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They were walking through pine trees now, umbrella pines that cast a web of shadows around their feet. The ground was dusty and strewn with pine cones and needles, and a smell of resin lingered in the air. It was startling to come out of the darkness into bright sunlight and find the sea stretched out before them, a shimmering, radiant, turquoise blue under a blue heaven.
Delia stood and gazed, the light almost too much to bear, the beauty and the still perfection catching at her throat. In a tree just behind them, a bird was singing its heart out.
‘Perfect,’ said Jessica with a sigh. ‘A little beach, utterly private. With rocks. Isn’t it quite, quite perfect?’
‘Stone steps going down to the cove,’ said Delia, already on her way down. ‘Bit slippery, so watch your footing.’
She felt drunk with the colours and the light and the beauty of the place. ‘Trees for shelter, rocks to lean against, and this exquisite private place,’ she said. ‘Lucky old Beatrice Malaspina to have lived here. What a pity it’s too early in the year to bathe.’
‘We don’t know how long we’ll be here,’ Jessica pointed out. ‘Don’t Italians take their time about the law, like late trains and so on? The Mediterranean sense of time, or rather non-sense of time. For myself, looking at this, I feel I could stay here for ever.’ She paused. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t want to, not with your music to get back to.’
She perched herself on a rock and rolled up the legs of her trousers before dragging her plimsolls off and walking down to the sea.
‘I’ll worry about work when my chest’s better,’ Delia said. There was no point in fretting over her work; at the very thought of it, she began to cough. ‘Besides, in a house like the Villa Dante, I’d be surprised if there weren’t a piano. I’ve brought some music with me.’
‘It’s chilly,’ Jessica announced, dipping white toes into the tiny lapping waves. ‘About the same as Scarborough in July, though, and I’ve swum in that.’
‘You aren’t going to swim?’
‘I might, if the weather stays warm. Too cold for you, though, with that chest of yours, so don’t go getting any ideas. A paddle is your lot for the time being.’
‘I’ve got stockings on.’ Why hadn’t she put on slacks, like Jessica?
‘No one’s looking.’
True. Delia hitched up her skirt and undid her suspenders. She rolled down her stockings and took them off, laying them carefully on a smooth rock, and went down to the water’s edge.
‘We’ll be all sandy and gritty and we’ve nothing to dry our feet on,’ she said, coming alive as the chill water swirled about her ankles. ‘This is bliss.’
She looked down at her toes, distorted by the clear greenblue water, and wriggled them in the sandy shingle, disturbing a shoal of tiny fish as they fluttered past.
‘It’s odd,’ she said as they sat on a rock and dried their feet with Jessica’s handkerchief, ‘to be staying in a house with no hostess. I feel as though Beatrice Malaspina is going to come sweeping into the dining room, to ask if we slept all right and whether we have everything we need in our rooms.’
‘She’d better not. A ghost would be too much.’
‘I wonder who the house does belong to.’
‘You, perhaps. The mysterious Beatrice M might have left it to you in her will.’
‘Why should she?’
They sat in companionable silence, listening to the birds’ joyful song from the nearby trees, and the mew of gulls out at sea.
Delia lifted her face up to the sun. ‘I can’t believe how warm it is. So much for Benedetta and her shivers. Mind you, the guidebook is very doleful on the subject of Italian weather, which the author says is full of nasty surprises for unwary travellers. He advises warm underwear and thick coats until May, as the weather in most parts of Italy can be surprisingly inclement.’
‘Killjoy.’
‘He sounds like a man after my father’s heart—you know how he mistrusts warmth and sunshine, as leading to lax habits and taking the pep out of the muscles of mind and body. And also, they drink wine in Italy, how shocking!’
‘Felicity drinks. Last time I saw her, she was guzzling cocktails like nobody’s business. I suppose she caught the habit from Theo, he’s a great cocktail man.’
The spell was broken; the mere thought of Theo, the mention of his name, took the pleasure out of the day. Delia stood up. ‘Let’s go back to the house, and sit on the terrace and just do nothing at all.’
‘We could look round the house.’
‘Later. There’s plenty of time. I shall go upstairs to change into a sundress, you find Benedetta and ask what we can sit on. I’ll look up the word for deckchair in the dictionary.’
Benedetta was very doubtful about the deckchairs. It seemed that April was not only a month to go nowhere near the sea; it was also definitely not a month for sitting outside in the sun. Reluctantly, she instructed Pietro to bring out some comfortable chairs. She followed him with armfuls of cushions and several rugs.
‘I think she means us to swathe ourselves in these, like passengers on an Atlantic crossing,’ Delia said, taking a cushion and ignoring the rugs.
Jessica pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead and lay back, letting her mind drift. It was extraordinary how easy it was here just to be, to simply exist, free from the endless round of repetitive, tedious memories of a past she longed to forget, but which refused to go away.
‘The wardrobes in the bedrooms are full of clothes,’ Delia said. ‘Did you notice?’
‘Perhaps Beatrice Malaspina was a dressy woman.’
‘They can’t all be hers, because they aren’t the same size.’
