The Villa in Italy: Escape to the Italian sun with this captivating, page-turning mystery

Short, stocky Mr Ferguson was altogether a different kind of lawyer from the grim-visaged Mr Jarvis. No grey striped trousers and black jacket for Mr Ferguson. He wore a crumpled grey suit that had seen better days, favoured loud ties and, Jessica was sure, never wore a bowler hat.

‘A foxy man,’ Jessica said. ‘But very clear. There’s no such thing as divorce by consent, although they did try for reform after the war, so he told me. The politicians wouldn’t have it. Too risky for the stability of family life. So there have to be grounds.’

‘Such as adultery.’

‘Or mental cruelty or intolerable conduct—actually, isn’t that the adultery bit? Or insanity.’

‘You’ve said that Richie is crazy.’

‘He is, but no judge would accept that for a moment. Then there’s desertion.’

‘Well, you’ve deserted him.’

‘That doesn’t count, not if he doesn’t want to bring an action. Which he doesn’t.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Rape, sodomy, bestiality.’ Jessica laughed. ‘Can you imagine stuffy old Jarvis saying those words in front of me?’

‘Has Richie been unfaithful?’ said Delia.

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’ve got grounds.’

‘Not grounds I can use.’

Jessica had refused to give any details to Mr Ferguson. ‘They say, never lie to your lawyer or your accountant,’ he said, giving her a shrewd look.

‘I’m not lying. I’m simply telling you that, yes, he has committed adultery, and no, I can’t cite the other person.’

‘Pity. Of course, any case you brought, especially if it were contested, would be headline news. So if there’s someone whose name you don’t want to see dragged through the pages of the gutter press…’

‘Richie knows I won’t bring the other woman into it,’ Jessica said to Delia. ‘So he’s sitting pretty. And I get all the opprobrium for walking out on him, and he preserves a hurt and dignified silence.’ She fiddled with a thread on her glove. ‘Oh, why did I marry him? Theo says…’ She gave Delia a swift look and changed the subject. ‘Heavenly countryside.’

SIX

The newsroom at the Sketch was a blaze of lights on a dark morning, and a hive of activity and noise, with phones ringing, messenger boys running in and out, and people having shouted conversations with one another across the room.

‘Mr Slattery,’ said a brassy blonde in a tight skirt, as the swing doors opened and Giles Slattery came in. ‘Telephone message. Your bird’s flown the coop.’

‘Mrs Meldon?’

‘Yes.’

Giles Slattery swore.

The blonde, who had heard much worse, took no notice. ‘Her char says she’s gone to the country, to her family in Yorkshire. Jim’s checking that end.’

‘Tell Jim to see what he can find out, but my bet is that she hasn’t gone home. Doesn’t get on too well with Mummy and Daddy right now; they adore Richie Meldon and are very angry with her.’

‘The Meldons are in Scotland,’ called out a lissome young man, who was perched on a window sill and twirling a pencil in his fingers. ‘Staying with those rich cousins of theirs, the Lander-Husseys. There are a few lines about it in William Hickey’s column this morning.’

Giles Slattery hooked his mac on the hatstand and tossed his trilby on to a dusty head of Karl Marx that some office wag had placed on top of a filing cabinet. He sat down and drummed his fingers on the desk.

Where could she have gone? he said to himself. His mouth screwed up at one side as he thought. ‘Put Sam on to checking the ferries. Since she’s driving, she could be anywhere, but I have a hunch she’s heading abroad. Easier for her to hide out on the Continent, out of reach of hubby and the press, that’s what she’ll think. Well, she thinks wrong.’

Slattery rammed one of his thin cigars into his mouth. He struck a match and lit it, then shook out the match and dropped it on the floor.

‘Tell Sam to get on to that airstrip in Kent, what’s it called? Lydd. You can fly your car over to France from there, if you’ve got the money. She’ll have gone to Paris; these bloody women escaping from their husbands always head for Paris. God damn the woman for slipping through our fingers. And get me Mr Meldon on the phone.’

‘Is he back in the country?’

‘How the hell should I know? Just get him, okay?’

SEVEN

Delia drove on in silence, the name Theo sounding in her ears. Theo, Theo. His name still gave her heart a jolt. Theo, Jessica’s older brother, the love of her life, now married to her sister, Felicity.

‘So you haven’t told Theo you’re off to Italy?’ she said.

‘Absolutely not, he’d pass it on to Richie in a flash, don’t you think?’

‘I’m sure he wouldn’t.’ Delia couldn’t keep the indignation out of her voice. ‘You malign him.’

