Death al Dente (18 page)

“There’s motive written all over that,” Francesca said decisively.

“There certainly is.” I fumbled over my next words, trying to put them the right way. “You have a lot of … affairs in Italy, don’t you?’

“We are a very passionate people.”

The taxi swung around a corner and Francesca put out a hand to steady herself. It fell on mine. I left it there. So did she.

“Many of Italy’s most famous men have dedicated churches to their mistresses. Did you know that?” she asked me in a neutral tone.

“No, I didn’t.” I thought for a moment. “Nor can I think of any other country where that could happen.”

“Raffaello—you call him Raphael—is most famous for his many paintings of the Madonna. You know of him, of course?”

“Yes, I’ve seen some of them—in Washington, in the Louvre, in Munich.”

“He used his mistresses as models for all of them. Most are portraits of La Fornarina, the baker’s daughter.”

“I didn’t know that,” I admitted. “But you still don’t have divorce, do you?”

“And never will.”

“So that encourages infidelity in marriage, doesn’t it?”

“Oh yes, but divorce is worse. It would endanger the family structure—and in Italy, the family is the structure of life, the basis of everything.”

“So,” I said, squeezing her hand, “infidelity could be a more powerful motive for murder than I think.”

She squeezed back. “We say in Emilia Romagna that food is a more powerful motive than sex.”

“When you say ‘we’, do you include yourself?”

“I—oh, here we are.” The taxi pulled to a stop in front of her apartment. I looked at it longingly but she leaned over, seemed to hesitate, then gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With a flash of long legs swinging out the taxi door, she was striding across the pavement and I was giving the taxi driver the name of the Ambasciatore Imperiale Hotel.

At that time of the morning, the lobby of the Ambasciatore Imperiale was quiet. I retrieved my key and went up to my room. I closed the room door behind me and flicked the light switch.

I was not alone.

Brother Angelo sprawled facedown on the floor.

He was in the same brown robes and his back was stained in blood from the knife protruding from it. I recognized the knife at once—I had last seen it pointed at me on the top parapet of Modena cathedral.

It was a shattering moment and yet mitigated by the inevitability of the outcome. Brother Angelo had shown every sign of being terrified by the man whose face he had seen in the car outside the Questura. He obviously feared being killed because of something he knew. The fact that that same man was a killer was in no doubt after his murderous attempts on Francesca and me with the crop-spraying robot plane and the six-wheeled behemoth.

Then the thought struck me that both Brother Angelo and his killer had managed to enter my room. Was the killer still here? I opened the room door wide to facilitate a high-speed exit. As a weapon, I could see nothing that I could take with me on my search. My eye went back to the knife at least twice but I could not envision myself pulling it out of the body. I took a large ceramic lamp as the best weapon to hand.

The bathroom and the small adjacent lounge were empty. I breathed heavily with relief, put back the lamp, then hastily closed the door and put on the chain. Then I picked up the phone and called Francesca. She sounded wide awake.

“I thought you might call,” she said breathily. “Do you want me to come there?”

“Yes,” I said, “very much, I—”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes—”

“Wait! Don’t hang up—listen, bring Cataldo with you.”

There was a silence.

When she spoke, her voice was glacial. “I certainly will not and I’m disappointed that—”

“Listen!” I implored. “Brother Angelo’s here and—”

“What?” She spat out the word and I had to jump in to stem a flow of what were surely going to be scatological words in Italian with which I had no familiarity.

“Listen !
Listen!
He’s dead!”

“Dead?” It was inevitable that even a girl as fast on the uptake as Francesca should repeat it.

“He has a knife in his back, the same one he threatened me with.”

“There? In your room?” Her voice was little more than a whisper now.

“Yes. I opened the door, came in, and there he was.”

“All right.” Not for the first time, I appreciated her lightning-quick acceptance of a situation. Her voice was normal as she said, “I’ll call Carlo and then I’ll be right over.”

I hung up and prowled around the room. I stopped and examined the half of the face that I could see. It was more than I had been able to glimpse in front of the Questura. He looked to be in his late thirties or maybe a little older, a pale complexion, a large nose, and a long chin.

