As he went back into the lobby with Sani, De Vincenzi murmured, “We’re nearing the end, but the most dreadful thing is yet to come.”

He went into the blue room, where everyone was still standing. They looked at him in terror, as if expecting him to announce a further catastrophe. He feigned indifference, even smiled.

“Please sit down. Miss Essington is a little deranged. She can’t have seen anybody or any killer. The cocaine is giving her hallucinations.” He turned to Mary Alton. “We must finish this as soon as possible. I’d like you, Mrs Alton, to go and get the dolls.”

The widow was momentarily somewhat perplexed, as if she hadn’t understood. She let out a deep sigh and fluttered her eyelashes. De Vincenzi repeated the request. She then nodded and left in a rush. Her quick, light steps could be heard on the staircase—then nothing. The men sat down. Mrs Flemington was so petrified with fear that her husband had to reach out and take her arm, drawing her closer to him.

“Are you perfectly sure, Besesti, that the killer can’t be Lessinger?”

“Yes. It can’t be Julius Lessinger.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer. It was clear he was struggling to swallow, as if his throat had closed up.

“Why not?”

“Because… Julius Lessinger died in Buenos Aries in 1913.”

It was such an extraordinary revelation that everyone was struck speechless. The first to recover was the lawyer. He leapt to his feet, threatening Besesti with a raised fist.

“Scoundrel!”

Besesti’s head drooped.

“Dastardly blackmailer!”

“Quiet, Flemington!” shouted De Vincenzi.

“He’s a scoundrel! He terrorized Harry Alton for five years with the threat of Lessinger’s revenge.”

“Be quiet now!” The inspector forced him to sit back down.

“It’s true,” muttered Besesti. “But I didn’t talk to the major about Lessinger after—”

“After you convinced him to become your partner in the coastal trading business.”

“Yes. I met Julius Lessinger by chance in hospital in Buenos Aires. He had a bed next to mine, and he was very sick—tuberculosis—and he wasn’t going to get better. He confided the whole story to me.”

“How had he heard it?”

“It seems he’d got Dick Nolan drunk one day and made him talk. He was the one who killed him in battle. He shot him in the back. He didn’t kill Alton as well because he wanted to recover the box of diamonds first. Then he got sick and was sent back to Johannesburg. Meanwhile, Alton and Engel had gone to England. What Lessinger was doing in Buenos Aires I’ve no idea. All I know is that he died in despair, because he wanted to revenge himself on Alton and he’d managed to find out where he was.”

“In Sydney?”

“Yes.”

“What about you?”

“When Lessinger died, I left for Sydney. My situation in Buenos Aires had become unsustainable.”

“And from Lessinger’s story you immediately saw a way of recouping your fortune!”

Flemington was still in a state of overexcitement. He was exasperated by Besesti’s ugly game with Harry Alton—the pretence that Lessinger was still alive and the blackmail threat—with its consequences for himself and his wife, the mother of Douglas Layng.

“But that letter! Who wrote that letter, then?” Flemington roared, his finger pointing at the table where the letter from Hamburg was still lying.

“The person who wrote it wanted to do what they have done, making everyone believe it was Lessinger,” came the calm voice of De Vincenzi. “Mr Besesti, did anyone besides you know about Lessinger’s death?”

“I kept quiet with everyone!” He got up. “I swear by Christ I haven’t spoken about Julius Lessinger for five years, to Alton or to anyone else. The threats to him did not come from me.”

He was sincere. Once he had succeeded with the initial blackmail, and had got rich from it, what point was there in continuing to make use of the secret? After all, it was dangerous enough to send his business partner to the gallows—and their fates were linked. Apparently, someone else who knew the horrifying story of the killings had impersonated Lessinger, taking care to keep Alton’s terror on the boil. But why?

And what was the motive for killing Douglas Layng, for having injured and nearly killed Carin Nolan, and for keeping all the other guests under the imminent threat of death?

The deep, harsh voice of Vilfredo Engel sounded strangely troubled. “Whoever the murderer may be, it’s one of us.”

That he was in the hotel was clear, considering the fact that Stella Essington had seen him and Novarreno’s attempt to blackmail him had cost him his life. But that he might be in the very same room…

“What are you trying to tell us, Engel?”

Engel had picked up the doll and was holding her upside down by the leg. Livening up, he replied, using the doll to gesticulate. His overcoat fell open, revealing the white pyjamas stretched tight across his body. He looked like a buffoon.

“The letters were written to terrify, and to render this tragedy easier to execute. Only one of us could know the story, and know where to have all the heirs meet. And only one of us could have any interest in the deaths of the others.”

