Daggers and Men's Smiles

by Jill Downie

  “No need, marchesa. I speak Italian, if necessary,” said Moretti. He watched with interest as three sets of eyebrows went up.

  “Moretti — you are Italian?” asked Monty Lord.

  “My father was.” Moretti went swiftly through the formalities and then said, “This is a trying time for you. I am very sorry about the tragic death of Mr. Albarosa.”

  “Murder.” It was the marchesa who spoke. “Murder, Detective Inspector Moretti. A sick mind playing games, perhaps. But murder. My poor daughter has been informed. She is on her way here, to say goodbye to her dear husband, the father of her children.”

  The Marchesa Donatella Vannoni was, in her own way, as impressive physically as her niece. Full-lipped and full-hipped, with a mane of dark hair streaked with grey, she was an Anna Magnani of a woman, with an aura of raw sensuality about her. But somehow she conveyed an air of austere grandeur, a cold remoteness, a structure built to keep people out. There was a marked divergence between her physical opulence and her conservative style of dressing: her lush curves were controlled beneath a dark grey carapace of a dress, and a bruisingly thick gold necklace lay over the generous shelf of her bosom like a chain-link barrier against infiltrators.

  Yet, in a moment of uncontrollable anger, those long carmine nails had raked Gilbert Ensor’s face.

  “Indeed. We will have to have written statements from everyone, but I’d like to ask you now where you all were around four o’clock this morning — and I realize that, for most of you, the answer will be, in bed. But I’d like to know who sleeps on the premises and who does not.”

  “I, of course, sleep here.” It was the marchesa.

  “Does your room face the terrace?”

  “Yes. I imagine your next question will be, did I hear anything, or see anything. I did not. I sleep soundly and well.”

  “Signor Vannoni?”

  Gianfranco Vannoni replied in Italian. “I was here last night. Does that make me a suspect?” A man used to charming his way through life, thought Moretti. He cannot resist the dangerous question, asked with humour. A charming moue of the lips and a gentle twist of his hands, their tan setting off the gleaming gold bracelet he wore.

  “It could,” said Moretti. “Tell me more.”

  “I went to bed early — I had to be on set by eight o’clock, and we had a meeting at nine scheduled for myself, Mario, Monty, and Gilbert Ensor. Mario was expecting fireworks.”

  “From —?”

  At this moment a door on the far side of the room opened, and a middle-aged man wearing a black turtleneck sweater and black pants burst into the room. He rushed across to the marchesa, who stood up, fell into his arms, and started to cry.

  “It’s okay, cara, I’m here, I’m here,” he said in Italian to her. They made a somewhat incongruous couple, because the marchesa was taller than her comforter and had to crouch to be consoled. He looked up and saw Moretti.

  “Monty Lord,” he said. “Forgive me, but I just got back from Italy. I met Piero in the corridor, and he told me about Toni. This is terrible, terrible.” He sat down, taking the marchesa with him in his arms.

  “You are the producer of Rastrellamento?” Moretti asked.

  “That is correct.”

  Monty Lord was a small man in his fifties, whose shaven head seemed almost too big for his body. The darkness of his clothing brought into prominence a pair of piercing pale eyes set in a tanned face, and Moretti felt as if it were himself and his sergeant who were under examination from the shrewd, searching look to which they were both subjected.

  “Mr. Vannoni was just telling me that he, you, and Mario Bianchi had a meeting scheduled for nine o’clock.”

  “Right. I was joining them as soon as I got in from the airport.”

  “He was saying that you were expecting fireworks and I asked from whom?”

  “Gilbert,” Monty Lord replied. “I gather from Piero you already had a preview.”

  Before Moretti could respond, Monty Lord went on. “Time is money, Detective Inspector. And the marchesa has had a terrible shock. Can any of this wait?”

  “The sooner we get some sort of picture of the victim from those who knew him best — and an idea of the whereabouts of everyone on the set, the sooner we can establish motive, opportunity — and the guilty party.”

