Season of Storms (33 page)

xii

“
TELL
him I can’t,” I said to Teresa, who’d come to my room to deliver a message from Alex. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel well this morning.”

Her dark suspicious eyes gave me a thorough going-over, as though she wanted to be absolutely sure herself before she carried the news back. “You are ill?”

I certainly felt like I was, and I didn’t doubt I looked it, too. I’d spent most of the past hour crying in that slow and inconsolable way that always left my eyes red and swollen and dry and my sinuses blocked. “I don’t feel well,” was all that my conscience would let me admit.

Teresa didn’t appear wholly satisfied by that, but having looked me up and down, sharp-eyed, a second time, she nodded briskly. “I will tell the signore.”

Thanking her, I closed the door of my room and leaned against it, letting a wave of depression wash over me. The truth was, I would have loved to have spent the afternoon with Alex as he’d asked me, away from this house and its people and problems. But I simply couldn’t. Not when I’d promised Rupert that I wouldn’t spread the word about his illness. An actress I might be, but I didn’t have the energy today to keep up the front for a full afternoon. Not with Alex.

At any rate, I didn’t think I’d fool him. He was cleverer than that. So it seemed safer to avoid him till I’d had a chance to come to terms with things myself, and get my emotions in check.

A reasonable plan, I thought . . . only Alex himself spoiled it half an hour later when he turned up at my door in person.

His quiet eyes assessed me as Teresa’s had. “May I come in?”

I started to refuse him. “Alex, honestly, I don’t feel well enough to—”

“Yes, I know. Teresa said you told her you were ill.” He came in anyway, and closed the door behind him with a certain unintended arrogance that might have been the product of his privileged upbringing or, more simply, of the fact that he was owner of this house. “She also said,” he went on, turning in the middle of my sitting-room to face me, “that in her opinion you didn’t look ill, but upset. She believed you’d been crying.” Again his gaze levelled itself on my face. “Have you?”

I sidestepped the question, lowering my eyes as I lifted a hand to my temple. “I have a beastly headache, Alex.” That was true enough—I didn’t want to tell him lies if I could help it.

“And this is what has made you cry? I don’t believe that.”

“Don’t you?”

“No.” His voice sounded faintly impatient. “I know what has happened.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I saw them together,” he said, “in the gardens this morning. It was obvious even to me.”

I looked up at him then, pressing my hand to my temple more forcefully as my headache intensified. “Was it?”

I sounded like an idiotic echo, and his impatience grew more pronounced. “Look, I can see that you’re finding it painful, but if you’ll permit me, I think it’s a waste of your time. He’s not worth it.”

“He’s not . . . ?”

“For one thing, he’s too old—he’s old enough to be your father. You might not think it’s a problem now, but wait another twenty years and—”

“Alex . . .”

“Well, it’s true. You throw your life away on such a man. It isn’t natural.”

“Alex,” I said as he turned from me, raking a hand through his hair in frustration, “what
are
you talking about?” And then, because I had a good idea he wasn’t talking about Rupert, I went on to ask, “Who exactly did you see this morning in the gardens?”

He glanced around, I think to judge whether I was being dense on purpose. “Den and Madeleine.”

“And why would that affect me?”

“They seemed very . . . close.”

“I know.” Keeping my own voice deliberately clear so there would be no room for misinterpretation, I said, “I’ve known about the two of them for some time now. I think it’s wonderful.”

“You do.” His turn to echo, and to frown. “So you and Den are not—”

“Of course not.” Silently cursing whatever it was that made everyone so keen to bracket me with Den, I folded my arms in defiance. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Believe me,” Alex said, “I’m not the least bit disappointed.” And then, remarkably, he smiled, and when I saw that smile I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that whatever there might once have been between him and Daniela, there was nothing now, no matter what she said.

That smile was mine, and mine alone.

I watched it coming closer as he crossed the room towards me, and when he stopped just in front of me, taking my face in his hands as he lowered his mouth towards mine, it was all I could see.

xiii

“
I’M
sorry if I’ve spoiled your afternoon,” Edwina said, reaching to pluck a dead blossom from one of the low shrubs that lined this section of the garden path. “Teresa tells me you and Alex had an outing planned.”