“But why?” shouted Besesti.

Flemington got up and looked at Engel.

“What do you mean, Mr Engel?”

The pachyderm turned slowly to contemplate the lawyer. He sneered.

“No one could understand better than you, Flemington of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, since you’re a lawyer, what interest an heir might have in being the only one left to receive the inheritance!”

Besesti interrupted:

“In that case, I’m excluded from any suspicion. I expect nothing from Alton. And I’m waiting to hear why I’ve been made to join this hellish meeting.”

The sane, quiet voice of Da Como was heard as he turned to the inspector.

“I don’t have anything to do with it either. I’ll be damned if I ever play another trick in my life—my having put the doll on Engel’s bed was nothing but a joke. Why have you made me come down here?”

De Vincenzi suddenly started. The doll! The two dolls Mary Alton had gone to get! She had not come back!

“Sani!” shouted a lacerating voice.

“Here I am,” Sani answered, rushing in from the lobby.

“Who is guarding the first floor?”

The deputy inspector paled. “No one—it’s true! I was there but then I came down after that woman.”

Pushing Sani aside, De Vincenzi rushed for the main staircase. But he hadn’t even reached the first landing when he stopped. Mary Alton had appeared before him. She was descending slowly, the two dolls in her arms.

“Ah,” the inspector sighed. Then he recovered himself and smiled. “I was afraid you weren’t able to find Carin Nolan’s doll.”

“I had to look in all her drawers, as a matter of fact. I couldn’t find it. It was in a hat box in the wardrobe.”

“Good.”

He let Mary go ahead of him and followed behind her, waiting for her to enter the blue room.

“Go up to the first floor and stand guard in the corridor. Rooms 7 and 19 are occupied, as you know. Take special care with Room 7, and if you hear the slightest suspicious noise, enter immediately.”

“I’ll make sure of it,” Sani hurriedly reassured him, hoping to excuse his earlier forgetfulness.

“Are you armed?”

“Yes,” and he showed De Vincenzi his revolver, which bulged in his jacket pocket.

De Vincenzi went back into the blue room. The widow had put one doll on the table and was sitting with the other in her arms, holding it tight against her breast. It was her doll. The one on the table, even though similar in all respects to the other two, had on a little blue silk dress. Why were the others, then, both dressed in pink gauze?

“Mr Engel, when your brother went back to Africa and you kept the doll with you, what was it wearing?”

“What are you talking about?” Engel asked, astonished. He couldn’t understand how the doll’s clothing mattered in such a tragedy.

It was Mrs Flemington who answered. “I sewed the two pink gauze dresses. My husband asked me to do it. Harry Alton had begged him to organize two dresses for the dolls.”

“Harry was afraid that Lessinger would come to London, discover the dolls and recognize them as the ones that had belonged to his sisters. He wanted them destroyed, and he asked Engel and his wife for them. But both Engel and Mrs Mary refused to hand them over. So he thought their clothes should be changed. It was my wife, as she said, who made the dresses.”

“What about this one?” the inspector asked, pointing to the blue doll.

“Carin Nolan was living in Norway. After the death of her grandfather, the doll was sent to Christiana from the Transvaal.”

“But, Mrs Alton, didn’t you tell your husband you’d lost it?”

“I don’t remember,” the widow replied. And she wrinkled her forehead. “The fact is, I had grown fond of the doll and wouldn’t let Harry have it back, or maybe I asked him to let me have it. I don’t remember. Maybe I said both those things. Harry was very suspicious, and not easy to deceive. But I don’t see what importance—”

“In fact, it doesn’t have any.”

“It’s definitely true about the clothes,” Engel suddenly exclaimed. “One day, Harry came to me and he himself changed the dress in front of my very eyes. The blue dress was burnt in the fireplace in my room.”

“Mr Flemington, read the will!”

Flemington stood up. He was clearly disturbed. He hesitated before walking to the black suitcase he’d left on the chair after putting it there in order to find the letter signed by Julius Lessinger.

“Inspector, you must take responsibility for reading the will at such a dangerous time.”

“It’s essential, Mr Flemington.” De Vincenzi looked one by one at the people surrounding him. Anxious expectancy was written on each face—everyone’s except for Besesti’s. He’d collapsed after his confession, elbows on the table, head in his hands, looking down. He remained immobile.

Flemington opened the suitcase and took out a large black leather portfolio. He went back to the table and drew from that an oversized envelope bearing five red seals. On the reverse, one could see four or five lines of the heavy, deliberate handwriting De Vincenzi had already noticed on the letter written by the major to his wife.