  “But surely,” said the marchesa, “this is just a random act by some madman? You know, of course, about what happened to the costumes.”

  She was interrupted by her niece who turned away from the fireplace to face Ed Moretti and Liz Falla, giving them the benefit of an alluring smile from her beautiful, heavily lipsticked mouth. “— and the attack on Gilbert Ensor. And you didn’t ask me where I slept, Inspector. But it wasn’t here.”

  The intervention of Giulia Vannoni seemed to anger Monty Lord. He turned his pale gaze in her direction and exclaimed, “Oh for Christ’s sake, if we all keep interrupting we’ll never get out of here.”

  This room reeks of animosity and anxiety, Moretti thought. But I’m not sure who mistrusts whom — or do they all dislike each other? He saw a look of distaste on the face of Gianfranco Vannoni as the American put a hand on his mother’s arm. Her niece, on the other hand, looked mildly amused. “Detective Constable Falla will take statements from each of you, separately. Is there a room close by she can use?”

  “She can use my study,” said the marchesa. She added, “The Ensors are in my private sitting room — you will, of course, be talking to them?”

  “Of course,” said Moretti. “I expected to find them in here with you.”

  Monty Lord snorted. “Donatella did not want to be in the same room as Mr. Ensor after the tasteless accusation he made out there. And the less I have to do with Gil the better — we have to meet from time to time, but I’m happier if I’m not breathing the same air as that literary lout.”

  “Were your disagreements limited to the script, Mr. Lord?”

  “We didn’t socialize, if that’s what you mean. Gilbert’s problem is that he thinks because he wrote a bestselling novel, and because we bought the movie rights, he can now tell us what to do. He can’t.”

  “But as long as you didn’t have to breathe the same air as Mr. Ensor, you were prepared to let him live?”

  “Christ, yes! I was in Rome until yesterday at Cinecittà — all kinds of people would be able to confirm that. And I flew back by private plane to be here for our meeting.”

  “Thank you, sir. Just give DC Falla the details and any names.” Moretti turned his attention again to Gianfranco Vannoni, speaking to him as before in Italian.

  “I understand, sir, that it was on your initiative that Epicure Films came to Guernsey.”

  The marchesa’s son looked startled. “No. Not that I remember. Why?”

  “I just wondered — why you were all here.”

  “Detective Inspector,” it was Monty Lord who intervened, “perhaps I could fill you in?”

  “Thank you, sir. If I could speak to you later today.” Moretti turned to his partner. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Signor Moretti,” the marchesa stood up, “my Anna will arrive soon, and we would like to take Toni back home.”

  “And home is —?”

  “Fiesole — you know it?”

  “It’s quite close to Florence, isn’t it?”

  “Si.” The marchesa nodded, and reached out for Monty Lord’s hand.

  “I regret, Marchesa, that I cannot at this stage give you any definite day or time when we would be able to release the body. There will, of course, have to be a post-mortem, which will be performed at Princess Elizabeth Hospital.”

  “Dio mio!”

  Whatever else the marchesa might have said was lost in the shoulder of the American producer’s jacket, and Moretti took advantage of her dramatic collapse to make his escape.

  As he left the room he could hear the sound of someone whistling. It was Giulia Vannoni. As she passed him she called out, “Don’t worry, Inspector. I have perm
ission to leave, and I have promised to be back.”

  She resumed her whistling as she passed him, running lightly and easily, her straight blond hair flopping heavily on her leather-clad shoulders. A long gone and, he had thought, long-forgotten love drifted back into his consciousness on the wings of her perfume. The name of both the woman and her perfume escaped him. The perfume’s name had something to do with chaos, or uproar. Something like that. The tune was more instantly recognizable: “La Donna è Mobile.”

  Perhaps there is supposed to be a message in it for me, he thought. Although Valerie would say that in his case it was the man who was fickle. One minute committed, the next running in the opposite direction. Actually, he’d been committed — if not married — for years, but that was how she saw it.

