The Varaldo family’s newly appointed architect arrived early on Wednesday morning. The clock in the village was just striking eight when Alice saw a car drive into the courtyard and park alongside her little Fiat. It was the silver sports car she had seen the previous month, this time with the top down. Inside it, two heads were visible: one human, one canine. She got up and went out to greet Luca Montorso and Frank the dog. The man gave her a little wave as she approached, and the Labrador jumped to his feet and put his paws up on the dashboard, his tail wagging energetically as he looked at her over the top of the screen.
‘Good morning, Alice. Frank, get down! The car’s scratched enough as it is. I’m afraid I forgot to ask if it was all right for me to bring Frank. Don’t worry if it isn’t. I gave him a walk on our way up here and he’ll sleep happily in the car for a few hours.’
‘Good morning, Luca. Thanks for coming. I would imagine it’ll be fine for Frank to follow you around, but we’ll ask Simonetta just in case. You know her, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’ No doubt sworn to secrecy, he didn’t mention the connection between Simonetta and his brother. ‘And I know Achille as well from when we were kids, but there hasn’t been much contact between us since then. I’ve never met the current Baron although I did meet his wife once. I liked her. She was a nice lady.’
He climbed out of the car, and the Labrador jumped out after him and came across to Alice’s side to say hello. She was just bending down to stroke him when she saw Simonetta emerge from the front door and walk over to greet Luca. At the same time Alice couldn’t help noticing the net curtains on her grandmother’s window twitching. There was a strange, slightly embarrassed look on Simonetta’s face as she held out her hand towards Luca, and Alice wondered if this meant she hadn’t yet found the courage to break the news of her relationship with Tommaso to her father and was afraid he might be watching. Officially, of course, neither Simonetta nor her brother had had any contact with the Montorso twins since their schooldays.
‘Good morning, Luca, I’m delighted you’ve said yes.’
‘Hi, Simonetta, it’s good to see you again.’ Luca shook hands formally and it was clear that he, too, was on his best behaviour, and Alice almost giggled. He indicated Frank the dog. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I brought my four-legged friend with me. If you’d rather not have a dog in the house, I can leave him in the car. It’s not a problem.’
Simonetta bent down to pet Frank. ‘The only objections might come from Baffo, our old cat, but he can always go and sleep on top of a cupboard.’ She glanced up at Alice. ‘Are you a dog person or a cat person, Alice?’
‘I’m an all kinds of animals person – apart from snakes and a few creepy-crawlies.’ She looked across at Luca. ‘Frank doesn’t sound very Italian, as names go.’
‘I called him Frank after my hero, Frank Lloyd Wright; the greatest architect of the twentieth century… well, in my humble opinion anyway.’
‘He’s a big dog but he’s not very old, is he?’
‘Frank’s not two yet, still a bit of a hooligan.’
Pleased to hear his name mentioned, the dog wandered around among the three of them, prodding them with his nose and wagging his tail lazily while Simonetta returned her attention to Luca.
‘It’s a bit early for the rest of the family, so why doesn’t Alice show you around the cellars, the ground floor and the towers? I imagine by the time you’ve seen those, the others will be up and about, and I can introduce you to them. I’m really pleased that you agreed to come and do this for us. You have an excellent reputation and I know you’ll do a great job.’ She was still sounding very formal and Alice hoped that she would manage to break the news of her relationship with Tommaso to her father before too long.
After Simonetta had returned to the house, Alice looked across at Luca. ‘Where would you like to start? Are you happy if I come around with you or would you prefer to be on your own?’
‘I’m very happy to have you with me.’ He sounded as if he meant it and Alice was furious with herself when she felt her cheeks flushing. The man was here to do a job and that was that – at least for now. She did her best to adopt a business-like tone.
‘Shall we start at the bottom and work upwards? There are extensive cellars and stores and what were maybe dungeons beneath the main structure, so I’ll take you there first if that’s okay with you. Have you got a torch? It’s pitch dark down there and there’s no electricity. I’ll just run and get mine.’