Flemington sat down. He read from the envelope he was holding:

The lawyer raised his head to look at his wife. Diana Flemington immediately stopped crying. Flemington’s nervous fingers lifted the red seals, one after another.

“Do you have a knife?”

Da Como was the first to get up and hold out a long penknife, which he’d opened. He returned to his chair in the corner. Flemington glanced at the open door, then at the inspector. De Vincenzi got up and closed the door. The blade of the penknife cut through the envelope, and Flemington’s fingers drew out a large sheet of paper folded in four. The reading of Harry Alton’s will was brief.

I leave all I possess to the three dolls, once the property of Donald Lessinger’s daughters. They alone are my legitimate heirs. The benefit of the goods which the dolls will thus possess shall be enjoyed by those to whom they have been entrusted. The doll temporarily given to my wife must be returned immediately to Douglas Layng after the reading of this will. Although the capital shall remain secure and inalienable, the usufruct shall be transferred from the three owners of the dolls to their own natural heirs until their extinction, at which time the life interest shall be enjoyed by the British Red Cross. This is my will, which my legal adviser and friend George Flemington will see carried out and respected. I, Harry Alton, being of sound mind and body, do hereby wish and decree.

Sydney, November 1919

A deathly silence followed the lawyer’s words. Mary Alton stood up. She held the doll to her chest, her fingers wrapped tightly around it. Her pallor was waxen.

“What does it mean?”

Flemington turned to look at her.

“It means, Mrs Alton, that your husband is not leaving you a cent of his possessions.”

“It’s not possible! That is not my husband’s will!” Her voice was cutting and the words forced through her teeth. Her whole body was shaking.

“What are you trying to imply?” Flemington asked.

De Vincenzi quietly watched Mary Alton. She had changed completely. Her violet eyes had turned into tiny, flashing emeralds. Her passionate, red-painted lips were now an open wound on a bloodless face.

“I deny that this is the will of my husband. There’s been a substitution. I know the real will of Harry Alton.”

Flemington put the large document on the table in front of him. “It’s true,” he said slowly. “Major Alton did draw up another will before this one, and he entrusted it to me. But the authenticity of the present will cannot be doubted, and since it is dated later, the previous one is annulled.”

Mary Alton was quivering. But she sensed the inspector’s eyes on her and kept quiet. Her features softened, and she recovered her air of inscrutable innocence.

“What was the date of the preceding will?” asked De Vincenzi.

“It was drawn up on the same day as the wedding in this hotel. The witnesses were me and an English doctor who was passing through Milan and whom the pastor had asked to attend Alton’s wedding.”

“Do you remember the terms of that will, Mr Flemington?”

“You see!” the widow interrupted again. “The second will is invalid. It doesn’t bear the witnesses’ signatures.”

“You’re mistaken, Mrs Mary. You’re mistaken!”

The lawyer showed her the document, pointing out the signatures of two other people following the major’s.

“There are the witnesses’ signatures. There’s also a codicil.” He read:

This will annuls any preceding will and constitutes the “surprise” I announced to my wife.

“Do you remember the instructions of the previous will?” De Vincenzi repeated.

“That one divided the inheritance four ways: three parts went to Vilfredo Engel, Douglas Layng and Carin Nolan. The fourth was destined for Mary Vendramini. In case of the death of one of the heirs, the survivors inherited the part of the deceased.”

He watched the widow approach the table, put down the doll she’d been clasping in her arms till then, and slowly retreat. She continued to look as cool as a cucumber, and her extreme pallor, heightened by the harsh light of the lamp, was frightening. Everyone stared at her. She moved like a zombie.

“Mrs Alton!” ordered the inspector.

“My presence is no longer necessary now I know what the surprise is.”

“You’re forgetting that there are two bodies you must step over in order to leave here.”

She raised her head and turned on them a look strangely rapt and luminous. “What do they have to do with me? It’s the dolls who inherit!”

For the first time she laughed: a low, broken, inhuman laugh. Chilling. It was impossible to believe she was the one laughing, so still had she remained, her look so pure and innocent.

A piercing scream rang out. “Murderer! You are the murderer of my son!”

Diana Flemington leapt from the sofa and started for Mary. Her husband was the first to stop her, seizing her in his arms. He took her away, still squeezing her against his chest and holding her head against his own shoulder with a tenderness that was new and surprising for such a large, gruff and sarcastic man.

Mary Alton heard the scream but didn’t even draw back. She gave a faint shrug and shook her head at the tirade. She looked at the inspector and said with deep pity, “Poor Mrs Flemington.” By now she’d completely recovered her remarkable equilibrium, and was calm and assured. Her eyes were no longer shining; they’d returned to their deep, dark violet colour. The accusation had not hit home, and she appeared to find it too absurd to consider.

