Pure Dead Brilliant (13 page)

O Sole Mio

L
uciano Strega-Borgia scraped the untouched remains of lunch into the firebox of the range and slammed the door shut to prevent the smell escaping into the kitchen.

“If you're sure I can't be of any assistance, sir . . .” Mrs. McLachlan untied her apron and hung it on a hook by the door to the kitchen garden.

“Quite sure, Flora.” Signor Strega-Borgia smiled at the nanny. “Why not take Damp out for a walk before dinner? That way she'll work up an appetite and we can get on with our work without distractions.”

“Dad, where d'you want these?” Pandora edged through the garden door, her arms laden with herbs.

“On the table, and you can chop them with this.” Signor Strega-Borgia passed his daughter a seriously wicked knife and turned to see how his son was faring. Titus stood over a large stainless steel pot, stirring onions and garlic as if his life depended on it.

“Not so
violently,
Titus. They're only vegetables, not mortal enemies. . . .”

“Why are you cooking dinner tonight, Dad?” Pandora looked up from chopping oregano, brushing a stray clump of hair out of her eyes.

“The rest of the household is indisposed.” Signor Strega-Borgia poured a mountain of flour onto the kitchen table and, after making a small indentation in the center, dropped twelve egg yolks into it. “Your mama is feeling nauseous. Marie Bain is sulking in her bedroom because none of us touched her kippers in raisin and rat-pee sauce; your mother's colleagues are all covered in bee stings—”

“Hornets,” muttered Titus, “not bees. I saw them—”

“Me too,” agreed Tock, crawling out from under the table and coming over to the range to peer into Titus's pot, adding under his breath, “And that's not
all
I saw.”

“Pardon?” Titus looked down to where the crocodile put his front paw to his mouth and mimed, “Keep shtoom.”

“Hornets? Where on earth did they come from?” Luciano Strega-Borgia wondered aloud as he rapidly worked the eggs into the flour with his hands, causing Pandora to regard him with horror.

“Yeurrrrchhh,” she groaned. “Dad, that is just utterly
gross
. It looks like sick . . .”

Secretly agreeing with his sister's assessment of the clotted mess on the kitchen table, Titus angled his body in Tock's direction and whispered, “
What
did you see?”

“That witch,” Tock muttered. “Her with the ridiculous horse-drawn hearse. I'd opened the bathroom window to let the steam out after my bath and I saw her. Standing talking gibberish on the edge of the meadow, messing up that spell, turning flowers into hornets.”

“Are you sure?” Titus stopped stirring and stared at Tock. “I mean, that's—that's
evil
. They're all covered in stings because of
her
.”

“Yup,” Tock said. “I think she's batting for the other side.”

“What? What d'you mean? What other side?”

Tock's whisper was almost inaudible. “The side of Dark, not Light.”

Titus paled. “You mean she's practicing Black Ma—”

“Don't
say
it,” Tock hissed. “Walls have ears. I think something very nasty is going on. Haven't you humans noticed
anything
?”

Titus thought of the overall strangeness of the past few days and nodded. “I thought it was just me,” he confessed. “I've been feeling . . . um, sort of . . . haunted . . . like there's something out to get me—”

Signor Strega-Borgia looked up from kneading a lump of dough that was beginning to resemble something you could put in your mouth as opposed to hurl in the trash and said, “How are your onions doing, Titus?”

“Um . . . yes . . . great. Soft and squishy and brownish,” Titus guessed, adding in a whisper, “What do you think we should do? Tell Dad?”

“No. No way. When it comes to the odd behavior of student witches, your father's judgment is somewhat clouded. As far as he's concerned, Black Magic is just a darker shade of White, a tonal difference as opposed to a moral one. . . .” Tock sighed and raised his voice to a normal volume. “And speaking of clouded judgment, I'd say those onions were
black,
not brown.”

“FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, TITUS!” Luciano roared. “Can't I even trust you to do a simple thing like
brown
an onion? How the heck are you ever going to be able to feed yourself when you leave home if you can't even carry out the most elementary of culinary tasks? At this rate, you're going to starve to death before you're thirty.”

