by Jill Downie
The little restaurant was beginning to fill up, and the proprietress smiled apologetically. “I must go back to the kitchen, Signor. And don’t forget your jacket.”
“I’m very grateful for your time.” Moretti got up.
“Oh —” the proprietress stopped and turned back to him. “You mentioned a housekeeper?”
“Yes. I wondered if they’d left anyone behind as a caretaker.”
“Funny you should say ‘caretaker.’” The woman laughed. “That’s what she did, once the truth about the daughter got out, and her lover was killed. My mother said Sylvia Vannoni was made a prisoner in her own home, never leaving her room. And the person who took care of her was the housekeeper. Scarpa, I think, was her family name — they’re still around, run a souvenir store on the Corso in Grosseto. In these parts they called the housekeeper ‘the jailer.’ Only one day the prisoner escaped, and killed herself in the church where her lover and her friend were betrayed, and died.”
The marchesa, the German commandant, the priest, the housekeeper.
Moretti saw again in his mind’s eye the mutilated costumes in the lodge at the Manoir Ste. Madeleine, stabbed through the heart.
September 21st
The questura in Grosseto’s Piazza Roselli was an imposing structure, the front facade curving gently around a large pool with a fountain in the centre. Moretti parked the Alfa Romeo in the forecourt and went into the building. About an hour later he came out again, little wiser than when he went in. There were no officers left from the years when Emilio Ruggero started his career in the carabinieri before being posted elsewhere, and many of the present police force came from other areas. They had little or no knowledge of local conditions around Grosseto, particularly of events that occurred over fifty years ago.
But one thing was certain. Without exception, every officer he spoke to confirmed that a crime could easily be covered up in the circumstances that prevailed at the time. One young officer who was a history buff was happy to talk to him about the events of the time.
“My grandfather was in the carabinieri during the war. He refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Republican government after Mussolini’s downfall, fled to the woods, and joined the partisans. But his brother didn’t. My grandfather said that, in those last years of the war, all hell broke loose. You had men wandering the countryside, many claiming to be other than they were — prisoners of war who were not prisoners of war, but could have been many things, like Austrian deserters from the German Army, or spies for the fascisti. You had communist partisans and anti-communist partisans, who hated each other’s guts. You had corpses alongside the roads and bodies buried in the woods. Easiest thing in the world, to cover up a murder. Death was everywhere.”
Death was everywhere. No point then, thought Moretti, in spending hours unravelling red tape so he can go through old records of ancient crimes. Because there would have been no crime reported; no one would have recorded the execution by the partisans of a fascist sympathiser and a prisoner of war who got in their way. And Sylvia Vannoni had taken her own life.
Or had she? Was her death the reason the principal family in the area had pulled up centuries-old roots and moved their lives so far away? Among all the question marks in the case, one thing was certain: the killer knew, or had uncovered, a great deal about what had happened in San Jacopo.
By the time Moretti left the questura it was late afternoon, and the storm had cleared the air, leaving behind the promise of a beautiful sunset. He decided to go back along the Corso and see if he could find the souvenir shop run by the Scarpa family. Perhaps he could pick up a small token of appreciation for DC Falla, he thought, though heaven knew what her tastes were.
It didn’t take too long to find the store. It turned out to be one of the oldest established in the area, and a generous donation to a local panhandler gave him the answer.
“Scarpa? Souvenirs? Just ahead of you, Signor. Thieves, all of them. Genuine antiques, fresh from their factory in Milan. Take my advice, don’t waste your money, Signor. Grazie mille!”
The mendicant’s judgment was a bit harsh. The boutique was selling copies of Etruscan pottery and artifacts, some of them quite well done, none of them pretending to be other than they were. The owner was a man in his forties, long-haired, in jeans, with an earring, and a tattoo of a rose on his bicep. He acknowledged Moretti’s presence with a nod, and went on reading his book. Moretti noticed that it was a war story of some kind, with a picture of war planes on the cover. Picking up a small statue of a cat, he went over to the counter.