  The Ensors were waiting for him in the marchesa’s sitting room, which was also on the ground floor, near the front entrance. It was a small room compared to the others, simply furnished with English chintzes and numerous family photographs in silver frames. Sydney Tremaine sat on one of the deep window seats cut into the thick walls of the manor, and her husband lay slumped on one of the beflowered sofas. He seemed to be asleep.

  “He didn’t know, you know,” was the first thing she said to Moretti. She looked pale and fragile in a white shirt of thin Indian cotton and khaki pants. “He’s had so much trouble over script changes, and he thought it was someone’s idea of a joke.”

  At the sound of his wife’s voice, Gilbert Ensor opened his eyes and sat up. The marks left by the marchesa’s talons ran down his cheeks in parallel tracks of congealed blood.

  “The bitch. See what she did? I could bring charges —”

  “Probably not advisable in the circumstances.” Moretti’s crisp tones cut into the self-pitying whine. “But that must be your decision, naturally. Right now I would like to talk to you, Mr. Ensor, about your book and the film script for Rastrellamento.”

  “How long have you got? Where would you like me to start?” The whine had changed to a petulant snappishness.

  “Tell me, first of all, about your initial agreement with Epicure Films — what were the original changes that were agreed upon? What are the main differences between your novel and the script?”

  “You know my work?”

  “I read Rastrellamento some time ago. Refresh my memory.”

  “You think all this has something to do with Gil’s book?” asked Sydney. She was looking puzzled.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps we can rule it out. Go on, sir.”

  “Well, there are two central plot lines: one is about a British prisoner hiding out in Tuscany just after the surrender of Mussolini, and the other concerns the struggle between the various factions in Italy at the time — the fascists, the partisans, the communists, and the efforts of the local population to deal with all these warring parties, including the presence of German troops. But if you know my work, you’ll know that I am interested in more than plot lines — I am interested in exploring the interactions of human beings, their philosophical stances and their justifications for their actions, conscious and unconscious. Much of this does not translate well to the screen, and I understand that. So much of that part of the book had to go.”

  “What, do you think, attracted Monty Lord and Epicure Films to Rastrellamento?”

  “Apart from my international celebrity?” Gilbert Ensor asked the question without the slightest trace of irony or self-deprecation. “Intrigue and exotic setting and historic period — and lashings of sex and violence.”

  “I still don’t really understand why you’re so interested in all this.” Sydney Tremaine unfolded her long legs and perched on the edge of the window seat. “Don’t you want to know where we were and all that sort of thing?”

  “Another officer will take a written statement from you both, but I am trying to establish some of the circumstances around the crime — the project you were all working on, what tensions may have arisen. Do daggers play a major role in the film, for instance?”

  “Not a major role, but certainly knives were used by the resistance movement — as a silent way of killing, you understand.”

  “And is there any reason in the script for you to be in Guernsey?”

  “None at all. Now, that had a great deal to do with the bloke who’s just got a dagger in the chest. There’s a thought.”

  “Yes.” Moretti watched the shadow crossing the flawless skin over Sydney Tremaine’s cheekbones. “I gather, Mr. Ensor, that you approved the initial cuts and alterations to your book, but that there have been changes since then that have given you problems. Why? Surely this is fairly normal in the film world?”

  “The changes to the basic plot line are quite unnecessary. This isn’t Gilbert Ensor’s Rastrellamento any more — it’s more like Dante’s bloody Inferno.”

  “In what way do you mean that?”

  “The whole project’s become hell on fucking wheels is how I mean that — I was not speaking intellectually. Each day I spend in contact with the movie world I can feel my brain cells dying, my mental capacity shrinking like a weenie in cold water.”

  Moretti ignored the outburst. “Your book and the movie have political content. If I remember rightly, you are harsh in your judgments of both the peasant population — the contadini — and the local aristocracy, when writing about their politics and their loyalties. Is it possible you have opened old wounds?”

  “See, I wondered that.” Suddenly, Gilbert Ensor was quite serious. He leaned forward and offered Moretti a cigarette from a battered packet he pulled from his crumpled linen jacket.