The knife slipped out of Pandora's hand and fell to the stone floor with a steely
chinggg
.

The faces of both his children were ashen.

“What on earth's the
matter
with you two?” Luciano pounded the lump of pasta dough with one fist, causing a cloud of flour to erupt around his hands. In the silence that followed, Tock sidled out the door to the kitchen garden, closing it quietly behind him.

“Titus,
caro mio
.” Luciano clutched his forehead, instantly full of remorse. “I am sorry for shouting. I'm an idiot. If you don't ever want to cook, well . . . that's your decision. Your poppa's money will make sure you never need worry about cooking ever again. You'll be able to hire the best chef in Europe, should you wish—your only problem will be avoiding turning into a complete butterball in the process. . . .”

Tears rolled down Titus's nose, landing with a hiss in the pot of blackened onions.

“Dad—” Pandora tried to head her father onto safer conversational topics. “The herbs are all chopped . . . um . . . what d'you want me to do now?”

Holding up a hand for silence, Luciano stepped straight into the verbal equivalent of quicksand.

“How long now? About a week, Titus? I've arranged for one of the estate lawyers to come for dinner tonight, so we can have a little chat about where best to invest your money. I mean, you can't keep it in a piggy bank, can you?”

Titus stared at his pan of spoiled onions as if it alone held the answer to all that ailed him.

“Titus. For heaven's sake, lighten up.” Luciano threw his arms wide, narrowly missing Pandora's head. “Think about it: how many thirteen-year-olds do you know with so much money in the bank that they could buy a new car every year? Just off the interest alone? And not just
any
car; with that sort of money you could buy—”

“An Aston Martin,” Titus said woodenly.

“
Please
. Spare me. I'm Italian, remember?” Luciano made a derisory
pffff
sound. “Not an Aston Martin, no. A Ferrari, a Maserati, something with a bit of soul—”

“Eughhh,
don't
mention sole,” Pandora interrupted, seizing the opportunity to halt her father's unwittingly tactless rantings. “If that was what Marie Bain made for lunch, then I want to be in a soul-free zone for the rest of my life. . . .”

“Cars don't
have
souls,” muttered Titus, scraping burnt onions into the compost bucket and dropping the ruined pan into the sink with a crash. Behind him, Pandora gritted her teeth. She'd tried to help, but both her brother and father seemed intent on conversational suicide.

“Heavens, child, do you have to be quite so literal?” Luciano abandoned his pasta dough in a mound on the table and headed for the pantry. “Titus, give me a hand here, would you?” He retrieved a stepladder from behind a flour bin and dragged it across to a wall of shelves stacked with homemade jams and chutneys, some of such venerable antiquity that they had turned black. Climbing up the steps and using the shelves to keep his balance, Luciano turned to check that he had his son's attention.

“Look, Titus.” Luciano stretched up and seized a glass jam jar with its cloth cover held in place with yellow raffia. He peered at the handwritten label.
“August 1989, Strawberry and Champagne Conserve
—in your mother's illegible handwriting . . .”

“So?” Titus glared up at his father.

“So, Titus,” Luciano sighed, “the contents of this jar are almost as old as you are. Your mother and I picked these strawberries in the garden with you as a baby on my shoulders. In fact, if memory serves, with you dribbling down the back of my shirt and attempting to pull my hair out in handfuls.”

“Mmm . . . ,” Titus mumbled, then, reasserting his adolescent need to prove that he found adult conversation deeply boring, added, “And your point is?”

“And my point
is
: this jar contains a memory of one of the happiest days of my life.” Luciano patted the jar fondly. “The weather was hot and dry, there wasn't a gnat in sight, your mother was wearing a white linen dress, I still had all my hair, my firstborn child was burbling on my back, and we were about to go down to the loch and eat strawberries and drink champagne. . . .”

“So what's in the other jars?” Titus scowled up at the laden shelves in the pantry.

