De Vincenzi saw the body, Cristiana and the orchid. By now he was used to seeing bodies and women—how many inquests had he racked up, each with at least one body and always lots of women?—but less used to seeing orchids, though he loved them quite a bit more.
So he stopped to look at the flower for longer and with greater pleasure. An unnatural flower made of flesh, born from rotting slime, grown in a tropical atmosphere. He sensed the woman looking at him, her gaze heavy, suspicious and enquiring. He was particularly well acquainted with the look women have when they find themselves in a frightening situation and are forced to defend themselves. He knew that a sudden, unexpected question can take a man by surprise, but a woman, never. Lying and distraction come easily to women; their deviousness is automatic.
He lifted his eyes from the orchid and looked at the body, moving so quickly that he bumped into Prospero O’Lary, who had come up beside him without his noticing. Prospero teetered and stumbled before steadying himself and finding his balance.
“Pardon me,” he muttered, red in the face. He pushed his glasses up his nose.
De Vincenzi stood over the bed. He could see for himself that the young man had been strangled, but he needed to know much more. However, he could do nothing but wait for the doctor, who had been called and would get there whenever he got there—at his own convenience.
How long had the victim been dead? Had he really been strangled? It wasn’t that he doubted it, yet the young man bore no other visible traces of beating or injury: he was healthy and strong enough to have put up a defence. Was it possible that he’d been killed without a struggle? His face was both handsome and common, with an air of cynical, insolent effrontery even after death.
“Who is—or rather, who was he?” he asked without turning round, still studying the dead man’s clothing. It was costly and pretentious, silk, with a gaudy handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket.
“Valerio Tardini,” said O’Lary.
“Oh, no! just Valerio. You only need to call him Valerio.” Cristiana’s voice resonated musically, full of melodic undulation, though it was thrumming with suppressed anxiety.
De Vincenzi left the bed and went over to stand beside Cristiana, who was still sitting.
“Am I to understand, Signora, that this man meant something to you?”
Cristiana couldn’t raise her eyebrows in surprise—they already formed two black arches in the middle of her forehead. But her eyes widened.
“Meant something? Oh, no! Valerio was nothing to me. He didn’t mean anything to anyone. He was my personal secretary, having been my waiter and then my errand boy. He belonged to me, belonged to the O’Brian Fashion House.”
“I see,” De Vincenzi said suavely. “He belonged to you, like an object, or a cute pet.”
Cristiana scrutinized him. “You’re a police inspector, aren’t you?”
De Vincenzi bowed his head.
“How did you know that he belonged to me in just that way?”
“I think that’s what you wanted me to understand. But why was he killed, and here on your bed? Isn’t this your room?”
“My room, Inspector, and that’s my bed. Why he was killed, I have no idea, unless someone did it just so I’d find him on my bed!”
Should he interpret her reply as a confession or a complaint? Too soon! He mustn’t jump to conclusions. If ever there were a case that couldn’t be rushed, it was this one. De Vincenzi sensed snares and danger as a diviner senses water, and he’d felt them from the moment he’d walked into the building. To complicate things further, there was a general air of suspicion, enough to give one the shivers. He remembered having had the same impression many years before, when he’d been embroiled in the mystery at The Hotel of the Three Roses during an awful, nightmarish and interminable evening of bodies.
He made a show of giving no weight to her words.
“Will you tell me how events took place?” And he turned away, as if he hadn’t put the question to Cristiana. It was then that he noticed another woman in the room. Marta was in fact leaning against the wall near the wardrobe, eagerly watching, listening and hoping to understand the thinking behind his words and actions. This was someone new to him. On the way to the lift, Prospero O’Lary had spoken only of Cristiana O’Brian and the dead man.
“Events? But there were no events, Inspector, or at least there was only one. I came up to my room, saw the body and…” she smiled, both pitying and excusing herself, “and I think I fainted. It’s never happened to me before, Inspector. I beg you to believe me when I say it’s never happened before.”
“I believe it, Signora. How long were you away from your room?”
“Well—for a long time. Since this morning. My life takes place downstairs, on the first floor, in my office and the showrooms. I come up here during the day only to change my clothes, and at night, to sleep.”
“What time was it when you came up today?”
“Oh, I know very well. You policemen always want to know the exact time everything happened. As though anyone who does anything keeps track of time with a stopwatch! However, it must have been four, Inspector. I say four because the fashion show began at three-thirty with the models, and I was there.”
“So you came up to change your dress?”
She didn’t hesitate. She lied immediately.
“Exactly. I was tired of seeing myself in that red dress. There are a lot of mirrors downstairs.”
“Do you live alone on this floor?”
“There’s Madame Firmino.”
“Madame?”
“Firmino. She’s my artistic director, a French woman from Antibes.”
“Was she with you in the showrooms?”
“No, that was exactly where you wouldn’t have found her.”
Marta finally pulled herself together.
“Madame Firmino came up to her room at three. She never attends our fashion shows. She says it’s a nauseating spectacle for the person who’s created the designs. A little after four, we bumped into her downstairs. She was in her bathing costume, barely covered by her dressing gown.”
She waited for De Vincenzi to interrupt, but he contented himself with a nod, as if the matter appeared entirely natural to him. So Marta explained.
“Madame Firmino takes a sunlamp cure—UV-ray therapy.”
“Interesting.”
“Do you think so? Well, she heard a thud in her room, rushed in here and found Signora Cristiana O’Brian in a faint on the floor and—and—” She stopped and pointed to the body.
“I see.”
“At least, that’s what she told us,” Prospero O’Lary added.
“But it’s absolutely true that she was taking a sun cure.”
“You gathered that from her costume?”
“I deduced it from the fact that her face was covered in oil,” “Oremus” affirmed in disgust.
“You can’t argue with that.”
Yes, that might have been so. At least, that was how it looked, an impression the killer wanted to create. But, thinking about it carefully, that impression did nothing but distance him from the killer.
“And Valerio?”
“What about him?” Cristiana asked.
“Where should he have been at that time?”
“Wherever he wanted! Valerio didn’t have a schedule, or even somewhere specific to be. The room he slept in is on the second floor beyond the atelier. He could come and go as he pleased. I needed him only rarely, and in any case I certainly wouldn’t have needed him today, the day of the show.”
“And not one of you saw him today?”
“He came to see me at eleven and asked for something to do. I didn’t have anything for him so he went off. I didn’t see him again from that point on.”
De Vincenzi addressed Marta. “And you are?”
“The director.”
“Did you see Valerio today?”
“I saw him.”
“Where?”
“Where I always see him—in the models’ room. He spent his time with those girls since they usually have nothing to do.”
“What time was it?”
“Two. Because I’d forbidden him to go into that room and the models had a lot to do today, Valerio escaped as soon as he saw me.”
“So he was still alive at two. Did Valerio often come up to this floor?”
There was a quiet pause. For the first time, De Vincenzi felt that his question had met with some resistance. Up to then he had been shadow-boxing.
“I told you he was free to go wherever he wanted.” Cristiana’s tone was cold and sharp.
“But what reason could he have had for coming here? To your room, for example?”
Prospero O’Lary squirmed, but Cristiana stopped him.
“No one ever knew what was going on in that boy’s head, not even me. He had a devious mind. And anyway, Inspector, who says he was killed in this room?”
“Of course.” De Vincenzi looked at the orchid. “Are you an orchid lover, Signora O’Brian?”
Cristiana trembled visibly.
“I detest them. That flower, too, was brought to my room without my knowledge. Just like the body!”