Beechfield Park, 1971
A fter Valentina’s murder, Thomas vowed to himself that he would put the memories of that dreadful time in a trunk, lock it up, and let it sink to the bottom of the sea, like the scuttling of a boat that contains the bodies of the dead. For years he had resisted the macabre temptation to find it, prise open the lock, and rifle through the rusty remains. Margo had rescued him from the dark shadows where he dwelled and brought him, blinking in bewilderment, into a world of light and love, albeit a different kind of love. He never forgot the locked chest, but the memory of it only tormented him in dreams. Then Margo was there to run a soothing hand across his brow, and the chest was willfully discarded in the ever-mounting silt at the bottom of the ocean. He had hoped that when he eventually died the chest would sink into the silt, never to be seen again.
He had not anticipated Alba’s determination to dive into those waters. For years he had endeavored to keep her firmly on dry land. But she had found the portrait, the key to the chest, and she knew that somewhere was a lock that fitted it to perfection. He was proud of her intelligence and a part of him admired her resolve; it was the first time in her life that she had demonstrated purpose. But he feared for her. She hadn’t the slightest idea of what lay in the chest. That, once opened, it could never be closed. She would learn the truth and have to live with it, even rewrite her own past.
Now Thomas was left with no choice but to drag the chest out of the sea, brush off the silt and coral that had grown up around it, and open it again. The mere thought of it caused his skin to bristle and turn cold. He lit a cigar and poured himself a glass of brandy. He wondered whether Alba had found Immacolata. Whether she was still alive. Perhaps Lattarullo was there too, retired maybe, chatting as he did without caring whether or not anyone was listening. He thought of Falco and Beata. Toto would be grown up now, perhaps with children of his own. After Valentina’s death they might have decided that living on in that peculiar place would only bring them unhappiness. Alba might never find them. He hoped, for her sake, that she’d return with her imagination still fresh and innocent for, although he had never lied to her, he had never corrected her own childish version of the truth. He hadn’t told her that he had never married her mother. That she had been murdered the night before the wedding. After all, he had done it for her. He was protecting the secure world he had built for her. If she discovered the truth, would she understand? Would she ever forgive him?
Puffing on his cigar, he sat back in his leather chair. Margo was out with the horses and he was alone, the chest at his feet, the key in his hands. All he had to do was turn the lock and lift the lid. He didn’t need to look at the portrait, for her face was as clear now as if she were standing before him. Once again the warm scent of figs enveloped him, transporting him back to Incantellaria. It was evening. He’d be married in the morning. His heart was full and bursting with happiness. He had forgotten the festa di Santa Benedetta. The disastrous moment when Christ had refused to bleed. He had ignored Valentina’s strange words. Now he put the key in the lock, lifted the lid, and remembered them, pondering their significance.
“We need Christ’s blessing. I know how to get it. I’ll put it right, you’ll see.”
Italy 1945
That night Thomas was restless with excitement. He was unable to sleep in the trattoria, for the air was hot and sticky, in spite of the breeze that swept in off the sea. He pulled on a pair of slacks and a shirt and walked up and down the beach, hands in pockets, contemplating his future. The town was silent. Only the odd cat crept silkily across the shadows in search of mice, belly to the ground. The blue boats dragged up onto the beach took on an inky color in the semi-darkness. The moon was full, the sky deep and glittering with stars that reflected off the gentle waves like gemstones. He recalled his wartime adventures, now an age ago, and felt a moment of guilt that his family were excluded from his wedding. But he would take Valentina and Alba home and surprise everyone. He was sure they would love them as he did.
With a smile he thought of Valentina. He would show her off in town. Take her to church on Sunday, as was tradition, with little Alba in her arms, and everyone would admire her beauty and her poise. They would watch her glide down the aisle in that unique way she walked, as if she had all the time in the world. He would invite Jack for the weekend and they’d share a cigar and a glass of whiskey after dinner in the study. They’d laugh about the war. About the adventures they had. And they’d reminisce about the day Fate took them to the shores of Incantellaria. They would remember Rigs’s rendition of Rigoletto, the wanton women of the night, and Valentina, as she had been then, standing in the doorway of Immacolata’s house in her white dress, semitransparent in the sunlight. Jack would envy him and admire him. Oh Jack, he thought as he wandered up the beach, oh that you were here to share this with me.