“Heaps of things. There's half a shelf full of quince jelly made after Pandora was born and”—Luciano indicated a large blue-and-white china jar on a low shelf—“Rumtopf that we began after Damp arrived. We were turning into experts at preserving by then. Come to think of it, we were becoming pretty expert at babies, too.”

Titus winced. Some things just didn't bear thinking about. . . . “Can I go now?” he muttered, gazing down at his shoes.

“Titus”—Luciano climbed down the stepladder and sat heavily on the bottom rung—“nearly thirteen years have passed since I first held you in my arms. Nothing you do or say can change how I felt about you then, or now. You can act like you think I'm just the most terminally boring old fart it has ever been your misfortune to share a roof with, you can roll your eyes and pray that I'll just spontaneously cease to exist—but it doesn't matter. What
does
matter is that ever since you and your sisters came into our lives, we have been a family, and deny it if you must, this family is part of your soul.”

“Yeah, Dad, but—”

“Hear me out. So . . . we keep all these ancient jars of jam because they are each and every one a reminder of the importance of family. When you and your sisters have grown up and gone, your mother and I are going to work our way through all these jars one by one, remembering all the joys you brought us—”

“Dad?” Titus could hardly get the words out. “Dad, there's something wrong. . . . It's . . . oh, it's just so
weird.
. . . I've got this horrible feeling—something awful's going to—”

The pantry door opened and Signora Strega-Borgia tiptoed in. “Don't mind me,” she whispered. “I've just suddenly been overcome with an unaccountable desire for some of that date-and-banana pickle we made last year. . . . D'you know where Mrs. McLachlan put it, Luciano?”

“You
must
be feeling better, Baci. You certainly look better.” Luciano stood up and wrapped an arm around his wife's shoulders. “But
pickle
? Are you sure? Why not wait until dinner? We're making pasta—that is, once Titus has told me what's
eating him.”

Signora Strega-Borgia plucked a jar off one of the shelves and, after a cursory glance at the label, peeled off its cloth cover and sniffed the contents appreciatively. “Mmmm. Delicious . . .” She dipped a finger into the jar and withdrew a sticky lump of pickle which she promptly swallowed.

“Eughhhh. Mu-umm.” Titus squinched his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the revolting sight.

Signora Strega-Borgia opened the door to leave and then paused, as if remembering something faintly unpleasant. “I'll leave you guys to it,” she mumbled in between mouthfuls. “Don't forget that lawyer chap is coming at eight and he doesn't eat meat, tomatoes, garlic, or onions.”

“What
does
he eat, then?” Luciano complained. “Supper
is
meat, tomatoes, garlic, and onions.”

“Who cares? Let him starve,” Signora Strega-Borgia said with uncharacteristic venom, closing the door behind her.

“Doesn't she like lawyers?” Titus said. “Or is it him in
particular?”

“Just him. Your mother loathes anyone who has
anything
to do with your grandfather's estate.”

“Why? What's wrong with it?”

“Let's just say that poppa, your grandfather, may he rest in peace, was a businessman with some rather unorthodox methods of dealing with his clients.” Luciano turned back to the shelves and replaced the jar of jam.

“What d'you mean, ‘unorthodox methods'? Come on, Dad, you have to tell me. After all, I am involved as well, with . . . with Grandfather's money and all that inheritance stuff.”

Attempting to think of a reply, Luciano picked up a squat glass jar and tried to remember what was inside it.

“Dad? What exactly did my grandfather
do
to make all that money? What
was
his job?”

Peering into the murky depths of the jar, Luciano took a deep breath. “Only your mother and I know about this. And one other, but he may well be dead now. Titus, you must never,
ever
breathe a word of this to another living soul. Some things are best kept hidden. Your grandfather, Don Chimera di Carne Borgia, was a mafioso. A very big and powerful one. In the criminal underworld of his time he was the big cheese,
il grande parmigiano,
with big businesses, politicians, royalty, and even heads of state forming corrupt links in his chain of influence. . . .”