“What do you intend to do now, Signora Alton?”

De Vincenzi spoke to her in Italian because he wanted to spare Diana Flemington the torment that would result in her hearing everything Mary was about to say.

“Get away from here! There’s nothing more to keep me in this place.”

“Yes, something and someone can keep you here! Your accomplice, for example.”

Mary stared at him. One might have said she looked amused.

“I don’t understand!”

“Wait a moment and you will.” He walked past her into the lobby. He signalled to the two officers to stand guard by the blue room: “No one must leave! Keep them from leaving here, even if you have to shoot.” He then hurried up the main stairs and ran into Sani at the start of the corridor. “Did you hear any movement?” He pointed to Room 7.

“No. Nothing. I even put my ear to the door, but couldn’t hear a breath.”

“What?” This time the shout was De Vincenzi’s. He grabbed the handle and flung open the door. He uttered a curse, a terrible curse against himself. How had he not foreseen this? There, on the floor beside the bed, lay Al Righetti. He’d been shot as he got out of bed, since he’d pulled the sheets and the bedcover along with him when he fell. He was bent over, with his forehead against the bedside rug and his arms flung open.

De Vincenzi leant over to lift him up and laid him on the bed with Sani’s help.

“He’s dead,” said Sani.

A spot of blood on his breast had stained his light-coloured pyjamas purple. Another spot could be seen on the rug, darker and thicker. He hadn’t bled much.

“But he was shot with a revolver, this one!” Sani exclaimed in terrified surprise. “Almost point-blank.”

Indeed, his silk jacket was haloed with burn marks from a shot just out of the barrel. The revolver lay on the floor—they saw it only now. A small revolver with an ivory grip. De Vincenzi bent to pick it up, and Sani made a move to deter him.

“The fingerprints!”

“There aren’t any,” the inspector muttered. “There can’t be any.” He picked up a little yellow satin cushion lying nearby. “See? She had the revolver hidden inside this cushion. She came up to Al Righetti, who wouldn’t have suspected her and probably wanted to embrace her, and she pressed the cushion to his chest as she fired. That’s why no one heard the shot.” He indicated burn marks on the satin identical to the ones on the pyjamas.

“Her?” Sani’s eyes widened. “But whom do you mean?”

“Yes. It was the only way for her to have the entire inheritance and to prevent her accomplice from speaking.”

He was scowling, his jaws clenched, his lips pursed. He studied the body: the wide-open eyes expressed nothing but enormous shock.

“Go and get Bardi and bring him back here.”

Sani had given up asking for explanations. He left.

Alone again, De Vincenzi studied the room. He was gripped by feverish excitement. He knew the whole story now! The spark that had been missing for so long had lit up his brain. A horrific drama… He ran straight from the bed to the window. The shutters had been thrown back and the first light of day was coming through, dulled by the rain. He began examining the windowsill, knelt down on the floor. His intuition had been right. He could see that the edges of the wooden windowsill and the floor tiles were still damp, and someone had tried to dry them. In order to kill Novarreno, Al Righetti had gone out of his window and come in through the Levantine’s window. The simplest gymnastic feat. He hadn’t needed the stairs to get down to the courtyard or climb out of it, not at all! He’d held on to the cornice that circled the building, continuing the line of the windowsills along the wall.

De Vincenzi turned back to the bed. In a corner between the wall and the wardrobe he spotted a small oil stove. It would have served to overheat the air in Douglas Layng’s room so that his body hadn’t gone rigid. The one he had been looking for…

He’d guessed it all, he had, in every detail. The only thing was, he hadn’t managed to see it all at once. But how could he? How could he have known that Julius Lessinger was dead? His very name on each person’s tongue; that ghostly avenger whom everyone named as if fearing he were behind them. The actual existence of Julius Lessinger, in whom he’d had to believe, had derailed him, forcing him to look in every other direction. It was true that he’d suspected Nicola Al Righetti, and for that very reason he hadn’t wished to question him further, or enter his room. After Carin Nolan had been injured it didn’t seem possible that the man could attempt any other crimes, and he hadn’t wanted to put him under suspicion before he had the evidence.

But how could he have guessed that she would kill him? Yet now he would have said that her killing him was unavoidable. Mary Alton absolutely had to prevent her first husband from speaking. A nagging sense of unease or remorse plagued him. He had sent her alone to get the dolls, precisely because he wanted her to betray herself. Yes, when it came down to it, Al Righetti’s death was his fault. And when he’d run to the first floor and met her on the staircase with the two dolls in her arms, she’d seemed so calm, so completely innocent—and beautiful—that he’d reproached himself for having set her up and told himself again that he was on the wrong track.

