A Rather Curious Engagement (16 page)

“Because I also know,” Jeremy said, “that if I didn’t, you’d try to pull this off yourself. And somebody has to keep an eye on you.”

“What am I, some doofus or something?” I demanded.

“No, it’s merely that you always think the best of people,” he replied. “Therefore, someone has to be on hand to think the worst.”

“Are you saying you suspected this all along?” I asked.

“I was fairly certain you were up to no good when we left Antibes, ” he said maddeningly, “but I knew for absolutely sure just now, when I went to get smaller change to tip the porter—and I saw you over at the front desk gabbing with the older lady receptionist. She gave you maps and she circled things on it.”

“Boy,” I said indignantly. “You’re a bigger snoop than I am.”

“I learned from the master,” he replied. “So, what else have you got?”

“Well,” I said eagerly, “the Count comes from a very old aristocratic family in Bonn. He was only eighteen when he married his childhood sweetheart—named Liesl. Ya get it?”

“Yes, yes, as in
Liesl’s Dream,
” Jeremy said. “Go on.”

“She was studying to become a concert pianist. But she caught polio and became crippled. Hitler didn’t have much tolerance for people with disabilities, you know. And the Count thought the fascists were ruining Germany, so he and Liesl decided to hightail it out of there. So they came here, to Lake Como. Liesl gave music lessons for many years after that, and the Count helped other war refugees who barely escaped with their lives.”

“Where’d you get all this gossipy, personal stuff?” Jeremy asked.

“Turns out the receptionist was once a pupil of Liesl’s,” I said. “She adored them. Says the Count and his wife were
molto generoso
, even after the war, supporting local charities and orphanages, making donations to fix the church bell, all that kind of stuff.”

“Sounds like a nice dapper sort of fellow,” Jeremy commented, intrigued.

“Yeah, she said he always cuts a
bella figura
in town, even after Liesl died in the 1970s, when her youngest child was only a couple of years old. The Count still made public appearances to keep up their charities and stuff . . .
Until,
” I added mysteriously, “very recently, when something went wrong. All they know around here was that he went off on his yacht and came back ‘a changed man.’ ”

“Blimey,” Jeremy said warily. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” I went on dramatically, “nobody really knows. All she said was, ‘Alas, the Count suffered a stroke. He is more frail these days, a bit forgetful. He does not make so many public appearances anymore.’ From the way she said it, I gathered that he’s now a bit—senile or something.” I paused for breath.

“Wow,” Jeremy said. “That’s some story.”

“You haven’t heard the best part,” I said. “True, he doesn’t get out much anymore,
but
in honor of his wife, he always attends the annual music festival. In all these years, they say, he never misses. As in tomorrow night.”

“Good God, the audacity!” Jeremy marveled. “Luring me in with Beethoven, you treacherous female.”

“Well, it’s taking place right here in our hotel,” I continued, undaunted. “In one of those gorgeous old salons on the lobby level,” I said eagerly. “You know, the ones with antique wallpaper and golden trim, and those sofas that make you think of kings and queens with powdered wigs, throwing music soirées. I saw the waiters setting up rows of extra seating already. And there was a platform for the string musicians and pianist. And tables full of champagne glasses. It’s going to be wonderful. So,” I said briskly, “that gives us all day tomorrow to find out more about the Count, maybe see where he lives.”

“You’ll have to take me to my island and feed me a magnificent lunch,” Jeremy warned. “I can’t snoop on an empty stomach.”

“Why, naturally,” I said.

“Good,” Jeremy said briskly. “Because I already made the reservations. ”

Well, we overslept a bit. But it was all part of the enchant-ment. The shuttered windows kept us in such a spell-bound slumber that only the sound of the maids hoovering the hallways finally stirred us. I suppose, too, that the strange stress of the last week had caught up with us. So we gulped our coffee and rushed out of the hotel to catch our ferry, which we just barely made, jumping aboard seconds before it began ploughing across the lake.

