Page 20 of The Venice Murders (Flora Steele Mystery #11)

20

Once again, they found themselves at the Maggiore office in the Piazzale Roma, Flora hoping that this might be their last visit to the business, but the familiar figure of Signor Gallo emerging from the doorway had her smile.

‘Signor Carrington and Signora Carrington. More adventures,’ he said, tugging his newly pressed suit jacket into place.

‘More adventures,’ Jack agreed, though he sounded flat. ‘But not so far afield today.’

Casa Elena was some twenty-five miles from Venice, Jack had calculated and, determined to enjoy the journey, Flora settled herself in the rear seat of the Alfa Romeo. It was a route that took them through a diverse landscape, fields of cultivation alternating with hillsides covered in vines, and occasionally a small castle perched on high, its ancient walls clear against the skyline. The glimpse of a wide river on Flora’s side of the car had her ask the driver its name.

‘Po,’ he told her.

‘Po?’ She looked at Jack for enlightenment.

‘One of the largest rivers in Italy. It flows into the Adriatic near Venice so it could be the Po. But he might be guessing,’ he said quietly, nodding at Signor Gallo’s back. ‘There’s a vast network of rivers – the Piave, Brenta, Adige, they’re just a few – it could be one of those.’

For some fifteen minutes, they had been steadily climbing from the valley floor, pillows of cloud drifting into an otherwise unmarked sky. The air, too, had grown noticeably cooler. They were leaving behind fields fertile with produce and, in their place, climbing amongst hills, every inch of which was covered in vines. Only clusters of cypress trees, stark against the horizon, provided a contrast.

The driver was swinging the car wide around yet another bend, but then pulled up sharply to stop outside a pair of elegant gates that had come suddenly into view.

‘Look at that crest,’ Flora said softly, leaning forward and pointing to an elaborately worked shield above the entrance. ‘Such beautiful colours.’

‘Flashy.’ Jack awarded the crest only a passing glance.

Signor Gallo had climbed from the car and was now tugging at a large bronze circle, highly decorated and attached to one of the stone pillars. Somewhere in the Casa ahead, a bell must be clanging and, sure enough, the gates slowly opened.

‘They’re electronic,’ Flora commented, ‘so why not a button, I wonder? But the bronze pull is stunning.’

‘Like I said, flashy.’ Jack was plainly in one of his dismissive moods and they were always best to ignore.

On either side of the drive, a long drive – Flora estimated it to be at least half a mile – a hedge of cotoneaster had been neatly clipped and, beyond the hedge, row after row of vines crowded together, their wooden supports standing straight as soldiers. A battalion guarding its treasure.

At the end of the drive, Signor Gallo brought the car to a halt outside the porticoed entrance of a large white building and, within seconds of their arrival, a uniformed maid had opened the massive front door and was waiting for them at the top of a flight of stone steps.

‘We’re here for lunch,’ Jack told their driver, ‘but we shouldn’t be more than a few hours.’

Signor Gallo was about to resume his seat in the car when the count himself appeared from around the corner of the house. Mansion, Flora corrected herself.

‘You are here!’ he said. ‘Wonderful!’

The count, wearing newly pressed slacks and a smart shirt of pale green seersucker, was looking his elegant best and seemed a good deal more lively than when they’d last encountered him at the hotel. A closer glance, though, and Flora noticed that sadness still lurked in his eyes. With one daughter dead and the other caged in a nunnery, it would be many years, if ever, before he recovered fully from the drama that had been played out in Provence.

Falconi bent to speak to the driver and, after a burst of rapid Italian, the car disappeared around the opposite corner.

‘I have sent him to my cook,’ the count told them. ‘He will eat in the kitchen.’

The servants’ quarters then.

‘Please, come. Sybil is waiting. We have also a guest who will eat with us.’

Flora caught sight of Jack’s expression – he was finding it hard to conceal a scowl. He hadn’t wanted to make this visit, had been annoyed by his mother’s abrupt summons but felt obliged to obey. Now, he was being told they were to share their lunch with a person unknown, suggesting that Sybil’s demand could not have been as urgent as she’d made out.

Following the count into a vast drawing room, it was not, however, an unknown person who greeted them.

‘You’ve met Father Renzi, I believe.’ Sybil glided forward, air-kissing Flora and giving Jack a casual pat on the arm.

