The Malaspiga Exit (20 page)

The bell rang at ten forty-five. In reply to her question through the door, a man said, ‘FBI, Mrs Nathan. We've got a message from your husband.' There were two of them; medium height, lightweight suits, soft hats which they didn't remove. She looked at them in turn.

‘Jim? Has anything happened to Jim …'

One of them closed the front door, and the second one said quietly, ‘Now don't be alarmed, Mrs. Nathan,' before he grabbed her round the shoulders and slapped adhesive tape across her mouth. He was very strong, and her resistance was pathetic; she kicked and flailed while he pulled her into the bedroom and threw her on the bed. He sat on her legs and held her down. The other man had a leather wallet open on the dressing table; Marie's eyes followed him, and behind the stifling tape she tried to scream and scream as she saw the hypodermic. They dragged her arm out and the second man tied a rubber band around it to raise a vein. They held her for a moment or two until it was ready. Then he put the needle in. She gave a violent jerk, and the man holding her down laughed. ‘Baby,' he said, ‘you're going to love it.' He got up and they looked down at her. She didn't try to move; she lay as if she were dead. Her eyes were closed and tears were creeping under the lids and running down her face. The man who had injected her reached down and pulled off the tape from her mouth. He packed up his hypodermic and put the wallet away.

‘I guess it's hit her already,' he said. ‘Let's get the hell out of here.' Somewhere in her mind she heard them go. The slam of the front door registered.

She crawled up on the bed; the sensation was familiar, terrifying in its intensity. Jim. She heard her own voice, a whisper, coming from lips that were raw. She was very thin and the rough handling had bruised her; she didn't feel anything. Jim. She had to get to him—she had to get help. She fought the inertia as far as the front door. When she got it open and started down the short stair to the street she had forgotten where she was going and why.

Lars Svenson arrived in Rome at one o'clock in the morning Italian time. He enjoyed flying, although long journeys bored him, but he had found a congenial companion in the next seat, a director of a textile firm who was also going to Rome, and since it was early by their time clock, they joined up and went to a night club. Svenson was due to take the route via Pisa, and then on to Florence by car. He had cabled his time of arrival, and would confirm by telephone the following morning. Taylor's message nagged at him.

The agent would be a woman with the name of Katharine. He spent an amusing but very expensive evening at the night club, and woke ten hours later in his hotel with an acid champagne hangover and a vague idea of how he had got there. His call to the Villa Malaspiga was frustrating even by Italian telephonic standards. The phone was answered by a servant who didn't understand his accent and kept repeating that the Duke was not at home. It was some time before Svenson could persuade him to tell him where he had gone.

They were all at the Castle. He could telephone to them there. Svenson didn't need the number. He had been to the Castle twice before, and he didn't look forward to another visit. He liked his comforts, and the inspection of furniture and sculpture had been accompanied by an invitation to stay the night.

He ordered an enormous meal, a combined breakfast and lunch, which the hotel provided after a considerable delay, and then began the difficult assault on the Tuscan telephone exchange at Massa, through which calls were passed to the town and the Castle at Malaspiga. Through a storm of crackling and a fade-out on the line he heard that the Duke and his party had gone out. A voice suggested that he ring before dinner. With no hope of reaching anyone for another three hours, Svenson went out into the evening sunshine of Rome.

Katharine woke early; her room was on the first floor overlooking the range of the Appian Alps at the rear of the Castle. The mountains were snow-white in the morning sunshine; jagged peaks reached six thousand feet into the blue sky, their summits hidden by clouds. There was a grandeur about mountains which had always appealed to her, but the dazzling range at Malaspiga was cold and dangerous, glittering with the sheen of the famous Carrara marble. Michelangelo himself had come to the marble mountains to choose the materials for his greatest works. Below them the countryside was green, swollen with hills; the Castle was on the top above the little town, a monument to the arrogance and power of the family that had built it. Whoever held Malaspiga was master of the plain and the Versilia, that narrow strip of land running parallel to the sea. The air was very clear; when she opened the window it was cold and she shivered. They were much higher up than appearances suggested. She had slept unevenly, woken by ugly dreams; she couldn't forget that hurried whisper as she left the dining room. ‘Be very careful.' The old Prince, with his mania for hats, was certainly eccentric but, in his own words, not nearly the fool he was supposed to be. ‘I like you.' She believed that too; the little attentions she had paid him had been appreciated. And he had tried to warn her, even as her cousin stepped towards her, and took her by the hand. After dinner they took coffee in the small saloon; she had avoided Alessandro and managed not to sit near him. She had been aware of the young Duchess watching her with a hatred that couldn't be concealed, and of Driver, hovering between them, trying to distract Francesca's attention. At one moment he had come up to Katharine on the pretext of lighting a cigarette, and whispered to her.