She’d arrived with her usual suddenness, a fairy godmother springing out of thin air, healthily tanned from her time in the Greek island sunshine.

The dogs, apparently overjoyed by Edwina’s return, had come with us, and I had to stop walking for a moment to keep from tripping over Nero, who’d halted in the middle of the path to sniff at something. “You haven’t spoiled anything. We’d talked about maybe going somewhere today, but then this morning I felt poorly, so . . .”

From her wordless sideways glance I had the impression that Edwina, like Alex and Teresa, was less than convinced by my illness excuse, but she at least was kind enough to keep it to herself. “All the more reason to be out in the fresh air,” she said. “Staying indoors is no cure for a headache.”

She believed in applying her medical theories with zeal, I’d noticed—she’d all but kidnapped me from my room, ordered me into a comfortable pair of shoes and a cardigan, and brought me out here. Still, I’d got off relatively easy, in comparison to Alex. The reason the dogs were with us in the first place was because their master had been dispatched to the Villa delle Tempeste, reluctantly, to break the news to Daniela that she was once again going to have to shift her things to make room for Edwina.

That alone improved my mood.

Edwina snapped another dying blossom off and clucked her tongue. “What
do
the gardeners get paid for? That’s what I’d like to know. There’s one, now,” she said, spotting a dungareed man who appeared to be pruning a flowering bush a short distance ahead. “I’ll just go have a word.”

It was, I thought, watching, an uneven match. Edwina, making up for the fact that she spoke very little Italian by speaking quite loudly and pointing a lot, was clearly overpowering the poor gardener, who seemed able to do little more than nod in the face of the onslaught.

“Hopeless,” she dismissed him, as she came back shaking her head. “Doesn’t know the first thing about pruning.”

Over her shoulder I noticed the gardener had gathered his tools and was wasting no time in making his getaway down an adjoining path, looking a little bit shell-shocked. I smiled, and in the poor man’s defence said, “Perhaps he’s one of the new ones. Alex mentioned that he’d hired a couple of new men to help keep the grounds.” Certainly the gardeners had been much more in evidence this past week. I always seemed to pass at least one of them whenever I was out. I told Edwina this, and added, “And Daniela’s men are working at the Peacock Pool. I haven’t been up there for a few days, but the last time I went, there was definitely something being done.”

“You don’t say? Let’s go have a look then, shall we?”

Actually, it looked no different than it had the day I’d come with Madeleine and Poppy—a little more forlorn, maybe, under the overcast sky, but otherwise unchanged. There was still the long pool choked with stagnant-smelling lilies and the tailless row of peacocks wading through it and the carved stone greyhounds stoically ignoring the curious nudges and sniffs of their flesh-and-blood counterparts. Our footsteps today sounded very loud and lonely on the marble paving stones that ringed the pool.

“Max, get out of that!” Edwina called, as the dog began pawing at something in the shadowed corner of the mausoleum.

“That’s where the men had been working,” I pointed out. “They’d opened the crypt.”

“How peculiar.” She climbed the mausoleum steps to see for herself. There were fewer tools lying about now, but the slab still stood off to one side and the square access hole still gaped blackly in the marble floor, with the old iron ladder descending into the darkness.

“They must have been making repairs to the foundation,” Edwina said, peering down with interest. Max pressed past her with his nose in action, poking his head down the hole, and she pulled him away by his collar. “Back, you idiot. Yes, I’m sure you do smell all sorts of things down there, but there’s nothing worth breaking your neck over, is there? Come on, get back. Off you go.” And she waved him away with an imperious hand.

He went reluctantly, with a faint whine, and I wondered if perhaps he sensed the presence of his ancestors buried down there in the dark; if he’d somehow been drawn by their scent. I couldn’t smell anything myself except the dust and mould and dampness of a stone vault that had never seen the daylight; but maybe Max, more sensitive, had caught the smell of death.