I was glad to be out on the water, inhaling the invigorating air and finally getting my bearings. I soon realized that travelling by boat was absolutely the only way to really gain a perspective on Lake Como, with its string of pretty little towns. The mountains rose all around us as we flirted past the little coves and promontories with their villages, lovely churches and splendid villas, jewel-like in the soft morning sun, in colors of yellow and pink and ochre and terracotta. The Count’s castle was supposedly not very far from here, high up in the hills above a small town called Ossuccio. I figured we might get a glimpse of it from the little island that Jeremy loved.

“Ready for a little history lesson, Miss Researcher-Slash-Spy?” Jeremy asked with a cunning look.

“Why do you look so smug?” I asked.

“Because for once
I’ve
got some history tidbits for
you
,” he crowed. “Looked it all up when I was a kid hanging about here. For starters, the Isola Comacina is the only island on Lake Como. It’s tucked into a cozy nook of a peninsula—”

“Halfway down the left thigh of the frog’s leg!” I cried. I’d already spied it on the map.

“Frog’s leg?” Jeremy inquired. “Perchance, do you mean the Lake?”

“Yes, go on,” I urged.

“Well, the island is quite small—you can hike from one end to the other pretty easily. Even so, armies have fought over the Isola Comacina for centuries. When the Romans occupied it, the island was prized for the valuable olive oil from its trees,” Jeremy explained. “Then the city of Como teamed up with the notorious Barbarossa—”

“That means the ‘red-bearded’ one, doesn’t it?” I asked.

Jeremy said, “Yes, but he was actually Frederick the First—a German king from the 1100s. Nowadays the island is practically deserted,” Jeremy said, “except for some old churches and ruins, and, of course, the restaurant, which has been around since the 1940s and hopefully will be here until the end of time.”

“Is it run by the original owner still?” I asked.

Jeremy shook his head with a sly smile. “Nope. The very first owner was one of Mussolini’s captains, who ran away and used this place as his hideaway; then he opened this restaurant. But don’t worry. Far as I know, nobody’s hiding out there now. You are in for a treat. Here we are.”

I leaned forward, eager to catch my first glimpse of the Isola Comacina, which now appeared to drift magically into view as our ferry rounded the corner and pulled up to its shores. It was a tiny floating world unto itself, lush and green. We walked from the pier along a footpath, up to a high promontory, atop which the restaurant was perched. Other diners were arriving in their own little speedboats.

The proprietor, a tall, tanned handsome man, stood at the entrance to greet each guest with a very natural attentiveness. He led us to a table laid with white cloth and pink napkins, perfectly situated in the shade of a leafy tree, where we had a view of the approaching boats.

A round-faced waiter with a businesslike manner plunked down a carafe of sparkling water, and a bottle of chilled white wine, and two short, stemless thick wine glasses—the kind that resemble whisky tumblers. I glanced around, looking for a chalkboard or something with the day’s special on it.

“Psst,” I said to Jeremy, “where’s the menu?”

“This is one restaurant where you don’t have to even think about what you want to eat,” Jeremy said, unfolding his napkin and dropping it in his lap. “They always serve the same one basic menu, because they do everything utterly right. Just sit back and be glad.”

This mystified me at first, until suddenly a flock of waiters arrived and began placing, in rapid succession, an array of pretty white-yellow-and-purple flowered bowls filled with appetizers, on the smaller serving table on my right.

“Go ahead,” Jeremy said, “pass it round.” I picked up one bowl after another, took some for my plate, then handed it to Jeremy. We tasted the various incredible
antipasto,
each served in its own vinaigrette. It was like being introduced to every vegetable for the very first time, and being transported by its perfection: tomato topped with a sliver of lemon; small, nearly seedless zucchini; enormous yet delicate white beans; succulent red beets; sweet carrots, and some delightful greens I’d never had before. And somewhere along the way, a big fresh loaf of bread had been placed on the table; and, there was now a platter of plump round onions that had been baked whole, to a soft and incredible sweetness. This was followed by little plates of tender prosciutto—the kind you can only get in Italy—accompanied by a delicate bit of melon that I popped into my mouth and realized, oh,
that’s
what melon is supposed to taste like.

All the while, the elegant owner, with his alert, intelligent eyes, was assessing the progress of everyone’s meal so that no one was ever left wanting. The effect of this careful attentiveness was that all the diners settled into a contented hum of dignified conversation.

