Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death (11 page)

But I didn’t want to do this alone, so I decided that I needed to confide in her. “Yes. When he talked to me he said he was headed to bed—he as much as admitted he was getting old and needed his rest. Although of course he could have lied, although from what little I saw of him, I would have guessed he would be more likely to brag about an assignation than to conceal it. I can’t imagine he would decide to take a walk after that. But there’s more to it than that. Did you notice the weird undercurrents in the group every time his name came up? I get the feeling some people weren’t happy to see him here, that they had some kind of history with him. Not a happy one.”

Cynthia nodded. “I know what you mean. I told you earlier that there were rumors about him, when we were in school. That he hit on students. I can’t point to anyone in particular, but there were hints. God, we were such babies then! Nowadays if a professor makes an unwanted move, a student would head straight for the administration to report it. And it would probably be in the paper the next day, or on the morning news. But do you seriously think that someone who, uh, suffered his unwanted attentions over forty years ago would take action now? After all this time?”

I didn’t know what I thought. I’d never been placed in that position, when I was in college, and I couldn’t guess how I might feel about it now, after so many years. Who was I to decide how others would feel? “Cyn, I don’t know. Maybe. The shock of seeing him unexpectedly, in an unfamiliar setting like this, could have set someone off—someone who thought she’d put it all behind her.”

“What do you want to do about it?” Cynthia asked quietly.

I met her gaze. “I’m not sure. Something doesn’t feel right. The police have declared it an accident, so they aren’t going to look any further, or at least I think that was what they said. I can’t blame them—it looks pretty straightforward: he was old, he’d been drinking, he fell. And I’m certainly not going to deliberately mess up this trip for everyone, not after we’ve been looking forward to it for the better part of a year. But just in case, I plan to keep my ears and eyes open.”

“Laura, do you seriously think that one of our classmates came to Italy and murdered the man? Nobody even knew he was coming until after we arrived.”

“I think it’s a possibility that they saw a chance and grabbed it. I will be happy to be proved wrong.”

“And if you can’t prove anything, either way?”

“Then it will go down as an accident, period. By the way, you didn’t happen to take a stroll in the moonlight after I went to sleep, did you?”

A peculiar look flashed across Cynthia’s face before she burst out laughing. “You calling me a suspect, huh?”

“Maybe.” I grinned at her. “I never assume anything. You had opportunity, and all it would take is one push.”

“But I had no motive. I didn’t know the man. I didn’t like the man, from what little I saw of him, then and now. Besides, if you’re going to investigate this, Sherlock, you need a Watson, so you have to trust me.”

“I always thought Watson was kind of thickheaded.”

“I’m the smart Watson. Am I in?”

“Of course.”

“So let’s get ready to go admire more Medici monuments. While we’re driving, while we’re wallowing in art and history, we talk and we listen. Somebody is bound to say something about the professor’s death. Good thing you and I are in different vans—we can listen to two sets of people.”

“Good thinking, Watson.”

Chapter 10

Cynthia had made it sound simple, but I had to ask myself what I thought I was doing. I don’t go by gut reactions or woo-woo “feelings.” I’m an analyst by trade and by choice. But something about the death of Anthony Gilbert troubled me, and I wanted to know why—without making it painfully obvious what I was doing and why I was asking questions.

Point one: He was a charmer, and I distrust charmers from the get-go. Point two: I’d be willing to bet he had directed his charms at some of my classmates gathered here, based on the curious range of responses to his presence. I wasn’t ready to say who, but I’d guess it was more than one of them. More than five? I shuddered at the thought—that would definitely put him in the sleazeball league. Point three: I was angry that he’d somehow insinuated himself into our gathering and then ended up dead. That wasn’t fair. This was supposed to be fun, with a bit of a trip down memory lane—good memories only. He’d screwed that up, although since he was the victim he couldn’t exactly be blamed—but I wanted to blame someone, and that meant his killer, assuming there was one. I made a mental note to check exactly how he came to be invited in the first place. Whose idea was it originally? Had Professor Gilbert said it was Gerry’s?

