The Devil in Music (26 page)

"Even
if he was in Piedmont," Julian said at last, "he could have
crossed the border into Lombardy long enough to commit the murder."

"Anyone
could have crossed the border."

"Yes,
Marchesa," he said steadily.

"Of
course, it would be easier from Belgirate than from Turin. One would
merely have to cross Lake Maggiore and land at some secluded spot."

"But
de la Marque wasn't in Belgirate. Was he?"

She
paused on the stairs leading up to the villa doors, looking at him
with laughing eyes, the lamps shedding gold on her hair. "Not
that I noticed."

Is
she daring me to suspect her? he thought. Does she merely want to
know if I do? Or is she trying to divert suspicion from someone
else?

He
was tired of these little taunting shafts first from de la Marque and
now from her. They both enjoyed tweaking the lion's tail, but when
the marchesa did it, it hurt.

Above
her head, a moth flew suicidally into one of the lamps. Julian took
heed of the warning, and led her indoors.

On
his first morning at the villa, Julian was served a breakfast of
eggs, ham, sausages, toasted bread, and polentina, a cornmeal
porridge. He much preferred the Continental habit of eating lightly
in the mornings, but the marchesa took such delight in offering him
and MacGregor an English breakfast that he felt compelled to do it
justice. MacGregor, for his part, declared that it was the best
breakfast they had had since they left England.

At
mid-morning, the marchesa received a ceremonial call from Benedetto
Ruga, the podesta ("part mayor and part magistrate," Julian
explained to MacGregor). He was in his fifties, with several chins
and a broad expanse of waistcoat spanned by a gold watch-chain.
Julian gathered that he owned a large silk mill and boasted the
grandest house in the village. His fulsome speech of welcome to the
marchesa was cut off by the arrival of Don Cristoforo, the parish
priest, a tall, gaunt, silver-haired man with a gait like a dignified
crow. He talked with the marchesa at some length about the festival
of Santa Pelagia, Solaggio's patron saint, which was to take place in
a week. Julian did not hear much of this conversation, but judged
from Don Cristoforo's increasingly unctuous manner that Marchesa
Malvezzi had promised a generous donation.

The
next caller was Friedrich Von Krauss, commander of the Austrian
garrison bar racked near Solaggio. Julian found him polite, urbane,
and far more respectful toward the marchesa and Carlo than Grimani
was. "Grimani is an Italian," explained Carlo in English, a
little apart from the others. "Those whose power is
unquestioned can afford to make concessions. Grimani must be more
German than the Austrians he serves."

He
broke off. Grimani's English-speaking shadow, Zanetti, had sidled up
behind them. Carlo shifted smoothly into a conversation in Milanese
about boating.

After
Von Krauss had presented his compliments to the marchesa and her
guests, Grimani bore him and Ruga away to discuss deployment of the
local gendarmes and soldiers to search for clues and question the
lake dwellers. Julian was not invited to this conference and did not
much care. He trusted Grimani to handle the gathering of physical
evidence with the dogged persistence and thoroughness for which he
was known. As for questioning the local people, Julian would rather
pursue that on his own, free from any alliance with the hated army
and police.

Left
to his own devices, Julian proposed to MacGregor that they walk to
Solaggio. "How will we know our way about?" MacGregor
objected.

"I
gather we've only to follow the lakeside path to the end of the
garden and go through the gate. Solaggio will be directly before
us."

They
set off down the shore path, stopping briefly at the belvedere so
that MacGregor could see it. Beyond the belvedere, there were no
plane trees to cut off their view of the lake. They watched
fishermen, two or three to a boat, expertly casting nets or wielding
fishing lines heavy with hooks and sinkers. It was warm work, for
the sun was out, after a fashion, shining whitely through a veil of
mist. To the right of the path, the garden offered enticing views of
green hillocks and shaded pools, winding paths and mysterious
rough-hewn stairs.

The
path terminated in an elegant wrought-iron gate with a letter M in
the centre and serpents entwined around swords along the top. The
gate was set into a stone wall some twelve feet high, running along
the south end of the garden and swelling into a round bulwark at the
brink of the embankment. Julian and MacGregor passed through the
gate and continued along the shore till they reached Solaggio.

The
village had a tiny harbour all but enclosed by breakwaters of masonry
and rubble. A row of whitewashed houses, all different heights, ran
along the shore. The more substantial houses had balconies
overlooking the water, with flowering shrubs spilling from wood-frame
balustrades.

Julian
and MacGregor walked around the harbour, drawing curious stares from
the peasants, their children, and even their dogs. At the far end
was a commodious house composed of blocks of assorted heights,

haphazardly
stuck together and crisscrossed by lines of fluttering linen. Each
block had its own red-tiled roof and a scattering of green-shuttered
windows. The front door opened on a small, vine covered terrace at
right angles to the lake. A sign outside the door bore a crude
painting of a bird.

A
girl of about eighteen came out on the terrace. When she saw the
strangers, her black eyes lit up, and she sauntered to the
balustrade. She wore a white blouse with the sleeves pushed up to her
elbows, a bright blue skirt, and a white cap from which several black
ringlets had been artfully allowed to escape. Her scarlet bodice was
tightly laced beneath mouth-watering breasts.

Julian
doffed his hat and addressed her in the clipped Milanese of the lake
dwellers. "Excuse me, popola, is this the Nightingale Inn?"

"What
else should it be, signer?" She leaned toward him over the
balustrade. "You'll be one of Her Ladyship's guests, I
suppose?"

"I
am Julian Kestrel, and this is my friend, Dr. MacGregor."

