Kiss of Hot Sun (4 page)

“I hear from Giles we are expecting three more guests tomorrow,” I said, deliberately revealing a mild resentment.

But Adeline didn’t seem to notice. “I only hope we shall like them. It is so trying if people are not
simpatico.”
Then she added casually: “By the way, Signor Zampini is also coming for a few days. You met him in Rome, I believe?”

“Yes. Monica took me along to a party at his place.” I remembered the man particularly because he’d struck me as so repulsive. “I didn’t realise that you knew him, Miss Harcourt.”

Delicately, Adeline added cream to a cup of tea. “Oh yes indeed, we are old, old friends.”

The thought of having Signer Zampini so close at hand gave me no pleasure. I was surprised, too. I wondered what on earth Adeline Harcourt, one-time queen of the London stage, could possibly have in common with this fat and hairy Italian.

It struck me as odd that, since they were such old friends, she hadn’t been at his party in Rome. I knew for a fact she’d been in the city that evening.

Giles drifted into the conversation, talking about the proposed jaunt as though it were already fixed, taking it quite for granted that I could go. I felt horribly uncomfortable at his easy assumption that my job could be treated so lightly.

But I needn’t have worried. Adeline was enthusiastic. “It’s a very good idea for you to get to know your way around the island. How else can you appear knowledgeable when guests ask for information?”

“But oughtn’t I to be here when the new people arrive?”

Adeline blithely dismissed this as quite unnecessary. In fact, I rather got the impression she would prefer me to be out.

* * *

Summer had come early, even for Sicily. The heat was mounting, each day up on the one before. When we set out the sun was already high, bouncing up from the ground almost as fiercely as it glared down from the sky.

Giles planned to drive me up Etna. “Not all the way, though. After six or seven thousand feet the road fizzles out. Of course, you can always walk the rest, if you like.”

I glanced at him suspiciously, wondering if he was pulling my leg.

Actually, I found Giles surprisingly well-informed. He spoke with compassion of the dreadful earthquakes Sicily had suffered, the Messina disaster early in the century, and the recent upheavals on the western side of the island. He told me about some of Etna’s worst eruptions, way back. “Still, maybe the old girl isn’t all bad, considering this lot comes from the filthy muck she throws up from her innards.”

‘This lot’ was the lower slopes, lush vineyards and terraced orchards of lemon and orange. Olives too, and everything imaginable crammed in. Not the tiniest fragment of soil was allowed to go to waste.

Quite suddenly Giles swerved off the road. He pulled up beside the entrance to a cafe. I glimpsed a sprawling white building half hidden by trees, with tables and chairs dotted around a paved courtyard.

“We’ll have a drink here, and push on nearer the crater for lunch,” he said. “Then we’ll have time for a slow amble back to the villa for tea.”

“This trip sounds more gastronomic than educational,” I laughed.

Giles didn’t laugh. “I don’t intend it to be either.”

It was the sort of remark, I decided, best left well alone.

Maybe I was slowing down to a Sicilian pace after all. It was so easy just to sit back and let things happen. The idea of a long cool drink in that shade-dappled garden was heaven. Even the feather-soft air seemed to be asking what was the hurry. Wouldn’t Etna still be there tomorrow?

In the cafe garden we made for a small arbour that had a view right up to Etna’s summit. But half way across, Giles switched direction.

“It’ll be cooler inside,” he muttered.

I protested. “But it’s gorgeous out here. And I wanted to enjoy the view.”

“You’ll be sick of that view soon enough,” he said rather sourly. He reached for my hand, and firmly marched towards the glass door leading inside.

I threw a wistful glance over my shoulder, and caught a swift impression of a familiar face. Still towed by Giles, I took a second look back.

Signor Zampini—the fat and greasy Guido Zampini! He looked as repellent as ever, uncomfortably hot in a dark blue suit tight-buttoned across his massive paunch.

Giles skipped up a couple of shallow steps. I fell up them, nearly capsizing. As I swung round to save myself, my last flash took in Zampini’s companions, a man and a woman. The man I didn’t know. The woman I did—oh my God I did!

I’d seen her just once before. Back in Rome, sitting on a hotel terrace, big-eyeing Philip Rainsby.