I wasn’t exactly “doing” anything about it. As I’d told Cynthia, all I wanted to do was watch and listen and see what people had to say. That wouldn’t be evidence of anything, but it might be suggestive. I certainly didn’t want to label any one of the women here a killer, but I had a suspicion that there were a few people who were happy to see the professor dead. I wondered if I should show some of the others the pictures I had taken of the professor’s body, sprawled on the ground, just to watch for their reactions. I’d have to be discreet, of course; otherwise I would come across as ghoulish and insensitive. No, probably a bad idea. I wondered why on earth I had taken those pictures in the first place. Because I’d been planning to photograph the landscape, and somehow captured a body by mistake?

No, Laura—you thought there was something wrong with the whole thing, so you took the pictures just in case …
I made a mental note to off-load them when I had the chance. Did I have any faith in the Italian police? Not necessarily, but I wasn’t about to butt into their investigation—or lack thereof. I had no idea which unit was in charge of murder investigations here, or whether it was regional or even national. In any case, it looked as though they were content to do nothing, and I couldn’t fault them, exactly. Old drunk man falls down hill—not precisely big news. But if anyone came asking, I’d be ready.

It wasn’t clear to me where Cynthia fit. I didn’t really suspect her of killing the professor, but I wasn’t sure if she was taking this seriously or just humoring me. Still, I knew she could keep her mouth shut, and I could use a second pair of eyes and ears. And from what she’d hinted earlier, she knew I was serious.

Up at the parking area in front of the main house—the only place on the property with room enough to accommodate four oversize vehicles—the drivers huddled over maps and printouts and GPS devices, plotting our next move. I climbed into my seat—on the left, behind the driver, Brenda. A couple of the others were already in the van, waiting.

“What an awful thing!” Dorothy said in a hushed voice, clearly relishing the drama. “Poor Professor Gilbert. Although I suppose he went as he might have wished, in the region he so loved.”

I tried not to gag at the saccharine platitude.

“Could it have been a heart attack? Or a stroke?” she went on, with unhealthy glee. “After all, he wasn’t young.”

“He was fifteen years older than we are, tops,” said Ann, throwing cold water on Dorothy’s commentary. “He seemed fit enough.”

I was debating asking the innocuous question “Did you know him?” when Dorothy beat me to it. “I was in his Florentine Poets class one semester. Did any of you ever take any of his classes?”

“Nope,” Ann said promptly. “They sounded kind of sappy to me. I took modern poetry to satisfy the requirements, and contemporary women writers.”

Dorothy was not to be deflected. “Anyone?”

Nobody else had, or at least not that they were willing to admit. I decided to stick my toe in the water. “What was he like as a teacher, Dorothy?”

Her eyes gleamed. “Oh, he was wonderful! He made the poets come alive. I loved to listen to him recite in Italian—it was so mellifluous. Even if you didn’t know Italian, you could hear the soul of the poem, the music of the words. He was something special …” Dorothy trailed off, lost in her misty memories.

Someone behind me snorted. Dorothy turned quickly. “Do you disagree?”

To my surprise, it was Denise who retorted, “Yes, I do. I took a class with him, and it was clear that he was a good-looking guy talking to a room full of impressionable young women. He ate it up. And I heard he did a little more than that.”

Aha, now we were getting to the meat of it.

Our driver, Brenda, climbed into the van and did a quick head count. “Good, everybody’s here. Take this, Denise—you’re navigator.” Brenda handed her a map, plus a printed sheet of instructions. Since the vehicle had a GPS that had worked just fine so far, this was kind of belt and suspenders thinking, but I’d rather we had an idea where we were rather than roaming aimlessly along pretty roads in the Italian countryside.

“Right, Chief,” Denise said. “GPS programmed?”

“Check it,” Brenda snapped back. “Everybody buckled up? Then we’re off!”

We waited while the first couple of vans started making their slow way down the hill and pulled in behind them. We were on our way.

I debated about trying to return to the discussion of the character of the late Professor Gilbert, but then Sharon, sitting next to me, said, “Hey, Laura, there’s a rumor that you found the body?”

How had that gotten out? The only people who knew were Jane, Barbara and Gerry—and Cynthia? And the police, of course. Had someone else been watching?

I decided to stick to the truth. “Yes, I did.”

“Ooh, was it … awful?” Dorothy said in a hushed voice.

“No. He looked peaceful enough, but I wasn’t very near to him.” The police had confirmed that his neck was broken, but I wasn’t going to go into details. Let the other women use their own imaginations.