‘Family clothes. Or maybe she had to watch her weight.’
‘She might grow fatter and thinner, but she can hardly have grown or shrunk several inches. Heavenly evening dresses from the thirties, do you remember how glamorous they were?’
‘Oh, yes, and didn’t you long for the time when you could dress every evening? And then, of course, when it was our turn, it was all post-war austerity and clothes rationing.’
‘You’ve some lovely frocks now. That’s what comes of marrying a rich husband.’
Jessica was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘Richie will have had to buy himself some new clothes. I never told you what I did before I left, did I?’
It had surprised her, the visceral rage she felt for Richie at that point. Opening his large wardrobe she had hauled out all twenty-three of the Savile Row suits that were hanging there. She looked at them, lying in a heap on the bed, and then ran downstairs to his study for the large pair of scissors he kept on his desk. She cut two inches off sleeves and hem of every jacket and every pair of trousers. Pleased with her efforts, she made all his shirts short-sleeved, and hacked pieces out of his stack of starched collars.
Getting into her stride, she threw away one of each pair of cufflinks, snipped the strings on his squash and tennis racquets and dented his golf clubs and skates with some hefty bangs of a hammer. More cutting work saw to his fishing rods and driving goggles, and then she carefully removed every photo he possessed of her—not that there were many of them, only the large studio shots in heavy silver frames designed to look good on the baby grand which no one ever played. The pictures and snapshots of them together she dealt with by removing herself from the photos, leaving him gazing at nothing but blank, jagged-edged shapes.
He was beside himself with rage when he discovered the extent of her destructive efforts.
‘Grounds for divorce, don’t you agree?’ she shouted at him down the telephone before slamming the receiver down and then, swiftly, picking it up again to ask the operator how she could change her number. ‘I’ve been getting nuisance calls, you see.’
‘Goodness, you must have been in a temper,’ said Delia. ‘How very unlike you. I wish I’d been there, I can’t imagine you laying into his things like that.’
‘It was surprising, wasn’t it? But I enjoyed doing it. Very Freudian, I dare say. I wonder how he explained the sudden need for new suits to his tailors.’
‘I expect they’ve seen it all before.’
‘I can’t believe I ever lived in that house with Richie. It all seems far away and unreal.’
‘The Villa Dante has a timeless quality,’ Delia said, closing her eyes. ‘As though nothing exists except the present moment.’
TWO (#ulink_fbb06105-30b1-5860-b0cb-10238baecc45)
Which wasn’t, as it turned out, a very long moment, for barely half an hour later, when Delia was just drifting into a pleasant doze of warmth and sunshine and fresh air, and Jessica was well into her book, there were sounds of arrival, of a revving car, of voices: Benedetta’s, Pietro’s, another Italian man and then, unmistakably, people speaking in English.
‘Oh, Lord,’ said Jessica, laying down her book and swinging her legs to the ground. ‘I think your fellow legatees are here.’
Delia didn’t feel like greeting these people clad in a brief green sundress but Jessica, cheerful in the beige shorts she had put on when they came back from the sea, had no such qualms.
The Italian man, who had the slanting eyes and lively figure of a faun from the classical world, announced himself in a flurry of bows, eyeing Jessica’s legs with evident approval, seizing her hand and bending over it, crying out how glad he was to make the acquaintance of Miss Vaughan.
‘No doubt,’ said Jessica. ‘Only that’s not me. I’m Mrs Meldon. This is Miss Vaughan.’
Dark eyes glowing at the sight of Delia’s shapely form. ‘But there is no Mrs Meldon expected,’ he cried. ‘I know nothing of any Mrs Meldon.’
‘I drove here with Miss Vaughan,’ Jessica said. ‘The lawyers in Paris knew I was coming. Didn’t they tell you?’
‘No, the lawyer here, which is me, knows nothing about it; no one tells me anything. However,’ he said, brightening, ‘there is no problem, with the Villa Dante so large, and how pleasant for Dr Helsinger to have such charming feminine company.’
Delia was about to ask the faun what his name was when he recalled his manners, and with profuse apologies announced that he was Dottore Calderini, avvocato, legal adviser to the late Beatrice Malaspina, ‘Such a wonderful lady, such a loss.’
Delia turned her attention to her fellow legatees. A dark woman with a bony face and angular frame, too thin for herself, and a tall balding man with intelligent, tired eyes and those round spectacles that no one wore any more. A don, by the look of him. Probably not the most exciting company in the world, but one of them might turn out to be a mine of information about Beatrice Malaspina and the Villa Dante.
The woman held out her hand. ‘How do you do? I’m Marjorie Swift. This is George Helsinger. Are you here because of the will as well? The lawyers said there were four of us.’
‘Only I’m not one of them,’ said Jessica. ‘Just a friend.’
‘So there’s one more to come,’ said Marjorie, looking round as though she expected another legatee to leap out of a bush.
‘Indeed, indeed, but as to when that will be I cannot tell you,’ cried Dr Calderini. ‘For I do not know when he comes, although it must be before May begins. So I am afraid here you must stay until we know he is coming, until he arrives.’