“Local history, is that? They tell me there were air raids on Grosseto during the war.”
The shop owner looked up from his book reluctantly. “Not local, but it’s a good one. Yes, Grosseto was bombed. I wasn’t around, of course, but it’s a story my grandparents never tire of telling — you know, like most of that generation who lived through it.”
Moretti laughed. “I know. As a matter of fact, a woman out in the country just north of here was bending my ear about some local drama that happened during the war — sounded highly unlikely to me. About a family called Vannoni, and a daughter called Sylvia who killed herself, because she was in love with a British prisoner of war they were hiding. Said she was kept a prisoner by the housekeeper. They called her the jailer, she said, around here. Are you from Grosseto yourself?”
The shop owner was now looking more interested. He put his book down on the counter and said, “Yes, I’m local, and the story’s true, as far as I know. The woman she called the jailer was a distant cousin of my father’s or my grandfather’s, I don’t remember which. Luisa Scarpa. She was a midwife, which is how she got involved, or so it was always told in my family.”
“Midwife?” Moretti felt as if he were frozen to the floor.
“Yes, didn’t she tell you that part? Mind you, nobody talks about it much from that generation, because there’s no doubt someone got away with murder.”
“There was a baby? The baby was murdered?”
“I don’t know whether it lived or died, or even what sex it was. Two guys were murdered, I think — a wartime thing. Traitors, I gather.”
“I’m amazed the woman I spoke to didn’t tell me about the baby.”
“I’m not. There’s people like my grandparents who want everyone to know what they went through in the war, and people like Luisa Scarpa who’d just as soon everyone forgot. I think it was some sort of deathbed confession, and whoever was told passed it on to my mother. Compared to some of the stuff that happened around here, it was nothing special.”
“I suppose so.”
Moretti paid for the cat and left the shop. He didn’t stop for a drink, because he no longer felt thirsty. Instead he hurried back to the hotel and up to his room. There he put in a call to DC Falla’s home number, leaving a message on the answer-phone as arranged. He then ordered a drink and something to eat from room service, and waited.
About an hour later, after he had finished his meal, the phone rang. It was Liz Falla.
“Am I ever glad to hear from you, Guv. There’s a lot to tell you. How’s it going?”
“Better than I could have hoped. You go ahead, Falla.”
“First of all, the son has done a bunk.”
“Gianfranco?”
“That’s the one — but don’t worry, Guv, because we know where he is — he’s in the nick. He’s in Florence, being held on morality charges. He was picked up in a sweep in the — hang on a tick while I check this — Sant’Ambrogio area. Using the services of underaged prostitutes.”
“Christ. So he did a bunk because he is a pervert, and not because he is a murderer, maybe.”
“Maybe — but he wants to do some sort of deal, which is how we know where he is. Says he knows something. The police in Florence got in touch with us, and I told them you’re on your way.” Liz Falla gave him the address of the questura where Gianfranco Vannoni was being held, and there was a chuckle on the other end of the ph
one. “They’ll be amazed at how quickly, won’t they?”
“I’ll head back there now — it’ll be quieter driving at night. Anything else?”
“Yes, PC Brouard got lucky with his Internet search, and he’s found where the daggers were made. Not the Hitler Youth one, but the others.”
“Fantastic! Where?”
“Pistoia, believe it or not.”
“Really?” said Moretti, “Give me the details.”
“I’ll give you a shortened version of PC Brouard’s saga, he’s that full of himself. Seems there are all types of arts and crafts going on in Pistoia and he found a small forge where they’re still making all kinds of artifacts. Of course, they didn’t speak English, but we managed to make ourselves understood. He asked them if they’d ever made daggers that matched the description he gave them and they said yes.”
“Then they must know who ordered them?”
“It was a Signor Baza, and he mailed them a cash advance.”
“How many, and where did they send them?”
“Four. And they didn’t send them, Guv. Someone picked them up.”
“Signor Baza?”
