Death Among the Ruins (17 page)

“Yes, I am afraid so,” said Terranova and he sighed, as if with regret.

“What? Is she laid out, upstairs?”

“Oh, no. The body was taken away early this morning.”

“Taken
away?
By whom?”

“By the sexton. It was taken away and buried.”

Arabella looked around the table to see how everyone else was reacting to this. Charles, Belinda, and Mr. Kendrick sat as if turned to stone, with their eyebrows sitting straight across their faces, and their mouths slightly open. Terranova’s party, on the other hand, were drinking coffee and eating breakfast as if nothing had happened, and though they kept their eyes, at least, at half-mast, no one was crying. Renilde’s own
mother
was dry-eyed.

“Something is not right, here,” cried Arabella.

“How very perceptive you are,
signorina,
” said the priest quietly. “But then, we are none of us very good actors. I think it is better, much better, if you do not ask questions, yes?”

She looked at him. At his heavy, square-shaped body, and colossal hands. She looked at the monks, who were also large, and also ready to do his bidding. And she prudently decided to hold her tongue, for the time being.

 

 

It was raining. Arabella was content to remain indoors, for the hotel was comfortable, and the inclement weather afforded her an opportunity to wear her writing turban, which resembled Madame de Staël’s, but with narrower stripes. She sat at the little desk before the window, scribbling away in her CIN with a goose-quill pen, and cutting, or so she imagined, a dashing figure of singular romance.

Things were easier now, for Terranova had left the hotel temporarily, taking his monks with him. The two living Rinaldos and Signora Terranova had remained behind, but they were not much in the way. Arabella was about to make use of Osvaldo, as a matter of fact.

“It is raining, yes; but it is a
dry
rain,” he said, with an expression that was probably meant to convey profundity, but merely succeeded in making him look constipated.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” asked Arabella, wiping her quill and setting it back in its stand.

“I think he means it is not the sort of rain that lurks about in damp puddles and turns things moldy,” said Belinda, who was sitting next to him on the sopha and knitting a small pair of trousers from dark green wool. “After it stops, there is little sign that it was ever there, and everything dries out in half an hour.”

“Good! Yes!” cried Osvaldo, grinning and pointing at her as though they were playing charades. “This is it!”

Arabella decided to take advantage of his elevated mood. “Osvaldo,” she said, “tell us about Renilde’s death.”

He immediately fell silent, so she rose from her chair and came to sit beside him upon the sopha. Thus, flanked by Beaumont sisters, the unlucky fellow now stood no chance of escaping with his secrets intact.

“I am not supposed to speak of it,” he mumbled, looking down at his hands.

“I know you are not. But no one can hear us now,” said Arabella, patting his hand. “And we should very much like to learn of this matter.”

“Yes,” said Belinda, linking her arm through his and pressing her thigh against his own. “Please tell us, Osvaldo, dear.”

What could a man do under such circumstances?

“She fell sick,” he said. “In the night. We called the doctor.”

“Do you mean the doctor who lives next door?”

“. . . Yes.”

Arabella noted his hesitation. “So the doctor came, and then what did he do?”

“Renilde had a fever. She was screaming . . . words that made no meaning. The doctor, he could do nothing to help her, and she died, without suffering too much. We had to bury her at once, you see, because of the fever.”

“Fever? I do not understand you.”

“It was a
peste
. . . a
plaga
. . . the kind of sickness that spreads quickly and kills many people. We have to hide it, you see? If people find out, they might burn the hotel down. Because any one of us might have catched it from her. But you must promise that you will tell no one I have said this. My cousin told me not to tell you.”

Arabella seemed suddenly to lose interest. “Yes, yes,” she said wearily. “We shan’t tell anyone. You had better leave us now, so that you won’t be suspected of having divulged the secret.”

After he’d gone, Belinda turned a stricken face toward her sister.

“My God, Bell! Mr. Kendrick was in close contact with Renilde, shortly before . . . ! Do you think he will . . . ?”

“I do not. And I do not believe that story, either.”

“You don’t? Why not?”

“I shall speak to the doctor, in order to make certain, but I know he was not here last night. When someone is raving with a high fever, and the doctor is called, there is much running up and down stairs. Servants are roused to change the linens, fetch water carafes, empty slop basins. There is noise, Bunny, lots of it, and you and I are both light sleepers. Yet we heard nothing at all, nor were the servants behaving this morning as if they had not slept.”

Arabella ticked off the points on her fingers as she spoke: “The house was not put under quarantine, which the doctor would surely have done in the case of infectious fever. Renilde’s possessions were not burned. And no one else has developed any symptoms. I shall tell you what I have been thinking, and what I am now certain of, after hearing Pear-Head’s lie. Mr. Terranova is a murderer, and a very dangerous man.”

Belinda gaped at her in horror. “What a dreadful business!” she cried. “Shouldn’t we tell the police?”

“I do not think so. You saw those soldiers kneeling to Terranova. And he lives in Palermo, remember. He lives in Palermo, yet is instantly recognized in Resina, by Austro-Hungarians.
That
is an important man.”

“What can we do, then?”

“Professor Bergamini is already inquiring after other lodgings for us in Naples. I shall tell him that it needn’t be Naples now—this is an emergency, and we shall settle for anything at all.”

“But what if the professor asks the reason for our rapid departure? Shall we tell him?”