‘If you want to go back to Florence tomorrow, I'll drive you.'

‘Thanks,' Katharine had murmured back. ‘I'll be all right.'

‘I wasn't thinking of you,' he had answered. ‘He had no right to bring you here.' He had turned away, and she found the Duke looking down at her, smiling. She wondered whether he had heard. When she went upstairs she turned the key in her bedroom door. There had been a look on Alessandro's face that made her fear she might wake to find him in her room.

She had listened very carefully to all the conversation, noting the names of the servants, hoping to hear that single clue left behind by Firelli. Angelo. It was such a common Italian name, but finding out about it had caused his death. She had heard nothing. To her surprise she found a modern bathroom attached to her room. The bedroom was furnished with a seventeenth-century walnut bed, massive chests and a ceiling-high cupboard, its doors painted with the coat of arms. A mirror in a gilt Florentine frame showed her the reflection of a woman in a white dressing gown who looked like a ghost in the dark background. She didn't want breakfast, and nobody had mentioned any plan for the morning. She dressed in trousers and a silk shirt, and went downstairs. She found Francesca waiting in the hallway, dressed in sober navy blue with a hat framing a face that was even paler and more expressionless than the day before. She glanced at Katharine.

‘We are going to Mass,' she said. ‘I think it would be better if you wore a skirt. They're very old-fashioned here.'

‘That won't be necessary, as I'm not going,' Katharine said. ‘I don't go to church any more.'

‘I see.' The Duchess turned away and picked up her gloves and a missal. ‘Sandro won't be pleased. He likes the family to go.'

‘I'm sorry about that,' she said, ‘but he'll just have to excuse me.'

‘And what will I have to excuse you?' He had come up behind them; he moved very quietly. He came to Katharine and put a hand on her shoulder. He bent down and touched her cheek with his lips.

‘I hope you slept well,' he said. ‘You looked tired last night.'

‘Your cousin doesn't want to come to Mass,' his wife said.

‘I'd rather not,' Katharine said to him. She was prepared for a struggle of wills. He dominated the women in his family so completely that he wouldn't expect anyone to say no to him. ‘I haven't been for years. I'd feel a terrible hypocrite.'

‘Then there's no problem,' he said quietly. ‘You shall do exactly as you like. John isn't a Catholic, but he comes with us. He can go this morning and I shall stay and keep you company.'

‘If you're staying at home, then why can't I?' Francesca spoke suddenly. There was a flush on her cheeks like two bright smudges of rouge. ‘You make me go when you know how I feel about it!'

‘I know all about your feelings,' the Duke said. ‘But you are my wife and you cannot parade your atheism to the town. My mother has never missed Mass in sixty years.'

‘Good morning.' They turned as John Driver came up to them. He glanced from Alessandro to Francesca, and his smile grew tight. He stepped near to her.

‘I'm coming to Mass with you; is everybody ready?'

‘Katharine and I are staying behind,' Malaspiga said. ‘Would you go and call Mama and Uncle Alfredo?' There was no mistake about his tone. She saw the look of hatred that crossed over Driver's face before he turned to do as he was told. ‘We'll see you off,' the Duke said, as they assembled in the hall. The old Duchess looked frail and exquisite in misty blue. The Uncle seemed glum and abstracted. He wore a simple panama hat and carried a cloth cap in his right hand. The old Duchess gave Katharine a smile and kissed her hand to her as they drove away. For a moment she and the Duke stood side by side in the courtyard. The sun was hot and high even at this early hour; she shielded her eyes against it.

‘You shouldn't have stayed with me,' Katharine said. ‘You're making it so obvious. It's upsetting your wife terribly.' Suddenly something broke the restraint she had put on herself. She swung on him. ‘How could you be so cruel to her! I shouldn't have come here!'