“No. It was a woman. They never got her name, but she paid the balance, and they described her.” Liz Falla paused.
“Well, go on.”
“All they could remember was that she was thin and red-headed.”
“Oh God,” said Moretti. “Did they say whether she had an American accent?”
“I asked him to ask that, and they couldn’t remember — she didn’t say too much. Don’t worry, Guv, Mrs. Ensor’s not going anywhere. I told her there’d been a threat made against her, sent to the station. But I think what’s working best is what I told her about you. That you’re for the high jump if there’s a cock-up.”
“That just about sums it up, Falla. Now let me give you my news, which is for your ears only, by the way.”
She listened in silence and then she said, “Oh, Guv, that poor woman and that poor little baby. It’s just terrible. To kill those two men is bad enough. But to kill a baby.”
“Oh no,” said Moretti. “I don’t think so. I don’t think that baby died. I think, Falla, he or she is very much alive.”
Gianfranco Vannoni looked a mess. He was wearing the clothes in which he had been arrested, and his pale wool jacket and pants had not responded well to being slept in. He also had a black eye and a fat lip.
As Moretti looked over the charge sheet, he saw that the injuries were not as a result of police brutality, but had been inflicted by the thirteen-year-old in the car with him, who had objected to what the report described as “certain services required of her by Signor Vannoni,” and had fought him off. It was her noisy resistance that had attracted the attention of the arresting officers and, from the report on the victim, it was likely the disagreement had been over the financial arrangements. The victim was undoubtedly one sad, street-smart little girl who had long ago lost not only her innocence, but the luxury of objecting to any demand made by men like Gianfranco Vannoni.
“Well,” said Moretti, looking up from the report. “This is a sorry state of affairs, Signor Vannoni. I understand your father has refused to put up bail. What about your mother, the marchesa?”
“My father is a bastard, and my mother has little spare cash. My father makes sure of that.” Gianfranco Vannoni winced as he spoke — clearly his split lip was painful. Moretti thought of the neglected behind-the-scenes areas of the Manoir Ste. Madeleine.
“You wanted to talk to me?”
“Yes. I would like to spare my mother and sister the pain of seeing this — stupid indiscretion of mine reported in the papers. You look like a man of the world, Inspector — I’m sure you understand how a man might want a little excitement from time to time?” Risking his split lip, Gianfranco Vannoni smiled conspiratorially.
“If a little excitement means having paid sex in a car with a child, Signor, then no, I don’t understand. Let’s cut the bullshit and get to the point. It does you no credit that it has taken fear of exposure to make you divulge information possibly relevant to two murders.”
“But I didn’t know it was, until my mother told me you were questioning people about the other house. Then I did some thinking, and realized what might be going on.”
“Which was —?”
Gianfranco Vannoni removed a large white silk handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his damp forehead. “What reassurances do I have that we can forget the — matter in hand?”
“None. But we can add the charge of obstruction to the list, if you like. Best you talk to me.”
The story Gianfranco Vannoni told was, in the beginning, essentially the story Moretti had heard twice already that day. What was interesting about Gianfranco’s version was where his sympathies lay: unequivocally, uncritically, with his family. Never once in the telling was there the slightest suggestion that anyone had done anything wrong.
Except Sylvia Vannoni. In fact, most of the account concerned the reputation of the Vannonis in San Jacopo: how beloved they were, how respected — and how the selfishness of the woman who had been his aunt had changed everyone’s lives. Moretti thought it was a particularly unpleasant example of how subjective both history and fact really arei. And what added to the unpleasantness was the irony of this unprincipled decadent talking about honour and duty on the heels of his own unsavoury conduct. Impatient with the ongoing moral rhetoric, Moretti attempted to speed things up.
“So, you feel that someone is taking revenge on your family for the indiscretion of your aunt and her subsequent suicide? You have told me she, to use your words, ‘behaved improperly.’ Let’s be more specific: she had an affair and became pregnant.”
