Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (88 page)

Her face brightened. “I love it! It is American,
si?
”

“Very American. I was saving it for myself, but I thought, well, there’s someone else who might like it. You, Eleanora. And so now it’s yours.”

She put a lotus-like hand on my arm. “We are friends, no?”

“Yes, we’re friends.”

I gathered her into my arms. Her warm, pliant body fit nicely there. Her lashes swept my cheek. When I released her, she plucked a flower from the grass, held it under my chin, said something I myself had said as a child.

“Do you like butter, signorina?”

“Yes, very much.”

“I know, I know! Because there …” She held a finger under my chin … “it is yellow. So it means, signorina, that you like butter.”

“In my country,” I said, “if we find a four leaf clover it means good luck.” I turned over on my stomach, parting the blades of grass.

She laughed delightedly. “Here too it is so,” she cried. “
Ecco
, signorina … we hunt for it, no? Maybe you find one, maybe me. Then we have the good, good fortune. Oh, I hope so, signorina, I hope so …”

• • •

I called Peter Fox when I went inside. He wasn’t at his hotel and so I left a message. He phoned me back shortly before three. “I thought you might like to know that I learned a few things today,” I said, and told him about the rusty nail on the ladder, and that I had gashed my arm on it. And I described Elizabeth’s white face.

“Oh?” he said, and fell silent.

“What do you think?”

“The point is, Barbara, what do
you
think?”

“I don’t know. I’m fond of Elizabeth. But of course she was the sole inheritor of my aunt’s estate, aside from a few small bequests. And she’s blooming, I will say that. Oh, but that makes me feel like a traitor! Forget what I said.”

“Aside from the blood on the handkerchief, do you have any reason for suspecting Mrs. Wadley?”

I surprised myself. “Suppose I did,” I said. “I’ve come to the conclusion that my aunt was not the most wonderful of persons. Apparently she was a miser, holding the reins in a tight hand, and Elizabeth is eating as if she never had a square meal in her life. She seems happy as a lark. Could she have jostled that ladder? I find myself not unsympathetic. After all, the late Contessa was almost eighty.”

“Well,” he said mildly, “you seem to have a criminal bent. Would
you
have jostled that ladder if you’d been under the thumb of an imperious woman?”

“She was imperious?” I asked curiously. I had come to that conclusion myself, but was wondering why Peter had used the word.

“She was imperious,” he said firmly. “I’ve talked to shopkeepers, tradespeople, bank tellers. Take my word for it, she was a first class bitch. Oh, I’m sorry. She was your flesh and blood, wasn’t she?”

“Only on my mother’s side,” I said foolishly, and laughed. “Heavens, Peter, she was very far removed. You’re not hurting my feelings.”

“It would be the last thing I’d want to do,” he said. “But Barbara, you’ve just told me something that might have a bearing on all this. It’s given me an idea. Maybe we can go farther afield than Mrs. Wadley. I’ve just thought of something.”

“What?”

“The ladder,” he said.

“Yes, all right, the ladder … what
about
the ladder?”

“Did it ever occur to you that — ”

Suddenly I knew that someone had come into the room. It was just a slight sound, but I knew at once that I was no longer alone. I said quickly, “I must go now. I’ll talk to you again.”

I hung up quickly.

And looking over my shoulder saw Elizabeth Wadley standing in the doorway. She had a peculiar look on her face. “To whom were you talking?” she asked.

“Just a friend of mine …”

“Was it that American?”

I tried to dissemble, but was struck by her expression. It wasn’t accusing, nor was it angry … or displeased. Her face was simply quiet, speculative.

“Yes,” I said. “I was talking to Mr. Fox.”

“I was almost sure of it,” she responded. “All right, Barbara, let’s go outside. I think you and I had better have a long talk.”

I followed her out to the garden. We sat down, under the trees, and she lit an unaccustomed cigarette. “First of all,” she said quietly, “I overheard your entire conversation just now. Everything you said to Mr. Fox. And I know he’s not just an ordinary tourist. I’m not senile, not by a long shot. I know what was in your mind this morning, when you hurt your arm. You gave me
such
a look!”