She went back to her office to get her torch and when she returned she found that he had retrieved a little backpack, a torch and a clipboard from the car. They went in through the entrance hall and down the steps to the cellars, the Labrador trotting happily between the two of them. They spent over half an hour down there, hunting around with torches, and in the course of his explorations Luca discovered something that Alice had completely missed on her previous visits. It turned out that there were in fact yet more rooms beneath these cellars, accessed through a half-concealed trapdoor in the floor. He heaved the hefty wooden door open and she made her way gingerly down a narrow spiral stone staircase after him into the bowels of the earth, and was pleased to find that her knee managed it without complaint. From the festoons of low-hanging cobwebs it was clear that nobody had been down here for ages. It was pitch black, musty and, if she was honest, really quite scary. She was glad she wasn’t on her own.
They emerged into another, narrower corridor, flanked by low doorways on both sides. From the iron bars on the doors and the rusting chains hanging from the walls, the series of dank cells down here had clearly had a far more sinister purpose than just acting as storerooms. Alice shivered as they walked about, not just because it was freezing down there. Certainly, if these cells were to be opened to the public, there would probably have to be some sort of age restriction to avoid scaring little children half to death.
When they reached the end of the tunnel they came across a wide round opening in the floor. This was clearly a well and Luca’s powerful torch revealed what looked like crystal-clear water only about a metre beneath their feet and, from the way the light penetrated downwards, the well was certainly deep. Alice was just leaning over, peering down into the water, when there was a sudden movement right in front of her. She jumped back and bumped into Luca, almost dropping her torch into the water. She felt a strong arm encircle her shoulders to steady her and his voice at her ear.
‘Looks like we’re not the only inhabitants of this part of the castle.’ He trained the beam of the torch on the spot where she had seen movement and revealed a large brown toad sitting there, studying them impassively. ‘In all probability this little guy is descended from generations of toads going back centuries. He’s probably got more claim to the property than the Varaldo family.’
Luca released his grip on her and she glanced up at him. Fortunately, in the shadows down here there was no way he would be able to see the colour that had leapt to her cheeks. ‘Thanks for catching me. I’ve never been a fan of frogs and toads. I just hope there aren’t any of his long slithery relatives down here.’
‘No, I’m sure there aren’t any snakes down here.’ He was probably trying to sound reassuring, but she felt sure she could detect doubt in his voice and she shivered again.
Doing her best to dismiss thoughts of snakes lurking in the shadows, she assumed what she hoped would sound like a confident tone. ‘If you’ve finished down here now, shall we head back up to the surface?’
‘Of course. Anyway, finding a well is a real bonus. Even here in the hills, water’s expensive and we need to take advantage of any natural resources we find. We should be able to set up a pumping system so as to use water from here, if not for drinking, then for the new toilets and so on. Every little helps.’
Even the dog seemed keen to get back up the steps again and Alice was hard on his heels. Luca was behind her with his torch and she realised as she climbed that this meant that his face was level with her bottom. The feel of his arm around her had been more than pleasant and now knowing that his eyes were probably on her was exciting. Like it or lump it, she couldn’t ignore the fact that she found this man very appealing. Of course, she knew next to nothing about his private life and she had no idea how he might feel towards her. For all she knew, he might be married with half a dozen kids. Not for the first time, she reminded herself that theirs was simply a business relationship. If he really was as good at his job as she hoped, the last thing she wanted was to make things weird between them and maybe even run the risk of losing him from the project. In consequence, she told herself firmly to concentrate on the job and nothing more.
Easier said than done.
She was relieved when they emerged blinking into the daylight. The morning sun was shining brightly through the slit windows of the entrance hall, giving the dog ever-changing zebra stripes as he padded around sniffing these new surroundings. As for his master, if he’d been thinking about her the way she’d been thinking about him, there was no sign of it. He appeared to be solely focused on the job and she wondered for a moment whether he had already realised she was disabled and had lost interest as a result. It was a distasteful thought, but it was what she had been fearing for four long years now. She had always hoped she would meet that special someone sooner or later, but she had been under no illusions as to how that special someone would almost certainly react to her disability.
Apparently oblivious to her dark thoughts, Luca scribbled on his clipboard before coming up with a bit of interesting news.
‘From what I could see down there on the lower level, we might even have a much earlier date for the castle than we thought. The official construction date is the late twelve hundreds, early thirteen hundreds, but I’m not so sure now. Did you notice that all the arches down there were round Roman arches, and generally speaking, that style of construction dates back to before the Crusades, so pre-twelfth century. I’ll have to look into it more closely and maybe get one of my friends – he’s a professor of archaeology – to come along and give his opinion, but it looks to me as though the lower levels could date back as far as the turn of the first millennium.’
