Some Bitter Taste Page 3

  ‘Lorenzini!’

  Nevertheless, when at half past five that afternoon he opened the windows and the outer shutters and turned off the light, he was able to congratulate himself since it looked as though he might just clear the backlog this evening. But wasn’t there something he’d forgotten, somewhere he’d said he’d go this week? Later, as he was writing up the duty sheet for the next day it was still nagging at him. As he finished it, he remembered: the woman with the postcard. It wasn’t urgent but he had promised her he’d go this week. If he didn’t turn up she would be more frightened than ever because his reassurance had been false. He stood up and got his jacket from behind the door. The phone rang. Captain Maestrangelo at HQ.

  ‘There’s been a burglary at the Villa L’Uliveto, Sir Christopher Wrothesly’s place up behind the Piazzale Michelangelo … Pian dei Giulari, so it’s on your territory. Small stuff, I gather, but you ought to go up there so I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. You’ve nothing on you can’t leave?’

  ‘No, no.’

  The marshal buttoned his jacket and went to look in at the duty room door. ‘Lorenzini?’

  ‘Marshal?’

  ‘I have to go out. If there’s anything, you can reach me through Captain Maestrangelo’s car. Minor robbery. Nothing interesting.’

  Lorenzini looked sceptical. ‘When did the captain ever leave his desk for a robbery, minor or otherwise?’

  ‘Oh, important foreign resident. Bit of pressure to make a show, I suppose.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘You might finish the duty sheet.’ Even so, thought the marshal as he locked up behind himself and stumped unwillingly down the stairs towards the furnace of the outdoor world, pressure wouldn’t account for it. A personal favour maybe, but the captain …

  Then he was outside on the gravel and the still-burning sun plus the stored heat coming from the great stones of the Pitti Palace overpowered him and melted down all thoughts beyond self-defence. He fished for his handkerchief and sunglasses and shifted from fiery exposure to simmering shade.

  Three

  Heat and silence. Too hot even for the birds to sing. And the rhythmic sawing of crickets only accentuated the stillness. Captain Maestrangelo and the marshal stood waiting by the smaller door on the left as instructed by the lodge keeper, who had opened up for the car and pointed the way along the cypress alley. A double-sided staircase led up to the central doors giving on to the first floor in the style of the Medici country houses. This one had been built by a banking family of almost equal fame. The captain gazed up at the balustrade, where statues and urns were silhouetted against a pale, vapourous sky. The marshal was looking down to his right at the layer of sulphurous filth that indicated the city. It was impossible not to feel pity for Florence, lying there beautiful and defenceless, unable to cough up the smog that was rotting and choking it.

  ‘Until you come up to a place like this you don’t realise …,’ murmured the captain, gazing up in admiration.

  ‘That’s true,’ sighed the marshal, gazing down in dismay.

  ‘I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. Please forgive me. Come this way.’ The man who opened the door was Jeremy Porteous, Sir Christopher’s secretary. When they introduced themselves he shook hands first, attentively, with the higher-ranking officer and briefly, without eye contact, with the marshal. They followed him into the coolness of a circular hall with a silent fountain at its centre. The marshal, taking off his dark glasses and trying to refocus in the dim light, only had time to glimpse a curving stone staircase and part of the pattern of a mosaic floor. They crossed a corridor where a feeble lightbulb in an elaborate chandelier made only itself visible and then reached a spacious room, where a stronger bulb illuminated plain painted cupboards and a big square table, obviously part of the kitchen offices. Here Porteous stopped and faced them, saying, ‘Sir Christopher will receive you in the garden. I feel I ought to warn you that he is not well and that anything in the nature of a shock could be very dangerous for him.’

  ‘Does he know about the burglary?’ the captain asked.

  ‘He does … but … we all feel that if possible we should not have him think that any member of his permanent staff could be involved. That would distress him a great deal more than the robbery itself—especially in the case of one young person—any disappointment in that quarter … So that, whatever your conclusions might be, we’d be grateful if you’d confide them to us in the first place. I’m sure you understand me.’

