It was nine-thirty when De Vincenzi wrapped it up.
“Let me recap, Lester Gillis. After you discovered Edward Moran hiding in Miami behind the name of Russell Sage, you found a way to make yourself indispensable to Ileana Sage. The Feds had just taken her husband away and it’s my theory that it was you, rather than she—as Anna Moran believes—who put them on his trail. You advised Ileana to take the hidden loot and flee to Europe. When you got to Paris and found out that Edward Moran was looking for his wife, you were quite probably terrified at first. But you recovered soon enough, and made up your mind to get rid of him for ever, this man who not only inspired a hatred born of the desire for revenge, but who also posed a serious threat to you. You helped Ileana escape from Paris in time and establish herself in Milan under the name of Cristiana O’Brian, never letting your enemy out of your sight. Somehow—I’m not sure how, but probably by having him tailed by a private detective—you knew when he arrived in Milan. You then conceived your criminal plan, without worrying about the other victims and with the cold intention of allowing suspicion to fall on Ileana Sage. If you killed Moran and got rid of Ileana too, you would in fact also achieve your goal of getting all the money she’d stolen from Moran and then multiplied.
“You sent John Bolton an invitation from the O’Brian Fashion House, care of the Albergo Palazzo, along with a floor plan for the building on Corso del Littorio—all the directions he’d need in order to show up in the signora’s room, while Valerio’s body was lying on her bed. From your point of view, Valerio’s murder was a masterstroke. That irrepressible Don Giovanni had promised to marry Verna Campbell, just as he had so many others, and he got the newspaper cutting about you from her. He had the measure of your true personality, and having started down the slippery slope of blackmail, he didn’t hesitate to try the same game with you after seeing how it had worked with Cristiana. A terribly dangerous game for him it was, and a fantastic chance for you to get rid of a troublesome blackmailer, ensuring in the process that suspicion would fall on the very person who had every reason to be rid of him herself!
“You killed him in the ‘museum of horrors’ and carried his body from there to Cristiana’s bed. But you weren’t willing to take any risks, and just in case the investigators should find the real crime scene, you left one of Cristiana’s medallions from the dog track next to the overturned mannequin; it had been easy enough for you to come by it. I’ll say it again: magnificent!”
Prospero O’Lary abandoned the farce of being the glossy and decorative “Oremus” and reverted to being Lester Gillis. He listened to De Vincenzi with a smirk.
“That’s how you got things moving, and everything went according to your plan. Bolton actually did come up to see Cristiana and you hid in her wardrobe. It would have been very unwise to let him catch sight of you or observe you up close. You used your time and situation in the wardrobe to perfect the evidence against Cristiana: you tore the dress she’d been wearing that morning to make it look like she’d actually struggled with Valerio while strangling him. I’ll admit that this little detail actually fooled me at first, when I found out about Valerio’s physical condition. That is, I thought it really had been Cristiana O’Brian who’d accidentally killed him by unintentionally pressing too hard on his throat.
“But let’s continue. The rest is pretty clear. Your second victim, Evelina, was forced on you by circumstance, and you made the best of it with some truly phenomenal quick thinking. At the moment, my reconstruction is only a process of deduction, but I’m sure it’s not far from the truth. I’d sent Cristiana away. Upset by her husband’s appearance, terrified by the orchid, confused by how Valerio had come to be killed in her bed and worried about the police intrusion, she goes down to the administrative offices. There she sees Evelina, who’d just been questioned by me. Aware of the deals her boss has been striking with some of her clients, and sure that it was Cristiana who murdered Valerio, she accuses her of the crime and threatens to tell me about all the blackmailing.
“Cristiana becomes even more terrified. She finds you in the director’s office, pulls you into the window recess so that Madame Firmino won’t hear, and tells you what Evelina said. You act decisively. You leave the office for a couple of minutes, strangle Evelina in the safest and easiest way, and go back to Cristiana—saying nothing about what you’ve done, of course. When I discover the body I’m already on the trail of Cristiana’s blackmailing, and knowing what I do about Evelina’s meddling at Commendatore N—’s, I can only attribute the second crime to her. I’ve said it before, Gillis: the planning and execution of your crime were top-notch, brilliant! What’s left? Now everything is ready for you to kill Edward Moran, and it’s certain that his death will also be attributed to Cristiana. You just have to find the right opportunity, and it presents itself soon enough. As soon as you learn that Cristiana has gone out in the early afternoon, you tell yourself: now’s the moment. You go to the pasticceria on via Santa Margherita where Cristiana actually used to meet her friends and the clients she was blackmailing. You stay there long enough to be able to tell me you’d gone to wait for Cristiana and then you call Moran… I have no idea what you said to induce him to come to Corso del Littorio, and no doubt you’ll never tell me.”
Gillis’s smirk grew more pronounced.
“Oh, no, I’m a good lad at heart, and if I can do someone a favour… Since I’m a goner, I may as well satisfy your curiosity. I told him a friend was waiting for him in Cristiana’s room and that he should come to the via San Pietro all’Orto entrance and use the service stairs.”
“And he believed you?!”
“Of course! I added that his friend would be wearing an orchid in his buttonhole, and that he should wear one too as a mark of identification, just like he did in America.”
There’s no one left in De Vincenzi’s office apart from the inspector himself and Sani. Sani looks at De Vincenzi.
“Now this is over, too. Are you tired?”
De Vincenzi smiles at him in resignation.
“You can call this The Mystery of the Five Orchids.”
“Five? No, three. One was my trick, the other a trick of fate. Edward Moran shouldn’t have put that flower in his buttonhole. He really shouldn’t have. He told me he’d changed his ways…”
