A Deadly Paradise (6 page)

“What do you mean?” Cenni had asked, surprised at her conclusion, considering the extensive bruising on Baudler’s upper body.

“Yes, I was surprised as well. From the number of blows and the mutilation, you’d think her assailant was outraged and that the blows would have been more frantic, but that’s not the case. Given the same injuries without the heart attack, my guess is she’d be in the hospital today and not the morgue.”

When Cenni asked if a woman could have inflicted the first blow, Falchi said:

“Of course. Countrywomen in Umbria are often as strong as the men. How often do you see a woman in her eighties walking a mile uphill carrying two huge baskets of groceries? You or I would give up before we made it halfway to the top. Sure, it could be a woman, or one of those wily little men, half your size, who hang out in the café playing briscola. I imagine the German wasn’t expecting the attack, which is why she was so defenseless.”

And before he could ask, she’d added that she had no idea what was behind the mutilation, although her guess was that it had been easier to perform with the body in a half-sitting position, which may have explained the reason it had been dragged to the steps. She did have one supposition: she explained that, in some cultures, one of the many reasons for performing a clitoridectomy was the belief that an unmodified clitoris could lead to masturbation or lesbianism.

Elena had listened silently while Cenni had reviewed the postmortem’s finding with her, jumping in just once to add that the pruning shears had also been found, stuck in a clay planting pot, but they’d been cleaned first. No evidence of prints or clinging flesh. When he had finished going over Falchi’s findings, Elena hesitated a moment, then spoke up.

“What about the letters? I didn’t find them in the house, and they’re not in the folders of evidence that the cara-binieri gave us.”

“What letters?” Cenni asked, puzzled.

She froze, and Cenni knew that she’d let someone’s cat out of the bag, probably Piero’s.

“Tell me, Elena,” he said, holding her gaze.

“Piero didn’t tell you?”

“No. You tell me.”

She sighed. “I may be misremembering, but a few months ago Piero told me that the carabinieri had had a number of complaints from Baudler about anonymous letters; one of them actually suggested she should have her clitoris removed, ‘Just like that African bitch you’re living with’—I’m quoting from the letter,” she added. “Shortly afterward, Piero told me that the local police knew who was sending the letters and put a stop to it. The usual jerks with nothing better to do, Piero said.”

“So you think Piero just forgot?” he asked, searching her face.

“Don’t, Alex. Piero and I are married. If you think he should have told you, talk to him yourself. Just keep me out of it, please.” She rose from the purple sofa and walked into the kitchen. “The carabinieri left some bottled water in the fridge. The only thing they didn’t trash, apparently. Do you want some?” she called out.

Cenni knew when Elena walked away that she wouldn’t discuss the matter further. It was now between him and Piero. He replied, “Yes, thanks. Water would be great, and now let’s talk about that document you found.”

If he’d ever doubted his reasons for preferring Elena to others in the Perugia Questura, the letter she’d found that five carabinieri had missed in their wild search of the murder house was an excellent reminder. In the hour that Elena had spent waiting for him, she’d searched the house, looking in all the places that had been searched before, and in one place that she knew women often hid secrets, their clothing. And she’d found Baudler’s secret, a single sheet of paper, hidden inside the lining of her winter jacket.

It was in Swedish, a language that Cenni did not know well, despite having a Swedish grandmother. It was written on what appeared to be letterhead paper, although the top of the letter had been partially torn off. There was no date to indicate when it had been typed. The small bit of engraving remaining on the top indicated that it had been sent from Skandinaviska Nordea Banken in Stockholm. It was signed by Jacob Lagerskjöld, a name that Cenni recognized immediately. The Lagerskjölds were distant cousins of his grandmother. There were two other references in the text that he also recognized: Banca Centrale Venezia and Count Molin. The Molin name was well known in Italy; the Countess Molin was one of the richest women in the country. He knew the letter was important, but he had no idea why. He stuck it in his wallet. His grandmother, his favorite person in the world and sharp as a tack at eighty-nine, would translate it. He had no idea how it might relate to Baudler’s murder; nonetheless, he was still sure it was the document that Dieter Reimann was seeking.