“Giles !”I yelled. “Wait a minute.”

He almost dragged me the last yard. We were inside the cafe, door shut behind us, before he stopped and faced me.

“What’s up, Kerry?”

I was on the edge of telling him, but I held back. It was something too personal to talk about. And I had an odd feeling there were wider implications I couldn’t yet analyse.

“What’s the matter?” Giles repeated, looking a bit anxious.

I improvised. “You nearly had me over then, that’s what.”

He grinned. “Sorry. I wanted to grab us a nice table.”

I couldn’t see what he was flapping about. Most people seemed to share my own preference for the tables in the garden. The restaurant itself was almost empty.

Giles must have had another reason for his abrupt change of mind. It was as though he too had spotted somebody outside, somebody he wanted to avoid.

The fat Italian was a likely candidate. Giles must surely know Guido Zampini, I reckoned. Perhaps he disliked
Adeline’s old friend as much as I did.

I was cheated of my cool drink too. We gulped down a hurried Martini in the uncomfortable overwarm restaurant. And then we were on our way again, attacking the mountain road like hell was on our tail.

My memory of that mad drive up Etna is hazy. Vaguely, I recall a falling-off of cultivation as we climbed higher. Then there were trees, I think, before a curiously forbidding region of black desert. I was certainly glad of the coat Giles had persuaded me to bring. In the heat down below, it had seemed impossible that I should need it. But high up the air was chilly and the wind biting.

We lunched at a sort of clubhouse at the end of the road. Giles ate ravenously, saying the cold air gave him an appetite. But I wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t get out of my mind a picture of three people at a table in a cafe garden thousands of feet below us. They’d be gone by now, but in my mind they were still there, talking earnestly.

Seeing Zampini was just an unpleasant coincidence. But the sight of that woman had shaken me badly. It reminded me too sharply, too cruelly, of someone I’d thought I was beginning to forget.

Giles made sure we got back to the
Stella d’Oro
in time for the teatime ritual. “It means so much to Adeline,” he said lightly. “We mustn’t disappoint the old darling by being late.”

We had ten minutes to spare before five o’clock deadline. I went straight up to my bedroom to wash off Etna’s dust, and slipped into a crisp pink linen dress. I got down to the salon bang on time.

Unexpectedly, it was quite full. Giles was there, of course, lounging easily in an armchair next to Adeline. On her other side were two men I’d not seen before—one rather short, trim and military-looking, with a small neat toothbrush moustache. The other, much younger, was tall and fair, with a paler complexion that looked as if it were new to Sicily.

There were also three people sitting with their backs to me. It was only as they swung round, the men jumping politely to their feet, that I recognised them.

I’d been expecting Guido Zampini to show up at the villa sometime today, so his presence didn’t surprise me. Maybe the sight of the other two didn’t surprise me all that much, either. Maybe I’d feared this ever since seeing the three of them together at the cafe.

I believe I managed to conjure up a smile. But if so, then it was quite utterly false.

Adeline Harcourt, queening it over the tea wagon, had all the smooth style of a Mayfair hostess. “Kerry, darling! Do come and meet my friends.”

Taking a good strong hold on myself, I went forward.

Adeline began the introductions. “Signor Zampini you have met before. I have known him for oh, so many years...” She pursed her lips and gave a teasing little shake of her head, as if begging him not to divulge precisely how many years it was. She moved on. “Mr. and Mrs. Blunt, who have come to stay with us for a while...”

“How do you do?” I murmured.

The man held out a huge hand, thick fingers splayed. “How do, me dear. And none of this Mr. and Mrs. business, if you please. The names are George and Rosie...”

“Rosalind!” his wife corrected sharply.

Now that I looked at her more closely, I had to admit she was attractive. She had a perfect heart-shaped face, and silky golden-blonde hair that swung to her shoulders. Vivid wide blue eyes gave her a look of fetching innocence. Yet underneath I detected a vein of toughness that maybe only another woman could recognise.

Her husband’s grin was entirely fond as he said: “I always call her Rosie. Happen she’s as sweet as any rose I ever saw...”

“Oh, don’t be a damn fool George,” she slung back spitefully.

