Vendetta for the Saint. (12 page)

“Donna Maria?” he said, with his
most engaging
smile,
profferring his hand. “My name is Simon
Templar. I am an old friend of your brother
Alessandro. When he heard that I was coming
to
Palermo, he insisted that
I should come and see
you.”

2

The
woman stood unmoving, except to glance
down at his hand as if it were a long-dead
fish. This
expression perfectly fitted the
lines around her
mouth and flared nostrils,
and was obviously one
that she used a
great deal. Her straggly mustache
was black; but the mass of her hair,
pulled back
into a tight bun, was a dull
steel gray. She was a
head shorter
than the Saint, but at least twice his diameter, and this bulk was encased in a
corset of such strength and inelasticity that there was little
human about the resultant shape. In the tradi
tionally characterless black dress outside it, she
re
minded him of a piano-legged
barrel draped for
mourning.

“I never see my brother’s friends,”
she said. “He
keeps his
business separate from his family life.”

Just as no ornament relieved the drabness of
her
robe, no trace
of cordiality tempered the chill of
her words. Only a person with the Saint’s self-as
surance and ulterior motives could have
survived
that reception;
but his smile was brazenly un
shaken.

“That shows you how much he values our
friendship. We were in the same business in
Ameri
ca, where I
come from—almost partners. So when I was at his villa in Capri the other day,
for lunch,
he made me
promise to call on you.”

“Why?”

The question was a challenge and almost a re
buttal in advance. It was clear that Al
Destamio did
not send his
friends to the ancestral demesne out of
spontaneous good-fellowship—if he ever sent
them
at all. Simon
realized that he would have to im
prove
his excuse, and quickly, or in a few seconds
he would be outside again with nothing
achieved but a glimpse of the unprepossessing facades of
Donna Maria and her lair.

“Alessandro insisted that I should get
to know you,” he said, allowing a rather sinister frigidity to
creep into his own voice. “He told me
what a good
sister you
were, and how he wanted to be sure that
in any time of trouble you would know which of
his friends to turn to.”

The ambiguity reached a mark of some kind:
at
least, there was an instant’s uncertainty in the
woman’s basilisk gaze, and afterwards a very
frac
tional unbending in her adamantine reserve.

“It has been a hot day, and you will
enjoy a cold
drink before you leave.”

“You are much too hospitable,” said
the Saint,
achieving the
miracle of keeping all sarcasm out of
his reading.

She made a sign to the maid, who had been
pointedly waiting within range, and lowered
herself
stiffly into one of the chairs.

Simon turned to choose a seat for himself,
and in
so doing was
confronted by a vision which almost equalled his wildest expectations.

Approaching through an archway of rambler
roses, from a hedged area of the garden where she
had apparently been taking a sunbath, was Gina
Destamio, clad only in a bikini of such minuscule
proportions that its two elements concealed little
more of her than did her sunglasses.
Her skin was a light golden-brown in the last rays of sunlight,
and the ultimate details of her figure more than
fulfilled every exquisite promise they had made un
der
the dress in which he had last seen her. It was
a sight to make even a hardened old pirate like Simon Templar toy with
the idea of writing just one
more sonnet.

Not
so Donna Maria, who sucked in her breath
like an asthmatic vacuum cleaner, then let it
whoosh out in a single explosive sentence,
crack
ling with
lightning and rumbling with volcanic ten
sion. It was in dialect, of which Simon
understood
hardly a word,
but its themes were abundantly
clear
from the intonation: shamelessness, disgrac
ing a respectable family before a total
stranger, and the basic depravity of the new generation. The
thunderbolts sizzled around Gina’s tousled
head,
and she only
smiled. Whatever other effect the
Swiss finishing school might have had, it had cer
tainly finished her awe of matriarchal dragons.

She turned the same smile on the Saint, and
he
basked in it.

“You must excuse me,” she said.
“I did not
know we
had a visitor.”

“You must excuse me for being here,” he re
plied. “But I refuse to say I am sorry.”

She slipped leisurely into the cotton jacket
which
she had
carried over her arm, while Donna Maria
painfully forced herself to perform a belated
intro
duction.

“My niece, Gina. This is Signor Templar
from
America.”

“Haven’t I seen you before?” Gina
asked innocently, in perfect English.

“I didn’t think you’d recognize me,”
he an
swered in the
same language. “You looked right
through me to the wall behind, as if I were a rather
dirty window that somebody had forgotten to
wash.”

“I’m sorry. But our rules here are very
old-
fashioned.
It’s scandalous enough that I sometimes
go into town alone. If I let myself smile
back at
anyone who
hadn’t been properly introduced, I
should be ruined for life. And even a nice Sicilian
would get the wrong ideas. But now I’m glad
that
we have another chance.”

“Non
capisco!”
Donna Maria hissed.

“My aunt doesn’t speak English,”
Gina said,
and reverted
to Italian. “Are you here for business
or pleasure?”

