The first day of March was rainy, windy and, where the dust had turned to slush in the outlying streets, muddy too.
In the apartment he’d rented on via Massena near Sempione Park, De Vincenzi got up from his bed at seven, perfectly rested if not completely calm. The crimes at the O’Brian Fashion House had been tormenting him when he’d got home at midnight, but he’d immersed himself in a book by Anatole France in an effort to forget them. He adored those now-forgotten books, and fell asleep quickly. Once awake, however, the two dead bodies immediately reappeared, and that grim memory, the sight of the leaden sky and the drizzle splattering the window put paid to any calm he’d felt. On principle he hadn’t wanted to analyse the two crimes during the night or to revisit the various troubling points they presented. Since he believed in the value of psychological clues alone, he would trust his intuition. His colleagues wryly called him a poet, and when it came down to it they weren’t mistaken, even though they didn’t consider it praise.
As he soaked in the bathtub, he thought about his confounded need to dig deep into people’s souls, and since his own spirits were low he sneered at himself. Nothing but a poor old fool. All that psychology, and someone had killed poor Evelina practically under his nose. She certainly didn’t deserve such a miserable end. She undoubtedly held at least one of the keys to the mystery, keys he’d now have to find in goodness knows what dark hole.
He was getting dressed and at the same time sipping the coffee brought to him by the maternal Antonietta when he remembered the two letters he’d found in the dead woman’s purse. He’d put them in his pocket and forgotten they were there. One of them was from a mobile library to which Evelina belonged, asking her to return a book she’d borrowed two months before. The letter was polite but expressed surprise that a reader as quick and passionate as Signorina Rossi could have kept a book for so long. The volume in question was a romance novel by Mura. De Vincenzi put the letter back in the envelope. Not a ray of light—but perhaps just a flicker: in the last two months Evelina had had such a lot of work or so many worries that she couldn’t concentrate on reading, which must have been the dreamy old spinster’s favourite diversion.
The second letter at first seemed more promising, even if he wasn’t aware at the time of its real importance. It was typewritten on paper without any letterhead, and following the address and the date were these words:
Our brief telephone conversation, Signorina, was not sufficient. I believe you may be helpful to me if, as you stated, you really wish to be. I’ll expect you, therefore, tomorrow evening at 21.00 in my private office on via Catalani 75, near Loreto. You will be handsomely rewarded for the trouble you’ve taken and which you have yet to undertake for me.
Yours faithfully
No signature. It was dated the 8th of March. Evelina, therefore, was set to go to the appointment on the very day she died. Had someone killed her to prevent her going? There was nothing to support that theory, but De Vincenzi told himself that it was crucial to trace the unknown correspondent, even if turned out to be a pointless waste of time.
Crucial and essential—even more so than meeting the Boltons, which he’d promised himself he’d do that morning. The two siblings—who were staying in the Albergo Palazzo, as he’d learnt from Anna Bolton’s invitation, which Clara had kept back—could wait. As far as De Vincenzi was concerned it wasn’t Russell Sage, now John Bolton, who’d killed Valerio and Evelina, even if the whole mystery appeared to revolve around him, as the two orchids seemed to suggest. De Vincenzi didn’t believe the outlaw was guilty—not even of the theatrical and symbolic presence of the flowers beside the bodies.
He phoned Sani at San Fedele, who reassured him that nothing had disturbed the tranquillity of the O’Brian Fashion House during the night. Sani had left there at seven in the morning, while everyone was still sleeping; Cruni remained with the other officers.
“Go and get some rest for a few hours. You’ll be needing it. I’ll take care of Corso del Littorio. Come back to the office this afternoon.” He was fond of his deputy, and his words resonated with affectionate concern.
He chose a roundabout route and, after taking two trams, one more crowded than the other, De Vincenzi arrived in via Catalani at nine o’clock. Splashing through the mud and rain he found 75, a small house without any number or other signage at the entrance. He didn’t bother inventing a pretext for his appearance at the home of Evelina’s unknown correspondent and, trusting to the inspiration of the moment, pressed the bell.
The door was opened by a haughty and disdainful elderly woman wearing a white apron over her black dress. By spinning her a story about how he was looking for a small house to let, he managed to discover that this one belonged to a commendatore who found it convenient for the occasional break, but only ever stayed for a few hours. With persistence, and displaying his police badge to the shocked woman, De Vincenzi learnt the name of the owner, a fairly well-known banker, possibly a millionaire.
He found himself back in the mud, in the middle of the road, with a set of directions. Even if they proved to be important, this would be a tough nut to crack. And yet postponing his visit wouldn’t ensure him a better welcome, so it seemed more urgent than ever that he go.