The window was sealed and I was on the tenth floor. I searched the room but could find nothing. I looked in the bedroom and the bathroom with a similar result.

I could not go out of the room and I could not stay in it but nevertheless I had to stay. Sitting quietly in a chair looking at a recently murdered corpse is a very difficult thing to do. Not that I wanted to keep looking at it, but it was there wherever I looked. I went over the room again a couple of times but still found nothing of any interest. I touched the back of one of Brother Angelo’s outflung hands very cautiously. It was still warm.

A few more torturing minutes and there was a rap at the door. I opened it and Francesca threw herself into my arms. She gave a little cry as, over my shoulder, she caught sight of the body. She untangled herself and stared down, fascinated. She had hastily put on dark brown slacks and a loose yellow sweater and she looked adorable. She had put on only a minimum of makeup and her eyes looked enormous as she stared at Brother Angelo.

“So that’s him.”

She was still staring as a heavy banging on the door announced the arrival of the dashing captain of the Questurini, Carlo Cataldo. He gave us each a brief look then went over to kneel by the body. He spent some minutes examining it without touching anything.

“Was the door open when you came in?” His question encompassed us both.

“I wasn’t here. I had gone home,” Francesca said.

“It was locked,” I said.

“The body was just like this?”

“I didn’t touch anything—oh, except for that lamp—I took it with me to make sure there was no one in the bathroom or bedroom.”

He checked all the rooms, finding nothing. “The night manager will be up here in a few minutes,” he said. “You two had better wait in the lobby.”

We sat at a table at the entrance to the bar, open to the lobby sufficiently that we felt reasonably safe. A night waiter brought us cups of espresso. There was not much to say and we didn’t say it. A murder can really stifle conversation. People started to come in, a few in uniform, most of them not. They all headed for the banks of elevators and they all pushed ten. My room must have been like the Marx brothers’ stateroom in
A Night at the Opera.

Captain Cataldo joined us after some time. He called for an espresso and lit a cigarette. He was wearing the same uniform as always but without the plumed hat. He did not look in the least tired. He asked questions relentlessly and his memory seemed encyclopedic.

“Is this the same man you saw in the duomo at Modena?”

“It looks like him, but I’m only going by the robes and the knife. I didn’t see his face.”

“The same man you talked with in front of the Questura?”

“I got only a glimpse of his face. I couldn’t swear to it but it looks like the same man.”

“Now that you have seen his face, do you recognize him?”

“No. I never saw him before.”

He sipped his espresso. “I try not to jump to conclusions but we may have a line on his killer,” he said.

“So soon?”

He puffed a couple of times on his cigarette, pensive. “I have talked to Signor Dorigo and he is very unhappy at your amateur investigating.”

“Would he prefer an official investigation? It sounds like he may have something to hide.”

“We will find out. I want you to come with me to the Dorigo Farms. One of the workers there is missing. I asked if the man could program the robot spray plane and drive the vehicles. He can.”

“That’s your man,” I said. “If he tried to kill us, a hundred to one he’s the one who killed Brother Angelo.”

“We have some other information, Carlo,” Francesca told him and recounted our evening at the nightclub. He nodded. “Your man there will be telling you all this when you go into the Questura this morning,” Francesca went on briskly, “but we wanted to be sure you knew.” He nodded again. It was hard to tell whether he had a man there or whether he found the information useful.

“I’ll pick you up at ten o’clock,” He motioned to me first. “You”—and to Francesca—“then you.”

“This
morning?” she said.

“Yes. It is now nearly four o’clock. You had better get some sleep.” To me, he added, “The night manager is having your belongings transferred to another room. This is your third, I believe.” I wanted to comment that the hotel had six hundred others but refrained.

“Did you drive here?” he asked Francesca and she nodded. “Then I’ll see you at ten.” He strode back to the elevator, boots thudding on the marble floor.

Francesca gave me a quick kiss. “You’re a man who makes life exciting, aren’t you?” Then she was gone.

S
O YOU ARE THE
two who wrecked my Caproni and my Yakimoto!”

