Page 19 of Murder at the Ponte Vecchio (Armstrong and Oscar Cozy Mystery #11)
TUESDAY AFTERNOON
I met up with Anna for a snack lunch in a little café near the university.
As usual, she opted for a goat’s cheese and aubergine focaccia sandwich while I had a plate of mixed bruschetta, with a couple of biscuits for my ever-hungry dog.
As we ate, she told me that she had spoken to her friend, Francesca, in the drama department, about Monica Gallo, the mayor’s daughter.
‘Francesca is actually Monica’s tutor so she knows her pretty well.
She says Monica’s a good, motivated student who has a real love of acting.
In fact, according to Francesca, if she has a weakness, it’s that she spends so much time doing amateur dramatics that she sometimes gets behind in her coursework.
But, overall, she’s a good student. As for boyfriends, Francesca didn’t know of anybody special but, just like her sister, there’s no shortage of men hanging around her. ’
I gave a lot of thought to my next step.
I could wander around the drama department of the university pretending to be a mature student, but if Monica’s tutor wasn’t aware of the identity of the mysterious boyfriend – always assuming there was one – then I could hardly expect to find that out in an afternoon.
Besides which, from what the mayor had said, Monica didn’t have classes on Tuesday afternoons so she was unlikely to be there.
I decided to sleep on it tonight and then pay a visit to the drama department next morning.
After lunch, I went back to the office, gave Oscar his food and picked up a spy camera with a motion sensor before heading back to the Teatro dell’Arno.
This time, I found four cars parked outside the theatre along with a handful of bikes and scooters.
Inside, the scene was very different from this morning.
The lights were on in the auditorium and there were half a dozen actors on stage.
Sitting in the front row with a clipboard and a pen, no doubt observing the performance closely, was Zebra.
I didn’t want to interrupt what was obviously the dress rehearsal for their new play, so I sat down a few rows back, hanging onto Oscar’s collar in case he spotted his new best friend and decided to make a dash for her.
From the costumes, it looked as if the play was set here in Italy just before or during the Second World War.
It was well over a minute before I suddenly realised that I recognised the face of the actor playing the lead female role.
It was none other than Monica Gallo, the mayor’s daughter.
I sat and watched for almost half an hour, interested in the play – which I still couldn’t identify – and fascinated by Monica.
Apart from being stunningly attractive, she had a lovely clear voice, and I was able to follow almost all of her dialogue while with some of the other actors, I struggled.
It was obviously a very tense and dramatic production and she was most convincing in her desperation towards her boyfriend or husband, played by a tall, good-looking man with an enviable head of glossy, chestnut-brown hair and a commanding presence onstage.
There were only three other actors on stage most of the time: a middle-aged woman who looked like a traditional housewife, a younger man in the uniform of one of Mussolini’s blackshirts, and a man wearing faded overalls and a white T-shirt.
This man was probably still in his twenties but he had been made up to look older – in my view, not completely convincingly.
He didn’t have many lines to say, which was probably just as well as I somehow got the feeling he wasn’t concentrating as hard as he should have been – but what did I know about directing a play?
Finally, the act ended and the curtains were closed. The actors disappeared and Zebra stood up. I felt tempted to clap but then decided against it as there were only two of us in the audience. As it was, Zebra turned, spotted me, and beckoned.
Oscar interpreted the invitation as being for him and he got there first, tail wagging enthusiastically. She crouched down and made a real fuss of him, to which he responded enthusiastically.
I waited until she straightened up again before indicating the bag in my hand. I kept my voice low although we were now alone. ‘ Ciao , Zebra. I’ve brought the camera. If you’ve got a moment, I’ll set it up for you.’
She led me back to the small room that she used as an office, where I closed the door behind us and explained how to operate the camera, linking it to her phone.
I told her I didn’t need it for a week or two and wished her luck.