  Are you indeed? And who’s ‘we’? The marshal already disliked this man. A handshake can tell you a lot. Not that it was limp, or damp, for that matter. It was too … elegant, somehow, and a bit too warm and clingy for the marshal’s taste. And watching him now, as he gave careful instructions to the captain, he was altogether too nice-looking and, though he was tall and thin and his nose was sharp at the end, everything else about him was soft. Soft skin; soft greying dark hair; soft floppy suit, silk presumably; soft, delicate voice. And the perfume. The marshal took a small step back. His presence was irrelevant anyway. Porteous spoke exclusively to the captain.

  ‘It was, as I said, a very tiny stroke—he remained confused for two or three days, couldn’t read or tell the time or remember what he’d just said—but he was quite aware of his condition and it was very frightening for him.’

  ‘It must have been,’ said the Captain, ‘very frightening indeed.’

  The captain himself was an elegant man. A quiet and serious man. Certainly not soft, though. Quite the opposite.

  ‘He’s back to normal now. But the fear remains.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So he must rest and avoid anything that would excite him. He is using a wheelchair as a precaution and it’s parked out of his sight once we transfer him to a chair. He’s very proud and doesn’t mention the business at all, so I beg you …’

  ‘You need have no fear,’ insisted the captain. The marshal, who knew him well, heard the hidden impatience in his voice. Porteous, if he heard it too, cared nothing about it and tattled on about Sir Christopher’s dislike of doctors and Sir Christopher this and Sir Christopher that and Sir Christopher the other. The marshal was reminded of someone, or so he thought. Then he got it. Those officious, unctuous priests who were always strutting and smirking with self-importance around the pope when you saw him on the TV news. No doubt, if they ever gave voice, it was the same story—the Holy Father this and the Holy Father that … after the shooting, how long ago was it … time passed so quickly.

  ‘This way, please.’ He opened the door. A brilliant rectangle of fresh gold and green. The marshal blinked and replaced his sunglasses. They walked between lemon trees, many of them as high as themselves, and again, as in his own kitchen, the marshal picked up the sharp scent of home and childhood. But these lemon trees were in decorated terra cotta pots, standing like guards all along a gravel walk at the far end of which was what must be the limonaia, its tall brown shutters open, its great doors ajar. Behind the lemons, to left and right, low razored hedges divided the various vegetables of the kitchen garden. The marshal, who was always interested in food, took a good look at what was growing there and was very curious to see, beyond the usual beans and salads, a patch of sweet corn. No doubt on an estate this size—and he knew it to be very big—there’d be a farm with hens. Odd place to grow your hen food, though. The man was a foreigner, of course, but his workmen surely weren’t.

  Halfway to the lemon house they turned left on a path leading to a high clipped hedge backed by young cypresses. They went through a narrow gap, a gateway in a lichened wall, and down some steps into a rectangular garden enclosed on the opposite side by a high wall with an arbour direcdy facing them beyond a lily pond. Once inside this garden, which looked to the marshal like a sort of outdoor room, they could see, to their right, the city under its cloud of pollution over a low balustrade flanked by tall cypresses. To their left, in the direction of the house, a stone staircase led up to a semicircular terrace,
its curve enclosed by a high hedge with statues placed in niches. Two of the green niches were empty, the marshal noted as they were led across on a raised path to the arbour, a circular plinth, with a vine-clad wrought iron roof supported at the back by a curve in the lichened garden wall and in front by two stone pillars. There, in a deep wicker chair, Sir Christopher sat in leafy shade. Beside him were paints and a half-finished picture on an easel. There was no wheelchair in sight, though the marshal’s eyes searched for it under cover of his dark glasses, and Sir Christopher rose slowly to greet them as they arrived. Perhaps it was the thought of a wheelchair, coupled with the memory of his mother after the stroke, but the marshal was expecting someone old, wrapped in rugs, perhaps even in bedroom slippers. Sir Christopher was pale and tired-looking but he was wearing a cream linen suit and a patterned bow tie. He didn’t look particularly sick and he was younger than the marshal had expected, in his late fifties at the most. His hair was dyed brown. Porteous introduced them and the marshal noticed the way Sir Christopher shook hands with them, smiling and according equal attention to both. A gentleman, then, unlike the soft fellow who now left them.