Alice was impressed. ‘That would make this castle a thousand years old. That’s amazing, wait till we tell the baron. He’s heavily into the history of the family and the castle, so I’m sure he’ll be excited to hear that.’
‘Thinking about it, I imagine we’ll probably find that the lower levels belonged to an earlier structure which was replaced when this castle was built, but even so, it makes this one of the oldest surviving castles in Italy.’ He gave her a little smile. ‘That should be quite a good selling point, shouldn’t it?’
She smiled back at him. ‘Any more discoveries like that will be gratefully received.’
They walked out into the fresh air and began a tour of the ground floor of the castle. There were a number of huge double doors leading from the courtyard into what had no doubt once been stables, stores and pretty basic accommodation for the garrison back in the days when this was a functioning defensive fortress. The outside walls had few, if any, openings and the widest of these were arrow slits that even Baffo the cat would have struggled to squeeze through. The walls themselves were over three metres thick and it was easy to see why this place had allegedly never been taken by an attacking force. There were piles of junk everywhere, and Alice was idly wondering if there might be a scrap yard who would be prepared to take all the metal items away, when Luca and his dog suddenly disappeared into the middle of a particularly dense pile of rubbish. There were the sounds of something heavy being moved and then, seconds later, she heard his voice.
‘Alice, I think you might like to see this.’
She could just make out his hand beckoning from behind a particularly unattractive large heap of detritus, so she tentatively started to squeeze between a vicious-looking piece of rusty agricultural machinery whose purpose she could only guess at and a torn old mattress, its horsehair stuffing spilling out onto the ground. As she was doing so, she couldn’t help thinking to herself that if she were a snake looking for a nice warm lair, then in there would be just the ticket. Something moved close to her feet and she jumped as a warm body rubbed against her calf. A glance downwards provided reassurance.
‘Frank, you frightened the life out of me! Please get out of from under my feet.’
Obligingly, the Labrador turned and headed off while she gritted her teeth and followed in his footsteps until she reached Luca.
He had cleared some of the junk and pulled the dusty canvas cover off an old car with a flat tyre. She could see it quite clearly. Although it was covered with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs, she realised that it was actually a rather smart, long black car with a convertible roof. She glanced at the front of the bonnet and saw that it sported a silver three-pointed star inside a circle. She recognised this emblem and turned towards Luca who gave her a smile.
‘Ever seen one of these before?’
‘Is it a Mercedes?’
‘Mercedes Benz, that’s right. Just give me a moment, would you? I need to check something out.’
While she and the dog continued to investigate the old car, Luca pulled out his phone and started searching. Alice dragged a few more bits of junk out of the way so that she could take a closer look. The paintwork had dulled with age, but the vehicle still appeared structurally sound. She managed to open the driver’s door and saw that the leather interior was in remarkably good condition, considering that the vehicle was quite obviously very old. Dissuading the dog from climbing inside, she pushed the door closed again and turned towards Luca. The smile on his face was even broader now and she queried what was going on.
‘What is it? What’ve you found?’
He looked up from his phone. ‘Got it! This website’s the biggest auction house in Switzerland and this looks very much like this car here.’ He scanned through the text alongside the photos for a few seconds before looking back up at her again, his eyes gleaming. ‘According to this, what we have here is a late nineteen thirties Mercedes Benz 320B cabriolet. I’m amazed it’s been left here to rot. The one in Zurich…’ He held the screen towards her and she saw a gleaming black car on display. ‘…Just look at how much it sold for.’
At first, Alice could hardly believe her eyes and she caught hold of his hand and pulled the screen closer to her face to be sure. There could be no doubt about it. The car in the picture had been sold for three hundred and seventy thousand Swiss francs.
‘In case you’re wondering, the Swiss franc and the euro are pretty much at parity nowadays.’
Alice looked up in amazement, the magnitude of the discovery still sinking in. Suddenly realising that she was still holding his hand, she released it, but she was so stunned by this discovery that her cheeks didn’t even flush.
‘Three hundred and seventy thousand euros. That’s an awful lot to pay for a car.’
He introduced a note of caution. ‘Obviously there’ll be considerable expense to return this car to its original condition but, even so, it looks like the Varaldo family are sitting on a real treasure here.’