"Rosa!"
A middle-aged woman erupted from the inn. Her snapping black eyes
and handsome figure were very like the girl's, but her face was all
sharp angles, her features haggard, as if wrecked by emotional
storms. Her iron-grey hair was scraped up into a knot and pierced by
a wicked silver hairpin. "What do you mean by idling with
gentlemen foreign gentlemen," she added, after a keener look at
Julian and MacGregor "when there's work to be done indoors?
Holy Madonna, but you're a useless cow! In with you at once!"

Rosa
tossed her head. "This gentleman asked me a question, Mamma.
What was I to do, cut him dead?"

"There's
no need to get so close to a gentleman to answer a question! Foreign
gentlemen!" she exclaimed, flinging up her hands. "As if
the soldiers weren't bad enough!"

"I
beg your pardon, Signora Frascani," Julian interposed
soothingly. "I didn't mean to distract Popola Rosa from her
work. I only wished to know if this was the inn I'd heard praised so
often."

"This
is the Nightingale, signer," nodded the woman, a little
mollified. "Come in for a glass of wine any time you like. But
remember, wine and food are all that's sold here!" She took
Rosa by a hank of her black curls and drove her indoors.

Julian
looked after them wryly. "No man should ever offer for a girl
without meeting her mother. Would you marry Rosa, after seeing what
she may become in ten or twenty years?"

"I
wouldn't marry a girl that forward, whatever her mother was like,"
declared MacGregor.

They
turned inland and ascended a steep, crooked flight of stairs

to
the piazza, the local equivalent of an English village green. It was
roughly rectangular, with a crude stone fountain at the centre,
around which women in brightly coloured shawls stood chatting and
filling pitchers. At one end was an ancient church of grey-brown
stone, with a pointed roof and a tall, square belfry whose slit
windows showed it must once have been a defensive tower. Opposite
the church was a handsome two-story house that was probably the
podesta's.

Julian
and MacGregor were making a circuit of the piazza when a great sound
shook the very earth beneath their feet. The bells in the church
tower were pealing out their mid-day hymn. The women at the fountain
left off gaping at the strangers to cross themselves and pray.
MacGregor regarded them askance. "Tomorrow is Sunday," he
said abruptly. "I suppose there's no chance of finding a church
of our own hereabouts?"

"I
shouldn't think so."

"I
thought as much. I'll have to stay home and read my Bible, which is
more than these papists are allowed to do."

"Should
you mind very much if I went to mass with the Malvezzis?"

"If
you want to have a priest mutter over you in Latin, that's between
you and your conscience!"

"I
don't wish to be muttered over in any language. But I should like to
hear the music. Country musicians here are often very good."

"If
you thought less about music and more about your immortal soul, you'd
be the better for it."

"I'm
never so aware of my immortal soul as when I hear music."

Their
conversation had attracted the attention of a dapper little man with
large spectacles and Macassar-oiled hair. He came forward, bowing,
and said in heavily accented English, "Sirs, I hope I do not
intrude. Permit me the honour to introduce myself. I am Dr.
Curioni."

Julian
introduced himself and MacGregor in Milanese, but Curioni begged they
would speak English. He had been to London, he informed them
proudly, and subscribed to several British medical journals. When he
learned that MacGregor was a surgeon, he was overjoyed, and at once
invited him and Julian to his house for some refreshment. Julian was
delighted. It was the first time in their Continental journey that
he had been included in an invitation for MacGregor's sake, rather
than the other way around.

Curioni
ushered them into his tidy house on the piazza and offered them wine
and panettone, a porous yellow cake with raisins and bits of candied
orange. He and MacGregor were soon deep in conversation about
contra-stimulation and other Milanese medical theories.

Julian
would have liked to broach the subject of the murder, but he did not
want to remind MacGregor that Curioni was the doctor who had perjured
himself about the cause of Lodovico's death. MacGregor would not
have understood the pressures brought to bear on Curioni, or the
general despair that induced Italians to submit to occasional
outrageous demands by the government, in the hope that the rest of
the time they might at least be left alone.

The
two doctors' conversation was so completely over Julian's head that
he finally took his leave, confident that MacGregor would get on
famously without him. As he retraced his steps through the village
and along the shore, he noticed a number of boats left carelessly on
the shingle or outside the doors of cottages. Were the boats chained
up after dark? He rather doubted it crime was so infrequent on the
lake. That meant Lodovico's murderer could easily have borrowed a
boat and approached the belvedere by water.

Julian
stopped at the gate to the villa garden. Here a horse's hoofprints
and droppings had been found on the morning after the murder.
Grimani believed that Orfeo had killed Lodovico, then used the horse
to make his escape. But where would the horse have come from? The
villa had no stables, and no horse hereabouts had gone missing.
Whether Grimani realized it or not, his theory presupposed that Orfeo
had had an accomplice.

The
sun was burning ever more brightly, banishing the mist to the
mountaintops, its last place of retreat. Julian's close-fitting wool
tailcoat began to feel uncomfortably sticky. He took off his hat and
let the breeze from the lake run through his hair. The cool gardens
beckoned invitingly. He decided to take Carlo up on his offer to
show him around them. That would give him a prime opportunity to
talk with Carlo about other matters.

"Of
course it's patterned on an English landscape garden," said
Carlo.

"Yes,
one sees that at once." Julian gazed around him. Just as in a
Capability Brown garden, the villa grounds presented a series of
views as finely arranged as painted landscapes. Every bend in a path
yielded fresh surprises: a Chinese footbridge arching over a pond
full of goldfish, a breathtaking glimpse of the lake from the top of
a rock-hewn stair, a secluded clearing presided over by a lion-headed
Egyptian goddess. But the narrow compass of these grounds, compared
with those of an English country house, caused the paths to wind more
tightly