12

“Where were you?”

The officer pointed to the corner where both parts of the corridor met: the longer one, where Room 12 was the first room—and where De Vincenzi had been with Mary Alton—and the other, which aligned with the landing and on which Rooms 5, 6 and 7 opened, across from Rooms 1 to 4. The first part of the corridor was very long and ended on the left with the small stairway that led downstairs to the billiard room.

“Actually in that corner, were you? Were you watching both parts of the corridor?”

The man seemed to want to make excuses.

“I walked down this corridor, right to the end.”

“So the lobby and the other corridor were left unguarded?”

“What could I do? I knew the stairs and the lobby were being watched. And you were in there. I thought—”

“Fine! Go back down to the end now.” The doors on the first part of the corridor were all closed. De Vincenzi headed straight for that of Room 5 and opened it: the room where Douglas Layng had been living was empty, the bed made, the dresser drawer—the one in which Sani had found the packet of letters tied with ribbon—still partly open. “Take the letters out of that drawer. You can give them to me later. I want to read them.”

Those letters now interested him. Sani hurried to obey and the packet of letters with English postmarks disappeared into his pocket. They left the room. De Vincenzi went up to the door of Novarreno’s room.

Absolute silence.

“Novarreno,” he called out. “Open up!”

No reply. He lifted the latch, but the door wouldn’t open. It was locked from the inside. After several more tries, De Vincenzi waited no longer. He took two steps backward and threw his shoulder against the right-hand side. It offered no resistance and broke open.

The light was on in the room and the trinkets-salesman lay on the ground, a dagger plunged into the middle of his chest. De Vincenzi bent down a moment to look at him. He touched his hand: it was still warm, but he was surely dead. He leapt over the body and ran to the window, which was wide open. He leant out to look at the garden. Down below, on the ground floor, he saw a lit window: it had to be the one in the blue room, where he’d left Flemington and his wife. He turned to Sani, who’d come into the room and was looking at the body, horrified, while the officers stood at the door.

“You didn’t put an officer on guard in the garden outside the parlour window as I ordered you to do?”

Sani was shaken. “I didn’t have the heart to send a man out to stand in the rain. There’s no way of leaving the garden apart from through the glass door which leads to the lobby, and I was in the lobby with two officers. After all, the door at the back of the building is also being watched.”

De Vincenzi limited himself to giving Sani a look of disapproval. “This poor man wouldn’t be dead if you’d followed my orders.” He turned to the officers. “Phone the emergency medical service and the doctor.” He went back to the window. The killer had entered and left through it, there could be no doubt, as evidenced by the door locked on the inside. “Give me a torch.”

Sani offered his own. De Vincenzi tried to see outside. As he had guessed, there was a ladder at the base of the wall. The killer had used it to go up and down and then he’d laid it on the ground against the wall. He’d gone to some trouble even in this, given how easy it had been for him to carry out the rest. And the ladder on the ground showed that the man no longer needed it, after the murder, to climb up to his own room, which clearly had to be on the ground floor. There were no windows on the garden other than the window of the blue room, still lit up, and the two kitchen windows across from it. The kitchen led directly into the dining room.

The rain continued falling insistently. The garden was flooded. He certainly wouldn’t find any footprints there. Footprints, no; but whoever had carried out that acrobatic enterprise must have been soaking, and certainly, once out of the rain, would have left wet prints wherever he’d walked. De Vincenzi stepped over the body once more, almost running past Sani and the other officers as he threw himself down the large stairway. He moved the officer on guard aside and opened the door to the parlour. Flemington, his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, was staring at the glass in front of him. A short distance from the glass was the empty whisky bottle. The lawyer had removed his jacket, collar and tie. Mrs Flemington was sleeping on the sofa.

At the sound of the door opening, Flemington stirred from his contemplation and looked at the inspector without the least surprise. Suddenly his eyes flashed with terror, as if he’d only just recognized him. But his voice was mocking: “Still awake, Inspector. Wretched night, this!” And he let out his peculiar laugh. But it was only a brief acknowledgement. His face immediately darkened and beneath his bushy eyebrows his grey eyes clouded over.

De Vincenzi looked at the closed window, the floor. Not a trace.

“There’s another dead man here, Mr Flemington.”