“No. We shall say that we are upset over the death which occurred here—that is no more than the truth. We cannot tell them the
whole
truth, Bunny.” Arabella was watching Belinda’s busy hands as she spoke. “Remember, Terranova and Bergamini know one another.”

“All right,” said Belinda. “I, for one, shall be very glad to get away from this place. To think of that . . .
murderer
sitting next to you on the downstairs divan, and fondling Cara!”

Belinda reached down to stroke the head of her little pet. From the moment they’d met, dog and mistress had been inseparable. Their mutual devotion was only natural in two such sweet-natured, exquisite little female creatures, but it had been strange the way Terranova had seemed to dote upon her, also. The first time he had seen Cara, he had gone down on his knees, placed his head against hers, and murmured endearments. And yet, when Belinda had offered to let him take her for a walk, he had suddenly shewn extreme indifference, and claimed to be “too busy”!

Arabella fixed her eyes upon the little green trousers Belinda was creating. She was really not in a position to do anything about Terranova, for there was no one she could trust.... Trousers . . . perhaps she should take Mr. Kendrick into her confidence. Would he know what to do? It seemed cowardly to simply run away, leaving Renilde in an anonymous grave somewhere . . . green trousers.
Little
. . . green . . . trousers.

“Bunny!” she said in sudden alarm. “What is that you are knitting?”

“Pantaloons. Do you like the color?”

“The color is neither here nor there,” Arabella replied with mounting agitation. “For whom are they intended?”

“They’re for Cara.” Arabella sagged with relief. “She shivers so in the draughts! Up we come,
cara mia.
” Belinda lifted the dog from its sentinel post next her chair and wrestled the trousers over its hind legs, pulling the tail through a hole at the back. Then she set her pet down on the carpet.

“What do you think?”

Arabella studied the animal in the trousers, who seemed to look back at her apologetically over its shoulder, barely moving its tail.

“Hmm,” she remarked judiciously. “When dogs wear clothing, you know, the garment is usually located farther up the body, as I believe it is in their chests and stomachs that they most feel the cold.”

“Oh,” said Belinda. “So, more like a shell, then?”

“I would imagine so.”

“How vexing! That was the last of my yarn!”

“
Signorina!
I shall bring-a you some wool for your doggie’s jumper!”

Osvaldo had just reentered the room, with his snuff box and a paper-wrapped parcel. He probably would not have been so eager to oblige her, had he known he was offering to enhance a gift from his rival, but the poor fellow had no idea of there being anyone else. For her part, Belinda was so involved in her daydreams of Bergamini that she barely registered Osvaldo’s existence. Even now as he stood aside for her, cramming his nostrils with rappee blend (“which, she’s-a is a-use by my uncle, the prince regent of-a you country”), Belinda swept past him and out of the room without so much as a nod of gratitude.

Osvaldo did not follow her, though. This time, it was with Arabella that he had business.

“
Signorina,
I am sorry, but we found these,” he said, hefting the parcel, “in Renilde’s dresser. Aunt Simonetta said-a to burn them, rather than give them to you, but I could not do such a heartless thing to my future sister. You will be my
only
sister, when Belinda and I are married.”

He unwrapped the bundle, spilling the contents across the desk. There were all the letters that Arabella had written home, and all the ones that had arrived for her and been hidden away.

“Renilde was-a keeping your post from you. I don’t know why she did this,” he said. “But I can-a guess. Please,
signorina,
say nothing of this downstairs. Aunt Simonetta will be so angry if she knows I gave these-a to you.”

“Thank you,” said Arabella, who was experiencing relief, surprise, and indignation all at once. “This was . . . this was very kind of you.”

He turned to go, but she laid a hand upon his arm.

“I went to the churchyard this morning to search for Renilde’s grave,” she said. “There was no sign of it.”

“No,” he said. “The coffin was taken to her father’s family, in Siena. They raised Renilde, you see? We hardly knew her. But Renilde, she was . . . she
have
a disappointment? Yes? By the man she was going to marry. So Cousin Felice asked her to join our party here, to have get away from sad times. I will leave you to read your letters. And once again, I am sorry for this.”

Solace? Anger? Joy? Arabella did not quite know what she felt. The letters were full of news from home and anxious enquiries concerning her mysterious silence. But none of them so much as mentioned the scandal. On the other hand, the writers had never received her letters asking about it.

At the bottom of the pile was a letter from her protector, the Duke of Glen
deen
. His ship having stopped in some port or other, he was anxiously asking her how she did. Evidently, news of the scandal had reached
him
all the way out on the high seas! He expected to be home by New Year’s, he said.

“ ‘Missing you dreadfully,’ ” she read, later, to Belinda, “ ‘because I have been at sea all these months, you know, and every night when I rack out, I think of you and I hoist up my nightshirt, and then I . . . ’ et cetera, et cetera.”

Arabella twirled her hand in a circular motion that was meant to convey what the duke had written, but in fact meant “see you later” in Italian gestural parlance.

“Still,” said Belinda. “Even he does not say that everyone is talking about us. Something else must surely have happened by now to take people’s minds off it.”

But Arabella was far from reassured.

Encountering Renilde’s mother that night in the passage, she attempted to commiserate with the quiet little woman upon her loss.

“I am glad at least,” said Arabella, “that her father’s family will be able to give her a proper funeral.”

Ginevra Rinaldo looked confused. “Her father’s family?” she repeated. “What do you mean? My late husband was a foundling, not that it’s any business of yours, and was raised in an orphanage. He never had the least idea who his people were!”