Thomas had left the wedding plans and preparation to Immacolata and Valentina. He knew the little chapel of San Pasquale would be adorned with flowers, Valentina’s favorite arum lilies. He knew her dress would be exquisitely made by the ancient but incomparable Signora Ciprezzo, whose fingernails were long and yellowed like old cheese. There would be dancing afterward at the trattoria. He imagined the whole town would be invited. Lorenzo would play the concertina, the children would sip wine, and laughter would resound, the war forgotten, a bright and optimistic future attainable to everyone. Immacolata, Beata, and Valentina had been cooking for days. Marinating, baking, icing, garnishing. There seemed no end to the preparations. So much so that Thomas had barely seen his fiancée. She had left him with Alba while she disappeared into town on an errand or for a dress fitting, skipping happily off down the rocks, waving to him as she went, shouting out instructions for Alba, who was fastidious and indulged.
He looked forward to nights alone with his wife, when he could taste again the salty pleasure of her skin. When he could kiss her mouth knowing that he could take his time, that he wouldn’t be interrupted. He looked forward to making love to her. To holding her in his arms as his wife. He looked forward to their belonging to each other by law, as God would be their witness.
If Freddie were alive today, what would be make of her? Knowing Freddie, he would mistrust her beauty and her smile. He hadn’t been a romantic, Freddie. He had been a realist. He would have married a woman he had known all his life. A cheerful, earthy woman who would have made a good wife and mother. He hadn’t believed in the kind of love that Thomas and Valentina shared. He had thought it a dangerous thing, that ferocious, all-consuming love. Now, when Thomas thought of Freddie, he didn’t wince with pain. He had grown to accept his brother’s death and although no one could replace him, Thomas’s love for Valentina had filled his heart where before it was desolate. But he believed Freddie would have come to love her in the end. It was impossible not to. Freddie would have patted his brother on the back and conceded that he was truly blessed, beyond the expectations of an ordinary man.
It was three in the morning. He didn’t want to be tired on his wedding day. In Italy wedding celebrations went on for days, so he needed to muster all his strength. He wandered back up the beach toward the row of buildings that looked out across the sea. Soon it would be dawn and the blue shutters would be thrown open to allow the sun to tumble in. The pots of geraniums that adorned the balconies would be watered and dead-headed, and the cats would return from their night’s hunting to sleep there in the warmth. As he walked back to the trattoria he heard the distant though unmistakable music of the concertina. Lorenzo’s low, doleful voice rose into the sultry air as he sang words of sorrow and bereavement. His words of death were lost in the echo and Thomas was none the wiser.
Tonight I sleep as a bachelor for the last time, he thought happily. Tomorrow I will be wed. He placed his head on the pillow and drifted into a serene and contented sleep.
He awoke a few hours later to frantic knocking on the door. “Tommy, Tommy!” The voice was Lattarullo’s. He sat up in bed, gripped by icy fear. He opened the door to find the carabiniere gray-faced with desolation. “It’s Valentina,” he gasped. “She is dead.”
Thomas stared at him for a long moment while he tried to make sense of what he had just heard. Perhaps he was trapped within a nightmare. He hadn’t woken up properly. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “What?”
Lattarullo repeated what he had just said, then added, “You have to come with me.”
“Dead? Valentina dead? How?” Thomas felt the world falling away around him as his heart began to unravel, slowly at first and then with frightening speed. He held on to the door frame to steady himself. “She can’t be dead!”
“She’s in a car on the road from Naples. We have to go now before…before…” He coughed.
“Before what?”
“Before the circus,” said Lattarullo.
“What are you talking about?”
“Just come with me. Then you will understand.” Lattarullo’s voice was a plea.
