A Trick of the Eye

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  He came back to the table with an open bottle of wine, sat down, and poured us each a glass.

  “To mischief!” he said, raising his glass.

  I raised my glass in turn, he clicked it, we both drank. The wine tasted warm and soothing and, on an empty stomach, went straight to my head.

  “How’s the wine? A bit acid, no?”

  “No, it’s fine, thank you.”

  “Wine is usually mediocre in this part of the world. They don’t know how to order it because they don’t like to drink it. Beer, yes. Wine, no. So . . . where is Mr. Pitt?”

  “Well, his dog died and he was just too upset to come.”

  “How sad,” he said.

  “Yes, it’s very sad. Mr. Spencer—that was the name of his dog—Mr. Spencer was like a child to him. He was shattered.”

  “Oh, I understand that well. My wife loved animals more than she loved people. She trusted them like she could never trust a human being. I think she was right.”

  His manner was direct and disarming.

  “When you say your wife,” I began, hesitating slightly, “you mean Cassandra?”

  “Sandy, yes.”

  “You call her Sandy? Her mother calls her Cassa,” I said.

  “She is Sandy to me,” he said firmly, keeping his eyes fixed on me. “Forgive me if I am staring at you, but you are very like her.”

  “Am I?” I shifted in my chair, nervously sipping my wine.

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  He looked genuinely surprised.

  “I would not have put you at more than thirty-two or -three. Honestly.”

  “Whenever people say ‘honestly,’ I know they’re lying,” I said.

  “Yes, but you like men who lie, no?” he teased. “And anyway, I am not lying.”

  I couldn’t help smiling.

  “So, you are working for Frances,” he continued, pouring both of us some more wine.

  “Yes, I was hired to trompe l’oeil the ballroom.”

  “Ah, the famous ballroom,” he said with contempt. “Trompe l’oeil, how appropriate. And what design have you chosen?”

  “Well, it was built, as you know, for your wife’s coming-out party, so I’ve just tried to re-create the party, with her at the center.”

  He put down his glass and lowered his eyes, remaining silent for a long moment. When he looked at me again his face had grown sad and serious.

  “Why did you come to see me?”

  “I came about Cassandra.”

  “What about her?”

  I continued on in a slow, measured voice.

  “Mrs. Griffin says that you know who killed her.” I paused. He said nothing. “I think Mrs. Griffin knows, but she won’t tell me. I want to find out.”

  “Why?”

  I thought for a moment. “I’m not sure exactly. But it’s not just curiosity,” I assured him. “For some reason, I feel a kind of bond with her.”

  “With Sandy or with Frances?”

  “With Cassandra. I can’t explain it. I feel as if I owe it to her.”

  “How did you find me?” he said.

  “I didn’t. Harry Pitt did. He tracked you down through your credit cards. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Oh yes, I suppose he did mention something about that . . . So Frances tells you that I know the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am surprised she didn’t tell you that I did it,” he said, smirking.

  “What?”

  “We are not fond of each other, Frances and I. I am sure you understand that. When the crime happened, reporters, journalists, writers—they followed me around the world always asking the same things: Did you kill your wife? Was it a conspiracy? And Frances did nothing, nothing at all to dissuade them from the thought that I had done it. Finally, it got to be too much. I said to them, let me ask you something: What do you expect me to say to you? Hmmm? Yes, I murdered my wife, and because you ask me, I will tell you. ‘E troppo,’ you know? Too much.” He shook his head and drained his glass.

  Of all the reactions I could have gotten from Roberto Madi, this was the most unexpected and ingenuous. He seemed completely open about the subject—tired of it, in fact. His attitude made me wonder what on earth I had expected him to say or do. Suddenly, I was a hunter without any weapons.

  “So, Frances sent you to me to sort everything out.”

  “Oh no, she doesn’t know I’m here.”

  He nodded as if he were skeptical.

  “You are a brave girl to come out here all alone.”

  “Well, I thought I was coming with Harry, but—”

  “The dog,” he interrupted.

  “Yes.”

  “I will tell you something. I am beyond caring what anyone thinks anymore. I loved Sandy very much. She was my life. So let them think what they want.”

  “Mr. Madi—”

  “Bob, please,” he corrected me.

  “Bob,” I said, “do you know who did it?”

  He stared at me intently. “Don’t you think if I had done it, they would have prosecuted me until I was dead? Believe me, poor people, unlike some others in this world, cannot get away with murder.”

  “Who can?”

  He shrugged. “Ah, well—”

  “You do know who did it, don’t you?”

  He leaned in, folding his hands together.

  “And if I did know, why would I tell you? My dear, what has possessed you to come here like this? Why do you take such an interest in this old, old story? I am sure that a beautiful woman like you has much better things to do.”

  I wasn’t used to being referred to as “a beautiful woman” and I was slightly taken aback. I was sure it was just his polished manner—a trick of the gigolo trade—but he nevertheless made me feel as if he really meant it, and I enjoyed that.