“They threw her clothes on top of the bed and some of them had slipped to the floor,” Elena explained. “I was hanging them back on their hangers when I felt this crinkle. I could see right away that the lining had been ripped and repaired. She even used a different color of thread, navy blue instead of black. I used my nail clippers to open the seam and my little sewing kit to stitch it back together. Only this time with black thread.”

“What else?”

“Well, if that’s not enough, take a look at her bank statements. In a credenza upstairs I found statements and bills going back twelve months. The first nine months, she was living way above her means. Her pension of seventeen hundred thirty-nine euros is deposited to her account once a month. That was the only deposit, yet her bills far exceed that amount. Then three months ago, there was a single deposit of ten thousand euros, and after that a deposit each month of three thousand euros, all transferred from the same account number. One month ago, another deposit was made of five thousand euros, but get this: the account number this time was different. Strange, don’t you think? That’s a pile of money for a good little fräulein. Maybe she was blackmailing someone.”

* * *

THEY SPENT THE remaining two hours searching the five floors of the murder house looking for additional evidence. Cenni agreed silently with Elena that the cara-binieri had trashed the place during their search. Dirty laundry, bed and table linens, bath towels, and Baudler’s clothes and shoes were tossed everywhere. Surprisingly, they had made just a cursory examination of Baudler’s papers, so her bank statements and receipts were still in the house. After putting on gloves, Cenni looked through the papers quickly before dumping them all into a plastic grocery bag that he’d found in the kitchen, while Elena kept up a running commentary on the shoddy work of the competition.

“It doesn’t really matter, Elena, since we’re doing a search now. Maybe the officer in charge resented our taking over and decided to leave the grunt work for us. Who can blame him?”

Cenni felt strongly that the competition between the military and civilian arms of the police was ridiculous and that an overhaul of police functions was long overdue. Every second year, the public heard about new procedures and new responsibilities, but nothing ever really changed. “
For things to stay the same, everything must change,”
Tancredi Falconeri says in Visconti’s
The Leopard.
Sadly, it was true. He also had a great deal of sympathy for the cara-binieri who provided the day-to-day policing of Italy and at the same time were the butt of every lame joke about stupid policemen. The glamour bits went to the state police, so he restrained himself in front of his officers when it came to assigning blame. But Elena was right, the place was a mess!

“I know, I know. I’ve heard your lectures before. But look at this! They searched the rag bin and missed the obvious.” She reached down to the floor and picked up two pairs of panties. “Very different sizes! I found two different size bras as well, in that stack over there,” she said, pointing to a pile of underwear on the floor. “Baudler had a skinny friend, but it looks like she must have moved out, as most of the stuff here is in Baudler’s size. Sixteen,” she added, and grinned maliciously.

After searching through everything on the four floors and in the cellar, they climbed to the top floor, which consisted of one room and a terrace. The room was empty, except for a few boxes of books, which Elena went through, complaining the whole time about the dust and the owner’s poor choice of reading material.

“Whoever owns this place is a religious nut. All these books are religious, and some of them are centuries old. Look at this one,” she said, holding up a book for Cenni to see:
Padre Pio: The Priest Who Wears the Wounds of Christ.
My grandmother owns this one!”

Not mine, Cenni thought, opening the door to the terrace. His grandmother, Hanna Falkenberg, was a rabble-rousing atheist, and he rather enjoyed the irony that her favorite grandson was a bishop in the Catholic Church. Of course, she’d deny it, that Renato was her favorite, but Alex knew that Hanna, as she insisted they call her, preferred his brother to him. He didn’t really mind, as he was pretty sure that, given the choice, he’d prefer his brother as well. Renato was the nice twin.

The terrace commanded a 180-degree view of the Umbrian countryside. The view was magnificent, but he also noted that it was a long drop from the terrace to the valley below. The house had been built against the original town wall, and he estimated that the distance from where he was standing to terra firma was a hundred and twenty feet. The terrace wall was just waist-high, and he assumed that whatever conditions Baudler may have suffered from, she’d been exempt from acrophobia.

He went back inside to find Elena reading one of the books. She looked up and frowned. “Strange to find something like this among all those religious books. It’s a medical dictionary, and it opened without any help to a section on sexual deformities—almost like a bookmark.”

“Any particular deformity?” Cenni asked.