“Oh,” said the man. “All in the space of twenty-four hours! I told you so.”

“We’ll be speaking at length before long, Mr Flemington. I’ve come now just to—”

“—to see if I needed anything.” That hiccuping, sarcastic laugh. “No! I don’t need a thing.”

“You don’t want to ask me who’s dead?”

He hunched his shoulders and got up slowly, propping himself against the table. Standing, he seemed heavy, if not enormous; with that bulk, how could he have got over the windowsill, seized the ladder and climbed up to the window? And then—having arrived at the hotel a few hours ago, only to be locked in that room—how could he have known which window was Novarreno’s? And besides, why Novarreno?

“Mr Flemington, how many people have been asked to convene in this hotel to hear the reading of Major Harry Alton’s will?”

“Have you heard? Five, and young Layng was one of them, though he is no more.”

“One of these people is called—was called—Giorgio Novarreno?”

Flemington looked at him with profound, unfeigned surprise.

“What did you say?”

“Giorgio Novarreno, a Levantine.”

“No. Why ever… Is he the dead man you mentioned?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand.”

He didn’t, in fact, understand. He was lost in thought, in intense reflection. The dead man clearly didn’t come into it.

“That’s fine, Mr Flemington. I’ll come back in a bit. Meanwhile, give some thought to the benefit—to you as well as me—of deciding to tell me everything you know.”

So Novarreno had nothing to do with the inheritance business, the dolls or with the lawyer, Flemington, of the firm Copthall and Flemington, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Unless he was Julius Lessinger… De Vincenzi shrugged his shoulders dramatically. Impossible! Not at his age; Novarreno couldn’t be more than forty. So why had someone killed him? And now that he had to dismiss the possibility that Flemington had killed him, who was left? The killer had come in through the window, no doubt about it. So: someone had to have come from the kitchen or another room with windows looking out on the garden.

He walked without stopping past the open door of Room 6, where Sani and the two officers were with the body, and made his way slowly down the corridor, looking at the doors on the left. He consulted the guest list and the hotel plan provided by the owner. Nicola Al Righetti was in Room 7; in Room 8, Vittoria Jumeta Zogheb; in 9, Carin Nolan; in 10, Donato Desatta. Room 11 was empty.

But then how could the person who’d delivered the fatal blow have got down to the garden and gone up to the chiromancer’s room when the ladder was now lying on the ground? Or was he dealing with an acrobat agile enough to get down to the garden and then back up without the help of the ladder? However it had happened, whom should he suspect amongst all those whose rooms were on that part of the corridor? Two men: Nicola Al Righetti and Donato Desatta. He’d already questioned Al Righetti and Donato Desatta was the owner of the Orfeo, a bar in the centre with drinking and dancing until four in the morning.

He slowly retraced his steps. He stopped for a moment in front of Room 10 before proceeding. He was going to eliminate Desatta from the investigation, because he still believed the crime could not have been committed by an Italian. The same hand, perhaps the same knife had killed both young Layng and Giorgio Novarreno; and Douglas Layng had been hung from a rope in a macabre manner, on the top-floor landing, many hours after he’d been killed. Besides, De Vincenzi knew Desatta. He’d seen him moving between rooms at the Orfeo. He was a man of over fifty who tried desperately to avoid going bald by using dyes and cosmetics on his sparse, mousy-blond hair, and also to maintain a trim physique. A fun-loving, jovial man. De Vincenzi couldn’t imagine him plotting all that or carrying out such a diabolical scheme. Nicola Al Righetti was the only one left: the man with the alibis who didn’t want to be woken from a deep sleep…

He looked at the two doors in the corner: that of Room 7 on the first side and 9 on the longer side. In the first one was the American; in the second, Carin Nolan, a Norwegian about nineteen years old—“the threatened innocent”, as Sani had ironically put it. In any event, she had to be the daughter or a relative of Officer Nolan who’d been in South Africa with Major Alton. What the devil had they done in the Transvaal, those three: Alton, Engel and Nolan? And why was Carin Norwegian? Perhaps her father was something of a soldier of fortune, like William Engel, who was originally from Germany? The Transvaal… diamond mines… Julius Lessinger, who’d turned up after twenty years in order to revenge himself or take control of the rich spoils. Someone everyone was afraid of, starting with the sarcastic, hiccuping Flemington, who drank whisky like water.

