Overture in Venice

by Hester Rowan

  ‘Thank you. And – Zecchini and his friend?’

  ‘Ah yes.’ Guy offered me wine, which I refused, poured some for himself, tasted it, pronounced it good, enquired after iny health, hoped that I had slept well, tossed some crumbs of bread to the birds …

  ‘Stop hedging, please, Guy. I want to know the truth. Did you see Zecchini or – what was his name?’

  He straightened and looked at me without evasion. ‘Belugi. No, I didn’t see either of them. But I’m afraid your guess was right. They did follow you to Garda and Zecchini enquired after you at the hotel. Didn’t know your name, of course, but described you to the porter – tipped him handsomely too, and the wretched man admits telling him that you were there.’

  I felt suddenly cold. ‘Does Jennifer know about this?’

  ‘Well yes, in a way. The porter told her last night that a man from Venice had been enquiring for you – but fortunately he didn’t describe Zecchini. So when I rang, Jennifer assumed that I had been the enquirer. At least she doesn’t know about Zecchini and the porter told me he hadn’t seen him since last night. I’ve left this telephone number and an even bigger tip and he’s promised to call me if Zecchini reappears.’

  ‘What will you do then?’

  His face looked sombre. ‘I don’t know – I haven’t thought it out yet. But the main thing is that he didn’t follow us, so there’s no reason why he should ever find you now.’

  I left the table and wandered over to the rose-clustered balustrade that edged the terrace. Below, the formal bounds of the garden were hidden in a froth of blossom; beyond, the lake glistened turquoise on a green cushion of hills. The air was heavy with the scent of roses, loud with bees. It was a place of incomparable peace and beauty. But the knowledge that I had been followed and followed and followed again by men who were at best thieves and extortionists, at worst murderers, darkened the landscape. All I seemed able to see clearly was Alberto’s hunted, pleading face.

  I turned urgently, on the edge of panic. ‘Guy –’

  He was already beside me, a steadying hand on my arm. ‘You’re safe here,’ he said, ‘I promise you. If you want to get out, though, if you’d rather leave Italy right away, I’ll ring the airport and put you on the next flight back to England. Would you like me to do that?’

  That was exactly what part of me wanted to do – to run away from Italy and never return. But then, there was the question of independence; my return ticket to England was for a chartered aircraft, and I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I hadn’t the money to pay for a seat on a scheduled flight. And then, there was my pride. With nothing more to fear, why should I run?

  I pulled myself together. ‘No – but thank you,’ I said. ‘It was good of you to bring me here, and there’s obviously nothing to worry about in this beautiful place. I’ve never been anywhere quite so peaceful and I’ll be perfectly happy to wait here for Owen.’

  He smiled and released his grip. ‘Good. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay – I know that Caterina’s very glad to have you here. Oh look, there’s Emilio, the gardener. He’s a grouchy old man, the bane of Caterina’s life, but she couldn’t possibly manage without him.’

  ‘In the garden?’ I asked, wondering what there was to show for his work.

  ‘No, down in the boiler house. Rural life would have very little appeal for Caterina if she couldn’t enjoy the comforts of civilization, and he’s the only person who can persuade the antiquated boiler to cough up hot water. Come sta, Emilio?’

  The old man looked up, his scowl lifting fractionally, and grumbled a reply. From his gestures towards various parts of his anatomy I guessed that he was describing the state of his health in considerable detail. Guy talked to him for a few minutes and then the gardener stumped away, clutching his back, his limp a good deal more pronounced than it had been when we first noticed him. But I was too much preoccupied with something Guy had said to share his smile.

  ‘What did you say to him, Guy – apart from asking how he was, I mean?’

  ‘Oh, I just told him that I’d come for the opening of the new reservoir at Trevalle. Why?’

  ‘I wondered about the name, that’s all …’

  ‘It’s a place in the hills, four or five miles away. A couple of valleys are being flooded to form a reservoir – the biggest project that’s ever been carried out round here. I’ll take you over to see it if you’re interested.’

  I hesitated. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to see the place or not, but I was certainly interested. The name had raised an echo in my head.

  When Alberto Crespi had spoken to me in St Mark’s Square, he had repeated one word several times. I had thought it was the name of the place he had wanted me to visit.