As always, she was dressed in the very highest of fashion. Flora had neither the money nor the inclination to follow the designers of the day, but she did read the occasional fashion magazine and the figured cream linen dress, full-skirted and neatly belted with a slashed neckline, had to be by Givenchy, or someone remarkably like him. To complete her ensemble, Sybil had chosen a pair of cream leather stilettos – the count must love her dearly, was Flora’s first thought on glimpsing them. Those shoes must wreak havoc with the parquet flooring.

But Sybil was at one with the house in which she now lived. The drawing room was painted a regal blue – duck egg, Flora divined – and a bank of long windows, with bounteous drapes in a toning colour, filled one entire wall. The sofas and armchairs were similarly upholstered, and so deep you could lose yourself in them and never be found. A scattering of Louis Seize marquetry tables completed the picture. A highly expensive picture.

Stephano Renzi had risen from his seat and hesitantly offered his hand to each of them in turn. He should be hesitant, Flora thought militantly. At the Vivaldi concert, he had deliberately snubbed them.

‘We will go into lunch in a short while,’ Sybil announced, in what Jack called her grand-dame voice.

‘But first, we talk,’ the count intervened, looking across at the priest for support.

Renzi cleared his throat. ‘I have an apology to make to you both. I am embarrassed that I did not speak when we met at the Pietà.’

Flora schooled her expression to neutrality and waited.

‘I had a reason,’ the priest went on, ‘though that does not excuse my discourtesy. But…you see, I had received a most disturbing communication and I did not want to speak of it. I did not want to involve you in more trouble and thought that, if we talked, this would happen. You would ask me how I am and I would have to tell.’

‘But Stephano wishes to speak today,’ the count put in hastily. ‘He has realised he must share his trouble.’

‘What trouble would that be?’ Jack’s tone was not particularly friendly. He’d appeared increasingly irritated from the moment they’d walked into the drawing room. ‘What would you have been forced to tell us?’

‘I have received a note,’ the priest began, his voice a little unsteady. ‘I do not know the writer. It was a note that mentioned my dear housekeeper, Filomena. It asked for money.’

‘A ransom?’ Jack asked swiftly. ‘You pay the money and Filomena goes free.’

Renzi nodded, seeming for the moment too overcome to speak.

‘But why not tell us the evening we met? You’re telling us now.’ Flora had begun to share her husband’s irritation.

The priest’s strange behaviour that evening had disturbed her greatly, leading her – and it was her own fault, she acknowledged – into danger. She had found it difficult, impossible in fact, to forget that frightening pursuit through the alleyways of San Polo.

‘I thought I could find the money,’ the priest said humbly. ‘I thought I could pay and bring my housekeeper home, back where she belongs. No one would be worried. No one would be in danger.’

‘But you couldn’t,’ Jack finished for him.

‘A priest is poor and it has not been possible to find all the money this person demands. So…I have had to come to my good friend, Massimo, and beg him for a loan.’

‘And his good friend Massimo has counselled that he should not pay the money at all,’ the count put in. ‘It is blackmail, nothing more, and he should go to the police.’

‘And you have been to the police?’

Flora was confused. They had been summoned here to meet Father Renzi and learn of the ransom demand, it was clear, but why, when the police were already involved?

Stephano shook his head. ‘I dare not go to them. The note – it makes plain that Filomena is safe but only for the moment. If I go to the police, what terrible thing might happen to her?’

‘So…is this where we come in? A last resort.’ Jack’s tone verged on the acid.

‘You promised to help,’ Sybil said, her voice every bit as waspish. ‘I thought you should be given the chance.’

‘How very good of you.’

‘How much money did the note mention?’ Flora cut in, impatient with the inevitable sparring between mother and son.

The priest named a sum that was so modest it had her raise her eyebrows. Jack, too, she saw, was taken by surprise. Both had been expecting a very large demand.

‘It is not much,’ Renzi said, realising what their raised brows might signify, ‘for most people, at least. But for me, it is a fortune.’

‘And you have no idea who wrote the note?’

It was a forlorn question, she knew, but the priest seemed a man who kept things close to his chest and if he had even the inkling of a suspicion, he should disclose it.

He shook his head. ‘It was not written by a hand. The letters were cut from a newspaper.’

‘The old trick,’ Jack commented. ‘But is there anyone you suspect, Father?’

The priest seemed to shrink in his chair.