‘What if he never comes?’ asked Delia.
‘People in wills always come,’ said the lawyer with a sudden air of worldly cynicism. ‘You may take my word for it.’
‘I think,’ said Delia, ‘that Benedetta should show Miss—Mrs?—Miss Swift and Dr Helsinger to their rooms. If they’ve had a long train journey…’
‘Long, but extremely comfortable,’ said Marjorie. ‘And I think first names, don’t you, given the circumstances? I’m Marjorie.’
‘My name’s Delia, and this is Jessica.’
George shook hands with Delia and Jessica. ‘I should be happy if you would call me George.’ In the distance a church bell was tolling a single note, the sound carrying in the still air. ‘The angelus,’ said George.
‘What?’ said Delia.
‘It is a bell rung every day at noon.’
They walked together towards the house and up the flight of shallow stone steps that led to the front door. At the threshold, Dr Calderini paused with a polite Permesso? before stepping inside.
Marjorie and George stood, amazed by the frescoes, exclaiming at the beauty of the marble-floored hall. ‘And do I see a garden beyond?’ said Marjorie.
‘Neglected, now,’ said Delia, ‘but it must have been lovely once. I don’t suppose they’ve had the staff to keep it up, not since the war, not if it’s the same as in England.’
‘Ah, the war,’ said Dr Calderini, who had been conversing in rapid Italian with Benedetta. ‘Everything was lovely before the war.’
Delia doubted it, remembering what she had heard and read about Mussolini and his fascist government, but certainly it would be true as far as gardens and houses went.
‘And what’s this?’ Marjorie said. She was standing in front of a column on which sat a glass box.
‘I didn’t notice that last night,’ said Delia, going to have a look.
‘I thought it was part of the painting, all that perspective and detail that deceives the eye,’ said Jessica.
‘It’s a thumping great ring,’ Delia said.
‘Ah, that is a cardinal’s ring,’ said Dr Calderini. ‘A great treasure—the Signora Malaspina was much attached to it. It belonged to Cardinal Saraceno, who built the villa. Although it has been much altered since his day, naturally. There is a fine portrait of him, also, in the house. It is a poisoner’s ring,’ he added casually. ‘Not the ring of his office.’
‘Poisoner’s ring?’ said Jessica. ‘Belonging to a cardinal?’
‘He was quite a wicked cardinal.’
That would confirm all her father’s long-held prejudices as to the untrustworthiness of any Catholic priest, let alone a cardinal, thought Delia. She laughed. ‘So the house belonged to a prince of the church who poisoned people. I knew the Villa Dante was extraordinary the moment we got here.’
‘You will be very comfortable here,’ said Dr Calderini. ‘People are always happy and comfortable at the Villa Dante, even in these troubled times, and Benedetta will look after you. She is to have help from the town if she needs it. Now, I shall take my leave.’
‘Hang on,’ said Delia. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something? I mean, we want to know why we’re here.’
Dr Calderini turned himself into a tragic mask of regret. ‘So sorry, so sad to have to be disobliging, but Signora Malaspina’s orders were laid down most strictly. I am not at liberty to tell you anything until all four of you are present at the Villa Dante, which will, I am sure, be very soon. Until then, my lips are sealed, I can say nothing. So,’ he finished, bowing and smiling as he headed for the steps, ‘enjoy the hospitality of the villa as Signora Malaspina wanted. You are to make yourselves completely at home. When the fourth man is here, then I will be back, and all will be made clear.’
And with a few parting words for Benedetta, he was gone.
Delia turned to Marjorie. ‘You and Dr Helsinger, I mean George, travelled together? Are you old friends?’
‘We met on the train, I’ve never set eyes on him before.’
‘Did you know Beatrice Malaspina? Can you tell us anything about her?’
‘I never knew her, and I know nothing at all about her; this whole business came as a bolt from the blue. I have no idea who she may have been, and nor, I may say, does George Helsinger; we discovered that in our conversation on the train. Do you mean you don’t know why you are here, either?’
‘Except for the will, no.’
‘Perhaps the mysterious fourth legatee will be able to enlighten us. If he ever arrives. Meanwhile, I’m perfectly amazed to be here, and I intend to make the most of every minute that I’m away from England.’
She spoke with such vehemence that Delia was surprised, but she couldn’t find out any more about her, since Benedetta had appeared and was clucking with impatience to carry off the new arrivals to their rooms.
‘Well,’ said Jessica, as she and Delia sat on the curved stone benches under the frescoes to wait for the others. ‘What do you make of your fellow guests?’
‘It makes me wonder more and more about Beatrice Malaspina,’ said Delia.
‘It’s a pity they had to arrive this morning. Now we shall have to be sociable and make polite conversation. I can’t see that we’re going to have anything in common with either of them.’
‘I think they look quite interesting. George Helsinger—can he be English with a name like that?—has a clever, interesting kind of face. I don’t know what to make of Marjorie. Dreadful clothes and no expression on her face, yet I get the feeling she’s far from dim.’