‘You asked me to bring you,' he said. For a moment, blinded by an emotion that was struggling to evade control. Katharine had forgotten that. Forgotten why … ‘And I'm not cruel to Francesca. In Italy it is the custom for the women of the family to go to Mass. On all important feasts and many Sundays I go with them. If Francesca stays away it causes scandal. She knows that as well as I do.'

He took her arm and she stiffened. ‘Don't be angry. Let's enjoy our morning together. There are some lovely walks, if you'd enjoy that.'

She didn't want to walk. She didn't want to go through the silver-grey olive groves and climb the terraced hills with him beside her, knowing that in some secret place they would stop and he would try to take her in his arms. She couldn't be free of the sweet air and the blue skies; they were part of the heritage which was fighting for her recognition, as deadly as the desire which flowed from him, drawing her like a magnetic force. She turned to face him, forcing herself to smile.

‘I don't feel like going outside,' she said. ‘Why don't you show me the antiques? I'd love to see this famous poudreuse you've discovered.'

‘Of course,' he said. ‘If it would amuse you. I'd like to look at it again myself. It was a fantastic find.'

The coolness inside the Castle made her shiver after the heat outside. If they were going to the store-room she would need the marker. He gave her the excuse to get it. ‘You're cold,' he said. In a man so ruthless, his solicitude for her was almost frightening. ‘Go and put on something warm. You'll catch a chill.' She turned, grateful for the excuse, and fled upstairs to her room. She put on a long cardigan and hid the little marker in the pocket. Alessandro was standing exactly where she had left him, his hands in his pockets watching the stairs for her return. They crossed the entrance hall, proceeding to the left and through a low stone archway which had once been closed by a door, into a long vaulted passage, its walls lined with suits of armour, weapons arranged in geometric patterns above. Some of the workmanship was so fine that she paused. Chased in gold and silver, the empty shells that had protected the Malaspigas in the wars of long ago and glittered on the jousting field, stood like hollow sentinels along their way. He told her names of those who had worn them and the battles which were part of Italian history. Florence against its old enemy Pisa, whom it finally subdued, against intractable Lucca which was never conquered, quarrels with Rome, with Venice, whose power was threatening the might of the Medicis. Their voices echoed; her questions, his answers. There was something frightening about armour, with its suggestion of a vacant body, something sinister in the closed visors and the grotesque shapes made for the human head.

‘After the war,' Alessandro said, ‘when the anti-Fascists came here, looting and destroying in the name of liberty, they broke up the armour. It was damaged and scattered; parts of that suit over there, which is from Cellini's workshop and almost unique, were found round the walls outside and some of it was recovered in the town itself. This is a fine collection now. But it took a long time and a lot of money to restore what they had tried so hard to ruin.'

‘So the creditors never got any of these?'

‘They weren't thought to be of any value,' he said. ‘Only now, when art is reaching such an investment peak—now money couldn't buy that suit of Cellini's or many of the others. Come through here. This is the Banqueting Hall. All the best things are in the rooms upstairs. We're living in what used to be the old servants' quarters. I had them all modernized after I married Francesca. Look at the tapestries—there's nothing better in the Uffizi.'

The Hall was a staggering size, the stone-flagged floor covered by a green carpet, scrolled with crimson and black, the arms of the Malaspigas woven into a ten-foot centrepiece. A huge refectory table ran down the centre of the room, flanked by twenty-four superb gilded Florentine chairs, upholstered in faded crimson velvet, with the wreath and the spiked ear of corn embroidered in gold thread on their backs. But splendid and rich as the furniture was, imposing by size alone, the tapestries were indeed the principal treasures. Katharine, remembering the afternoon spent in the Uffizi, compared them with the priceless series depicting scenes from the court of Catherine de Medici, and couldn't disagree with the Duke. These were a series, the seasons, each twenty feet high by sixteen feet long, the colours as true and brilliant as when they had come from the looms. Pure gold and silver thread was woven into the designs of beasts and flowers, birds and foliage, with an allegorical group symbolizing the four seasons in the centre, and the arms of the family woven at the top. They were not the familiar heraldic device.