Antonio Dorigo spat out the words. Captain Cataldo looked at us affably and waited for us to answer.

“Is the Caproni the crop-spraying plane?” I asked innocently.

Dorigo glared.

“And the Yakimoto the big six-wheeled vehicle? Or is it the other way around?”

Dorigo gave a jerk of a nod. He looked about to boil over, a short pudgy man with little hair and a round, fat but disagreeable face. We sat in his office at his farm location, a couple of buildings away from the cafeteria where I had spotted the face I recognized—the event that had started it all.

“We didn’t wreck them.” Francesca said coldly. “The man who works for you tried to kill us with them.” She sat back in the uncomfortable chair, crossed her elegant legs, and stared right back at him.

“That’s rubbish!” Dorigo snapped. “Why would he want to do that?”

“Exactly what we are here to find out,” said Cataldo amiably.

“What were you doing on my land?” asked Dorigo unpleasantly.

“We were taking your tour,” said Francesca, lolling in the chair like a Medici princess.

“The tour doesn’t go through the rice fields,” Dorigo said.

“After the tour, we went into the cafeteria and we saw a man who had been involved in a previous murder attempt and followed him,” I told him. It was not the full story but an explanation of the events involving Brother Angelo could get complicated and I didn’t want Dorigo to have any opportunities for diversion.

“Spezzano tried to kill somebody?” Dorigo put a hefty dose of disbelief into the question.

“So you know who it was?” Cataldo slid in the question like a well-greased stiletto.

Dorigo muttered some kind of accord.

“Spezzano is the man you told me about over the phone?” Cataldo was still smooth and friendly.

“The man who is missing.”

“And why do you assume that he is the same man who was responsible for the—ah, accidents with the two pieces of equipment?”

Dorigo glared at him. “It seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

“Not to me,” said Cataldo.

Dorigo looked from me to Cataldo to Francesca, frustrated. “Spezzano is an ex-convict. You probably suspect him every time a crime is committed and he is anywhere in the vicinity.”

“So he ran away.” Cataldo was slowly defusing the volatile Dorigo.

“A clear sign of guilt,” said Francesca, icily. “Dropping airplanes on us and then trying to run us into the ground with yellow monsters! No wonder he disappeared!”

Dorigo glared, turning to Cataldo, but the captain declined to comment on Francesca’s lofty disdain of legal procedure. Instead, he said, “Luigi Spezzano, that is his name, isn’t it?” Dorigo grunted agreement.

Cataldo nodded. “His record is not good. Armed robbery, causing bodily harm, assault with a deadly weapon. Did you know this when you hired him?”

“I have hired ex-convicts before,” said Dorigo, his belligerent attitude ebbing.

“Under the Rehabilitation and Retraining Program?”

Dorigo nodded.

“You receive a rebate on each salary you pay to any person under this scheme, don’t you?”

“I like to help people whenever I can,” said Dorigo virtuously, “including those who are trying to get a new start in life.”

“How long had he been working for you?”

“About three months.”

“He knew how to operate all the equipment?”

“He was still learning.”

Just as well, I thought. If he had not banked the biplane too tightly, it might not have stalled and crashed. The noise from Francesca was a loud, scornful grunt at Dorigo’s claim of his charitable efforts at the regeneration of convicts.

But Dorigo’s resistance was weakening. He did not threaten Francesca and me with a lawsuit, and Cataldo, having softened him up, moved on to more relevant questioning.

“Do you intend to sell your rice fields, Signor Dorigo?”

He shrugged. “Most businessmen sell things when the price is right.”

“Did you intend to sell to Signor Pellegrini?”

His pudgy face showed some of his earlier pugnacity but he controlled it.

“He made legal offers. I refused them.”

“Was there animosity between you?”

He was about to deny it when he realized that his previous attitude would make any denial preposterous. “Yes, some,” he admitted, “but I had no reason to kill him.”

Cataldo continued to question him but when it was clear that he was not going to get any further useful information, he thanked Dorigo politely and we left.

In the car going back to town, Francesca said, “Thanks, Carlo. I’m glad we don’t have to buy him a new airplane.”