‘You must say.’ Sybil stared hard at him. As always, she pulled no punches.

‘I wondered…I did wonder if it might be someone from the Tasca family. Probably it is not, but Filomena’s nephew is still friendly with Luigi and?—’

‘You think it could be Luigi Tasca?’

Renzi held up his hands in a despairing gesture. ‘I have no real idea, Signor Carrington. All I know is that I must rescue this poor woman in whatever way I can.’

‘And this is where you come in,’ Sybil said, smiling brightly. She looked over her shoulder as a black-suited manservant stood in the doorway. ‘But first, we eat.’

‘What are we supposed to do about it?’ Jack muttered, walking beside Flora through a spacious hall to the dining room. ‘Kidnap Tasca and force the truth out of him? If it is him.’

Flora made no response, but stopped to look through one of the floor-length windows at the scene beyond. Through the haze of warmth, a range of gentle hills appeared on the horizon, protective and benign, seeming to hold the winery in their embrace, with acres and acres of vines stretching up the hillside and into the distance. Casa Elena must produce thousands of bottles every year, she thought, a lucrative endeavour if this beautiful house was anything to judge by. Wine, she knew, was growing ever more popular at home, a future challenge to traditional beer. Perhaps she should be selling wine rather than books!

For a moment, Flora was back in the All’s Well, walking its aisles, breathing its air, deep in its bookish atmosphere. In an instant, a wave of homesickness had swept her from head to toe, temporarily stunning her. It was the first longing for home that she’d felt on this trip. They had only two days more in Venice, one after this visit, and, though she was sad to leave an entrancing city, suddenly it was books that were calling to her. It was Abbeymead that was waiting.

The dining room she was ushered into proved another masterpiece, aglow with pale peach, and as resplendent as the previous salon, while the stately lunch that followed matched its surroundings: an antipasto of caprese salad, a primo piatto of ricotta gnocchi with walnut and thyme butter sauce, followed by a main course of braised beef and parmesan polenta, and just in case the count’s guests weren’t quite full enough, a selection of ice creams and sorbets along with lemon almond cake. Limoncello and amaro replaced the several bottles of wine that had been consumed during the main meal.

Conversation had remained muted until the braised beef was under attack, but it was then that Jack, who had been mostly silent, glanced across at the priest. Catching the man’s eyes, he fixed him in a steady look.

‘When you were the priest in Asolo, you had items stolen from your church, you told us.’

Father Renzi looked guarded. ‘That is so,’ he agreed cautiously.

‘When we asked you before, you seemed unsure, but have you had items stolen from Santa Margherita as well?’

At their first meeting, the priest had mentioned a candelabra that had temporarily gone missing, but nothing else. Yet, according to Daniele, his brother had spoken on the telephone of items stolen from Santa Margherita. Clearly, Franco hadn’t been referring to the theft of the painting – his call had been made before the artwork went missing – so to what had he been referring? What exactly had been stolen?

Renzi took a deep breath. ‘Small things,’ he confessed. ‘An embroidered hassock, a jewelled rosary, a gold baptism cup. Filomena told me things had gone missing. Each week, she reported a new disappearance. It worried her greatly.’

‘But not you?’

He looked down at his hands. They had become agitated, alternately plucking at and smoothing out his cassock.

‘I did not want to accept that the trouble was starting again,’ he said finally. ‘I had lost my home in Asolo, lost my church, my congregation, all for speaking the truth. I moved to a city I did not know and, at a time I was near to retirement, I had to start again. It has been difficult, very difficult, but I have managed. Filomena, too. And now, this threat had appeared – for us both – that the trouble was beginning all over again.’

‘Essentially, you ignored her concerns,’ Flora remarked.

The count looked annoyed, holding up his hand as if to ward off further criticism. ‘That is unfair,’ he said. ‘Stephano has made great sacrifices. He deserved a calm life. A gentle life.’

‘No, no,’ the priest disputed. ‘It is perfectly fair. I should have taken notice. I should have reported the thefts to the church authorities, but I covered them up for my own peace of mind. And look where it has led.’

No one chose to answer his question and the remainder of lunch was eaten largely in silence. When the array of desserts arrived on the table, Sybil said rousingly, ‘Well, now you both know the score, can you help?’

‘All we can do is try,’ Flora said, earning a deep frown from the husband beside her.

Jack would have his say later, she knew.