At 6.30 p.m., Cristiana O’Brian’s showrooms looked deserted. The catwalk show had been halted at 6 p.m.—before even half the designs had made their appearance: De Vincenzi had requested that Marta stop it before the scheduled time. He wouldn’t disturb the ladies gathered there; it didn’t seem necessary to question them. But he needed to have free rein. Besides, the investigating magistrate would be there before long and, right after that, the undertakers with the stretcher.
Marta and Clara had smilingly and obsequiously helped the clients to leave. Clara had put on a special smile and bow for the Boltons. As she walked them up to the door she said, “We trust that your sister will want to honour us with a few more visits, Mr Bolton.”
“I’m sure she will, Signorina. My sister has always greatly admired your designs.” John Bolton smiled again in the lift, this time smugly. Almost without moving his lips he said to Anna, “The game promises to be tricky. I saw her and spoke to her.”
Anna Sage responded listlessly. “I don’t see any use in your playing the same old game. Remember, in Miami you lost because you wanted to offer your relatives lunch on the Fourth of July.”
“A memorable lunch, that was!”
And the most extraordinary visitor Federico had ever seen at the fashion house put another ten lire in his hand.
De Vincenzi was now free to move about in the empty showrooms. He needed to order his thoughts, since he hadn’t yet had time to take stock of the situation. He’d gathered many clues, but he couldn’t connect them; they didn’t add up to a complete picture. As he contemplated a collection of rhinestone and ormolu flower jewellery in a glass display case, he began to tot up the clues. The orchid was one of them, perhaps the most obscure of all, the one that might unexpectedly and accidentally reveal the solution. Right after that came the cold and unfathomable Verna Campbell, who’d made sure to give him disturbing information and enthralled him with tales of gangsters. The girl had done more than that: she’d revealed to him the importance of the green address book now in his pocket.
Evelina’s sudden attack was another clue. Then there was the body’s having been placed in Cristiana’s bed… The list might still be incomplete.
Despite all this, no single, specific piece of information, no clue showed where the path began. Everything was murky and dark. Why had Cristiana O’Brian—who’d never been a dressmaker and didn’t have any aptitude for it—felt it necessary to set up a fashion house? In and of itself, that fact certainly wouldn’t have aroused anyone’s surprise if Valerio hadn’t been strangled. But both the crime and the crime scene cast a sinister light on the woman’s activities. What’s more, Valerio’s murder didn’t chime with all the rest. If it was a product of the environment, the staging seemed over-elaborate. This wasn’t the crime that was meant to happen. And De Vincenzi was startled to think what the real crime might be, and how it might have been carried out.
The lights had been left on in the showrooms, and weak daylight was still filtering through the windows. The corridor looked deserted, but De Vincenzi heard the models chattering in their room even though Clara was there to keep an eye on them. Cristiana O’Brian was in the office with O’Lary, and Marta was with the dressmakers, whom De Vincenzi had prohibited from leaving their room.
So Evelina had to be in her office, waiting in trepidation for him to question her. He thought despairingly about the vast number of people he still had to interrogate. All the women would talk to him about Valerio. What could they tell him that would help to set him on the trail of the murderer? Nothing, probably. On the other hand, they might still reveal other facts about Valerio, and he’d be glad of that.
He took the medallion he’d found on the floor from his pocket. Had it actually belonged to Valerio? He’d been so sure it was his that he hadn’t even bothered to check to see whether the dead man had had a chain it could have fallen off. He slowly went through the doorway of the third showroom, the last one on the same side as the internal lift. He was heading for the office when the models’ voices, coming from behind the closed door, made him stop.
“You’re being stupid to cry over him! He cared for you like he did the knot in his tie! He liked you, but as for loving you, he fooled you just like me and all the others.”
“Be quiet, Irma! Don’t you see that Gioia’s hurting? It’s a mood, and it’ll pass. As it happens, he was in here a short time before he was killed, and he talked to her.”
“I’ll bet the American bumped him off… She couldn’t accept it.”
“What now? Have you seen the police everywhere? They’re going to close this dump and send us packing.”
“Oh, I couldn’t care less! Fercioni have been after me for a while. I only have to go and see them for them to take me on.”
De Vincenzi began walking down the corridor. Could this, then, be a crime of jealousy? Yes, it would have been possible to consider it one—if the body had not been taken to Cristiana’s bed. But it’s rare for a woman to have the strength for such gruesome work, even if she wants revenge against a rival. Could Cristiana have been in competition with her own maid, or with one of the models or dressmakers? It would all be very simple if things had gone like that. But they had not.
He went into Evelina’s room. The door between Cristiana and Prospero’s office was closed. De Vincenzi checked that first, and then looked at the bookkeeper’s large desk. He noticed that the woman’s head was bent over the ledger. Maybe Evelina had felt sleepy, or maybe she’d fallen over like that crying… Yet why should she be crying? How strange that he should consider that.
But then he saw something else that made his blood run cold. On the corner of the desk was a glass, and in that glass was an orchid.
De Vincenzi was at her side in a flash. He shook her, and her head rolled across the ledger but her body didn’t move. He lifted her head: it fell back down. Yet he’d had time to see her face: Evelina was dead. The enormous woman was still warm, but she wasn’t breathing. He tried to sit her up straight, to grab her wrists, but he realized immediately that it would be impossible to move her. All that flesh had become so heavy…
De Vincenzi felt lost for several moments. This new crime, committed practically under his nose, had shocked him and robbed him of any initiative, his power to analyse or to act. From the moment he’d set foot in this building, it had all been happening around him. It was bewildering.
He moved away from the body and walked around the room randomly. It was surprising that he’d managed not to scream, not to call anyone and, above all, not to run. Even a police inspector is a man. He felt like someone had slapped him. He’d been at this job for twenty years without managing to get a grip on his emotions. A body is a body, and that’s that. So why should this one upset him more than any other?
He went over to the window, drew back the silk curtain, put his forehead against the glass and stayed like that for a few minutes. He called on his reason, and succeeded in discovering why he’d had such a shock. Nothing had given a greater impression of life—intense, physical, overflowing—than Evelina’s body when he’d seen it in motion, alive. That body was now motionless, heavy, a mass as enormous as it was inert, and the violent contrast gave her death a frightening meaning, rendering it material, visible. That, rather than anything else, had to be the reason for his fleeting feeling of loss.
Calmer now, he went back to the body and studied it. From her neck, it was clear that she’d been strangled. Yet Evelina’s killer had not used his hands. The marks covered her neck: wide, deep and black. A curious chain of bruises. The woman had been strangled with a necklace.
He finally succeeded in righting the body so that it stayed against the back of the chair. Hanging against Evelina’s breast he noticed a glass necklace whose shiny black beads were held together by a thick silk thread. He tested its strength and was convinced that the pull of a finger alone wouldn’t have broken it. Without a doubt, the necklace was the murder weapon.
He let Evelina’s torso fall once more against the table, settled her dangling head on the ledger and walked over to the door of the offices, opening it suddenly.
Standing next to the rosewood table, Prospero O’Lary was talking to Cristiana, who listened to him as she smoked. Madame Firmino was still sitting in the chair he’d found her in, and appeared to be absorbed in contemplation of the smoke spiralling up from her cigarette. Prospero O’Lary was saying, “I told you, Cristiana, I don’t know the symbolism of the orchid. I only know the meaning of the aster.”