Edwina didn’t share my fancies. “He’s likely got wind of a rat” was her interpretation of the dog’s behaviour. “I should think there’d be a few of them down there.” She looked at me. “Speaking of rats, you must tell me, my dear, about this business with the workman that’s run off. . . what’s his name . . . ?”

“Pietro?”

“That’s the one. I didn’t like to ask Teresa for too many details—she’s still quite broken up about Giancarlo’s death, poor thing—but I gather, from what she said, that this Pietro had been stealing things, and that Giancarlo caught him at it. Is that right?”

I nodded, and told her the basics of the business, skirting round the few details that Alex had told me in confidence.

“A shame,” she said, when I’d finished. “I was never very fond of Giancarlo—he had too much of his father in him—but for all his faults I know he was devoted to the family. His death will have come as a great blow to Alex, I’m sure.” There was something indefinable in her expression that made me wonder whether she, too, believed that her son-in-law had been Giancarlo’s father as well as Alex’s. But she’d already changed course. She said, “You say Giancarlo managed to recover one of the pieces that was stolen, though? That was fortunate. So often these things disappear without a trace. A neighbour of mine had her house broken into last winter, and several of her good paintings were stolen. You’d think they’d be easy to hunt down, big items like paintings, but the police were telling her there’s such a market internationally for stolen works of art, so many private collectors with more money than morals, that very often things just vanish. So it’s lucky this Pietro person was stopped early on, before he could do too much damage. Lucky for Daniela, too,” she added. “I’d imagine she could ill afford having her name connected in any way to a theft. From what I hear she’s not too popular with the other trustees as it is—they only tolerate her because of her late husband’s wishes. They wouldn’t need much cause to get rid of her, and then where would she be? She couldn’t live the lifestyle she’s accustomed to, not without the Trust.” She cast a thoughtful look towards the roofline of the house, behind us. “I wonder . . . has anyone else who’s had dealings with the Trust had things go missing?”

“Alex already looked into that,” I assured her, “and no, it doesn’t seem so.”

“Ah. Well, I don’t suppose they’d be able to get away with running a racket like that . . . not for long, anyway. Word would get about. And even if they were a bunch of crooks they’d hardly be bothered to steal things
before
they took over a property, would they? They’d wait until afterwards, when the owner wasn’t there any longer to notice.”

“But Alex will be here,” I said.

“Do you think so?” She looked around the cypress-sheltered garden with a dubious expression. “I can’t see him staying on, myself—it isn’t Alex, this place. He’s a simpler sort of person. Oh, he may come back from time to time to visit, but to live?” She shook her head. “No, I can’t see it. It’s not his house, you see. It’s his grandfather’s, and it will be as long as it’s standing.”

I thought I knew what she meant. Il Piacere had the stamp of Galeazzo everywhere—his tastes, his style, his decadence had settled into every room like dust that, being swept, would only rise and swirl and settle back still more tenaciously. One could only be a visitor in a house like this. No matter how long Alex lived here, or how much of it he changed, it would never belong to him.

I frowned faintly. “But where would he go if he didn’t live here?”

Her shrug was philosophical. “The world is a wide place. Better to find a corner of it where there aren’t so many ghosts.”

She meant that figuratively, I knew, but I couldn’t keep my lips from curving.

“What?” she asked me.

“Nothing, really. It’s only that these past few weeks I’ve been tempted to believe in ghosts myself,” I said, and told her of the ‘footsteps’ I’d heard walking in my room, and of the woman’s voice murmuring late in the night, and my half-dream of seeing Celia the First at the foot of my bed. Smiling at my foolishness, I said in jest, “Perhaps your séance turned her spirit loose.”

Edwina didn’t share the joke. Dead serious, she answered in a thoughtful tone, “Perhaps it did.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t really mean—”

“Perhaps she didn’t realize that I’d left, and she’s been searching for a medium to help her to communicate.”

I tried once again to use levity. “Well, in that case she’s picked the wrong person. I’m no use at all in that department.”

“No. I should think it much more likely that she’d try the little girl.”

“Poppy?”