Seated under the tree with a breeze ruffling my hair, I felt a contented calm, and yet a heightened awareness of the sensual delights around me—the sun, the sky, the sea, the food, the pleasant company. I couldn’t help becoming fascinated with the other diners, most of whom were Italian, grouped around long tables for entire families whose children behaved phenomenally well, even when they had finished eating.

One little boy, dressed in formal white pants and white shirt, tiptoed around the perimeter of the restaurant beyond its railings, but his mother, elegantly dressed in a cream-colored suit, only had to call out his name once to make him come hurrying to her side.

“So this is where you came on vacation as a kid?” I asked Jeremy, picturing him as a sweet, earnest English boy sitting in one of these chairs, swinging his legs, those blue eyes of his taking in everything around him.

“Yes, for several years in a row, in early summer,” Jeremy replied.

“You and your mum, and Uncle Peter?” I asked. Jeremy’s English stepfather was Mom’s brother.

“Peter came once with us,” Jeremy said. “He loved it, too, but was always busy at work. He told me that someday I’d come here with my own wife and kid. Mum took me back here a couple more times after that.”

Jeremy had never known his real father, an Italian-American who came to London in the late 1960s for the music scene and fell in love with Jeremy’s mother; but ended up being drafted into the Vietnam war and died a few years later, not long after Jeremy was born. I wondered if Aunt Sheila had deliberately brought Jeremy here as a boy so that he’d become familiar with his Italian heritage.

The next plate arrived with a subtle flourish—a cold meat platter consisting of a slice of “English” ham and paper-thin shavings of a tender roast beef called
bresaola
. All the food was served in just the right amounts so that you could eat everything without over-doing it.

“Jeremy,” I said after we’d devoured it, “this is heavenly. I am never going to leave this place. I am going to stay in this chair until they fling me into the lake.”

“I won’t let them,” he promised.

I gazed across the lake at the mysterious shores opposite us. Small towns nestled at the foothills, looked like little villages from a long-ago world of make-believe. Somewhere across the lake was the coastal town where the Count lived in his castle. But there were so many intriguing châteaus and villas dotting the landscape, I couldn’t tell which one belonged to him.

“Looking for your Count?” Jeremy asked, amused. “I don’t know what you expect from the guy. He doesn’t sound like he’s in very good shape. He might be mad as a March hare, for all you know.”

“Maybe. But I just can’t help feeling that he might help us figure out what happened to
Penelope’s Dream
.”

“Well, what’s the bloke look like?” Jeremy asked.

“Elegant. Aristocratic. A big intelligent head. The kind of profile you could put on a monument,” I said. “Blond hair. But that picture was taken years ago.” The image of the Count from the photograph in the yacht club was fading fast in my memory, but I still thought I might recognize him.

The older waiter arrived with a very serious-looking platter that he placed on a temporary serving table which a younger waiter had set up for him in advance. A big, cooked trout that had been grilled over charcoal, was now being cut in half for us. The older waiter worked expertly with his cutlery, and lifted the fish right off the bones, placing one half on my plate first, then the other half on Jeremy’s.

“Mmmm,” I murmured. I sighed happily. “A fresh fish makes you feel like you’re going to live forever.” We gazed in amusement at the occasional boat passing by, whose driver and passengers waved or peered curiously at us. A man at a nearby table picked up his pink linen napkin, stood up and waved it like a nautical signal to his friends so that they’d know where he was sitting and they could join him. Small speedboats here were like taxicabs. Everyone looked happy.

“I love travelling by boat,” I said. Then I added, “You’re not really thinking of selling
Penelope’s Dream
, are you?”

“No,” Jeremy said. “I mean, I considered it. But I guess I was just blowing off steam. I felt a bit of a fool, having it stolen right out from under us. Being here on the lake has reminded me why I wanted a boat in the first place.”

Score one for Lake Como so far, I thought to myself.

After we’d finished off that fish, the next course arrived: we each got a half of a free-range chicken that had been slightly crushed and cooked in an iron pot with oil. It came with a green salad. Which was followed by a little chunk of parmigiano cheese that the waiters carried over in a giant wheel, spearing our chunks with the tip of a knife. And finally, just before the coffee, came a dessert of fresh ice cream called
fior di vaniglia.