  “Thank you.” In the interests of establishing rapport — a peace offering, Moretti told his conscience, as he accepted.

  “At first, when someone hurled that thing at me on the terrace, I thought it was some madman who had it in for celebrities. Then I calmed down and thought maybe it was an accident — some moronic kid playing about. Then, when I heard about the damage to the costumes, I thought it was a malicious attempt to scare us off the project.”

  “But it’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

  “But why Toni? If you wanted to make a point, you’d try for me again, or go for Monty, or maybe one of the actors taking political roles, wouldn’t you? Toni was Mr. Sunshine — a kind of male Pollyanna. Most of the locations had already been scouted, you know, and Monty used him to appease the marchesa. He did damn all and nobody cared, because he was so bloody cheerful and good-tempered. Got up my nose, but I like my humans to be bastards or bitches — that’s why I married Syd, isn’t it, honeybunch?”

  Sydney Tremaine slipped down off the windowsill. “I’ll be right outside if you need me, Inspector,” she said.

  “I probably won’t need to keep you today. Just be available to give a written statement some time.” As she walked from the room, Moretti had the feeling she was removing herself before she lost control.

  “I thought it was Mario Bianchi who hired Toni Albarosa, for his local contacts — at least, that’s what he told me.”

  Gilbert Ensor gave a contemptuous laugh. “He would, poor sod. Trying to hang on to the illusion he has some sort of creative control over Rastrellotitanic, as I like to call it.”

  “You think the project’s doomed?”

  “Oh, it’ll get made. But it won’t be the movie we started with, and I am seriously thinking of removing my name from the project.”

  “Have you said that to anyone?”

  “Most likely. When I’m in a blind rage or in my cups — which is most of the time lately — I say all kinds of things I don’t remember.”

  “I see. Thank you, Mr. Ensor. The office will be in touch with you some time tomorrow.”

  Gilbert Ensor got up from the sofa and crossed to the door. For all his marital raging and sniping, he was a lost soul without his wife to guide him through the maze and morass of everyday life — such as where to find the limousine that would take him home.

  “Syd?” His plaintive call reverberated
through the echoing expanses of the manor house.

  But Sydney Tremaine wasn’t there.

  "Not one of them, Guv, can think of any reason why anyone would want to kill the marchesa’s son-in-law.”

  Moretti and Liz Falla were exchanging information as they made their way across the park and up the flight of stone steps to the upper floor of the lodge where the first attack with a dagger had taken place. Liz Falla had acquired a complete list of everyone employed on Rastrellamento from the associate producer, Piero Bonini, and was compiling a record of who lived where. Not just eagle-eyed, thought Moretti, but organized. It wasn’t her fault Hanley had said “eagle-eyed” until everyone was fed up to the back teeth with hearing it.

  Most of the cast and crew lived in hotels and guest houses in St. Martin’s and St. Peter Port, with the level of luxury matching their level of importance. There were a few exceptions. All the Vannonis and Toni Albarosa were at the manor, and three of the cast were staying there also. These were the two female leads: newcomer Vittoria Salviati, who played the young love interest, Maddelena, and an established star, Adriana Ferrini, whose role as the Contessa Alessandra di Cavalli was creating the latest problems on the movie. One of the leading men, Clifford Wesley, an up-and-coming British actor, recruited from the classical stage, who was starring as the escaped British prisoner, Tom Byers, was also at the manor. The internationally known German film actor, Gunter Sachs, who was playing the commandant of the prison camp in the imaginary Tuscan village of Santa Marina, had stayed briefly, but had now transferred to the Héritage Hotel, where Betty Chesler and Eddie Christie were also billeted.

  “Did Piero Bonini have any interesting comments to make about his cast?”

  “Mostly he went on about Gilbert Ensor, who seems to be at the top of everyone’s hit list. Hit-and-miss list, I suppose I should say. Do you think someone thought Toni Albarosa was Ensor in the dark?”

  “Could be, but unlikely. What would Gilbert Ensor be doing skulking about outside the manor in the small hours?”