Marta opened the door to the administrative offices and, after a quick glance inside, stood aside.
“Madame Firmino is still there.”
De Vincenzi sent a reassuring smile Evelina’s way. Her small eyes were fixed more firmly than ever on the ledger. The mature, fat lady’s face, so serene, so sweetly pink, immediately inspired the inspector’s trust.
“Has the signora been in this room for long?”
Marta looked first at Evelina and then at De Vincenzi.
“Of course! Signorina Evelina is always in the office at two.”
“I eat in the building, in the employees’ cafeteria.”
The earnestness shining through her words convinced De Vincenzi that Evelina would be the ideal, truthful witness, if indeed she had anything to say. He went to stand by her desk.
“Lots of work, eh?”
Evelina put her hands palms down on the sheets, where she was filling in figures across five columns, and fixed her gaze on the intruder with less kindliness. As far as she was concerned, it wasn’t done for strangers to take an interest in her accounting: a firm’s books are secret and sacred.
“Are you the administrator, Signora?”
“Signorina,” the spinster corrected, lowering her gaze. Then, her voice stronger, “I keep the books, and sometimes also the petty cash. But the administrator is actually Signora O’Brian, aided by Signor O’Lary.”
“I see.” De Vincenzi leant familiarly against the desk, keeping his gaze from the sacred account books. “And have you seen Valerio today, this afternoon?”
The unexpected question caused Evelina’s calm face to blanch.
“Valerio? What does Valerio have to do with me?” She turned to Marta as if imploring her to intervene.
The director stood just outside the administrative offices, holding the door ajar. In answer to Evelina’s silent, alarmed plea, she lifted her shoulders in a sign of powerless resignation.
“The gentleman is a police inspector.”
De Vincenzi moved away from the desk. Nothing was more important than winning Evelina’s trust and goodwill.
She stiffened immediately into a solid block of frozen flesh. Her cheeks trembled slightly and her chest heaved under her silk bustier, which was too tight.
“Police? Why the police?” Her eyes flashed with ill-humour under heavy, fat eyelids. “I always thought that bad boy would meet a sorry end.”
“He ended up terribly, in fact, Signorina. Simply put, someone strangled him.”
This time the blow hit hard. Evelina swayed and collapsed like a young calf under the mallet.
“But I saw him. I saw him and he was alive!” she whined.
“What time did you see him, Signorina?”
The pale woman was trembling all over.
“A glass of water,” she begged in a faint voice.
Her eyes were wide with alarm. Marta ran and De Vincenzi grabbed her arm.
“She has a bad heart.”
“Give her some water.”
Marta ran towards the administrative offices and disappeared through the open door. De Vincenzi grabbed the woman’s hand and gently and repeatedly slapped her back. She seemed to be coming to. The colour was returning to her face and her cold sweat was over.
“Oh!” she sighed, and looked at De Vincenzi in confusion. “How horrible!”
De Vincenzi continued to pat her, feeling as though he were smacking a baby.
“Don’t think about it, Signorina. We’ll talk about it later, calmly.” At the sound of Marta’s returning steps he moved away from Evelina.
“We’ll speak about it alone.”
Evelina’s eyes flashed with fear, and De Vincenzi was convinced that she would be of great help to him—if only he could get her to speak.
“Give her something to drink, Signorina. Spray some water in her face, and take her to the window so she can get some fresh air. I’m going to have a word with Madame Firmino.”
He went into the administrative offices before Marta could respond. Dolores hadn’t moved from the chair, where she sat smoking. De Vincenzi saw her copper-coloured legs, oily face and a few stripes of her yellow-and-black bathing costume peeking out from under her dressing gown. Above all, he saw a sharp-featured, almost offensive face, and platinum-blonde hair. Madame Firmino’s eyes had begun following him the moment he entered the room, and they never left him. It was evident that she knew, or intuited, who this competent gentleman advancing towards her was, and it was equally clear that she was on the defensive. The inspector threaded through the chairs and small tables and bowed to the young woman.
“I’ve come to speak with you about fashion and design, Madame Firmino. I know how talented you are in this area.”
Dolores wasn’t going to be tricked, though this was the most astonishing preamble she could ever have imagined.
“Are you investigating Valerio’s death?”
De Vincenzi waved away this clarification.
“Working in an environment you don’t understand is quite difficult, Signorina. Will you help me?”
“Did they tell you I was the first one to find Cristiana in a faint and Valerio dead on the bed?” She threw her finished cigarette into a crystal goblet on the little table and took another from the sandalwood box, which she had appropriated.
“Do you have a light? Since I’ve been in here I’ve had to light each one off the other because I left my room without bringing any matches.” She smiled. “And no cigarettes, either, for that matter. The ones I’m smoking are Cristiana’s. That will teach her to faint when she sees a body.”
De Vincenzi lit her cigarette.
“You don’t smoke?”
“Rarely.”
“Your brain doesn’t need any stimulants?”
“I get them from observing details and people.” He looked her straight in the face.
“Are you a police inspector?”
“I wouldn’t like to be Valerio’s killer. A police inspector who observes people and details is rather dangerous,” she proclaimed, pulling the edges of her dressing gown over her legs. She put her hands on her knees and leant towards him.