  I couldn’t be sure, of course. So much had happened since then, and anyway it seemed unlikely that a Venetian would be concerned with anywhere outside his own territory … but I felt almost certain that the place Alberto had spoken of, had emphasized as he pleaded with me to understand his message, was Trevalle.

  Chapter Seven

  Guy was watching me. ‘Is the name significant?’ he asked, but before I could reply Caterina came from the house with his trout. He gave me a look of warning; understandably he did not want me to mention the events in Venice in her hearing.

  I tried to change the subject with a casual remark about the view, but as though Caterina had half-heard our thoughts she said: ‘I nearly forgot to ask you, Guido. Did you hear any news of Alberto Crespi while you were in Venice?’

  Guy hesitated in the act of helping himself to salad. ‘Yes – I called on Signor Crespi, but he had some bad news to tell. I’m afraid Alberto’s dead.’

  ‘Alberto? Dead?’

  ‘He was found in a canal. The police are investigating. A bit of private warfare in the underworld, they suspect – you know the kind of people Alberto was likely to mix with.’

  ‘Yes – oh, but I would never think him important enough for anyone to want to get rid of. Poor Alberto. Vincente will be sad, I know.’

  I was astonished that anyone of Caterina’s elegance – she had exchanged her gardening clothes for a cool lawn dress – whose life was divided between a Milan apartment and a lakeside villa, would even be acquainted with a down-at-heel Venetian thief like Alberto, let alone mourn his death. So astonished that my curiosity made me intervene.

  ‘Guy told me about Alberto. How did you come to know him, Caterina?’

  ‘Oh, he was born in this valley. His family lived in the village at the end of the lake. His grandfather was –’ her gesturing hand tried to pick an elusive word out of the air ‘– was what, Guido?’

  ‘Coachman,’ he supplied. ‘Coachman to Great-Grandfather who built this villa. And Alberto himself was apparently a gardener’s lad here before the war. It was still practically feudal, even then, with most of the people in the village employed on the estate. Wasn’t Alberto’s mother the cook, Caterina?’

  ‘I believe so. I know that Vincente has often spoken of his childhood here. His mother died when he was very small and his father was much away, so he was lonely. Later, of course, his father met and married an English girl who became Guido’s mother, but until she came here Vincente was looked after by Alberto’s mother as if he was her own child. And I know that as a boy Vincente worshipped Alberto, who was several years older and of course stronger and could run and swim and make a shepherd’s pipe from wood. Vincente will be sorry for his death.’

  ‘But how did he come to be mixed up with the Venetian underworld?’ I asked.

  ‘Apparently that was a side-effect of the war,’ Guy said. ‘I know it was something that distressed my father very much because he felt responsible for Alberto’s downfall.’

  ‘I was a child at the time of the war,’ Caterina said, ‘and I remember very little, but I know that many things were done that were not – conformable?’

  ‘Acceptable?’ Guy suggested, pushing aside his plate and reaching for the cheese.

  She
nodded. ‘Acceptable, in peace. Their father – my husband’s and Guy’s – was a partisan. He fought to free Italy from German occupation, and many of the men from the village fought with him. Alberto was only a youngster, but he joined them and learned to live out of his mind.’

  Guy gave her an affectionate grin. ‘On his wits, carissima.’ He turned to me to explain. ‘Apparently they were all on the run, living in caves up in the mountains, stealing, killing, destroying, doing whatever they could to harrass the German troops. Alberto wasn’t naturally brave, but he once risked his own life to save my father’s when they were on some bridge-blowing escapade. He became a local hero. But it was an unhealthy kind of training for an impressionable lad. After the war ended he simply couldn’t get the hang of living as a normal, hard-working, law-abiding citizen. He drifted about the district for a time, scrounging and pilfering and causing a lot of distress to his parents. And to my father who kept bailing him out and trying to help him go straight. Then, when his parents died, he moved to Venice.’

  ‘He had an uncle there,’ said Caterina, happily unaware that I had met Signor Crespi, ‘a jeweller. And there was also a family who had moved from the village to work in a restaurant in Venice, and they offered to find him a job. But no, Alberto could not bring himself to work for a living. Did you see any of the Bianci family, Guido?’

