5

De Vincenzi waited upstairs for the doctor and nurse from the emergency medical service. He stood on the landing, his head just inches from the noose. He stiffened in the silence, willing his nerves not to betray him, not to give in to a sudden collapse. Slowly, methodically, he tried to take in everything around him: the light, the imperceptible vibrations emanating from every object, as if absorbing it all by osmosis, through the pores of his skin. The body of Douglas Layng had been hanging for some hours in the very spot he found himself at that moment. From when to when? The killer had been over the same ground. Bianchi had given him the dead man’s name when he’d first phoned him, but it had not been mentioned again. Who was Douglas Layng? And how had this young Englishman, apparently rather effeminate and delicate, a Northerner, come to be killed in Italy?

He glanced towards the room where they’d put the body; Cruni seemed to have taken root in front of the open door. Square and stocky, with legs too short for his oversized torso, the sergeant was looking around slowly, cautiously. He wasn’t the least disturbed by the body, the silence or the pinkish light casting great whirling shadows in corners, on the stairs and under the archway leading to the corridor. De Vincenzi turned his head away quickly. The sight of his subordinate, the living embodiment of the profession—his profession, as it happened—was distracting him from his goal.

The door to Engel’s room also remained open, and past the archway, past the empty rectangle of the open door, he could see something glowing in the profound darkness. What light was burning in there? Ah, yes! It had to be the eyes of that doll… But what nonsense. The doll’s glass eyes couldn’t be glowing! So, what then?

What the devil: the mirror! The mirror hanging over the dresser, reflecting the light from the lamp on the landing. A mirror is always ready to pick up any shimmer from the surrounding environment. Now, he too was living in that mirror—and he didn’t know it. A mirror was a terrible witness. That one there had spied on him, taken his person too, and reflected his image into the darkness of the room where a rosy doll leant her shoulders against the pillows, her legs twisted at the knees… And in the room at the other end of the corridor, Vernet’s thoroughbreds galloped across the wall with simian jockeys in the saddle. Everything continues to live in the dark, even when we think it’s all dead. Was the body, then, still living in the dark? In what light was it reflected? A killer! And that horrendous, nightmarish mise en scène. It was the first. Would it be the only one? A huge, overwhelming sense of danger enveloped De Vincenzi. Someone had written: the devil is grinning from every corner. He would have to battle with the devil. Flush him out, give chase.

A voice rose from the bottom of the stairs. Someone was shuffling up the steps. The doctor and nurse. De Vincenzi took out his watch: ten to midnight.

“Doctor, there’s a body on the bed in there. The investigating magistrate hasn’t been yet. He may not get here till tomorrow. It’s rather irregular, but it’s crucial that you inform me of the cause of death immediately. I absolutely must have the secrets the body’s hiding, which only you and science can get out of it. All of them: how he was killed, how many hours ago… You can take off his clothes. In fact, undress him now and let me have them.”

The doctor listened as he stared at the dangling rope. He was a tall man, and so frighteningly thin that he seemed completely shrivelled. He had a long face like a horse’s and his skin was taut across his cheeks; his tiny eyes gleamed like topaz. Behind him was the nurse, dressed in a white blouse topped with a cape that had opened up as she’d climbed the stairs. She was rubbing her hands to keep warm. A shock of red hair hung over her forehead.

“Yes,” De Vincenzi continued, slowly, and in another tone, trying himself to play down the importance of what he was about to reveal, “he was hu— someone put that noose around his head after his death. Bear that in mind too, Doctor. The rope was wrapped under his chin and behind his ears.”

De Vincenzi entered the squalid little room ahead of the doctor and nurse. The doctor stepped over to the bed and put his bony white hand on the body’s closed eyelids, on the forehead. He quickly ran his claw-like fingers down to the knees and ankles before moving back up to palpate the stomach. Why the knees and ankles? He lifted a leg, an arm, and let them fall back down. The entire bed jiggled and the iron headboard twice banged against the wall. The doctor turned and took another long look at De Vincenzi—a look of amazement.

“It’s not possible to do a thing in this light.” And then he said impatiently, “How do you think I can see in here? Can’t someone change the lamp?”

“Cruni, go down and get the strongest light you can find. You might take one from the dining room.”

“Silvestri, can you give me a hand here? Let’s start getting his clothes off.”

De Vincenzi went out to the landing again. Sani appeared, panting slightly from the climb; De Vincenzi hadn’t heard him come up; his footsteps had become confused with Cruni’s going down.

“Two foreigners have arrived from the station just now. They’ve unloaded their trunks and suitcases. They must be English, husband and wife. I had them go into one of the small rooms and asked them to wait there. They didn’t complain. They sat down, and the man asked me a couple of times, ‘But is this actually The Hotel of the Three Roses?’”

“Elderly?”

“More than elderly. The woman’s hair is snowy-white. They’re very distinguished; must be rich.”

“Go back downstairs. I’ll join you shortly.” As Sani started down, De Vincenzi shouted out, “And for goodness’ sake, don’t allow a soul to approach them! They probably don’t know.”