“Question me. I’m ready.”
De Vincenzi smiled again. However ready she was, Madame Firmino must have been aware internally that the man’s every movement, each of his facial expressions and his reassuring smile projected a sense of calm indifference, as if he lent no weight to the matter of the dead man or his murderer. Yet despite telling herself that his behaviour was a trap, she was prepared to fall into it.
“Did you know Valerio well?”
“What do you mean by ‘well’? I’ve been with Cristiana O’Brian for a year and I’ve known Valerio for a year. I saw him a couple of times a day, maybe more. I spoke to him rarely enough, and after he lost his initial illusions that he’d be able to court me, he never approached me unless forced to—if that’s what you call knowing someone well. There was no intimacy between us; we weren’t even compatible. Another level, another class.”
“Why did Signora O’Brian keep him on?”
“Probably because he was useful to her.”
“How?”
“Well, in the only possible way: serving her. Cristiana met him in Naples. He was already grown up, but ever the boy from the streets. She brought him here with her. Valerio had a certain intelligence and without a doubt a lot of cunning. He attached himself to her and didn’t let any possibility she offered pass him by.”
“How did he get on with the staff?”
“Look, Inspector, the staff—as you call them—in this fashion house are all women. There are no men apart from Mr O’Lary and Federico, the doorman. So you can picture for yourself these relationships you’re asking about. Valerio is a bit of a small-time Don Giovanni, and since he had unquestionable physical charms, he was lucky.”
“Could a woman have killed him?”
“Well, why couldn’t a woman have killed him? But in Cristiana’s room?”
That was the exactly the problem: the place where the body had been found, and the added complication of the orchid. The problem was further complicated by the supposition that Valerio had been killed somewhere other than where he’d been put after his death.
“Tell me about Signora O’Brian, Signorina.”
“Why don’t you say: tell me about the last queen of Cambodia? What should I know about Cristiana? She’s the owner of this fashion house, she’s single—or seemingly so—and she’s always very polite to me and to everyone. I create designs, invent dress styles, study colours, evaluate fabrics. I’ve too much work, don’t you see, to concern myself with what has nothing to do with me. Cristiana is Romanian, or at least I think she has Romanian origins. She comes from America, and I’ve heard that she’s been in Milan for two years. She seems to be widowed, or in any case she maintains that she is, and Prospero O’Lary maintains the same. He came with her from America. She has money, maybe a lot, and this business is her first in Milan. If you go down to the showrooms, you’ll find the best names from amongst the aristocracy and the wealthy. A dress from here never costs less than several thousand lire.”
She tossed away her cigarette, started to take another and then halted. “I smoke too much! Over-stimulated. It makes me talk more than I should.”
“Oh, you’ve told me enough, Madame Firmino. Absolutely enough, although you haven’t talked to me about your designs. Is Signora Cristiana also a designer?”
Dolores smiled. She knew all too well how little Cristiana designed, and clearly what bad taste she had in clothing.
“Only one style, dear Inspector, and only two colours: tomato-red and first-Communion-blue; and when she happened to see a painting by Fragonard in Paris, you’ve no idea of the full skirts, long sleeves, scoop-neck corsets and on top of all that a gauzy scarf…”
“A bit outdated, yes?”
“Oh, no—it’s a style one could still launch, provided it was updated, along with oneself. But as far as other people’s clothes are concerned, Cristiana’s stuck in a rut.”
“But she must at least have some competence in constructing them?”
“Ask Marta about it. She’s had to plead with her not to set foot in the atelier.”
“I see. She’s interested in fashion as an industry. She’s got good business sense.”
Madame Firmino’s smile was the picture of spite. “No, she’s not lacking business sense.”
De Vincenzi got up. “When did you last see Valerio today?”
“I don’t think I actually saw him, but I heard him. I heard his annoying whistle, which almost always preceded him as he came through the corridor my room’s on.”
“What time was that?”
“Oh, God, Inspector! I didn’t look at my watch. But it must have been after two-thirty, because I came up to my room at two-thirty to dedicate myself to my treatment.”
Cristiana had discovered the body just before four. De Vincenzi saw a piece of white paper on the rosewood table. He picked it up and held it out to Madame Firmino with a gold pencil he took from his waistcoat pocket.
“May I ask you to draw a design for me?”
She looked at him, astonished.
“A dress design?”
“I’m not asking that much. I just need you to draw me a plan of the third floor of this building.”
“Oh.”
She hesitated, then shrugged her shoulders. Setting the paper on the small table, she covered it rapidly with lines first, then words.
“You could have had anyone draw this for you… so it might as well have been me.”
De Vincenzi studied the paper.
“Thank you for writing down what each room is used for. It’s all perfectly clear, except for this last room.” He pointed to a rectangle near the stairway at the end of the corridor.
“Oh, that! It’s the room we call the ‘museum of horrors’. I was the one to christen it. That’s where the mannequins are kept for all our usual clients.”
“Excuse me, Madame Firmino, but I don’t understand.”
“Well, in order to work confidently and without troubling our clients to try things on too often, Marta orders a mannequin to a lady’s measurements when she uses us regularly. It’s a perfect replica of her body in wood and horsehair. Just imagine, Inspector, what horrors are kept in that room!”