  ‘I met Anna. Her father has now bought the restaurant, did you know? And she is to be married next year. She enquired after you and the children.’

  ‘Ah. I knew they were doing well. Anna’s parents came up to the village on a visit last year, did I tell you? They brought Alberto with them. I think they hoped that he might want to get away from his associates in Venice. They took him to stay with relatives in Trevalle, but he would not settle … and now this. Poor Alberto.’

  Guy nodded. ‘I feel very sad about his life and his death – such a waste … Well, that was an excellent lunch, Caterina, thank you. If there’s any coffee –?’

  Maria, Caterina’s young help, appeared, red-cheeked, tongue-tied and anxious not to drop anything, to clear the table and bring fresh coffee for all of us. Guy salvaged a bread roll and broke it, idly tossing crumbs for the birds.

  ‘Well, that is quite enough about people you do not know, Clare,’ said Caterina briskly. ‘Tell us something about yourself – have you known Owen for long?’

  The Lombardi family seemed to have a penchant for asking the same awkward question. ‘Er – not really,’ I murmured. I was reluctant to admit it, even to myself, but Owen had become rather a shadowy figure.

  ‘Long enough, though, eh, Clare?’ said Guy, tongue in cheek. I gave him an unfriendly look which Caterina didn’t notice.

  ‘I shall be so pleased to see him again,’ she said. ‘I dote on Owen.’

  ‘Women always do,’ said Guy lazily. ‘He makes them feel maternal. It’s because he reminds them of their favourite teddy bear.’

  I couldn’t hold back a gurgle of appreciative delight; Guy had exactly recalled my own abiding impression of Owen. He caught my eye and grinned before turning his attention again to the birds.

  ‘Pah!’ said his sister-in-law indulgently. ‘You are only envious of Owen’s charm.’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve never aspired to be thought cuddly. Besides, why should I be envious when the delectable Isabel Lang is coming here this evening? I made quite an impression on her, I’d have you know.’

  ‘We shall see the truth of that when she comes,’ said Caterina sceptically. ‘This is a girl and her father from Brazil,’ she explained to me. ‘He once knew Guido’s father, it seems, and is anxious to visit us while they are in Europe. Did you meet them in Venice as you promised, Guido?’

  ‘Yes, we had a very pleasant lunch together. They’ll be hiring a car to come up here, and I gave them the route.’ He turned to me. ‘Dr Lang is a geologist, and he’s particularly keen to get to Trevalle before the flooding starts. Something very unusual about the structure of the rocks in one of the valleys, apparently.’

  ‘He will not have much time,’ Caterina said. ‘Only two more days and the valleys will be closed.’

  Guy shrugged. ‘I can’t imagine why he didn’t come sooner, but I suppose he knows his own subject.’

  ‘Better too late than never,’ Caterina said sagaciously.

  He smiled at her. ‘Something like that,’ he agreed, brushing crumbs from his knees.

  That reminded me. I looked at my watch. ‘May I use your telephone, Caterina? I promised to call my cousin at the hotel.’

  ‘Of course. You know how to get the number?’

  ‘Guy said he’d help me. If you’re ready, St Francis?’

  He tossed the last of the bread and stood up, scattering the birds that had congregated round him. ‘With pleasure, Daphne.’

  Caterina raised an amused eyebrow at us but returned incuriously to her coffee. Guy led the way indoors and out of earshot, and then turned to me.

  ‘What were you going to say about Trevalle?’

  ‘I think – I can’t be sure, but I think it was a name that Alberto mentioned. He repeated it several times.’

  ‘It could well be, considering his local connections. Can you remember anything else he said?’

  ‘No, I’ve tried but I simply can’t remember. I think that perhaps if I hear the words I might recall them.’

  He nodded. ‘Look, Clare,’ he said, his face grave: ‘I want to find out what Alberto’s message was, if I can. Our family owes him that. And I owe it to the people he said were in danger, whoever they are – but especially if they’re Trevalle people, because the valleys were once part of this estate. I’m going over there later this afternoon. I’d like you to come with me because I’ll be meeting people who speak no English and there’s a chance that you might hear a word you remember Alberto using. But if you’d rather stay here with Caterina, if you don’t want to be involved, I’ll quite understand.’

