“Surprise?”
“I knew I’d see you again fairly soon.”
“Intuition?”
“Anna was here before you!”
“Deduction, then.”
Silence. The man removed his spectacles.
“I have never known why spectacles, especially gold-rimmed ones, manage to give someone an air of respectability.” Cristiana was now in complete control of herself. “Over there, too, you fooled yourself into thinking that your appearance was perfectly respectable. No one fell for it—apart from me.”
Russell P. Sage smiled disappointedly. “As it happens, the G-men were at my heels! But here it’s another story. Here I’m John Bolton, a rich industrialist from Chicago, and I have no intention of robbing any banks. I’m developing an idea for starting up a toy factory.”
“Just like in Portland.”
He interrupted her with a wave of his hand. “Quiet! The Ultra Products Company is over. I won’t be making any more toy animals or tin soldiers. Different strokes for different folks… I’m dreaming of some little cars… they’ll be master-pieces. I’ll make the children of this country happy when I produce them in series. The market will be flooded with Bolton automobiles.”
Cristiana stiffened. “What do you want from me?”
“Oh, nothing you can’t give me. I want your love.”
Cristiana laughed, a vibrant, tinny laugh that was hard on the ears. “You’ve killed off any possibility of my loving you, Russell.”
“I’m not trying to gloss over what I did to you, Ileana. I shouldn’t have got carried away.”
“You think that’s your only fault?”
“Of course! I didn’t have the right to drag you into my mess and you did well to get away while you could. You were very perceptive when you said that the break-in at the Caledonia National Bank in Danville would be my last exploit and that I’d be appearing in court in Rutland.” His voice suddenly dropped, but the words hammered on. “But you shouldn’t have lost your faith in me, Ileana. I gave you too much for you to doubt me.” He’d grown excited. “Oh, no, you shouldn’t have been hoping you’d never see me again!”
Cristiana pursed her lips.
“There’s nothing left to say. Not a thing more I can do for you, Russell Sage! You can’t get me back, even if there is a body lying under my bedspread.”
Russell followed her gaze and noted the dishevelled bed, with a dead man’s feet sticking out from under the damask.
“Is that why the police are here? And just when I came up here to help you!”
He watched her. His face had turned dark and a vein near the birthmark on his forehead was pulsing and bulging. As he studied her, he drummed the fingers of one hand on the opposite fist. He appeared to be working hard at his reflections. All at once he shook himself.
He looked at her again, but this time in admiration. “You are a force to be reckoned with! I didn’t appreciate you as I should have.” He put his spectacles back on. “I’m not worried about your telling the police who John Bolton really is. It would be too dangerous for you, and actually not at all for me. I’ll leave this building calmly, Ileana. But we’ll see each other again.”
He backed up to the door, taking small steps and staring at her. Suddenly he darted into the corridor and headed confidently for the service stairs, which he descended quickly and lightly, arriving at the first floor without anyone hearing his tread. A short time later he arrived in the showrooms just as the loudspeaker was announcing the thirty-seventh outfit in the Cristiana O’Brian collection.
Cristiana remained motionless, staring at the door through which Russell had escaped. His sudden flight had surprised her. She’d been prepared to stand up to him, for a struggle, but everything had ended before it had begun. Well, his escape had been logical, an impressive example of quick thinking. Staying in that room and risking being surprised by the police would have been like confessing he’d killed Valerio.
But who had put the body on her bed? How had Russell known where to find her room and how to reach her without being seen by anyone? Was it possible that this wasn’t his first time here? Her thoughts were confused. She had the sense that events around her had been taking shape over the last three hours, joining up and fusing into one giant bullet travelling through space like lightning—one that would inevitably hit her and explode in a horrendous uproar as it hit the ground. An uproar and a disaster that would sink her.
She jumped at a slight squeak. Immediately she turned to the wall with the wardrobe and dresser, since the sound seemed to be coming from that side of the room. The wardrobe doors looked to be only partially closed. Had she left them like that? She didn’t have time to answer her own question before they opened to reveal Prospero O’Lary.