‘This is amazing. I can’t wait to tell them.’
The opportunity to break the good news to the family came at ten o’clock that morning. Luca was officially introduced to the other members of the family in the living room and Alice felt genuinely sorry for him at first. The expression on his face as Simonetta led him in there was probably not that different from what would have appeared on the faces of soldiers about to leave their trenches and go over the top in World War I. The baron was standing by the fireplace with his hands holding his lapels, looking for all the world as if he were King’s Counsel about to address the judge to ask for the death sentence. His mother was sitting bolt upright in a chair beside him with a serious expression on her face. Sensing the tension in the atmosphere, even Frank the dog stopped halfway across the floor and cast an uncertain glance back at his master. Simonetta was quick to relieve the tension.
‘Nonna, Papà, this is Luca Montorso and he’s just made the most amazing discovery.’ She went on to recount what Alice and Luca had just told her about the Mercedes in the courtyard store, and the atmosphere in the room underwent a complete metamorphosis. In a matter of seconds, smiles appeared on all the faces, and Alice heaved a surreptitious sigh of relief. The baron relinquished his formal stance and came across to shake Luca’s hand, while his mother, helped to her feet by her grandson, stood up so that she, too, could greet Luca. She also produced a charming welcome speech.
‘Signor Montorso… Luca, it’s very good to meet you. On behalf of all our family, welcome to Varaldo Castle and congratulations on starting your period of employment with us on such a high note. We can’t thank you enough.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Lady Varaldo, and you, Barone. I’m delighted to meet you and, to be completely honest, I never thought this day would come. As you can imagine, my brother and I were brought up to loathe and detest your family, and all because of an unhappy father, bitter about things that happened way back in the mists of time. It would be wonderful if this could be the beginning of the end of this senseless feud.’
On his grandmother’s instructions, Achille went to look for a bottle of champagne and they all toasted the arrival of Luca and the wonderful discovery he had made. Ines, who served the wine, looked as though her eyes were about to pop out of her head, and Alice could well imagine her astonishment to see a Montorso in the house after all that had passed between the two families. For her part, Alice hoped that this new spirit of glasnost would extend to the other members of Luca’s family. Silvia appeared a few minutes later with a plate of her mother’s home-made biscuits and the dog was delighted to be handed one by Simonetta. Needless to say, it went down his throat without touching the sides. Alice smiled to herself. She knew Labrador gluttony so well.
They drank their champagne and the atmosphere became ever more cordial, especially when Luca told the baron that he believed he had found evidence that the castle might be even older than they had thought. A real conversation developed between the two men and Alice exchanged knowing looks with Simonetta as they saw the baron being animated and welcoming. Finally Luca asked if it would be in order for him to spend the rest of the morning looking around the castle in preparation for a full structural survey that he and his assistant would undertake early the following week. Depending on what this threw up, he told them he would prepare a detailed schedule of works to be carried out and, with their approval, he would embark on the tortuous process of obtaining listed building consent for all the works from the all-powerful Belle Arti authorities.
When asked by Simonetta for his estimate of how long this might all take, he warned them that he felt they should plan for a grand opening not before the end of the year, and maybe not until next Easter, depending on how long it took to get all the plans approved and the work completed. Simonetta looked disappointed but Alice was quick to offer some encouragement.
‘In the meantime I propose we press on with clearing out the junk. Let’s start in the storerooms and I’ll see if I can find a firm with a digger to remove all the rubbish from the moat. Above all, we need to begin to work the land, particularly forestry and alpacas.’
‘Alpacas?’ Luca looked across at her in surprise.
‘On my father’s advice. He recommends we seriously think about establishing a herd. Let me tell you all about what I learnt when I visited an alpaca farm with Alfonso.’
She went on to report what she and Alfonso had been told, particularly with regard not only to selling the fleeces, but actually going through the whole process of spinning yarn and knitting articles for sale in their new gift shop. The suggestions were met with general approval and she was authorised to buy a dozen or so animals in the first instance. Finally, the meeting broke up and Luca returned to his surveying, this time accompanied by Achille, with whom he’d been exchanging nostalgic stories of their early school days. Suppressing a touch of disappointment that she wouldn’t be with Luca, Alice went out in search of Alfonso to give him the good news.
It really felt as though things were on the move.