“That is correct.” It was startling to watch just how difficult it was for Gianfranco Vannoni to say even that much. He flushed, and his pricey calf brogues from which the shoelaces had been removed, shuffled loosely on the floor.
“You speak of the goodness of your family in San Jacopo during the war. They hid a British prisoner of war, you tell me.”
“Yes! At great risk to themselves.”
“And he was the father, I presume.”
“Oh, no.”
“No?” Moretti sat up. It had been a long night, and he had been drifting into a semi-somnolent state, since the story was now so anticlimactic.
“No. They used him as cover. They met when my aunt Sylvia went out to take him food, and she lied about going to church as well. Said she was going to mass and confession, when she was meeting her lover.”
“Let’s back up a little. They? If not the POW, then —?”
But Moretti knew, even before Gianfranco Vannoni gave him the answer.
“Some son of a bitch from Slovenia, hired as a schoolteacher when all the real men were fighting for their country. A coward and a lecher. He was her lover.”
“The schoolteacher,” Moretti repeated.
“Him. And now Mario is trying to add a schoolteacher of some ethnic persuasion or other to the cast of Rastrellamento. I have never seen my mother so angry. You’ve seen my mother in action, so you’ll know just what a stink she’s been raising. That’s why I had to get away — she leans on me, you know, and I just had to escape for a while. But it makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“But your mother is not a Vannoni.”
“That has nothing to do with anything. When she married the Marchese Vannoni she became the keeper of the family honour, who knew all the secrets. She was a Vitali. Her family owned the jeweller’s stores of the same name.”
So the marchesa’s family were in trade, albeit the luxury trade. The Vitalis owned one of the boutiques, Moretti knew, on the Ponte Vecchio, and he’d seen others in Rome and Milan.
Gianfranco Vannoni kept talking. “When the family moved away from San Jacopo, they settled at first in Florence. The marriage between my father and my mother was, to all intents and purposes, an arranged marriage, combining property, wealth, and name. We children
in the family were told about Sylvia, and sworn to secrecy.”
“Why tell you? Why not let it rest?” Moretti asked.
“Because vicious and inaccurate lies are still being told about San Jacopo, and the family thought it best we hear the truth.”
“The truth,” Moretti repeated. “I assume this is why your mother is in Guernsey. To escape what you call vicious lies.”
“Yes, partly. About ten years ago, there was someone — we never knew who — asking questions in the region, stirring things up again. Sylvia may be dead, but the damage goes on. I have begged my mother to break the silence and put an end to her exile, but she won’t hear of it. She says she only married my father for his name, and he married her for her family’s money, and she’s damned if she’s going to end up without the one thing she wanted: a title with an unblemished reputation. My mother’s social life was ruined by the stories, and it helped bring about the end of my parents’ marriage. Can you blame her for hating my father for what his dead aunt has done to her life?”
Moretti did not respond. Bracing little homilies about the difference between good and evil, truth and lies, would have no impact on Gianfranco Vannoni, and really didn’t matter, as far as the case was concerned. “So, your great-aunt had an illicit relationship with a Slovene schoolteacher in San Jacopo, and they used a British prisoner of war as a go-between, or as cover. The Slovene had pro-fascist sympathies, and was shot by the partisans, along with the Briton. Later, Sylvia killed herself. Is that substantially correct?”
“Yes,” Gianfranco Vannoni agreed. “Could I have a cigarette, by any chance?”
As Moretti took out his packet of cigarettes it occurred to him he hadn’t smoked in over twenty-four hours. Across the table, some of the swagger returned to Gianfranco. He drew deeply on the cigarette and attempted to straighten his bedraggled jacket.
“So, Detective Inspector, what is happening about my present situation?”
“If the girl does not press charges — and it is highly unlikely she will — you will be released — but that is only because you are a material witness in a murder investigation, and should return immediately to Guernsey. That is what I have told the arresting officer, and also that I will be leaving with you.” As Moretti looked at the battered face of Gianfranco Vannoni across the table, it struck him that this debauched piece of pond life was providing him with an alibi for his own Italian adventure.