Hastily Thomas pulled on the trousers and shirt he had worn the night before, slipped into his shoes, and followed Lattarullo outside to where Falco waited in the car. Falco’s face was white and gaunt. Dark shadows circled his eyes and bore into the hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were raw and shifty. Thomas didn’t trust him. The two men exchanged glances but neither spoke. Falco was the first to look away, as if Thomas’s stare weighed too heavy with suspicion. Thomas climbed into the back seat and Lattarullo started the engine. The car coughed and wheezed and finally revved sufficiently to start. Dawn was breaking. The sun was pale and innocent as if it knew nothing of the brutal murder it now brought into the light of day.
Thomas had dozens of questions to ask, but he knew he had to wait. His head throbbed as if clamped in a cold metal frame. He wanted to abandon himself to tears as he had done when he heard of his brother’s death, but he was unable to let go in the company of Lattarullo and Falco. Instead he clamped his jaw and tried to breathe evenly. What was Valentina doing on the road from Naples in the middle of the night? The night before her wedding? He remembered her words: “We need Christ’s blessing. I know how to get it. I’ll put it right, you’ll see.” What had she meant? Where had she gone? He felt his stomach plummet with regret. He should have asked her. He should have paid more attention.
Finally, he could take the suspense no longer.
“How did it happen?”
Falco groaned and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know.”
Thomas was irritated. “For God’s sake, this is my fiancée we’re talking about,” he shouted. “You must know something! Did the car fly off the road? There are no barriers to prevent an accident…”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Falco said in a quiet voice. “It was murder.”
When they arrived at the scene, the first thing Thomas noticed was the car. It was a convertible burgundy Alfa Romeo with an exquisite leather and walnut interior. It was parked neatly in a turnout overlooking the sea. When he saw the woman lying slumped in the passenger seat his heart momentarily inflated with joy. It wasn’t Valentina. Of course it wasn’t she. Here was a woman with her hair piled on top of her head, her wrists and fingers and ears sparkling with diamonds, her face painted like a whore’s with black kohl and crimson lipstick. Her neck had been sliced with a knife and blood had stained the front of her sequined evening dress and the white fur stole that was draped over her shoulders like a slaughtered beast. Her cheeks were as white as the stole. Beside her was a man he did not recognize, elegant, with gray hair and a thin gray mustache. Blood dribbled out of his mouth. It had already dried on the ivory silk scarf that was tied around his neck. Thomas looked at Falco and frowned.
“That’s not Valentina,” he began, then suddenly felt his heart wrenched from his chest. Falco simply stared back.
Thomas looked again into the car. He had been wrong. It was Valentina, but not the Valentina he knew.
“My favorite stone is a diamond. I would like to wear a necklace of the finest diamonds just to sparkle for a night, to know what it feels like to be a lady.”
It was then that he opened the car door and fell onto her body, weeping in despair and disbelief, grieving for the woman he knew and for himself, so cruelly betrayed. He clung to her, still warm and soft and smelling strongly of a perfume he didn’t recognize. How could Valentina dress like this? What was she doing in this car with this strange man? The night before her wedding? Nothing made sense. He shook her, as if he could wake her. Wasn’t his love enough?
He felt rough hands as they pulled him off her and dragged him away. Suddenly the car was surrounded by men in blue uniforms and hats. Police cars had drawn up, their sirens wailing. The press had arrived from Naples too and there were cameras, flashbulbs, raised voices. In the midst of all this chaos it started to rain, and detectives hurried to cover the crime scene before the deluge destroyed the evidence.
Thomas was cast aside like an extra in a movie. He watched in confusion as the police hovered about the dead man. No one seemed to take any notice of Valentina. Then he saw a couple of men gesticulate crudely at her before erupting into raucous laughter. He realized that while he was dwelling in a Hell of fire and pain, everyone else around him was celebrating. There were smiles, pats on backs, jokes. A fat detective in a long coat rubbed his hands together before lighting a cigarette beneath his hat, as if to say, Right, all done here, case solved.
Thomas staggered over to him. “Do something!” he yelled, his eyes bulging with fury.
“And you are?” the detective replied, studying him with narrow, intelligent eyes.
“Valentina is my fiancée!” he stammered.