  “Won’t you at least tell me about her? How you met? What she was like?”

  “I am sorry,” he said with mock arrogance, “I never give interviews on an empty stomach!” Then he smiled broadly. “Let me take you to dinner.”

  “Why not?” I said, feeling flattered. “What shall we order?”

  “Christ, not here!” he cried. “The food here is atrocious. We’ll drive over to Snow Lady. It’s only a few miles from here. There is a very good Italian restaurant there, run by friends of mine. It’s open late. We’ll have some pasta and a little more wine and I will tell you my life story. And then you will tell me yours. Come—I am hungry.”

  He got up from the table and held out his hand to me. I nodded and let him help me up from my chair. He guided me out of the bar, back through the lobby. We walked outside into the November night. I followed him to a small lot behind the hotel where his jeep was parked. He opened the door for me and I got in. He was very courtly, very correct, yet I kept waiting for some dark aspect of his character to reveal itself.

  As Madi drove, he made polite conversation.

  “Have you ever been to Snow Lady?” he said.

  “No, this is the first time I’ve ever been out west.”

  “It always amazes me how Americans do not travel in their own country,” he said. “It’s the most beautiful country in the world, and yet they always want to go to Europe before they explore their own land.”

  “I guess you’re right. I’ve been abroad five times, and I’ve never been out here. I think I was always a little afraid of the West. I must say, I think I was wrong.”

  We drove in silence for a time. The road was dark. I stared out the window at the blackness on either side. We seemed to be taking the back routes.

  “Where are you from?” I said.

  “Italy.”

  “Where in Italy?”

  “Milano. Do you know it?”

 
“I’ve never been to Milan, but I love Italy. God, I adore it, especially the Veneto. I don’t understand why on earth you’d ever want to live here if you were born there. I’d stay in Italy for the food alone, never mind the art.”

  “Europe is too old and decadent,” he sighed.

  “America’s quite decadent these days, don’t you think?”

  “Oh yes, but America’s decadence is wonderfully naive, like the decadence of youth. In Europe, we are so old and so cynical. We’ve seen too much. Our decadence has lost its energy. We have completely surrendered to it, whereas you Americans are still capable of struggling against it. You want to be pure, whereas Europeans simply accept corruption as a fact of life. It’s such a bore in Europe because there is no real social theater like there is here.”

  “Is that why you came to America—for the social theater?” I said facetiously.

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “I married Sandy.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “In St. Moritz.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  He turned to look at me for a second.

  “How much are you pretending not to know?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s quite well known, the story of how I met her,” he said. “Lowly ski instructor meets great heiress. You do not know it?”

  “Just parts of it,” I replied. “Not the details.”

  “You really are a brave girl to come all this way not knowing anything about me.”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged.

  “Brave and foolish.”

  I suddenly felt very foolish—and vulnerable. There I was, out in the middle of nowhere, speeding along dark roads with a person I had once suspected of murder.

  “I like that,” he went on. “It is so typically American. You dive into the water without looking to see if there are any rocks.”

  “Some of us dive even though we do see the rocks,” I said.

  He smiled at me as he was driving, putting me more at ease.

  “Who is this Mr. Pitt who was supposed to come with you?”

  “He’s a friend of mine. An antique dealer.”

  “Why is he interested in this case?”

  “Because of me, primarily. But also because he knew of it. He met Mrs. Griffin years ago.”

  “So you persuaded him to come out here with you?”

  “Actually, it was more the other way around. He persuaded me. He thought a little adventure would be good for me. He was the one who talked me into working for her in the first place.”

  “How very considerate of him,” Madi said, sounding slightly sardonic.

  “It’s true, I was becoming too isolated. Working for Mrs. Griffin has been an amazing experience. But that’s enough about me. I want to know how you met Cassandra.”

  Madi didn’t answer until a few moments later when we turned onto the main highway.

  “I grew up in poverty,” he said, almost as if he were talking to himself. “I thought poverty was the worst thing in the world. Then I met Sandy, so beautiful, so sweet, so rich . . . But I never met another human being as tragic as she.”

  “In what way?” I said, moved by his evident feeling.

  “In every way you can imagine.” He shook his head. “She was like a wounded bird. Every night she had terrible dreams. She would wake up screaming and I would hold her until she fell back to sleep. We understood each other’s pain.”

  “You think love is based on pain?” I asked him.

  “The greatest love, perhaps, yes. But not all love is great. There are other kinds of love, much more comfortable, which are based on other things. Unfortunately, they are not the ones that interest me.”

  I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His face was weaker in profile, less handsome.

  “Sandy and I came out here for our honeymoon. She is the one who introduced me to the West. She hated the East. She hated anything that was cluttered or constricting.”

  “She must have loathed The Haven,” I said, recalling the stifling grandeur of that great house.

  “The Prison. That is what she called it.”

  “Why did you come back east to live?”

  “We did not. We lived out here. We built a house together. I live there now.”