“You were in there!”
The little man climbed over the lower panel and emerged from his hiding place. He breathed a sigh of relief and adjusted the waist of his frock coat.
“Why did he go off so quickly?”
“He saw the body.”
“Oremus” seemed perplexed.
“Of course,” he burbled. Then, more clearly: “He didn’t kill Valerio!”
“That’s what he wants me to believe, in any case. How did he find my room?”
“You’re forgetting that Russell knew how to rob a bank in broad daylight.” He started for the door. “I must go back downstairs, and you’d do well to come down yourself. This room will be swarming with police before long. That inspector’s way of doing things makes me uneasy—and the body even more so.”
Cristiana watched him go. She heard his steps receding down the corridor as far as the lift, which opened and closed with its characteristic clatter. No. She would not go down. She looked at the orchid, then at the dresser and wardrobe. How ready Prospero O’Lary had been with his hiding place…
“Will you allow me to come in, Signora?”
Cristiana jumped like a startled panther.
“Ah, is it you, Inspector? You frightened me. Please, come in. Come in, of course.”
De Vincenzi entered with an officer. Another could be seen in the corridor, looking with intense curiosity at one of the eight herms.
“Until the investigating magistrate comes and gives the authorization for the removal of the body, I’ll have to put someone on guard in this room. Since all the necessities will be taken care of by this evening, you can provisionally go to your office, Signora.”
A smile crinkled Cristiana’s lips. “I was rather wondering why you hadn’t already searched this room!”
“Do you think it would have been helpful if I had? Objects rarely speak in a criminal investigation, at least in the way most people mean. I never follow tracks or material clues. And that’s why I’m so often mistaken!” he added, smiling at her cordially.
Cristiana looked about.
“I’d ask you only not to mess things up too much. My room won’t thank you.”
“I’ll content myself with speaking to your maid instead, Signora. Would you have her come up if she’s here?”
“Well of course she’s here, Inspector! The service rooms and kitchen are on the second floor. I’ll go and tell her.”
She started to leave and the officer stepped aside to let her by, but she stopped at the threshold.
“Inspector, what precautions do you take against suspects here in Italy?”
“None, or almost none, Signora O’Brian. We’re happy to wait until our suspicions are shown to be valid.”
“Hmm. So you won’t even have me watched?”
“Do you think you’re under suspicion?”
“Well, you see, I’m the only one who could’ve had any reason to kill Valerio. That boy was becoming troublesome.”
“If everyone who had some reason to kill really did kill, the ground would be strewn with bodies! Sometimes, the real killer does nothing but carry out someone else’s desires… or those of many others, Signora. As for having you watched, I don’t feel it’s necessary. In any case, it won’t be possible for you to leave the building.”
The woman gave him one last look.
“I never thought the police in Italy had such… novel methods.”
“Do my methods really seem so novel to you?”
“More than that, they seem dangerous. Goodbye, Inspector!”
“Don’t be so sure, Signora,” De Vincenzi said without irony. To his officer, he indicated one of the armchairs.
“Have a seat.”
The man sat down. He was young, chubby and well groomed. He lifted his coat tails before sitting down.
“Is this the crime scene, sir?”
De Vincenzi began looking around; the wardrobe caught his attention.
“Call it the scene of the crime if you like.”
“I don’t see a body, sir.”
“If you move you’ll be touching it. You’re sitting in front of it.”
The officer turned round. He saw the bump made by the body under the bedspread, blushed and stood up at once. Smiling awkwardly at De Vincenzi, who was watching him kindly, he moved away from the bed and went to sit in a chair near the door, some way away.
“Are you afraid of the dead?”
“They give me the creeps, sir.”
“It’s the living who give me the creeps! You’ll notice that with time.” He opened the wardrobe and looked inside for a moment.
“For example, look at this. Someone—alive—has been in this wardrobe, and he didn’t even bother to put the clothes back in their place!”