9

The search yielded nothing, of course. But there was something strange about Novarreno’s room. What it was, De Vincenzi couldn’t immediately say. Uncertainty was beginning to engulf him. The overcoat and hat of this trinkets-dealer—the one in thick, shaggy wool, saffron-yellow and impossible to forget, the other tiny and round, with a yellow and turquoise striped ribbon four fingers high—weren’t they strange? Strange, too, the few books on black magic and the occult, Salomone’s Clavicole, Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal and Abbot Bianco’s Lessicomanzia? The huge piece of rosin—strange? That violin without strings? Or the corked bottle with Acqua amara on its label? Everything and nothing was strange. It was the atmosphere. On the bed there was a scarlet travel rug as a blanket, in the glass on the nightstand an orchid. On the table, a pad of blue paper, a packet of envelopes and a bottle of ink. The suitcase with all the samples was on a chair in a corner.

“Would you like to see a few of my things?” He was ready to blow up the little pig, to make a shell bloom.

De Vincenzi stopped him. “Do you know if someone on this floor has a portable oil stove? Or an electric radiator?”

“Well, no—how should I know? The hotel has an oil stove that’s kept in the one bathroom. They turn it on when someone wants to take a bath since the little room where they put the tub has no heating.”

“So where is this bathroom?”

“At the end of the other part of the corridor; you go down some steps and the door is there. The stairway continues and leads to the billiard room.”

Anyone could have taken the stove and carried it to Room 5 so the room would overheat and the body would lose its rigor mortis. But why? Just so they could take the body up to the top floor and hang it from a beam on the landing there? Always bearing in mind that the killer must have been sure no one would surprise him, and that he could act freely. Completely absurd. And yet… In that case, the window would have been opened afterwards in order to get rid of the smell of oil. A concatenation of circumstances, cleverly arranged but pointless, awkward and excessive, because the results of the killer’s actions were obvious, so what was the point of trying to hide the clues? A waste of time and energy. It could be said that everything the killer had done in this crime had increased his difficulty and risks a hundredfold.

Novarreno fixed his small, penetrating black eyes on De Vincenzi. His vague smile could have been mocking—or challenging. Unless it masked some internal disturbance that was closer to fear…

“Does your clairvoyance reveal that, before dawn, there will be more than one body under the roof of this hotel?”

“You’re joking.” But his voice, normally warm, soft and melodious, was slightly sharp this time. Strident. Was he afraid of being killed himself?

“Which of these people did you know before meeting them here as guests of the hotel?”

“Not one of them.”

But it wasn’t true. De Vincenzi shrugged. He’d expected that answer. He was looking for what it was that seemed strange in that room. All at once his face, which was furrowed and locked in mental concentration, relaxed and seemed to light up. He’d got it. In that room there were no letters, either on the table, in the drawers or anywhere else. There wasn’t a trace of correspondence. Nor were there any pieces of paper with writing on them of any sort. Giorgio Novarreno, salesman, had taken care not to leave any trace whatsoever of his real business beyond that suitcase with its samples in his room. The room was at one and the same time occupied and empty. Everything it contained was for effect; it wasn’t alive, and didn’t reflect the life of the person who lived there. That was the odd thing. And the man’s reticence, his lies… And the truths, too, which he thought useful to disclose… His occupation as a salesman—what actual work was it hiding?

“Don’t leave this room. I’ll come back to you.”

“Can I go to bed?”

“If you wish.”

De Vincenzi left the room and went into the corridor, closing the door behind him. Now he wanted to meet all the hotel guests, one after another. The killer was undoubtedly one of them. But would he manage to identify and expose him? Where to begin?

Sani was watching him from the landing. The officers were at their posts in the corridor. De Vincenzi stopped on the landing.

“Are the managers downstairs?”

“In the parlour.”

“What about the guests who don’t live at the hotel?”

“I’ve put them in the dining room—four in all, since according to the manager the others ran off in a hurry as soon as the hunchback announced what had happened, and before Bianchi arrived. But the hotelier knows them all and they’re easily traced.”

