin Nolan, maybe the daughter of the officer who’d fought with Alton in the Transvaal… And then there was Vilfredo Engel. How close a relation was that burly, panting piquet player, friend of Carlo Da Como, to the officer William Engel?
De Vincenzi knew he’d made great progress since he’d entered Room 12, but there was plenty more for him to do, and even when he’d managed to understand the details of this fantastical, knotty story he’d still be a long way from arresting the killer. Unless… unless it was true that the series had just begun and the killer would find it necessary to give another terrible sign of his presence.
“So that’s how you married Harry Alton.”
“It was he who asked me, insisting on his terms. I hadn’t hidden anything about my past from him.”
“Did you know the major was rich?”
“Your question is at the very least discourteous, Inspector. But I will answer you. My life had not been happy. If I was reduced to dancing in music halls and touring the cities of Europe and America—”
“You’ve been in America?”
“Yes.”
“Where? Which cities?”
There was an almost imperceptible hesitation, but it didn’t escape De Vincenzi.
“Several. New York for sure… and… and others. I was telling you that I did not like the life I had to lead. Yet I wouldn’t have wanted to live miserably with my parents in Italy, either. That’s why I left home. But in London, Paris… New York… and other places…” She shivered, almost twitched in the armchair. All at once she got up. “Well, when Major Alton offered his hand in marriage, I accepted, because I knew he was rich and that life with him would be easy and calm. There you have it!”
“And now?” De Vincenzi asked ruthlessly, although he knew that Signora Alton’s cynicism was above all the result of the tense situation in which she found herself.
But he couldn’t wait for her reply. Quick steps could be heard in the corridor and Sani was shouting loudly, “Where is the inspector?” He didn’t have time to get to the door before Sani appeared at it, followed by the officers.
“What’s going on?”
“I was in the lobby downstairs when I heard a thud overhead, like that of a body falling. The noise seemed to come from one of the first rooms near the garden, Number 5 or 6.”
“Let’s go,” De Vincenzi said laconically. He turned to the widow as he was leaving. “Get some rest, Signora. I’ll come back to you tomorrow. You haven’t told me the story of your doll yet.”
12
“Where were you?”
The officer pointed to the corner where both parts of the corridor met: the longer one, where Room 12 was the first room—and where De Vincenzi had been with Mary Alton—and the other, which aligned with the landing and on which Rooms 5, 6 and 7 opened, across from Rooms 1 to 4. The first part of the corridor was very long and ended on the left with the small stairway that led downstairs to the billiard room.
“Actually in that corner, were you? Were you watching both parts of the corridor?”
The man seemed to want to make excuses.
“I walked down this corridor, right to the end.”
“So the lobby and the other corridor were left unguarded?”
“What could I do? I knew the stairs and the lobby were being watched. And you were in there. I thought—”
“Fine! Go back down to the end now.” The doors on the first part of the corridor were all closed. De Vincenzi headed straight for that of Room 5 and opened it: the room where Douglas Layng had been living was empty, the bed made, the dresser drawer—the one in which Sani had found the packet of letters tied with ribbon—still partly open. “Take the letters out of that drawer. You can give them to me later. I want to read them.”
Those letters now interested him. Sani hurried to obey and the packet of letters with English postmarks disappeared into his pocket. They left the room. De Vincenzi went up to the door of Novarreno’s room.
Absolute silence.
“Novarreno,” he called out. “Open up!”
No reply. He lifted the latch, but the door wouldn’t open. It was locked from the inside. After several more tries, De Vincenzi waited no longer. He took two steps backward and threw his shoulder against the right-hand side. It offered no resistance and broke open.
The light was on in the room and the trinkets-salesman lay on the ground, a dagger plunged into the middle of his chest. De Vincenzi bent down a moment to look at him. He touched his hand: it was still warm, but he was surely dead. He leapt over the body and ran to the window, which was wide open. He leant out to look at the garden. Down below, on the ground floor, he saw a lit window: it had to be the one in the blue room, where he’d left Flemington and his wife. He turned to Sani, who’d come into the room and was looking at the body, horrified, while the officers stood at the door.
“You didn’t put an officer on guard in the garden outside the parlour window as I ordered you to do?”
Sani was shaken. “I didn’t have the heart to send a man out to stand in the rain. There’s no way of leaving the garden apart from through the glass door which leads to the lobby, and I was in the lobby with two officers. After all, the door at the back of the building is also being watched.”
De Vincenzi limited himself to giving Sani a look of disapproval. “This poor man wouldn’t be dead if you’d followed my orders.” He turned to the officers. “Phone the emergency medical service and the doctor.” He went back to the window. The killer had entered and left through it, there could be no doubt, as evidenced by the door locked on the inside. “Give me a torch.”
Sani offered his own. De Vincenzi tried to see outside. As he had guessed, there was a ladder at the base of the wall. The killer had used it to go up and down and then he’d laid it on the ground against the wall. He’d gone to some trouble even in this, given how easy it had been for him to carry out the rest. And the ladder on the ground showed that the man no longer needed it, after the murder, to climb up to his own room, which clearly had to be on the ground floor. There were no windows on the garden other than the window of the blue room, still lit up, and the two kitchen windows across from it. The kitchen led directly into the dining room.
The rain continued falling insistently. The garden was flooded. He certainly wouldn’t find any footprints there. Footprints, no; but whoever had carried out that acrobatic enterprise must have been soaking, and certainly, once out of the rain, would have left wet prints wherever he’d walked. De Vincenzi stepped over the body once more, almost running past Sani
and the other officers as he threw himself down the large stairway. He moved the officer on guard aside and opened the door to the parlour. Flemington, his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, was staring at the glass in front of him. A short distance from the glass was the empty whisky bottle. The lawyer had removed his jacket, collar and tie. Mrs Flemington was sleeping on the sofa.
At the sound of the door opening, Flemington stirred from his contemplation and looked at the inspector without the least surprise. Suddenly his eyes flashed with terror, as if he’d only just recognized him. But his voice was mocking: “Still awake, Inspector. Wretched night, this!” And he let out his peculiar laugh. But it was only a brief acknowledgement. His face immediately darkened and beneath his bushy eyebrows his grey eyes clouded over.
De Vincenzi looked at the closed window, the floor. Not a trace.
“There’s another dead man here, Mr Flemington.”
“Oh,” said the man. “All in the space of twenty-four hours! I told you so.”
“We’ll be speaking at length before long, Mr Flemington. I’ve come now just to—”
“—to see if I needed anything.” That hiccuping, sarcastic laugh. “No! I don’t need a thing.”
“You don’t want to ask me who’s dead?”
He hunched his shoulders and got up slowly, propping himself against the table. Standing, he seemed heavy, if not enormous; with that bulk, how could he have got over the windowsill, seized the ladder and climbed up to the window? And then—having arrived at the hotel a few hours ago, only to be locked in that room—how could he have known which window was Novarreno’s? And besides, why Novarreno?
“Mr Flemington, how many people have been asked to convene in this hotel to hear the reading of Major Harry Alton’s will?”
“Have you heard? Five, and young Layng was one of them, though he is no more.”
“One of these people is called—was called—Giorgio Novarreno?”
Flemington looked at him with profound, unfeigned surprise.
“What did you say?”
“Giorgio Novarreno, a Levantine.”
“No. Why ever… Is he the dead man you mentioned?”
The Hotel of the Three Roses Page 9