  I was rather surprised to hear this as I’d always assumed Cassandra had lived in New York.

  “So you were actually living out west when—?”

  “Ecco!” he said interrupting, “The great Snow Lady.”

  The lights of the resort town shone up ahead.

  “You must be hungry,” he said.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. I haven’t eaten all day.”

  “Good. I enjoy seeing women eat.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I looked at him askance.

  “You worry too much,” he grinned. He leaned in close so that when he spoke, I could feel his breath on my cheek. He patted my hand.

  “You’re a very serious girl, you know that? Very, very serious.”

  I didn’t pull away. His hand felt warm on my skin. I understood how Cassandra would have been attracted to him. I was beginning to be attracted to him myself.

  Chapter 15

  We drove into Snow Lady, a resort wrapped around the base of a mountain of the same name. Madi played guide as we toured the twinkling town, driving around prefabricated chalets and quaint streets that were too well thought out. There were carved wooden signs for everything from ski lifts to rest rooms to restaurants. The town looked as if it had been assembled all at once from some mammoth kit—the full-blown fantasy of an inferior architect, stocked with gingerbread buildings which were a combination of Austria and Disneyland. Lack of age and history made Snow Lady a bland, uninteresting place meant only for skiing, shopping, sleeping, and eating. Without question I preferred the comparative seediness of Broken Ridge, and apparently, so did Madi.

  In a mock guide’s patter, he pointed out various “uninteresting points of interest,” as he called them, and related the history of the place, which was built by a group of developers in the mid 1960s who went broke just before America resumed its love affair with the West in the early 1970s. Then speculators moved in and made a killing.

  “Now it is impossible to buy a place here for less than a half million dollars,” he said. “I never come here except to eat. Everything is too luxurious and too boring.”

  Madi parked the jeep and we walked to Roffredo’s, a tiny Italian restaurant tucked behind some ski shops at the base of Snow Lady Mountain. He was greeted enthusiastically by the proprietor, and we were seated at a corner table with a dramatic view of the mountain. Lights sparkled across the slope where a motionless ski lift hung, a drooping string of black stones.

  We settled in. Madi ordered a bottle of Chianti and the pasta special for both of us. I was eager to learn more about his relationship with Cassandra, but I was also aware of a connection forming between the two of us. Once or twice I caught him staring at me with the same intense curiosity I thought I’d detected in Mrs. Griffin the first time I met her.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” I said.

  “You remind me so much of Sandy,” he said simply.

  “That’s what Mrs. Griffin said.”

  “I’m not surprised. You could be sisters.”

  “How old would she be now? Thirty-nine, forty?”

  “Forty, just turning forty-one. Her birthday is in December. And you are thirty-nine you said.”

  “Thirty-nine, just turning a hundred.”

  He laughed.

  “When I asked you that before, you answered me immediately. Most women are not so candid about their age.”

  “Why be coy about a fact?” I asked.

 
“Because facts are generally irrelevant, so why not?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A fact is merely an event: it happened, it didn’t happen. It is the perception of an event which is more important than the event itself. If you look and feel much younger than your age, the fact of your age is meaningless.”

  “Did you ever kiss the Blarney Stone?” I inquried.

  He laughed again. We both did.

  “So, as you say: cut the bullshit, right?” he said.

  “Right.”

  “I like you, Faith.” There was a new sincerity in his voice. “I really do like you. It’s rare for me to like a woman. I love them, I hate them, but I rarely like them.”

  “You were going to tell me how you met Cassandra?”

  He leaned back, finished his glass of wine, and poured himself another.

  “You must understand,” he began with a sigh, “Sandy is my life, my obsession.”

  “Was.”

  “Was. Is. Same thing.”

  “Tell me again where you met her?”

  “St. Moritz.”

  “You were introduced to her?”

  “She was on a ski trip. I was her guide. I came round to pick her up at her hotel. When I asked her what sort of program she wanted to follow, she said, ‘I want to follow you.’ ” He smiled wistfully, seeming lost for a moment in the recollection.

  “How old was she?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Did you have any idea who she was when you met her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Had you ever heard of Holt Griffin?”

  “Non! Certo non!” he cried.

  “When did you find out who she was?”

  “When it was too late. The great Holt Griffin,” he said bitterly, shaking his head. “What a monster.”

  “In what way?”

  Madi lit a cigarette and polished off still another glass of wine.

  “In what way?” he repeated. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Oh, but I do,” I said emphatically.

  A puff of smoke curled into his nostrils. His eyes grew cold and distant. He bit his lip.

  “What, exactly, do you know of him?” Madi said.

  “Not much really. Except that he was very grand and rich, from an old family. Supposedly very elegant. Possibly bisexual—at least that’s what Harry Pitt told me. Now that I think about it, there isn’t one picture of him in the house. That’s odd, isn’t it? I have seen photographs in newspaper clippings, but I don’t have a very clear impression of him.”