  ‘It’s very good of you to come. I understand from Jeremy that we’ve lost nothing of particular value this time. He is preparing a typewritten list of the small objects which are missing. He’ll bring it out to us in a moment, I’m sure, so perhaps you’d sit with me and drink something.’

  They sat down. The captain declined to take anything and, though impressed by the variety of drinks, mosdy alcoholic, set out on a low wicker table beside Sir Christopher’s chair, the marshal said, ‘I’d be glad of a glass of water, if that’s all right. Hot day….’ And he’d better not drink much of that or he’d break out in a sweat again after having cooled off so nicely in the captain’s car.

  ‘Of course.’

  The marshal expected a servant, perhaps a buder, to appear from nowhere and do the honours but Sir Christopher served him. He put a lot of ice in the glass, which the marshal didn’t want, but he didn’t like to say so. He’d have done better to take nothing because now he didn’t know where to put his hat and so held it precariously on one knee as he sipped the freezing cold water.

  ‘Do I understand from your saying “this time” that you’ve had other burglaries?’ Nothing disturbed the captain’s quiet gravity and one sunburned hand lay smooth and still on his perfecdy balanced hat.

  ‘One quite serious burglary, I’m sorry to say, though a great many years ago now. The distressing thing about that occasion was not so much the considerable value of the stolen artworks, which were part of my father’s collection, but the fact that there seemed no doubt that someone in the house was involved. Someone who let them in and took them to the things they were interested in. There were no signs of a forced entry, you see, and there were two dogs in the house who didn’t bark.’

  As the captain asked his questions the marshal listened to the sawing of the crickets and the water trickling feebly in the fountain at the centre of the lily pond. He was worrying about what to do with his ice-cold glass since the table was out of his reach. It was becoming agony to hold. Would it fall over if he put it down on the pebble-patterned floor booby-trapped with creeping flowers? Sir Christopher saw his discomfiture and leant forward a little. ‘Do let me…’

  Like the marshal, he was a big man, a bit overweight, and the hand that reached for the glass had plump pale fingers. ‘We were obliged to fire a young man we’d just taken on to help with the cataloguing of the collection here, which my father never kept up to date and which, I’m afraid, still is far from complete. The young man—a very diligent worker—was the only person other than my curator, who’s been with us almost thirty years, and my dearest friend, Renato, an antiquities expert with whom I’ve dealt all my life, who could have directed the thieves to those pieces.’

  ‘They couldn’t have helped themselves to whatever attracted them?’

  ‘Ah, my dear Captain, if you were to see the top floor of this house you would realise how impossible that would be. My father was a real collector. He didn’t buy for this house, the house was just a receptacle for his collection, nor did he ever sell anything. It’s a sort of Aladdin’s cave up there. Not only that, but since things were being moved during the cataloguing process, pairs had occasionally been separated—in the case of one piece needing restoration, that sort of thing. Yet they made no mistakes and their choices were precise and, sorry though I am to say it, admirable.’

  ‘And nothing, I presume, ever appeared on the market.’

  ‘Nothing. Robbery on commission. Collectors, you know, have no scruples. They mention to their dealer that they are looking for a certain type of piece and ask no questions when, after a time, it is produced. Still, a very sad business, having to send the boy away. He had taste, and one tries to help the young … Jeremy came to me at that age, knowing nothing. He is now very expert indeed.’

  ‘Sir Christopher …’

  Jeremy Porteous, the soft, dark man, was back, flourishing a sheet of paper in front of him.

  ‘Thank you, my dear. Captain, here is the list of stolen goods, nothing of great interest, as you’ll see, but my lawyer will be dealing with the insurance company and they’ll need a copy of our report to you.’