“Was your fiancée. That woman’s not in a position to marry anybody.” Thomas’s mouth opened and closed like a drowning man’s, but nothing came out. “You’re a stranger here, aren’t you, signore?” he continued. “The woman is of no importance to us.”
“Why not? She’s been murdered, for God’s sake!”
The detective shrugged. “She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “Pretty girl. Che peccato!”
As the rain fell, dripping down his hair and into his eyes, Thomas stumbled over to Falco and grabbed the collar of his shirt.
“You know who did this!” he hissed.
Falco’s big shoulders began to shudder. The iron backbone that held him up began to melt and he hunched forward, hugging himself. Thomas was stunned to see such a powerfully built man cry and felt a surprising sense of relief as he too began to sob like a child. They clung to each other in the rain.
“I tried to tell her not to go!” Falco howled. “She did not listen.”
Thomas was unable to speak. Desolation had winded him. The woman he was set to marry had all the time loved another and for that she had paid with her life. He withdrew from Falco’s embrace and vomited onto the ground. Someone had cut through Valentina’s soft, delicate throat with a knife. The brutality of the killing, in cold blood, left him crazed with anguish. Whoever had robbed Valentina of her future had stolen his too.
He tried to picture her gentle face but could only see the mask that lay slumped in the front of the Alfa Romeo. The mask of the stranger who had lived a parallel life about which he knew nothing. As he stood bent over the wet ground, the fog began to clear:
“War reduces men to animals and turns women into shameful creatures…I don’t want her to make the mistakes that I have made in my life…You don’t know me, Tommy.”
She was desperate to be taken away from Incantellaria. Was that all he was to her? A ticket to a new life where she could start afresh and leave her sordid, shameful ways behind her?
He felt a hand on his back and turned to see Lattarullo standing beside him in the rain. “I never knew her, did I?” he said, looking at the carabiniere in desolation.
Lattarullo shrugged. “You are not alone, Signor Arbuckle. None of us did.”
“Why do they behave as if she doesn’t matter?” The police still buzzed around the dead man like wasps about a honeypot.
“You don’t recognize him, do you?”
“Who is he?” Thomas blinked at him in innocence. “Who the devil is he?”
“That, my friend, is the devil. Lupo Bianco.”
Later when Thomas returned to the trattoria like a sleepwalker, he collected together the portraits of Valentina that he had drawn. The first was an illustration of her virtue and mystery, drawn the morning after the festa di Santa Benedetta on the cliffs by the lookout point, more lovely than the dawn but, as he now reflected, just as transient. The second was an illustration of motherhood. He had captured to perfection the tenderness in her expression as she had watched her baby suckling her breast. Her love for their daughter was genuine, unadulterated, pure. Perhaps it had even surprised her in its intensity. He rummaged around for the third, then remembered Valentina had taken it home with her.
Immacolata’s house was as still and quiet as a tomb. The old widow sat in the shadows, erecting a shrine for her daughter to accompany the two she had already made for her husband and son. Her eyes were fixed on her task with dull resignation. When Thomas approached her, she spoke in a soft voice. “I am called a widow because I lost my husband but what am I now that I have lost two children? There is no word because it is too terrible to articulate.” She crossed herself. “They are together with God.” Thomas wanted to ask her whether she knew about Valentina’s double life but the old woman looked so fragile sitting there in her own private Hell that he couldn’t bring himself to ask.
“I would like to see Valentina’s room,” he said instead.
Immacolata nodded gravely. “Up the stairs, across the landing to the left.” He left her with her candles and chanting and climbed the staircase to the room Valentina had occupied only the evening before.
When he entered her small room, the shutters were closed, the curtains drawn, her white nightdress laid out on the bed in preparation for the night. On the dressing table lay her brushes and bottles so recently used. His throat grew tight and he found it difficult to breathe as the room filled with the scent of figs. He sank onto the bed and pulled her nightdress to his face, inhaling her fragrance.
To find the missing portrait became an obsession. He pulled out every drawer, searched through the clothes in her wardrobe, looked under the bed, beneath the sheets and rug, everywhere. He did not leave a single thing in the room unturned. It was not there.