Summer at the Lake (40 page)

To which Esme shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Good, because you would have given yourself to a man who had the cold heart of a murderer.’

‘A murderer? Surely not?’

‘It is true, I tell you!’ Maria exclaimed vehemently, bringing her hand down on the arm of her chair with a fierce slap. ‘Believe me, Angelo was no angel, he was a devil! It was he who caused the death of my oldest brother. Federico’s death broke my parents’ hearts. And mine. My family never recovered from the sadness.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Esme said gently, sensing that whenever this brother had died, Maria still felt that loss keenly. ‘What did Angelo do?’

A faint welcome breeze blew in at the open glass doors, causing the heavy net curtains to sway and stir the stagnant air. ‘You knew about the
spalloni
at the lake, didn’t you?’ Maria said. ‘The
contrabbando
?’

‘The smugglers? Yes, I was told that it was a way of life for many, a way to survive. I know also that Angelo was involved.’

Maria gave a short sour laugh. ‘He played at being involved. He was nothing but
un mammone
– a spoilt mamma’s boy – looking for excitement. His own life bored him. He wanted the life of a
spallone
. He saw it as heroic. Which it was for those whose lives depended upon it. It was not enough for him to be part of the organisation in Lecco and Milano that helped fund things. For that was his role, you see, that was what he was suited to do – with his smart appearance and family name, it meant he was above suspicion. But he wanted more; he wanted the excitement of hiding from the border police in the mountains, of beating them. To him it was nothing but a game, an adventure. For my brothers who knew the dangers, who risked their lives again and again, they did not want him with them, but he persuaded them. To them he was a fool, full of talk and hot air.’

She paused to take another sip of her drink, giving Esme the opportunity to glance across to the sofa where Adam and Floriana were sitting. They each gave her a small acknowledging nod.

‘He boasted that he was as strong as my brothers,’ Maria went on, ‘but he wasn’t. How could he be when every day he sat behind his desk in his safe office in Milano? Not for him the hard physical labour my brothers were used to as builders.’

‘So what happened?’

‘What happened is carved on my heart,’ Maria said. ‘The story has been told in our family many, many times. For us, Matteo and Federico were true heroes. And for me personally, Federico was the brother I loved most when I was a child. I adored him.’ With a shaking hand, she leant forward to place her now empty glass on the table. She cleared her throat and sat back stiffly, her eyes fixed on Esme.

‘Reluctantly my brothers agreed for Angelo to go with them one night after he promised to do exactly what they told him. The easy part was crossing the border into Switzerland, but the return journey, with the heavy
bricolla
on his back, is what truly tests a man. After all his big talk, Angelo could not carry his sack of
bionde
– that was what cigarettes were known as. He was too slow and many times Federico and Matteo had to wait for him. He was a vain man and his pride hurt, he became angry and accused them of deliberately making his
bricolla
heavier than the ones they carried. He was nothing but a child. An angry child used to getting his own way. They had warned him before that it would be hard, that the sacks would weigh as much as thirty kilos and so they told him to stop behaving like a child and to be a man, it was time he grew up!’

Esme could just imagine how furious that would have made Angelo.

‘There were other men there too,’ Maria pressed on. ‘It wasn’t just Federico and Matteo; they were part of a team that had to work together. But Angelo was not a man to play in a team or to share. He wanted only the glory for himself. Before long, he had forced Federico and Matteo to slow down so much they had lost sight of the rest of the men; they were on their own in the dark. Again Angelo began to complain that his
bricolla
must be heavier than theirs, so Federico swapped with him to prove it was not the case. Of course, the truth of this only made him look more stupid. By now Matteo was angry, he understood the danger, and he insisted they hurry to catch up with the others, but that was when they heard noises and suddenly the path behind them was bright with flashing lights: it was the Swiss border police. Federico shouted for them to run, but the police started firing their guns and that was when Matteo saw Angelo push Federico out of the way so he could escape. He cared only about himself.’

Pausing to take a deep breath, Maria’s gaze shifted from Esme to a group of framed black and white photographs on the wall to her left – they were too far away for Esme to make out the people in them, but she assumed they included Maria’s brothers.