Edwina nodded. “The spirits frequently attach themselves to children of that age, I don’t know why. Something to do with the onset of puberty, I’d imagine. Children passing through that time of life seem to release some form of energy that draws the spirits to them.” To illustrate her point, she said, “That dream that Poppy had, for instance, after our séance—that might have been our Celia’s spirit, trying to make contact.”

Or it might have been a little girl’s imagination,
I thought, but because I liked Edwina and respected her beliefs I kept my skepticism silent. Instead I said, “Well, if it was, she didn’t have much luck, because she’s left the girl alone since then and set her sights on
me
.” I smiled. “You’re certain, are you, that you wouldn’t like to hold a second séance, and send her spirit back to where it came from?”

“Quite certain. I told you before I left, my dear, that if we repeated the séance there might be grave consequences. We are, after all, talking about murder.” With a final look down at the gaping dark hole in the floor at our feet she turned and strolled between the pillars, slowly descending the steps to the level of the pool. “The spirit of Celia Sands claimed she’d been killed by a woman. And I very much fear that the woman she spoke of was Francesca Tutti.”

I followed her, frowning. “Galeazzo’s wife?”

“She wouldn’t be the first woman in history to do away with a rival.”

I thought of Medea again, in the myth, poisoning Jason’s new wife and his children . . . thought of Galeazzo’s poem, black and brooding, speaking of the woman “
like Medea, with my children’s blood upon her hands . . . her rival’s flames around her head . . .
” Had he been writing of Francesca Tutti then, I wondered?

“Anyway,” Edwina said, “there weren’t too many other women here the night that Celia disappeared.” Pausing at the bottom of the steps, she clasped her hands behind her back and gazed along the murky Peacock Pool, her expression so serious that I had to remind myself we were talking hypothetically, about the accusation of a nonexistent ghost.

“Did you know her?” I asked.

“Francesca? Oh, no, we never met. No, she died long before my daughter came to live here.”

“Well then, what would it matter if Francesca did the murdering? She’s dead now—they all are. The truth coming out couldn’t hurt her.”

“Ah, yes, but the sins of the fathers—or mothers, in this case—reflect on the sons. Or the grandsons.” She turned her head then, her gaze levelled on mine to make certain that I understood. And then, when she could see the implications sinking in, she said, “It’s never nice to learn that one’s descended from a murderer.”

“No, I don’t suppose it would be.”

“
That’s
why I won’t hold a second séance.”

I could understand, now, why she’d been so firm about the matter. She’d been concerned about upsetting Alex by casting aspersions on his forebears. And her concern wasn’t totally unjustified, I conceded, because it wouldn’t really matter that the ‘message’ any spirit might deliver at the séance would be only a projection of Edwina’s own subconscious mind, nor that Alex himself didn’t believe in such things; the barest suggestion that his grandmother had murdered Celia the First would be enough to start the trouble. Speculation, once begun, turned into rumour, and a rumour that couldn’t be proved or disproved could take hold like a virus, infecting a family’s good name.

It was better, as Edwina had advised, to let the past be past.

As we walked along the pool she said, “You might try explaining that to Celia’s spirit, if she visits you again.”

She said that so naturally, as if everyone conversed with spirits, that I couldn’t help but smile, remembering my former flatmate Sally and her quirky ‘white-witch’ rituals—the strange chants and the rune-stones and the tarot cards. Edwina and Sally shared a kind of faith, I thought, that I could never fathom. Though I supposed that if I stopped and really thought about it, the tarot card reading had so far been eerily close to the mark . . . the selfish, cruel woman who’d cause me some trouble . . . the quarrels and illness in my family—at least,
I
counted Rupert as my family—and the man with light-brown hair who was meant to be my foundation, the man who was calm on the outside but emotional inside, as I had discovered this morning . . .

Edwina noticed the blush. She was, I think, about to comment on it when the dogs, who’d been snuffling for scents on the old marble paving stones, startled us both with a sudden eruption of barking. Heads lifted, they turned now in tandem, hackles rising, noses pointed to a small break in the cedar hedge surrounding us for privacy. And then, in perfect unison, they left the ground in one swift perfect leap and bounded off.