7

Room 5 was the first on the left at the start of the corridor, immediately after the spacious landing.

De Vincenzi had a moment of hesitation as he put his hand to the brass doorknob. But he shrugged his shoulders and, smiling sceptically at Sani, grasped the handle. “This isn’t a fingerprints sort of crime, and if I phoned forensics at this hour, they’d think I was mad!”

The window was wide open, and both men shivered as they went in. It was still raining outside and fog had entered the room, so when they flipped the switch, the light from the lamp looked veiled and gave off a smoky halo.

“Close it. What does this window look out on?”

“The courtyard.” Sani bit back a curse—there was a little table in front of the window and, leaning out, he’d caught his finger in the shutters.

A small white bed… it was the first thing De Vincenzi saw. It looked as if the sheets and bedcover had been pulled right over the pillow, but the bed had not been remade. Someone had simply covered it like that. He pulled back the edge of the sheet. Exactly what he’d expected.

However, he could never have imagined such a horrible sight. God, how the young man had bled. The blood must have soaked through the mattress. A pair of white pyjamas, hidden under the blankets at the foot of the bed, were also dark with blood. Someone had torn them off the victim after the killing and they’d served to staunch the wound and then to rub the body dry. He quickly pulled the covers up again.

The modus operandi now appeared all too clear. But why hadn’t the killer feared being surprised by one of the maids? If the doctor’s calculations were correct, the young man had been killed yesterday morning, or in the early hours of the previous night. He would verify Layng’s movements from four in the afternoon until he’d gone to the dining room, probably to gamble. They’d given him a passion for baccarat—it was in his blood—and they’d been fleecing him. A thousand lire in one go, for someone who had to live on ten pounds a month, was really a sensational loss. Who’d gained from it? He would find out, but then what? One thing seemed certain: that the person who’d won the money was not the killer. You don’t strangle the goose that lays the golden eggs… Unless young Layng had noticed that such a person was cheating and had threatened to expose him, insisting that the money for his debt be returned to him, and then that person had shut him up for ever. The theory was plausible. Plausible, but foolish in this particular case. It didn’t square with the macabre mise en scène featuring the hanged man. Not at all. Things couldn’t have been that simple, and it couldn’t have been the motive for the crime.

De Vincenzi’s mind was wandering. He took up the thread again. Layng, therefore, had been killed at an unspecified time on Monday morning, and in any case not later than early afternoon, even if the doctor was mistaken. So how could the body have been kept hidden in that room without anyone discovering it? Was it credible that the maid had not entered the room all day, that no one had noticed Douglas’s disappearance or gone to look for him? He hadn’t gone down to breakfast. No one had seen him, as usual, and no one was worried about it. But even allowing that this was actually the case, how could the killer have made his calculations before it happened, and how could he have been so confident as to risk the stabbing?

De Vincenzi’s gaze lingered over the small bedside tray with its empty cup and small spoon. Someone had brought him a coffee in his room. He held the cup, wrinkling his brow. It had been carefully washed—there was no residue. Therefore? Therefore, a narcotic or some poison must have been added to the coffee. Simple. And the killer had taken care to rinse the cup. An unnecessary precaution, as it happened. The autopsy…

Sani was rummaging in the suitcase, in the trunk, in the drawers. Nothing of any interest. Everything was very tidy. The undergarments were those of someone who was comfortably off. A silver shaving kit.

“Look how he kept the letters he received.” Sani pointed to the top dresser drawer, where there was a packet of letters still in their envelopes, tied with a ribbon. He picked them up and went through them. “They’re from England. They must be from his parents.”

“I’ll look at them later,” said De Vincenzi, and he pressed the bell.

Sani gazed at him in surprise. “Who do you think will come up? They’re all locked in the dining room, being guarded by the officer.”

“You’re right. Go and get the two maids and the porter. I believe there’s one of those in this hotel.”

Sani went out and left the door open. De Vincenzi followed him into the corridor. There, at least, the lamps shone brightly. At the end, the corridor turned round a corner. He counted two doors on the same side as Room 5 and four on the opposite side. The line of doors continued down the other part of the corridor. Just in front of Room 5 was Room 1. Beside it, Room 6. The numbering went up to 4 on the right and continued with 5 on the left.

He went over to the landing, leant over the balustrade and called the officer standing guard at the bottom of the stairs.

“Have the owner give you a plan of the hotel with everyone’s names and room numbers. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Sani returned with the two chambermaids and the porter. De Vincenzi went back into the room where Layng had been killed. The others followed. The maids were haggard, yellowed miseries, ageless, almost sexless. Sisters, the manager said, from his mother’s own village. It was obvious that they were from the country. They came into the room slowly and circumspectly, as if urged on by the big, dark-haired young man behind them in shirtsleeves and a turquoise-striped apron.