‘Thanks to Angelo,’ Maria said, turning to face Esme once more, ‘Federico was shot in the head and died instantly, and Matteo was captured and spent a year in prison, and all for agreeing to let Angelo go with them. It was a decision Matteo has regretted all his life. If you asked him today about it, he would tell you word for word what I have said and then he would spit on the name of Angelo Bassani.’ With a weary shake of her head, she took off her spectacles and rubbed her eyes. ‘Poor Matteo, he wasn’t allowed to go to his own brother’s funeral. It was terrible. A disgrace.’

Out of respect for Maria, not wanting to seem uncaring, Esme counted to twenty before saying, ‘What happened to Angelo? Was he caught?’

Her spectacles back in place, Maria said, ‘He escaped. But he did not escape judgement entirely. His body was found in the lake a year later.’

‘An accident?’

‘Possibly. Possibly an act of justice from God. Who knows? He had many enemies. He owed money to people in Milano. He gambled. There was talk of debts.’

‘When did all this happen?’

‘It was August 1955 when his half-rotted body was found. I know exactly because that was when I married. I was twenty-one.’

Five years on from when she and her father had left Hotel Margherita, Esme thought. ‘How did his mother take the news of his death?’ she asked.

‘It was the end for her. Signora Bassani became an old woman almost overnight and died of . . .’ Maria waved her hand around in the air, as though conjuring the right words. ‘It was something growing on her brain. A lump. She was not an easy woman to feel sorry for, she was too proud and she loved her son too much. It was a love that made her blind; she could not see the bad in him.’

‘I’m not so sure that was true,’ Esme said carefully. ‘Angelo was jealous of his cousin, he seemed to think his mother thought more of Marco than him.’

‘That was typical Angelo, he was jealous of anyone he thought might be more popular than him.’

Thinking of the way Angelo had reacted when he’d suspected she and Marco were growing close, Esme said, ‘You’ve been very kind to share all this with me, especially as it must bring back a lot of painful memories, but do you know anything about Marco? Do you know what happened to him? Did he become a priest?’

Maria’s expression immediately changed and she gave Esme another uncomfortably meaningful look. ‘I thought you might ask about him. For that is what you really came to ask me, isn’t it?’

The directness of Maria’s question, and knowing that little had got past her all those years ago, Esme felt her neck and face flush.

‘Yes,’ she said simply.

In the silence that followed, the ring of her mobile made Floriana start.

‘Sorry,’ she apologised, fumbling in her bag for the phone as it kept on ringing. Unable to find it, and not wanting to spoil the crucial moment any more than she already had, she went outside to the garden to deal with whoever was calling her. It had better not be one of those wretched PPI people.

It wasn’t. It was worse than that. Far worse.

‘Floriana, it’s me, Imogen.’

‘Oh, hi, Imogen,’ she said, trying to pitch her response on the right side of pleasantly surprised rather than all-out panic accompanied with flashing lights and sirens blaring. Why was Imogen calling her? She had never phoned her before. That was ‘never’ in the sense of
NEVER
in very large italicised capitals and in bold for good measure. What could she possibly want?

‘I hope you don’t mind me ringing,’ Imogen said, ‘I got your number from Seb.’

‘Absolutely no problem at all,’ she said, nearly choking on her forced cheerfulness. ‘So how’s the bride-to-be?’

‘Oh, you know, frantic with organising a million and one things. We’re at the lake now, we got here yesterday.’

The thought of Imogen being so close made Floriana’s stomach lurch with a swirl of queasy apprehension. Which was ridiculous. She had known all along Seb and Imogen would be arriving a few days before the big day on Saturday, but since she and Esme and Adam had settled in at Villa Sofia, the wedding – the actual reality of it – had conveniently receded to the far reaches of her cluttered mind, hidden at the back with all the other things she preferred not to deal with. But now it was right back up there at the top of her list of
Things She Would Rather Not Do
, a list that included
Avoid Speaking to Imogen on the Phone
.

‘The hotel’s super,’ Imogen blithely carried on. ‘Mummy and I are booked into the spa for the rest of the afternoon, leaving Seb to enjoy some boy-time with Daddy and Jules.’

‘Jules?’

‘My brother.’

Ah yes, the foisted best man. ‘That’s nice,’ Floriana said. So much for being frantic, she thought unkindly while grimacing at the words
Mummy
and
Daddy
. And who described something as
super
without being ironic? ‘Sounds like you have everything under control.’