“I was beginning to think it was all
business, but
since your
uncle sent me here it has suddenly be
come a
pleasure.”

“Not Uncle Alessandro? I am glad you
know him. He has been so good to us here—”

“Gina,” interrupted the chatelaine,
her voice as
gentle as a
buzz-saw cutting metal, “I am sure the
gentleman is not interested in our family affairs.
He is only having a little drink before he
leaves.”

The maid returned from the house,
opportunely, with a tray on which were bottles of vermouth, a
bowl of ice, a siphon, and glasses.

“How
nice,” Gina said. “I am ready for one my
self. Let me pour them.”

Her aunt shot her a venomous glance which
openly expressed a bitter regret that her
niece was
no longer at an
age when she could be bent over a knee and disciplined properly. But the girl
seemed
quite oblivious
to it, and the Dragon Queen could only glower at her back as she proceeded to
pour and mix with quite sophisticated efficiency.

“Have you seen much of Palermo
yet?” Gina asked, as if seeking a neutral topic out of respect
for her guardian’s blood-pressure.

“Nothing much,” Simon said.
“What do you
think I should see?”

“Everything! The Cathedral, the Palatine
Chapel, Zisa, Casa
Professa—and you should drive
out to Monreale, it
is only a few kilometers, and
see the Norman
cathedral and cloisters.”

“I must do that,” said the Saint,
with surprising enthusiasm for one who, in spite of his sobriquet,
seldom included cathedrals and cloisters
among his
sightseeing
objectives. “Perhaps you could come
with me and tell me all about them.”

“I
would like to—”

“My niece cannot accompany you,”
Donna
Maria rasped.
“There are professional guides to do
that.”

Gina opened her mouth as if to protest, then
seemed to think better of it. Apparently she knew
from experience that such battles could not be won by direct opposition. But
she gazed thoughtfully at
the Saint,
biting her lip, as though inviting him to think of some way to get around or
over the interdiction.

Simon raised his glass to the chaperone with
a
courteous
“Salute!”
and sipped it, wishing there
had
been more choice of beverage. His palate
would never learn to accept the two vermouths
as
drinks in their own right,
instead of as mere ghostly
flavorings
added to gin or bourbon respectively.

“I did not want to cause any
trouble,” he said.
“But
it was Alessandro’s suggestion that Gina
might like to show me around.”

Donna Maria glared at him sullenly—he could
not decide whether she was more resentful at
hav
ing to control an impulse
to call him a liar, or at a
disconcerting
possibility that he might be telling
the
truth.

“I must look in my diary and see if
there is any
day when I can
spare her,” she said finally. “If you
will excuse me.”

She lurched to her feet and waddled into the
house without waiting for confirmation.

“I’m afraid she doesn’t like me,”
Simon re
marked.

“It isn’t you in particular,” Gina
said
apologetically.
“She hates practically everybody,
and twice as much if they’re men. I sometimes
think that’s what keeps her alive. She’s so
pickled in her own venom that she’s probably indestruc
tible and will still be here in another fifty years.”

“It’s funny there should be such a
difference bet
ween her and
her brother. Al is such a big-hearted
guy.”

“That’s true! Do you know, he takes care
of the
whole family
and pays all the bills. He sent me to
school and everything. If it hadn’t been for him I
don’t know what would have happened to us
all.
When my
parents were killed in a car accident they
didn’t have any insurance, and there was
hardly
any money in the
bank. I was only seven at the
time,
but I remember people looking at the house and talk about selling it. Even
Uncle Al was very
sick just
then and everyone thought he was going
to die. But he got better and went to
America, and
soon he began
sending back money. He’s been
looking
after us ever since. And yet he hardly ever
comes near us. Aunt Maria says it may be
because
he feels we’d
be embarrassed by remembering how
much we owe him.”

The Saint lounged in his chair with long
legs out
stretched,
sipping his drink perfunctorily and listening with the appearance of only
casual interest;
but under that camouflage his
mind was ticking
over like a computer,
registering every word, cor
relating
it with previous information, and reaching
on towards what hypotheses might be derived from
their multiple combinations. He had an ex
trasensory feeling that the answer to the
Cartelli-
Destamio riddle was close
at hand, if he could only
grasp it,
or if one more link would bring it within
reach …

And then the fragments that were starting to
fit
together were
rudely pushed apart again by the
voice that spoke
behind him.

“Signore,
it is getting late for you to return to the
city.” Donna Maria was returning from
her errand. “It would not be well-bred to send a friend of Alessandro’s
away at such an hour. You will stay
for
dinner?”

Even more devastating than the astonishing
reversal of her attitude was the expression that ac
companied it. A ripple of life passed across
her in
flexible
cheeks, and her bloodless lips curled back
to expose a fearsome row of yellow fangs.
For a
moment Simon
wondered if she was preparing to
leap
on him and rend him like a werewolf, or
whether she was merely suffering the rictus
of some
kind of
epileptic seizure. It was a second or two
before it dawned on him what was really
happen
ing.