“The poor, poor man …” Dorothy said softly. I was sure if I turned around to look at her, she would have tears in her eyes. But at the same time, I wasn’t sure if her sentimental reactions suggested any closer sort of relationship, past or present. She’d always been a bit sappy, I recalled.

“Media vita in morte sumus,”
she went on. Show-off.

“Gerry must feel terrible about this—I heard he was the one who invited the professor,” I tossed out. “How did they come to know each other?” I’d heard one version and I wondered if the stories would match up.

“I heard they met in the States,” Ann volunteered.

“I thought it was over here?” Sharon said. “Some local symposium or something.”

“Is Gerry an academic too? I haven’t had much chance to talk with him,” I said. Apart from telling him there was a body in his olive grove.

“I think he used to be. Now mostly he does research and publishes, and manages the property. Maybe he teaches a course now and then, or gives lectures,” Brenda said. She might know, since she had arrived earlier than the rest of us and had possibly spent more time with our hosts.

“How did Jane and Jean come to know Barb and Gerry?” I asked, out of general curiosity.

“Didn’t you know?” Brenda asked. “Jean’s daughter was over here on a junior year abroad and stumbled on the place online. She loved it, and when Jean and Jane started cooking up this trip, she mentioned it. It was available for this week, and when Jean mentioned the Wellesley connection, it was a done deal.”

“Barbara went to Wellesley?” I thought I’d heard that mentioned but I wanted to make sure.

“Yes, but before us,” someone behind me said.

I probably wasn’t going to get any more out of the group without looking obsessive, so I thought I’d let it rest—for now. “So, how many of you have grandkids?”

The topic of grandchildren carried us well until we arrived at Medici villa number whatever. “Poggio a Caiano was purchased in 1473 by Lorenzo the Magnificent, although he did not live to see it completed,” Dorothy intoned, reading from her handout. “His son Giovanni—later Pope Leo X—finished it, and the place was used by the Medici Grand Dukes for quite a while. It includes paintings by Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, and a few artists I’ve never heard of. There used to be twin ramps in the front for horses to ride up and deliver people—they’ve been replaced by staircases. The garden was redesigned in the nineteenth century.”

“Thank you, Dorothy,” Denise said sweetly. “Brenda, pull in on the left, there.”

“Well, I thought somebody might like to know,” Dorothy replied, hurt. It looked to me like tempers were a bit short this morning.

The villa was lovely, and not too crowded. The rooms, with their paintings by artists well known and less known, were magnificent and many—so many that it was easy to get lost. I wandered happily, admiring moldings and wallpaper (later additions) and furniture (ditto) and one amazing bathtub. It was hard to imagine living in a place like this, even with scores of servants. But then, it was hard to imagine being a Medici. My sole accomplishment was asking one of the guards standing in the palatial dining room an actual question in Italian:
Dov’è la cucina?
I’m pretty sure she said it was somewhere below where we were standing, since she pointed down a lot while speaking very quickly, and I was left wondering how the staff ever managed to transport the food from the kitchen to the dining room—or if the Medicis ever even ate food while it was still hot, after having been carried through a half mile of chilly corridors.

I ran into Cynthia somewhere in the maze. “Anything new?” I asked.

“Can’t talk here. I’ll fill you in later.”

Several other classmates drifted in. “Isn’t it glorious?” Cynthia sighed, quickly changing the subject.

“I have to agree,” I said amiably. “Amazing what endless money can buy. Do you think anyone just had fun here? Or were they too busy plotting and scheming?”

“Who cares?” Denise said, coming up behind us. “Just enjoy it.”

I turned to her. “How can you enjoy it when you know how it was paid for?” And that led to a discussion of pure art versus artistic context, and patronage, and where the heck the kitchen in the place was, and we entertained ourselves until it was time to regroup for lunch.

Lunch was held in a restaurant about half a mile away, and we all trekked along the sidewalk like a ragged army regiment. At the restaurant we filled the back room, painted a color somewhere between yellow and cream and ringed with large glass windows overlooking a leafy patio. Each table held eight or ten of us, and the food was served family style. We ate, and ate more, cleaning each plate that appeared. The wine bottles circulated. A woman sitting across the table from me held up a piece of bread and contemplated it seriously. “You know, I don’t think there’s any salt at all in this, and it still tastes great. I wonder how they do that?”