‘That’s what Seb keeps saying. He says I’m worrying too much, that it’ll all come together with or without me beating it into submission with a big stick. Such a typical Seb thing to say, don’t you think? He has no real grasp of what’s involved.’

Piggy in the middle, Floriana warned herself. ‘That’s a man for you,’ she said, matching Imogen’s blithe tone.

‘Anyway,’ Imogen said, her voice suddenly stepping up a gear. ‘According to what Seb’s told me, you’re already here on holiday with friends, but if you could tear yourself away from them for an hour or so, how about you and I having some girl time this evening?’

‘Err . . .’

‘Come to the hotel and I’ll meet you in the bar at six-thirty. No need to dress up. Yes, Mummy, I’m coming. Don’t fuss, the spa can wait until we’re there! Sorry, Floriana, like I say, a million things to do. See you then!’

‘Hold on, where are you staying? Which hotel?’

‘Grand Hotel Tremezzo. You can’t miss it; it’s the impressive one with a large swimming pool across the road from it. Catch you later!’

Imagining a perfectly manicured fluttery hand waving goodbye to her, Floriana ended the call and stood very still. She was in shock, and in spite of the hot sun pressing down on her, she shivered. That was no invitation she had just received, it was a royal command. Princess Imogen had summoned her to the royal court. But why? Girl time? What was that all about? When had Imogen ever wanted that with her?

The net curtains at the glass door behind her swished to one side and Adam stepped out into the garden. ‘Everything OK?’ he asked.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said. ‘How’s it going in there? Does Maria know anything helpful about Marco?’

‘Yes and no. She knows plenty from years ago, but nothing about him in the last decade or so.’

‘Did he become a priest?’

‘He did.’

‘Don’t tell me, he’s now a high-ranking player in the Vatican and rubbing shoulders with the Pope.’ Rattled by Imogen’s call, she had no problem in directing her anger towards this Marco character. There he was, piously going about his business while all these years poor Esme had suffered in secret about the loss of her baby.
His
baby. Hah, what would his precious Church have to say about that!

Adam squinted at her in the sun. ‘The last Maria heard he was working as a parish priest somewhere near Turin.’

‘Hmm . . . well,’ she muttered, trying to pull herself together, ‘perhaps reaching a dead end might be best, given the circumstances. Especially when you consider that wherever the Bassani family goes bad luck is but a breath away.’

Pushing his hands into his trouser pockets, Adam nudged at a weed growing through the gap in the paving slabs with his foot. ‘Seems a shame when we’ve come so far in the story.’ He looked up. ‘You’re not telling me you believe an old woman who claims the family was cursed?’

She shrugged. ‘Esme lost her baby and the chance to have any more through her connection with them, I wouldn’t want anything else bad to happen to her.’

‘But that could have happened with any pregnancy she had and with any man as the father. There was nothing mysterious about it. It was a genuine medical emergency she suffered. Medical facts, Miss Day,’ he added with a small smile. ‘No superstitious hokum.’

Realising he had picked up on her less than cheery mood and was trying to lighten it, she affected a Scarlett O’Hara voice. ‘Why, Mr Strong, I do declare you’re putting me in my place.’

He laughed, raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘Do I look mad enough to attempt that?’

Grateful to him for making her smile, and for taking her mind off Imogen, she linked her arm through his. ‘Now if you were Rhett Butler you would take delicious delight in rubbing my nose in my so-called hokum. Come on, let’s go back inside and see if Maria’s remembered anything remotely useful about Don Marco.’

Yes, she thought, I need all the distraction I can get to stop me from dwelling on why Imogen wants to meet.

From what Floriana could see of Grand Hotel Tremezzo, it certainly lived up to its name; it was very grand indeed.

Everywhere she looked, her eyes fell upon five-star grandeur and opulence, from the vine-covered exterior that commanded a spectacular view of the lake with Bellagio in the distance, to the shiny gold- and mirror-lined lift that rose smoothly from the ground floor entrance up to the vast reception area furnished with red and gold rugs and enough sofas and armchairs to kit out DFS for a bank holiday sale. On the website Adam had shown her, the hotel was described as an authentic art nouveau palace historically frequented by the elite. Which made it the perfect hotel for Imogen and her family.