Cristiana wouldn’t look at the bed, now in such strange disarray. Valerio’s body made a lump under the bedspread. As soon as Marta and the inspector left, she deliberately turned her armchair to face the dresser with the orchid on top of it. Behind her and between her chair and the body, Prospero O’Lary stood staring at the door the other two had just gone through. Rays of March sun were coming through the ivory silk curtains and glass of the window, cold but clear and razor-sharp.
“I wonder…” he murmured.
Cristiana’s voice rose up from the back of the tall armchair, so low and strangled that it seemed to be issuing from the depths of some strange altar.
“I’m wondering the same thing, Prospero. It’s a very serious question, and I don’t have an answer for it.”
Prospero started.
“It’s always painful—and dangerous to ask oneself questions. But I’m wondering what Madame Firmino will say to the inspector. That dear young woman has a screw loose. She might introduce some unexpected and unpleasant complications.”
“No complication will be as unpleasant as the presence of that orchid in the vase, O’Lary. Do you know the symbolic significance of the orchid, Prospero?”
The little man hopped over to the dresser, looked at the flower and turned to Cristiana.
“I don’t know any apart from that of the aster—the symbol of Christ.”
Cristiana shrugged.
“If only Christ could really help us… Who would kill Valerio? Who would bring his body and that orchid to my room, O’Lary?”
“Valerio was destined to end that way.”
“Because he was corrupt—is that what you’re saying?”
“Because he played with fire.”
Cristiana shot a look at the fireplace, and the look wasn’t without apprehension.
“I don’t understand you, O’Lary,” she said sternly.
“Oremus” blinked and held up a hand to calm her.
“It doesn’t matter, Cristiana. In fact, forget I said it. You know I sometimes talk nonsense. Over there, too, in Portland, when you turned to me to help you escape—to free yourself from Russell Sage…”
Prospero’s voice had become shrewd, insinuating, perhaps a bit ironic. Cristiana paled, and her eyes shone cold and menacing.
“O’Lary!” she hissed. “It’s dangerous to talk about him.” She shivered and then abruptly let out a short laugh. “Do you know what happens to people who mention the devil?”
Prospero adjusted his glasses. “What are you trying to say, Cristiana?”
“Just what I said. If you saw Russell appear in front of you, what would you do?”
“In fact he has already appeared. I recognized him immediately just a short while ago, down the corridor. Did you know he was coming? Have you seen him?”
“I saw his sister, that dreadful sister-in-law of mine.”
“Is Anna Sage in Milan as well?”
“At this moment she’s in our showrooms. When I recognized her, I didn’t know what to do except get out of there, so I ran up here, where I found Valerio’s body and the orchid. What do you make of all this, O’Lary? Did you know that every time Russell came back home after one of his trips—which I thought were to do with his job as an insurance salesman, and instead were all about meeting up with his gang to raid banks—did you know that he always brought me an orchid? Flowers are his weakness! Just like books, pictures and stamps. A great collector, my husband. And a pure spirit, so pure that he made the innocent Ileana love him and marry him.”
The painful sarcasm in her words trailed off in a sob.
“It’s impossible,” Prospero murmured.
Cristiana shrugged once more.
“The body is there… and the orchid… And I am Ileana, even if my name is now Cristiana O’Brian.”
Prospero looked at the bed.
“It’s impossible,” he repeated. “How could he have got in here—and why would he have killed Valerio?”
Cristiana replied to his question with another one.
“Perhaps he doesn’t know yet that you came with me—that you’re here with me. Why don’t you go while you still have time, O’Lary? Russell isn’t a forgiving sort of man. If he’s been looking for me and has found me, he must have a plan, and Russell Sage’s plans are always dangerous. Like a stick of dynamite!”
Prospero adjusted his glasses. “Russell Sage thinks I’m dead,” he said slowly. “He won’t recognize me, and if he does he’ll think he’s seeing a ghost.”
“As you wish.” Cristiana got up. “In any case, it’s necessary to do something now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself since I came to. What can I do? I can’t even escape now. If it was Russell who killed Valerio, he did it to force me to stay.”
There it was. It was a possible theory. The body had been put in her room in order to compromise her and prevent her leaving. It seemed clear and logical to her, and she took heart. She liked clear and logical situations. And if Russell had ultimately just wanted to keep her from getting away again… But how had he managed to get into the building?
“What do you think, O’Lary?”
“Yes,” the little man murmured without conviction. “He might have killed him for that reason; but I still don’t see how he could have done it. Was it only today that you saw Anna Sage?”
“Yes. She must have had an invitation in order to get in, otherwise Marta or Clara would have stopped her. How could she have got one?”
“Oremus” fluttered his eyelids and his face lit up.
“Maybe Valerio’s death can explain it!”
Cristiana wrinkled her forehead.
“Do you think Valerio betrayed me?”
“Valerio always needed money, and he’d never have imagined that Russell P. Sage would settle the score like that—” and he pointed to the bed with a sardonic grin.
They heard a step in the corridor. A slow, deliberate tread, advancing confidently and inexorably. The sound was all the more strange to their ears for having arisen so suddenly. It was immediately obvious that it came not from the stairs, but from the corridor itself.
Paralysed with fear, Cristiana looked at the door, her eyes wide. The waiting went on for several seconds as the step slowly advanced. At last the earnest, smiling figure of John Bolton appeared in the doorway.
His voice was warm and cordial. “You’re alone, Ileana my dear! It’s just how I hoped to find you.”
The terrified woman looked around. Indeed, she was alone. Prospero O’Lary had simply vanished.