“Which of you works on this floor?”

“Both of us,” the taller one answered. Her nose was long and yellow like a duck’s beak. “This is the only floor.”

“What about the rooms upstairs?”

“Oh, those! We do those when we finish down here, sometimes even in the evenings.”

“So yesterday morning you were both on this floor?”

“All three of us,” the porter interrupted. “I was with them. We do the rooms together.”

“Who brings coffee to the rooms?”

“Whoever. When someone rings, whoever is closest to the room responds.”

“Try hard to remember: which of you three brought coffee to Signor Layng in this room yesterday morning?”

The two girls looked at each other but didn’t hesitate.

“She did,” said the first one to speak.

“I did,” confirmed the other.

“At what time?”

“It must have been eight.”

“Did he ring?”

“Yes.”

“How did you find him?”

“In bed, as usual.”

“Was he awake?”

“Of course. He told me to open the shutters.”

“Did he ring every morning at eight?”

“Yes.”

“You got the coffee downstairs. Where?”

“Well, at the counter. Mario made the coffee in the machine, one by one as we ordered them.”

“And you brought it straight up here?”

The woman seemed confused. She had no idea what the coffee had to do with it.

“Yes, of course.”

“Think carefully! You took the coffee from Mario’s hands and brought it here.”

“Well, of course.”

“You’re sure of that?”

Her sister and the porter looked at her. They, too, were bemused.

“Absolutely. What do you mean?”

“I’m asking if you’re absolutely certain that you didn’t put the tray down somewhere before taking it to Signor Layng… if you were called to some other room.”

“I don’t think so. I remember having brought two trays, one with a full breakfast and black coffee for Room 1 and the other with a black coffee for Room 5.”

“And?”

“Oh yes! I put the tray for Room 5 on the table on the landing, out there, and went into Room 1. Then I picked it up again and came in here.”

“How long did you stay in Room 1?”

“Only a couple of minutes—just to open the window, give the cup of coffee to the signore and put the breakfast tray on the signora’s nightstand.”

“Who’s staying in Room 1?”

“A journalist and his wife.”

The intense questioning continued. The two women and the man spoke with evident sincerity, but they didn’t know anything. The coffee tray, therefore, had remained for a few minutes on the table on the landing. Was that when the killer—or an accomplice—had dropped in a sleeping tablet? A sleeping tablet, or poison? But they could set aside the possibility of poison, since there would then have been no need for the stabbing.

Had they seen the Englishman leave his room?

No, not one of the three had seen him.

“Why didn’t one of you come into this room to clean it?”

“But we did come in, sir,” exclaimed the taller of the sisters, who must have been the elder.

De Vincenzi started. “You came in here? Which one of you?”

“I did,” the woman replied, “and Luigi.” The porter agreed.

“What time was it?”

“How should I know? It would have been sometime around eleven… must have been a bit later, but definitely before noon. We’d finished all the other rooms. The door to Room 5 was closed. I knocked, then opened the door. The room was empty. We cleaned it and left, closing the door as usual.”

If those two weren’t lying—and it was unlikely they were—Douglas Layng had not yet been killed by eleven. But in that case…

“Just a minute here,” De Vincenzi shouted impatiently. “How can you have cleaned up in here if the tray and the coffee cup are still there on the nightstand?” All three turned to look at the objects. All three showed signs of the greatest surprise. No one spoke for several moments. Then Luigi shrugged.

“It must have been brought up later—in the afternoon.”

“By whom? Which one of you remembers having brought it to him?”

Not one of them remembered doing so. The two women and the porter insisted in no uncertain terms and with every appearance of truth that they hadn’t seen the Englishman at all that day. No, they hadn’t gone into his room again; they’d had no reason to do so. And the evening? Yes, the chambermaids had gone into some rooms between eight and nine to turn down the beds; but not in all of them, and almost never in Layng’s, and in any case not that evening.

De Vincenzi was about to continue his questioning when the officer he’d sent for the hotel plan appeared at the door with several sheets in his hand. He seemed bashful.

“So? Give them here.”

The officer held out the papers. “One of the people in the locked room downstairs is asking to speak with you right away. He seems obsessed and he set to, making the devil of a racket, screaming that it smacks of a veritable imprisonment of his person, he has nothing to do with the crime, he has an urgent appointment…”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. He’s a thin, gangly sort, dark as an Abyssinian.”

The two women laughed. “He’s the one with all the tricks.”

“He’s a chiromancer who predicts the future.”