  ‘Of course.’ The captain took the list and passed it to the marshal without glancing at it. ‘Marshal Guarnaccia will deal with everything. He’ll transfer this list to one of our report sheets and bring it for your signature. Naturally, we’ll circulate this list to all the Florentine antique dealers but I can’t, as I’m sure you realise, offer you much hope …’

  ‘I do, indeed, realise it and apologise for having to take up your time on account of the insurance. I don’t expect to see any of these things again. And although I’m sorry for it, since the silver was from my father’s bedroom, which has never been touched since his death, what I’m most concerned about is that poor boy, Giorgio.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I should really be very distressed and surely with fingerprinting and so on you can prove—’

  ‘Now, you mustn’t upset yourself,’ Porteous interrupted. ‘The boy assures me—’

  ‘So did Alex assure us, and I’m still not convinced we were right to do what we did. I can’t let young Giorgio be judged unfairly.’

  Porteous laid a hand on the older man’s shoulder, murmuring, ‘Remember you mustn’t get agitated.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The marshal will need to speak to all your staff, Sir Christopher, including this Giorgio. Did he replace the boy you dismissed after the other robbery?’

  ‘No. Oh, no, since Alex there have been a number of … he’s quite recent, has only been here a matter of months. A charming boy. You won’t … ? I mean …’

  ‘The marshal will speak to him just as he does to the rest of your staff.’ The captain got to his feet. ‘Sir Christopher, please believe me when I say that your preoccupation is perfectly comprehensible. You want to feel safe in your own home, among loyal people, and that is certainly more important than recovering a few pieces of silverware. If I might take a look at all access points of the house and then the room or rooms where the thefts occurred. The marshal here will stay with you and explain the procedures which will follow. I’m sure he’ll convince you that you have nothing to worry about.’

  The marshal’s heart sank. Maestrangelo had an unshakable conviction that he was good at talking to people and getting them to talk to him. But in this case it was ridiculous. Why the captain had come here was still a mystery. The marshal had been a bit embarrassed to ask on the way here but, surely, if it was the usual thing of pressure from high places—important foreign resident—the captain should be sitting here making polite small talk while the marshal got on with his business, checking for forced entry, questioning staff, and so on. The very idea of leaving him with the job of trying to comfort a millionaire who’d had a few knickknacks stolen! And besides, to get people to confi
de in you, you had to edge into the thing gradually, chat about everyday problems until you found an opening or rather the other person did. People needed to talk, after all … what in God’s name was he supposed to chat casually about to this chap? What could his everyday problems possibly be? He launched, instead, into an explanation about fingerprinting the staff-^just to eliminate them, you understand—the examination of the outside of the building, the precautions to be taken in case this should be a trial run for something bigger once the flurry had died down. When that petered out and the captain hadn’t reappeared he was back to wondering what the everyday problems of a rich man might be. He gazed about him, trying to think of something to say, avoiding the painting on its easel. He’d be sure to say the wrong thing there. It looked pretty amateurish but that was probably because he was used to the ones in the Pitti galleries and didn’t understand modern stuff. He shifted his attention to the garden, a safer subject altogether. Pale pink and white geraniums spilled out of terra cotta vases and urns. A few white roses still bloomed on branches that scrambled up the walls and around the lower branches of other trees. There were low trimmed hedges, very neat and geometrical, enclosing all sorts of bushes and pale tangles of tiny, unimpressive-looking flowers.

  ‘Your garden’s beautifully kept.’ Well, it was true of the hedges, anyway. For the rest, it seemed out of control, especially because every nook and cranny in the walls and pebbled paths was matted with growth of some sort or another. Yet the man must have an army of gardeners … shouldn’t have spoken.

  ‘It is beautifully kept and in the case of this particular garden I have reason to be grateful for it because I’ve neglected it myself for so many years. My first thought each morning is for the gardens. I like to spend an hour at least with the gardeners. But this garden … they’ve loved it and cared for it and they’ve changed nothing apart from moving out one or two things which were in need of restoration. I know it’s not for me that they do it, but I’m grateful, even so.’