She puffed on her cigarette without inhaling and waved away what I had started to say. “No,” she said. “You don’t have to speak. You think I gave the bloody ladder a bit of a push, don’t you? Well, you’re wrong. I had my hand on it, yes. I’ll tell you why. Because I tried, unsucessfully, to save your aunt’s life.”

She described an arc with her arm. “You and I sit here sheltered by leafy trees. I was sitting that way on that particular day. Unseen by anyone, hidden by the trees. Mercedes was up on the ladder. I was very angry at her. Being such a fool. Like a sixteen year old girl … showing her legs … almost eighty and proud of her legs … as I said, a narcissist. Furthermore, we’d had a terrifying argument earlier in the morning.”

She snorted. “With the people you’re fond of, there’s always an element of ambivalence. We were, in a way, strange bedfellows … I, luxury-loving but without a penny to my name. Mercedes rich as Midas but no appetite for the good things of life. From one end of the year to the other she didn’t have her things cleaned, went about in disreputable pants and baggy sweaters stained with grease spots. There was never enough to eat. I was dependent on her for my very toothpaste. “You must tell me whenever you want something,” she always said. I would sooner have died. If I wanted something … if I
desperately
needed something, I told Lucrezia, and she bought it out of the household money.”

There was a rather long silence. Then, “I suppose I did, in a way, come to hate her,” she said in a low voice. “She was a jailer, in fact … a benevolent despot … but just the same she reigned supreme, and I — ”

The leaves, shivering in a cool breeze, trembled in the trees, and the hour, three o’clock, bonged out from the belltower in the center of Florence. I sat and waited. There was nothing for me to say, nothing was expected of me. A woman was baring her soul to a stranger.

She went on. “But much as there was resentment in my heart, I loved Mercedes. Can you understand? She was my life. It can be a half life, a sometimes unhappy life. But a life. I’m lost without her. I go through the motions, coddle myself, eat heartily and know I’m a rich woman. But what have I really got? Nothing, nothing. My beloved enemy has left me.”

“Elizabeth,” I started to say, touched to the quick, but she stopped me. “Just the same,” she said, “you’re right, Barbara. Mercedes’s death was not an accident. Someone did push the ladder. And I know who it was. I saw it. I saw the hand reach out. Mercedes tried to save herself, but — ”

She gripped the top of the round garden table. “In that moment I
was
Mercedes, trying not to fall, trying to stay alive, trying to — ”

She put a hand over her mouth. “When I reached her it was too late. I couldn’t get there in time. I gripped the side of the ladder and tore my hand on the nail.”

“Elizabeth,” I said, stunned, “why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because it’s over and done with. Because nothing can bring Mercedes back. Let the dead bury their dead, as I have. Well, I feel dead, yes. Stuff myself as I will, I’m stuffing a corpse. I hope I don’t live too long, but it would be just my rotten luck …”

She gave me a somber look. “It’s just, when I heard you talking that way … thinking I could have killed my friend. Why, Barbara, I can’t kill a fly on the wall. I make poor Lucrezia do that.”

“Then who was it?” I asked breathlessly.

“I shan’t tell you.”

“But why
not?
”

“Because someone I love would be hurt.”

“You mean … whoever killed my aunt will get away with it?”

Her face changed. It looked tired suddenly, and whiter than usual, emphasizing the red gash of her lip-sticked mouth. “Get away with it?” she repeated. “Well, in that sense, yes. But — ”

She kneaded her furrowed brow with gnarled fingers. When she put her hands in her lap again her face was wry. “The things we do stay with us, you must know that. I still remember the way I castigated my little sister, who was my father’s favorite. I was jealous, of course. I called her a fat pig, the worst thing I could think of, because she was so sensitive to being overweight. I sometimes wake at night and remember those cruel words, and the helpless tears that came to her eyes.”

“But all the same, darling Elizabeth — ”

“So you see,” she said, interrupting, “living with guilt, day after day, is a horrible punishment. Worse than hanging. Oh yes. That person lives in a hell of their own making.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But just the same I have some Calvinistic ideas about crime and punishment. I can’t insist that you tell me who pushed that ladder, but I’ll nag you about it. I’ll ask you again. And again. I’ll — ”

“In the end,” she said with a little smile, “you might feel the same as I. That when the time comes you won’t do any more about it than I have. But it will be your decision.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” I protested.