De Vincenzi knew that he was a sales rep for articles from the bazaar, of German make. He kept them in a suitcase, always ready to show his astonishing tricks to the first person to stumble by: ducklings gliding over water, shells that bloomed in water with branches of coral, meadow flowers that turned into pink piglets when inflated. But what really drew the girls was the magical quality of his person. He was a palm-reader—a chiromancer, they said—able to predict the future. And he must also have been a hypnotist, because “when he stared into a woman’s eyes, she’d fall asleep”. Not one of the three could say where he came from, but they all agreed he couldn’t be Italian.

“Fine,” De Vincenzi cut in. “Bring him up.” He sent the two chambermaids and the porter back downstairs, convinced they’d told him everything they knew… maybe. Maybe. Because the coffee story was completely inexplicable at the moment. The young man had undoubtedly been killed in his own bed, in that room. But when?

Sani looked at his watch. “It’s two,” he said quietly. “I’m wondering…”

“What?”

“… if we can continue to keep these people locked in the dining room all night.”

De Vincenzi shrugged. “They’re playing cards, just like every other night.”

A voice from downstairs said: “The inspector is on the first floor.” They heard someone coming up.

It was the doctor. He was very tall, and with his hat pulled down over his eyes, his collar turned up and a long nose that stuck out menacingly like a beak, he looked more like a scarecrow than ever.

“I’ve finished. You can order him to be moved to the Monumentale cemetery. I’ll go there tomorrow morning for the autopsy.” He was ready to leave.

“You can’t tell me anything else, then?”

“What do you want me to tell you? Someone killed him. The weapon must have been a long, thin knife, pushed in right up to the hilt. The rope used to hang him left bruises, but they weren’t very deep, which means that, hung up like so, he would have been there less than an hour.”

“When did he die?”

“It’ll be necessary to find out where the body was kept until he was hung up. If it was a very warm place, then rigor mortis wouldn’t have lasted as long and the secondary flaccidity, which in this particular case had barely started, would have appeared fifteen or sixteen hours after death. Normally it manifests twenty-four hours later.”

“Taking into account that he was kept in this room or a similar one…”

The doctor grunted in assent and looked around. “And you took him down when?”

“Around eleven-thirty, or thereabouts.”

“OK. I’d say he was killed sometime around nine or ten in the morning. There you go.” He turned on his heel and disappeared.

Sani looked at De Vincenzi. “At eleven the chambermaid and porter came to the room and the body wasn’t here!”

“Right. But go on. We’re not finished!”

“Eh? The sheets weren’t yet soaked with blood at eleven.”

“Right. And at eleven, that rinsed cup wasn’t on the nightstand. Therefore, according to all appearances, which might be certainties, Douglas Layng hadn’t yet drunk the narcotic and was still alive.”

“And yet the doctor couldn’t have been out by four hours. Post-mortem indications don’t lie.”

“Hmm. He said himself: if he was kept in a very warm place…” De Vincenzi looked around and went over to touch the radiator elements: warm, yes, but not enough to be suffocating. He opened the wardrobe: nothing but clothes. He was looking for something and not finding it.

Sani followed his movements, clearly uneasy. “What are you looking for?”

De Vincenzi didn’t reply. He walked around the room once more, then suddenly stopped and sniffed the air.

“The window was open, yes?”

“Wide open.”

“Ah!”

That could be the explanation. In which case, his hunch stood up. Everything now hinged on whether or not he’d find in some other room what he’d vainly looked for in this one, ever since the discovery. There wouldn’t have been enough time to take something so cumbersome out of the hotel. Unless… What did he actually know about what had happened from the time they’d found the body until Bianchi had arrived with his officers, considering that Bianchi had immediately blocked all exits?

“Here he is, Inspector.”

The officer presented a skeletal man dressed entirely in black, his bony face ashen, the colour olive-toned skins turn when they pale. The blackest of eyes flamed out from their sunken sockets.

“Ah! What’s your name?”

“Giorgio Novarreno.”

De Vincenzi was ready to begin his interrogation, but the man slowly and solemnly raised his right hand, forcing De Vincenzi to keep quiet. He remained absolutely still, but quickly scanned the entire room.

“A man was killed in this room,” he offered, his voice warm and melodious, “at precisely twelve-thirty yesterday. There’s still a lot of blood in here.”

Sani flinched. De Vincenzi wasted no time; he took his subordinate by the arm and pushed him out of the door.

“Wait for me downstairs.”

He closed the door once more, turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket. He then went to stand in front of the palm-reader, who remained fixed in his moment of inspiration.

“No play-acting,” De Vincenzi stated, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Tell me everything you know—or else I’ll immediately accuse you of being the author of this crime or an accomplice.”