Her voice was strident, and I couldn’t place the accent because it was larded over with pretensions to class. The man, however, spoke pure Yorkshire—a no-nonsense, unpolished Yorkshire.

Adeline was continuing with the introductions. The two men beside her, I gathered, were connected with the local police.

“.... Inspector Vigorelli and his assistant, Cesare Pastore.” She became stagily arch. “They pretend they have come for the pleasure of taking tea with me, but I suspect they know all about my wicked criminal activities, and will whisk me away to one of their dungeons at any moment.”

I managed to join in the dutiful titter, but the image of a hotel terrace in Rome was dominating my mind. Philip Rainsby and that woman—and I wasn’t a bit surprised to discover she was married. I could picture the scene too clearly to doubt their intimacy. There had been a closeness between them that spoke of a whole lot more than casual friendship.

The older police officer had taken my hand and bowed low, clicking his heels smartly. The younger one shook hands, and looked into my eyes.

I became aware I was keeping the men on their feet. I sat down hastily.

Signor Zampini flashed me a gold-dazzling smile, and explained to the others: “Signorina Lyndon was so kind as to come to a little reception I gave in Rome.” In spite of his thick charm, I got the impression that for some reason he disliked me, or distrusted me. I remembered how I’d dodged him at the party. Maybe he had recognised that as a deliberate brush-off. I smiled back at him, trying to look amiable. For Miss Harcourt’s sake I mustn’t offend him any further.

I turned to the woman. “You and your husband have just arrived from Rome?” I wasn’t really sure what I hoped to gain by asking about Rome. She was hardly likely to mention Philip.

To my surprise she looked embarrassed and glanced at her husband. Flushing, he flickered his eyes towards Zampini. Following the quick sequence, I was certain that the fat Italian gave a slight nod of assent.

It had all happened so rapidly that the woman’s reply could have sounded spontaneous. “Yes, that’s right. We flew over from Rome this afternoon.”

“This afternoon?” But it was in the morning that I had seen them with Zampini.

“Aye, lass,” George Blunt confirmed quickly. “Straight from Rome we’ve come, and driven up here from Catania.”

Just what was going on between these three?

“I don’t remember meeting you at the party,” I said, tossing out the bait to both husband and wife.

Rosalind Blunt looked cautiously puzzled, but her husband charged straight in.

“What party would that have been, lass?”

Suddenly I was aware that the rest of the company had become an absorbed audience.

“I mean Signor Zampini’s party—the one he mentioned just now.”

Both the Blunts started talking at once in their eagerness to deny all previous knowledge of the Italian. “We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Signor Zampini before...” she fluttered, while he came in heavily: “Never clapped eyes on the gent until ten minutes ago.”

A shiver ran through me, a whisper of... not quite fear, but of something pretty unpleasant all the same. Why were the Blunts and Zampini pretending to be strangers?

Come to think of it, there had been a scheming air about the close way they’d talked together at the restaurant table. And I had an uneasy feeling there must be some link with Giles’ strange behaviour when he’d abruptly hauled me off indoors. Had he some reason for not wanting me to see these three together?

I glanced at Giles, but he seemed deep in talk with Adeline. He must have heart the Blunts’ remark about not knowing Zampini, yet he’d expressed no surprise. Of course, I couldn’t be positive he’d spotted that trio in the cafe garden. Maybe his sudden decision to find a table inside had been for some other reason.

I didn’t know what to make of this peculiar set-up, but I was going to have a word with Miss Harcourt about it at the first opportunity. I had to warn her that something underhand was going on. For the moment, though, I’d better play it along, concealing what I knew.

Inspector Vigorelli addressed me with stiff courtesy. “You are coming to live here in
Stella,
signorina?”

“For the time being. As long as Miss Harcourt has a use for me.”

“Ah yes...?” I felt his interest quicken.

Adeline cut in: “Kerry thinks I give her too little to do. But of course coming straight from England she is so headstrong.” The firm voice became suddenly tremulous. “It is such a help to have her here—an old woman like me...”

On cue, the police inspector jumped in with a gallantry about Adeline’s youthful appearance, scorning the very idea of encroaching old age. But having launched herself into the frail old lady act, Adeline wasn’t going to abandon it so soon. Now she became a figure of tragedy.