“It won’t be necessary.”

He quickly went downstairs and into the parlour, throwing the door open suddenly. The woman was sitting where he’d left her, holding herself upright, stiff and staring ahead. At the sound of the door, Mrs Flemington immediately turned to look at the sofa in the opposite corner of the room. Mr Flemington appeared to be sleeping on it. The woman’s large, glaucous eyes then moved towards the inspector; De Vincenzi read in them a desperate confusion. But the flash of terror disappeared immediately. Mrs Flemington was smiling now, yet her forced smile would not have fooled anyone. The woman was afraid. Who or what was frightening her so much? De Vincenzi looked at the sofa. Mr Flemington was lying across it, his head on the armrest and his feet on the ground. The fingers of his left hand, dangling over the floor, grasped a pipe. His eyes were closed and his breathing was heavy. The inspector’s attention was drawn to a bottle and a glass on the table in the centre of the room; the whisky bottle was two-thirds empty. Who had brought it into this room? He remembered very well that he had not had it sent, though Flemington had asked for it. He had to believe that the Englishman had left the room or that someone had responded to his request. In any case, the couple had had some contact with the hotel manager or the waiter. So had the woman then learnt something more than he had told her in the first interview—and was that why she was so alarmed? Flemington had drunk enough alcohol to knock him out on that sofa.

“Are they going to give us a room at last? This hotel’s way of treating us is very odd. Mr Flemington will put in a complaint tomorrow with our consul.”

Of course. De Vincenzi knew it. Diplomatic objections and all the rest… The chief would be peeved with him, all the more so if nothing came out of this mess. Nothing? The killer. But what did these two English people so recently arrived in Milan have to do with anything?

“I wonder, Mrs Flemington, why your husband wouldn’t listen to my advice about changing hotels?”

The woman glanced at the sofa again.

“Someone recommended this one to us… we have an itinerary. Mr Flemington has had his business correspondence sent here.”

“What does Mr Flemington do?”

The woman pulled herself up and looked at De Vincenzi haughtily. “Flemington, of the firm Copthall and Flemington, solicitors to the Court, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. My husband is one of the best-known lawyers in London.”

De Vincenzi looked over at the snoring man, lips half open and pipe in his hand, the effects of whisky. But why would such a grand lawyer come to The Hotel of the Three Roses?

“Mrs Flemington, I speak your language, but not so well, I’d say, as to understand its subtleties. And you don’t speak or understand Italian.”

“So?”

Naturally, De Vincenzi was going the long way round. The woman, however, had immediately become suspicious and wanted to get to the point. She wanted to know right away, that much was clear. But what? What was she waiting for him to tell her?

“I’d like to be able to explain, in order to convince you.”

“How?”

She was trembling with impatience. The man on the sofa moved and picked up the hand that was dangling. He was trying to turn round, to change position.

“Signora, there was a tragedy in this hotel some hours ago. A crime was committed, a horrible crime. A man was killed, a young man, and after his death he was strung up by his neck from a beam to make it seem as if he’d been hanged.”

The woman, extremely pale, held her breath. She stared at De Vincenzi with glassy, glowing eyes, green as a cat’s. Her pupils danced with hysteria and De Vincenzi saw, in their depths, convulsions of laughter, violent muscular contractions, the quick, clean punctures of a hypodermic needle on Pravaz’s syringe. Such a sudden change would have terrified someone who’d tried to avoid provoking it, having seen it coming.

“Monstrous, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for a reply. It wasn’t forthcoming in any case. “And the young man who was killed, practically a boy, he was English, came from London. His name was—”

From behind him came a voice as dry, angry and sharp as a paper cut: “Douglas Layng.”

This time it was as if De Vincenzi had been scorched by a red-hot iron. He turned round.

“How did you know?”

Flemington, the lawyer, was sitting up on the sofa. Although the whisky had gone to his legs, his brain was lucid. His sarcastic laugh was heard again.

“What do you think?”

“Nothing. But answer me: how did you know the dead man was called Douglas Layng?”