We decided to install it in the common area used by staff and actors alike and she came with me to watch as I set this up, hiding it among a pile of dusty cardboard boxes.
She then offered me a cup of Nescafé, which I accepted, not so much because I wanted another coffee, but because it gave me an opportunity to do a bit of probing into the actors I’d just seen – one in particular.
I started off cautiously. ‘It looks to me as though the play’s set during the fascist period here in Italy, but I’m afraid my knowledge of twentieth-century drama isn’t that great. What’s it called and who’s it by?’
‘The play is called Ultimatum and it makes a change from the series of Shakespearean tragedies we’ve been doing over the winter.’
‘That’s a new one on me. Who wrote it?’
She looked up and caught my eye. ‘I did.’
‘Wow, you’re a playwright as well as a theatre director.
How do you find the time? I do a bit of writing myself and I struggle to fit it in with my day job.
’ I moved the conversation closer to my person of interest. ‘I thought the woman playing the main female role was excellent. Are they really just amateurs?’
She nodded. ‘They all are. They just do it for the love of the theatre. You’re right, Monica is very talented. She’s playing Linda, the wife of the main protagonist, and she really brings something to every role she plays.’
I did my best to sound only casually interested. ‘What does she do when she’s not performing?’
‘She’s a student. She’s doing drama and I’m hoping very much to get a friend of mine to come along to the first night to see her in action.
He’s retired now, but he used to be a theatrical agent and if he likes her, he might be able to put her onto an agent of her own.
Like I say, she’s very talented and I could see her going far. ’
‘What about the other actors?’
‘They’re all good but they’re not quite in her league apart from Tiberio, who has the male lead.
He’s a very talented actor as well, and the others do a great job apart from Paolo – he’s the one in the overalls and the white T-shirt.
He keeps forgetting his lines and it’s not as if he has many of them to learn.
’ There was frustration in her voice. ‘I’m afraid he isn’t as dedicated as the others.
It’s pretty clear he hasn’t been giving time to learning his lines properly, but I don’t have much choice.
The fact is that we’ve been struggling to find actors willing to give up their time in return for very little – well, nothing, really.
We can’t afford to pay them – not even expenses – and our audiences are never huge.
It’s this area, I’m afraid. The council has earmarked it for redevelopment and it’s been going steadily downhill for ages.
’ She met my eye and shrugged. ‘I have to make do with the actors I can find and I’m just lucky to have some excellent ones among them. ’
I was pleased that my impression of Paolo with the scruffy overalls as being distracted had been confirmed by the director.
Maybe I knew more about this business than I had thought.
‘Shame he’s not so motivated. He’s a good-looking guy.
Are he and Monica an item?’ I tried to sound as casual as possible.
She shook her head and smiled. ‘No, she’s already taken. Besides, Paolo is more interested in members of his own sex.’
‘Is Monica’s partner an actor as well?’
‘Yes, Tiberio, the male lead, and like I say, he’s an excellent actor. He really owns the stage; you must have noticed.’
‘I definitely did. I wonder how he’ll react if Monica gets snapped up by an agent and shipped off to Hollywood one of these days.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he followed her to Hollywood. Besides, if he doesn’t make it as an actor, he can always work as a doctor. I’m sure he could find a good job over there.’
‘He’s a doctor? Wow, it must be hard for him to find the time to rehearse.’
‘He’s in his final year of medicine at university here and he keeps telling me it’s getting more and more difficult for him to balance the two.’
I sat back and reflected on what I’d just heard, hoping that this information would satisfy the mayor that his daughter’s boyfriend wasn’t a waste of space.
Tall, good-looking, and training to be a doctor, as well as being a talented actor, surely made him quite a catch – not least as he shared his name with the Roman Emperor Tiberius.
I wondered yet again why Monica was insisting on keeping him away from her parents.
Anyway, the good news as far as I was concerned was that I had quite fortuitously concluded my mission and I wouldn’t need to waste hours wandering around the university next morning.