Lost in thought, De Vincenzi stared at the doors of the rooms, the corridor, the lobby. The officers stood stationary at the door of Novarreno’s room, where the body lay stretched out on the floor. And Cruni was on the third-floor landing, guarding the other dead man whose heart had been stabbed many hours ago… Mary Alton Vendramini was playing with her doll… Stella Essington would be stupefied with heroin or cocaine… And she wanted to hear the cello played, to soothe the feverish agitation of her nerves… He shook himself and went towards Room 6. Sani came up to him.

“There was no struggle. To the naked eye it seems he didn’t even leave prints.”

What prints could he have left? De Vincenzi studied the body. Novarreno was still dressed as he had been when he’d left him a few hours earlier. “Go to bed,” he’d told him, “if you want.” But the Levantine hadn’t done so. Tall, thin, with that sharp profile of his—no flesh on his face, just skin and bones—he seemed like a great bird of prey shot down in flight, eyes wide open, glassy and full of terrified astonishment. No, there’d been no struggle. The very fact that Novarreno had let his eventual killer enter his room through the window meant he must have known him. A man was killed in this room, at precisely 12.30 yesterday. There is still a lot of blood in here… How had he known? It was surely true, what he’d said, and for that knowledge he’d paid with his life. A shady character, in any case. He knew everything, or nearly everything, but he hadn’t talked. After his first sentence, uttered more as a stunt, to make an impression, in order to act the necromancer, Novarreno had retreated behind a wall of reticence, his alibis well prepared, determined to say only what could serve him. What had he been turning around in that tortured brain of his, so clever at preparing tricks? But he was also uncomplicated. He was plotting blackmail. In possession of a terrible secret, he must have known its worth in gold. And he’d been killed so that someone did not have to pay him—to shut him up.

“Cover his face with a hand towel,” he ordered Sani brusquely.

De Vincenzi turned his back on the body. It had to be like that. Novarreno had wanted to join this atrocious game and he’d been fleeced. The circle was closing in. All in the span of twenty-four hours. Would he be able to put a stop to the series of murders, given that the dead man here was not part of it but an unforeseen accident? He’d have to hurry and couldn’t afford to take one false step. His adversary was the sort who never misses a chance, and never loses.

“When will the doctor be here? Have him give me the knife.”

“Did you look at it? It’s a switchblade, but it must have an extremely thin blade.”

“I’ll look at it later.”

There was time. If the killer had left it in the wound, De Vincenzi couldn’t hope that it would furnish any clues, and as for fingerprints, one no longer finds them, not even in detective stories.

The hotel doorbell rang, as long, loud and insistent as a blowtorch. The inspector went down a few steps and leant over the balustrade. An officer had leapt out of the wicker chair he’d been sleeping in and was proceeding towards the door. Virgilio appeared, sleepy, and staggered towards the door of the dining room.

A rather ostentatious man entered the hotel, with a blond beard, a fur coat with a mink collar and a brand-new grey hat on his head. He was smiling, showing off a set of bright white teeth. He twirled a stick with a gold knob.

“Good evening, Signor Besesti.”

“You might wish me a good morning instead, my dear Virgilio.” He was wary. “Have you put on a night guard?” and he pointed behind him to the officer, who was walking around.

He started going upstairs. On the landing he came face to face with De Vincenzi.

“Signor Pompeo Besesti?”

He was so surprised his monocle fell out of his eye.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m from the police.”

The other man laughed. “Very pleased to meet you.” But he wavered for a moment before regaining his composure. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t believe there’s anything that directly concerns you, but I’d ask you to agree to a short interview.”

“At this hour?” He raised his shoulders, faintly condescending. “Would you like to come to my room?” and he went on without waiting for De Vincenzi’s consent.

De Vincenzi quickly moved in front of him and closed the door to Room 6 so he wouldn’t see the body. Then he turned and waited for Besesti to enter his room first, a room that more or less faced Novarreno’s. When Besesti put out his hand to turn the doorknob, a slight tremor made him lose his grip. The door wouldn’t open.

“I forgot my key.”

“Here it is.”

As he took it, the director of the Bank of Pure Metals furrowed his brow and pursed his lips.