He continued searching the room. He opened the wardrobe and saw a silk shirt on a hanger. He looked at the sleeves. A bit of broken stitching hung from the buttonhole of one of the cuffs—and there was the golden disc with its three blue and red enamel circles; the other disc—the one he’d found in the built-in wardrobe on the third floor—was in his pocket. He closed the wardrobe and looked in the dresser drawers, then in the table drawer. Nothing. There were linens, clothes, boxes for collars and ties. Hidden under the shirts in the first drawer was a big Colt, black and sinister, with a silencer on the barrel: an American gangster’s weapon. But no letter, no papers. He continued looking, increasingly agitated. What he hoped to find, even he could not say.

He noticed a suitcase and went over to open it. His movements had become clumsy. Only his nervous excitement kept him from wilting, from keeling over after that diabolical night. He’d come to the hotel at ten last night and now it was almost eight in the morning—ten hours. He was afraid of totting up the hours, of imagining that something worse might lie in store for him…

He kept seeing that pure, oval face before him, white as wax and framed by a mass of shining golden hair… two deep, violet-coloured eyes… a simple, graceful, fragile body. He emptied the suitcase onto the floor. Ties, linens, some men’s jewellery. Another, smaller revolver. So, nothing. But what was he hoping to find?

Finally he found it. A few yellowed pages, some of them torn and some covered with directions and names written in pen. Just what he’d dimly guessed as soon as the old Bernasconi had told him about the young man who always met Mary Vendramini in Milan. Nicola Al Righetti had secretly married Mary Vendramini in Chicago in 1911, and those yellowed sheets were the documents that certified their marriage.

By now, it was all clear. Realizing how rich Major Alton was, Mary hadn’t hesitated to contract a second marriage—in agreement with her first husband—in order to get her hands on the money, and to inherit it when the time came. The time had come. De Vincenzi jumped as if someone had whipped him—he felt a sigh, a sort of wheezing, behind him. He put the papers in his pocket and turned round.

The hunchback was standing at the door, looking at the dead man on the bed, his eyes wide with fear.

De Vincenzi got up. “Signor Bardi, do you recognize this man?”

He looked at him.

“What? What do you mean?”

“This man was in this hotel in 1914. Do you recognize him?”

The hunchback had a brainwave. It was just as if his pale, yellow, angular face had suddenly lit up.

“Yes,” he shouted. “Yes! That’s it! He’s the man who was with Mary Vendramini.”

“Fine. That’s all.” De Vincenzi signalled to Sani to take him away. “Make sure he does not leave his room.”

“Who killed him?” asked Bardi in his strident but firm voice.

“It doesn’t matter right now. You’ll find out. Go.” And he followed the two, closing the door behind him and starting down the stairs. Oh to be done with this, and to be done with it as soon as possible. What was waiting for him down below in the blue room?

The two officers stood at the door.

“Nothing?”

They shook their heads and moved aside. Inside, everyone was as he had left them. The widow, who turned to watch him, was also still waiting.

“Mrs Mary Alton, you are under arrest for the murder of Nicola Al Righetti, your first and only husband since the second marriage you contracted with Major Alton is null and void; and for complicity in the murders of Douglas Layng and Giorgio Novarreno, and for wounding Carin Nolan.”

The woman continued staring at him. After their initial shock, the others around her—George and Diana Flemington, Vilfredo Engel, Carlo Da Como and Pompeo Besesti—sat in suspended silence, as if pinned to the floor by a new anxiety, by the sensation that something awful, unexpected, even fatal was about to happen.

De Vincenzi repeated the charge. Mary Alton moved towards the table, picked up the two dolls, clasped them to her breast, kissed them and then sat down, where she began gently cradling them, caressing them and speaking to them in her measured voice, as harmonious as music, as sweet and nostalgic as a love song.

“You’re mine… mine, both of you… I’ll keep you for ever with me… good sisters… With me for ever!”

They took her in the car, through the rain, through streets and avenues and over fields, with the two porcelain dolls. They went through a gate, and then the car stopped in front of a large white building surrounded by flower beds. Two men in dark-blue shirts came to take her from Deputy Inspector Sani. Shortly afterwards a gentleman with a large, aquiline nose and gold-framed glasses received her in a dazzling, all-white room, where he began to observe her with intense curiosity. And all the while she cradled her dolls, singing lullabies of innocence.