Flemington raised his hand with the diamond on it as if to placate De Vincenzi. “I came to Milan to this hotel in order to find Douglas Layng. And I was afraid of arriving too late. Unfortunately, my fear was justified. Is it really young Layng who’s been killed?”

“It’s him.”

“How sad!” He stopped talking. His wife was crying, tears sliding silently down her cheeks and furrowing the layer of powder covering them.

Flemington slowly rose, and with small, perfectly regular steps went to stand beside his wife and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Diana,” he said, and however tender he wished to sound, his voice conveyed an order rather than a tone of comfort.

“My wife held Douglas Layng on her lap as a baby.” Removing his hand from her shoulder, he walked up to the inspector and with whisky-tinged breath said to his face, “Of course you must arrest the killer.”

“Do you know him?”

“Bloody right! And it’s crucial that he be arrested.”

“What are you still afraid of?”

“Everything.”

“Well, it will be easy to arrest him if you know who he is.”

“Do you think so?” Once more his grating laugh could be heard like short hiccups. “It won’t in fact be easy. I can tell you who it was, not who it is now. I have never met him in person. I couldn’t point him out to you in order to shout: grab him! It will be necessary for you to discover who killed Douglas Layng. Only then will I be able to tell you why he was killed and why he was hung by the neck from a beam. And I will also be able to tell you the real name of the killer, who will of course have assumed another as of today.”

De Vincenzi looked at him. Flemington now seemed in possession of all his faculties. What fantastical story did he have in store? Everything was fantastical, in any case. Everything that was happening. A nightmare.

“All doors to this hotel are being guarded,” he murmured, just to say something. Because his thoughts were following an entirely different course.

The other man let out his peculiar, sharp laugh. The inspector’s nerves were vibrating like the taut strings of a violin.

“Julius Lessinger habitually never went out through doors. It seems like a joke, right?” He turned to look at his wife, who had dried her eyes and recovered her stiff, upright dignity. He looked satisfied and rubbed his hands slowly. “My mission in coming here was to take young Layng back to London immediately. Now, there will be other catastrophes after this first one.”

Even more than Flemington’s words, the facts themselves made it seem as if young Layng had been killed by someone who had begun methodically executing a criminal plan, and the young man’s murder was only the beginning. Who was the intended target?

“You spoke of catastrophes, Mr Flemington. Could you tell me what else you’re worried about? And who is this Julius Lessinger you mentioned?”

“If the killer already knows about our arrival—and it’s reasonably sure that he does—my wife and I are in danger.” He said this perfectly calmly.

“In any case, the killer couldn’t have known that you would be here last night, and it wasn’t to give you a warm welcome that the body was set hanging on the top-floor landing.”

The Englishman’s eyes flashed. “The top floor, you say? Ah! just like down there! He took care of the details… until he could… Up there, right? Of course!”

But he wasn’t laughing any more and his cheeks had turned somewhat blue. His wife sighed.

De Vincenzi stared at Flemington. “You don’t want to tell me anything else, Mr Flemington?”

There was a brief hesitation before the man shook his head.

“No! Not yet…”

“Be careful. If not tonight, I shall be forced to make you speak tomorrow.”

The other man shrugged. “All in the course of twenty-four hours. You’ll need to hurry up, Inspector. Tomorrow I’ll talk—if necessary.”

“As you wish.” And De Vincenzi turned round and headed for the door.

“Do we have to stay in this room? It’s not the most comfortable place for a lady to spend the night.”

“I’m sorry, but I have no choice. It’s necessary that no one should see you for now, and in any case it’s easier for me to keep you safe in here.”

Flemington laughed again, but weakly. “You mean to say that you’re putting a guard at the door?”

“And under that window, in the courtyard.”

Flemington’s laugh was once more sharp and sarcastic.

“Thank you, sir. This way, you can also be sure that we won’t be going anywhere. But please have someone bring me some more whisky.”

De Vincenzi left, closing the door behind him and turning the key in the lock.

Julius Lessinger… Either Flemington was lying, or he had revealed a name that definitely wasn’t that of the killer. He’d said so himself.