This time he took a taxi to Piazza della Scala. Although the huge waiting room at the internationally renowned banking institute was chock full of people, the commendatore received him without delay. He was a stout man, rough-hewn, all lined and wrinkled, with the watery pallor of a diabetic. De Vincenzi realized immediately that his title of police inspector was the open sesame, and that the commendatore was worried. More than worried. Afraid.
He gestured for De Vincenzi to sit and sat looking at him.
“I’ve asked you to come in straight away, despite my being extremely busy. But I don’t understand.”
“Of course.” Polite both by nature and habit, De Vincenzi now appeared disarmingly smooth. “How could you understand? But perhaps this letter will help.” He held out the letter he’d found in Evelina’s purse.
The commendatore recognized it without reading it, and he became even more agitated.
“How ever did this letter fall into the hands of the police?”
“For tragic reasons: the woman to whom it was addressed has been murdered.”
The man started. He seemed momentarily lost, but quickly regained his composure. The colour returned to his cheeks, his eyes grew steely and his face tensed. He shifted things around on his desk as if re-establishing order in front of him. But the reorganization and calculation were actually taking place internally.
“You realize, Inspector, that this business must be conducted with a great deal of tact and delicacy?”
“Oh, I assure you I know that all too well!” De Vincenzi sighed.
“How did you find out that the letter was from me?”
“There’s an address on it.”
“And old Sofia told you.”
“Old? Not very. But yes, old Sofia had to tell me, Commendatore.”
“I see.” He pushed at a large crystal ball, picked up a pen and replaced it. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to help me understand. Nothing else. Think it over. What I’m asking is completely risk-free for you. My only goal in coming here is to find a lead that will take me to the murderer.”
The commendatore peered at De Vincenzi, trying to read him. He made his deductions quickly and decided on a certain froideur, which he adopted in money matters and which had brought him his wealth.
“Where do I come into it?”
“You can easily help me to understand why someone would kill a calm, peaceful woman weighing more than a hundred kilos and suffering from heart attacks. We always need a motive.”
“What do you want to know, then?”
A humble, bashful smile preceded De Vincenzi’s reply. “Everything, Commendatore. Everything.”
“The woman approached me by phone.”
“When?”
“About a week ago.”
“And she wanted…”
“Yes, I’ll tell you. But I ask for your discretion, your absolute silence. May I count on that?”
“I believe so. What I mean is, I think I understand what you’re about to tell me and that, therefore, I can see to it that your name is kept out of the inquest.”
“What do you think I’m about to tell you?”
His method: getting others to speak in order to gain the upper hand.
De Vincenzi smiled. “I’ve seen your secret villa, Commendatore, and I know Madama Cristiana O’Brian and her fashion house.”
“So you’ve gathered that Cristiana was blackmailing me!” he exploded. “Yes. She’s been doing it for a year now. I took a friend to her fashion house and I was a damned idiot to pay her bills personally. After the second bill was paid, that woman—O’Brian—telephoned me to say that she knew my private address, my family’s address, and she was afraid that one of her bumbling employees had sent a copy of the bill to my wife by mistake. Clever, no?”
“Rather.”
“I paid. And naturally I forbade my friend to set foot again in that filthy den of blackmailers. Would you believe it?”
“Yes, I believe it, Commendatore.”
“After a month, another telephone call. O’Brian told me she’d noticed that my friend had stopped coming to her. She said, regretfully, that the same bumbling employee was about to write to my private address to suggest other designs that would certainly appeal to the taste of the person I was protecting. What could I do? I paid again.”
De Vincenzi rose. “Thank you, Commendatore, and please excuse the disturbance.”
“Don’t you want to know anything else?”
“The rest I can imagine. Signorina Evelina discovered her boss’s plot and phoned you in turn, offering to stop it.”
“Exactly. Another blackmail.”
“But no! I think not. That poor thing would have been on the level. She believed she could stop Cristiana O’Brian’s criminal activity—and maybe she really could. It may be that she’d discovered another secret she could use with Cristiana, one that would render her powerless with you and the others. Because, of course, you wouldn’t have been the only one to have fallen into that typically American-style trap.”
“On the level!” exclaimed the commendatore, genuinely amazed.
“Otherwise, why would she have been murdered? Yes, I understand: to eliminate a rival. But I assume she approached you in good faith. You can’t weigh more than a hundred kilos without having a correspondingly light conscience!”
When he got to the door, something occurred to De Vincenzi. He turned and went back to the desk. “Excuse me. One last question. Was it a young man with dark hair, quite good-looking, who came to get the money for O’Brian?”
“Shameless! Yes, that’s him.”
“I see. Well, it’ll console you to know that that young man has also been murdered.”
In the lift, De Vincenzi stood watching a young man in brown put a finger in the collar of his constricting uniform. He took Cristiana O’Brian’s small green address book from his jacket pocket and at N he found the name of the commendatore from whom he’d just taken his leave.