What had he been thinking? He turned back to the room where the doctor and nurse were getting on with things. He saw the dead man’s clothes and underwear heaped on a table. How white and slender his body was! He almost seemed like a child. The doctor was bent over him.

“My word, will you look at this! Someone’s stabbed him in the back.”

De Vincenzi went over and saw a triangular wound under the shoulder blade where the heart would be, a blackish gash, its edges stiff and purple. There wasn’t a drop of blood around it. Someone had definitely cleaned him up. He took the dead man’s jacket, his waistcoat and shirt from the table and studied them. No holes. The shirt, too, was free of any traces of blood. Killed in his bed, or else undressed and then dressed again.

“He must have lost a lot of blood.”

The doctor replied without turning round. “Perhaps not. If the weapon was left in the wound for a few hours after his death, he’d have bled very little.”

Where had the body been kept until it had been brought up here to hang? And how had it been moved, at nine or ten at night, with the hotel full of people and the almost certain risk of bumping into someone—if not on that hidden staircase, then surely along the first-floor corridor, with all its doors to the guest rooms? Or on the large staircase, one flight of which it must definitely have been brought down if it was from one of the first-floor rooms, as it was logical to suppose? Was it possible that Layng had been killed in one of those poky attic rooms and kept there until his killer, or his killers, had thought the moment right to stage this macabre performance? Yes, it was possible. De Vincenzi thought about the long glass wall dividing the lobby from the dining room: so many people in there! He would have to question all of them. Question them? Study them, rather. Analyse them. A feeling of nausea rose in his throat. But he knew that only the psychological aspects of the crime can reveal the truth. Well, he’d do what he had to.

Cruni came back with the lamp. “It’s the strongest one I could find.”

The room, sunk into darkness, was suddenly flooded with a harsh, cold light. The naked body took on clean outlines, as if it had been drawn. The doctor nodded at the nurse, who brought him the little black bag he’d put down on a chair. A very long probe gleamed in his hands and disappeared immediately into the wound.

“The knife pierced the heart.”

De Vincenzi was examining the clothes. Nothing in the pockets—not a thing. The jacket bore the name of a London tailor, and was no help at all.

“Doctor, before you go, would you come and speak to me? You’ll find me downstairs.”

The doctor made an inarticulate sound of assent.

“Cruni, you stay here.” De Vincenzi led him to the landing. “No one must touch a thing. If someone comes up, send them back downstairs.” He slowly descended the stairs.

Sani was in the lobby. “The two travellers are in there.” He pointed to a door at the back of the lobby, past the writing table on the right.

“I’m going in there.” But he looked at the glass wall of the dining room. He couldn’t see anyone through the glass. What had all those people been doing in there for two hours?

He went into the parlour, where the couple were still sitting. They watched him approach. The woman must once have been beautiful, and she still was for that matter, though her hair was completely white. A real air of distinction, a clear and penetrating gaze. The man was large, his face animated. An enormous diamond sparkled on the small finger of his right hand, which was splayed over his knee. He regarded De Vincenzi silently, responding to his bow with a nod. He then asked in English, “Are you the proprietor? Why have we been asked to come in here? Is this the custom in Italian hotels?”

De Vincenzi had a moment of almost paralysing doubt. What if these two were the dead man’s parents? How to give them the news? What would they do?

“I beg your pardon,” he replied in English. “I am not the proprietor of this hotel. I am a police inspector.”

He saw a look of apprehension flash through the woman’s eyes. Her husband furrowed his brow and stood up suddenly.

“What do you want with me?” he asked in a sharp voice. “I don’t understand!”

What didn’t he understand—or what was it he was hastening to confirm that he did not understand?

“A most dreadful event has taken place in this hotel. A man has been found dead, and an inquest has been opened. It will be necessary for you kindly to go to another hotel. It won’t be possible for you to have a room here for another few hours.”

The woman stood up now as well. “A dead man!” Her eyes were brimming with terror. “But we can’t go to another hotel.”

“Something dreadful? Ah…” The man sat back down. “We’ll wait. We must stay here in this hotel.”

De Vincenzi breathed a sigh of relief. No. He’d been mistaken. They couldn’t be the parents of young Layng, or else the woman would already have uttered the name of her son.

“Would you mind showing me your passport?”

The man pulled from his pocket a small blue booklet with a large golden coat of arms stamped in the middle: the coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

De Vincenzi read the name: George Flemington. “That’s fine,” he said. “Would you kindly stay here? You may be waiting for some time.”

“Could someone at least bring me a bottle of whisky…”

“I’ll see to it that they do.”

As De Vincenzi started for the door, he heard the wife whisper, “Oh, George! What does all of this mean?”

And then he heard the man’s laugh. The sound of that laugh—low, cruel and sarcastic—echoed in his ears long after he’d closed the parlour door to find himself once more in the empty lobby with the fibre suitcase and the overturned armchair.