“Perhaps you never will,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette,

I remembered the first evening I’d gotten to the Villa Paradiso. Elizabeth bending over the dead dog.
They’re trying to frighten me …

Was she afraid for her life? Had she meant the things she told me later had been said only in excitment and sorrow?

I leaned forward. “Why did Paolo die? You said someone was trying to frighten you. If you couldn’t be seen by whoever pushed the ladder, why should that person have any reason to — ”

“Because, my dear, that person realized almost
instantly
that I saw. Because that person knows I have damning evidence. Because in order to make sure that I’d keep quiet about it if I knew what was good for me, the only thing left I loved was put to death. Yes, Barbara, it was a warning, all right.”

“But my aunt died several months ago, Elizabeth. Why was this warning just the other day? After all this time?”

“I can’t answer that,” she said, frowning.

“Maybe I can,” I said slowly. “Signores Predelli and Pineider knew I was coming to Italy. More than likely, they mentioned it to the Monteverdis. And then, knowing a blood relative of Mercedes was to appear on the scene, they worried that you’d confide in me. And took steps.”

“Why do you say the Monteverdis?” she asked.

“Why? Who else is there?”

“Lucrezia, Pietro, Emilio, lots of others.”

“Oh no,” I said surely. “You’re talking about one of the family next door. You may be secretive about it, but you can’t fool me all the way. You’ve told me a few things, now I’ll tell
you
a few.”

And I briefed her on the rat biscuits and the stained handkerchief that had belonged to my aunt. “Peter found out that it was your blood type,” I said. “And so, of course, we both … well, wondered about it.”

“I see,” Elizabeth said. “Now I see everything. Oh, how awful, how terrible.” She put a hand to her face, and I saw the fear in her eyes.

“How
awful,
” she said again, and looked up quickly. “Barbara, go home. Go home. I mean it. It has nothing to do with you. Lucrezia will help you pack. Go to Rome … or Naples … but leave. Because — ”

“Someone else told me to do that,” I said. “But I’m not that kind of quitter. Why should I leave now? What have I done? Who has anything against me? Elizabeth, I’m staying.”

The anger and the fury swept over me. What kind of nonsense was this? Be afraid of nameless terrors? Go home, tail between my legs, and …

“I’m not leaving,” I said, with finality. “
Capisco?
I’m staying on until my holiday is up. I want to spend as much time as possible in my aunt’s villa. And I’ve grown fond of her friend. I won’t leave until it’s time for me to go. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like a good stiff drink. I’m going to mix a batch of martinis. We’re going to get a little bit sozzled. How about it,
cara?
”

“I think it sounds splendid,” she said tremulously, and I saw her relieved eyes, that I was not going to leave her … not just yet.

I strode across the grass, adrenalin flowing through my veins. So they think they’ll get the best of us, I was saying to myself. Damn them, damn them …

We’ll just see about that, I decided, pouring gin into a pitcher with a heavy hand.

We would just see about
that.

• • •

We had a delightful evening. The television was, as always, unreliable, with ghosts, snow and a garbled audio. We gave it up as a bad job and played scrabble. Elizabeth knew words I’d never heard of, British words. “Just a cotton picking
minute
,” I kept saying, teasing her, and consulted the dictionary. But she was right “Natter” meant to speak garrulously, “hame” was a part of a harness.

“All right, if you want to cheat that way,” I complained, and she laughed delightedly. “I do
so
enjoy your company,” she cried, and before we went to bed, broke open a split of champagne from the refrigerator, over which we sat talking about our lives. “Men? They’re around, but no one I’ve fallen flat on my face for,” I said, when she queried me, and she told me about her late husband. “A dear soul, but frightfully
impractical
,” she assured me. “He left me with debts and that’s about all, save for a broken heart. He was the only man I ever cared a fig about. Such an old dear, and I’ve never stopped missing him.”

I smoked a last cigarette before going to bed in my room, brushed my teeth and then my hair, and got into bed. The soft breezes that drifted in through the opened french windows were like fingers stroking my skin. I was a bit stewed and nicely floating. America seemed like another planet, another life. As had Elizabeth Barrett, the poetess, I whispered to myself as I lay on my plump pillows, “Italy, Italy, Italy …”