“There’s a faint pencil mark under
hermaphrodite.
”

“Curiosity, I suppose. Teenagers are always checking out their sexuality, afraid they’re different from their friends. When we were thirteen, Renato and I searched through every book in the house looking for information on male sexuality.”

“And. . . ?”

Cenni laughed. “Ask Piero if you need enlightenment on what every boy needs to know. Now stop looking at dirty pictures and put those books back in the box. I want to check the basement door again. There’s a huge spider web across the door opening. If a web that size takes more than two days to spin, we can be fairly sure the murderer came through the front door. Not that it makes much difference either way. Too many people in these small towns leave their doors unlocked during the day—and night. Maybe Baudler was in the habit of leaving her door unlocked. Make a note of that. We also need to know how many people had keys to the front door. Make a note of that too. And see if you can find out how long it takes a spider to spin a web of that size.”

“How do you expect me to do that?”

“Call a spider expert, Google it, or ask Piero. He never had problems with any of my requests. And he never complained!”

“Lovely, how he throws Piero at me,” Elena murmured.

Cenni ignored her grumbling and continued his observations. “The only other way in is through the basement window, which is how the neighbor and his cat got in. But the neighbor’s traces are the only ones the carabinieri found on the ledge and the floor, and the cat’s, of course. Must have been quite a shock to the poor cat.”

Elena, who hated cats, was nonplussed. “The ‘poor cat’! What about the poor
neighbor?
”

“I think we should quit now,” Cenni told Elena when they’d finished searching the murder house. “It’s after six, and you don’t want to wear yourself out your first day back. We can interview the owner of the house and the neighbors tomorrow. And I also want you to find out who’s been sending Baudler money, as soon as possible. That looks promising.”

“And you’ll want to go to your grandmother’s and have that letter translated,” Elena responded, reading his mind.

ALEX REACHED HIS grandmother’s apartment in Perugia shortly after seven. She immediately sent Lucia off for a bottle of champagne. “And bring three glasses,” she shouted after her.

“I thought the doctor told you no more champagne,” he admonished her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hanna responded. “I plan to go out in style—
my
style, not your mother’s. But what brings you here at seven o’clock? Isn’t there a playoff game tonight? Something brings you here besides love and duty.”

“You always could read my mind,” Alex said, leaning over and kissing her on the forehead. “I have a letter in Swedish that I need you to translate. It’s connected to a case.”

“I wish you and your brother would remember that you’re one quarter Swedish. Neither of you knows more than ten words of the language, and most of those can’t be repeated in company.”

“And whose fault is that?” he asked affectionately.

In the time that it took his grandmother to find her glasses and read the letter, he observed her closely and had a heart-rending moment of profound sadness. Her hands shook noticeably from what her doctor claimed was the beginning of Parkinson’s disease, and her once substantial Swedish frame was shrunken and bent, more so since his last visit a month ago. In July, she’d be ninety, and Renato was planning a great surprise. He was bringing her three very eccentric Swedish nephews to Italy for the celebration. Alex tried hard never to think of her death, but he realized for the first time that it might not be so very far away.

She finished the letter, removed her glasses, and stared off into space. Alex waited for what seemed an age, until his impatience broke through.

“What does it say? Does it provide a motive for murder?”

“I suppose it does,” she replied quietly. “And for some shame as well.”

Hanna Falkenberg was a cousin of Jacob Lagerskjöld, who had signed the letter, so Alex waited for her to respond in her own time.

She began slowly, looking down at her hands: “The letter is cryptic, but I’ll give you my interpretation: Jacob is writing to Count Molin to let him know that ten million pounds, in twenty-pound notes, is on its way to Banca Cen-trale Venezia, presumably for distribution. The date is missing, but from another reference within the letter, I’d say it was written in 1945, and in 1945 it’s highly doubtful that the Bank of England would send large sums of money to Skan-dinaviska Nordea for distribution, not when Jacob and his brother Marcus were viewed by both the British and the Americans as German sympathizers.” She looked up and gave him a wry smile. “I suppose it sounds hypocritical for a naturalized Italian to be complaining about the neutral Swedes, but you know my position on the war and the Swedish government’s decision to remain neutral.”