  My unadventurous instinct left me in no doubt that the safest, most sensible course would be to stay at the villa until Owen took me to rejoin Jennifer for the charter flight back to England. But Owen was now insubstantial, a person I hardly knew; Alberto Crespi, for all that he was dead, had become much more real to me. Already I felt guilty enough over my inability to help him before he died. Now, the knowledge of his connection with the Lombardi family and the possibility that I might be able to repay their hospitality by helping Guy discover the reason for Alberto’s anxiety, combined to decide me.

  ‘I seem to be involved already,’ I said.

  Guy warned me that the journey to Trevalle would be rough and dusty. He suggested that it would be wise to change from my dress into something more practical, and so I resurrected my pink suit from the bottom of my case; after the beating it had taken on my way out of Venice, no amount of road dust could possibly harm it.

  Guy eyed me with guilty consternation. ‘Oh lord! Did that happen when you climbed out of Signor Crespi’s window? And I liked that suit, too … I’ve been meaning to ask you, how did you get out of his courtyard? It backs directly on to a canal.’

  ‘So I discovered. But I waved a banknote at a passing boatman and said: “Rialto, per favore,” and it worked like a charm.’

  ‘You’re a resourceful girl, aren’t you? But I am sorry about the suit – you must send me the cleaner’s bill.’

  ‘I certainly shall if the going gets any rougher – great heavens, is this what we’re travelling in?’

  He gave an affectionate pat to the snub nose of a tough open vehicle that looked rather like a toy Land-Rover. ‘This is the Haflinger. It’s an Austrian job, built for mountain roads. It’s noisy and slow and not very comfortable, but ideal for where we’re going.’

  Trevalle lay to the north of the villa in the rocky foothills of the Dolomites. The direct route was a narrow unsurfaced track that scrambled over the intervening hills among scrub and spruce, giving us sudden giddy views of green pastoral valleys far below our road, and Alpine peaks risin
g beyond.

  Only the grass-cutter clattering of the two-cylinder engine spoiled the remote peace of the hills. I was glad when Guy stopped behind a hilltop shoulder of rock and cut the engine; after the noise and rush of movement, sun and silence seemed to enfold us. I breathed deeply, welcoming the fresh resinous air to my lungs, hearing the wind in the tops of the pines, the cry of a soaring bird, the insistent chittering of cicadas in the warm grass.

  But there was something else, too: a distant, unlikely hum, as of machinery.

  ‘What on earth is that, up there?’ I asked.

  ‘What we’ve come to see,’ he said, leading me round the rock and on to a natural platform that overlooked the valley beyond. ‘There’s Trevalle.’

  In this high, lonely place I had expected to see another of the quiet green Alpine valleys opening below us. Instead, what I saw was a desert valley, a cratered moonscape of rocks and bare earth on which crawled mechanical diggers and dumpers looking, from our height, like Matchbox toys. At the lower end of the valley, minute men were made visible by the brilliant yellow blobs of their safety helmets as they moved on and around a great curved concrete retaining wall that closed the space between two rocky hills.

  I was shocked by what seemed to me desecration. But Guy, standing by my side and surveying the work through binoculars, looked positively pleased.

  ‘This is what’s been needed for a long time,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘It will make all the difference in the world to the town. Look, there it is in the lower valley beyond the dam.’

  I could see, in the wider valley that lay below the retaining wall, a modest gathering of shallow red-tiled roofs with a few modern buildings on its outskirts. ‘Such a huge reservoir for so small a town?’ I asked in horrified disbelief.

  He laughed. ‘A bit large for Trevalle, I agree. No, the water is chiefly for the benefit of Trento, the nearest city. That’s where the main road from the town goes. But the advantage to Trevalle itself, and to the other towns further down the valley is that there’ll be no more of the violent floods that have always threatened them. There was terrible loss of life and destruction of property in the town only five years ago. A river runs right through the valleys, dry in summer but a torrent every spring. Look, you can see its course still, even though this middle valley has been churned up by the diggers. You’ll see it better in the upper valley when we go up there.’