‘No, you idolise him. For goodness’ sake, Delia, surely you’re over him now? He and Felicity have been married for more than two years.’

‘Of course I’m over him,’ Delia lied.

They drove the next few miles in silence. Then Jessica asked, ‘Where are we going in Paris?’

‘I thought we’d go to the hotel I usually stay in. It’s on the left bank, not smart or opulent, but clean and comfortable, with a little courtyard where one can sit out and have breakfast, if the weather’s kind.’

The weather in Paris was kind. For the first time in weeks, Delia felt the tightness in her chest relax. She relished the green bursting out on the trees, the warm spring sunshine, and envied the young lovers who strolled, arms round each other, along the banks of the Seine. She and Jessica walked over the Pont Neuf, and stopped to watch the barges passing beneath them, waving to a girl sitting on the roof of one of them, and then they walked along the quais, passing artists at their easels, a girl sitting with her back against the wall, a typewriter on her knees, a group of boys fishing.

Delia knew Paris much better than Jessica, and they spent two blissful days exploring, shopping and eating.

‘You’ve no idea how wonderful it is not to be constantly avoiding reporters,’ Jessica said, after another delicious meal.

‘We should drink a toast to Beatrice Malaspina, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.’

‘I just hope they won’t trace me.’

‘Madame Doisneau is holding on to the forms we filled in until the day we leave; she says she has no time for the flics. Besides, the reporters will be prowling around your parents’ place.’

‘Yes, but they’ll ask questions in the village, and someone’s bound to tell them that Mummy and Daddy are away, and that I’m not there either.’

‘All that takes time, so while the going’s good, just don’t think about it. Now, if I’m going to be on time for my appointment with the French lawyer that Mr Winthrop told me to see, I’d better get going.’

The French lawyer turned out to be a Gallic equivalent of Mr Winthrop, dry and lean in a dark suit, but he did unbend enough to tell Delia that she would be joined at the Villa Dante by three other people named in Beatrice Malaspina’s will. ‘If they agree to make the journey,’ he added.

‘He wouldn’t tell me anything else about them. Clams, all these family lawyers, whatever nationality they are, let’s just hope the Italians have more to say,’ she said to Jessica afterwards.

‘So you haven’t found out anything more about Beatrice Malaspina?’

‘Nope, nor about the Villa Dante. You do realise that it might turn out to be a boarding house, and Beatrice Malaspina some old dink who took in English guests?’

‘It could be. Or a house in an Italian suburb.’

‘He showed me where it is on a map. It’s near a small town called San Silvestro. Historic and picturesque, he said, but I don’t know if he meant the villa or the town.’

‘And no details of your fellow legatees?’

‘None. I did ask when they’d be arriving at the Villa Dante, but he just said that we all had to be there by the end of the month.’

‘Which gives us plenty of time to enjoy a few more days in Paris,’ said Jessica happily. ‘Let’s go back to that shop where we saw those heavenly silk pyjamas.’

‘And aren’t you going to buy some new summer clothes? It could be warm in Italy.’

Jessica was surprised at that. ‘Isn’t it always warm in Italy?’

‘No,’ said Delia. ‘I remember singing in Florence one March, I’ve never been so cold, and there were six inches of snow on the ground; people laughed at my surprise and said that the Italian winter is Italy’s best kept secret. On the other hand, I’ve baked in April in Milan, so there’s no telling.’

‘I packed a few summer frocks and a sundress and a pair of shorts and bathing things, so that will do me if it’s warm.’

They were sitting outside a café near Notre Dame, enjoying an aperitif before deciding where to have dinner. The city was emerging from dusk into the twinkling lights of evening. They watched the stream of people walking past: a man with a parcel dangling from his finger, tied in a neat loop, a woman with a doll-like child tripping along beside her, a pair of highheeled ladies of the night, little fur collars making a frame for their dramatically made-up faces, an officer whose eyes flickered over them as he slowed for a moment, hesitating, before he strode on; a young couple who could hardly be out of their teens walking with her arm wrapped around his waist while he held her close to him with a protective arm over her shoulders and her other hand in his.

‘I like her hairdo,’ Delia was saying, but Jessica wasn’t listening. She had stiffened, her eyes focused on a figure lounging against a lamp post.

‘Giles Slattery,’ she breathed. ‘Over there, in that mac he always wears, I’d know him anywhere.’

‘You’re imagining it,’ Delia said. ‘Beasties under the bed, that’s all. Lots of men wear those macs.’

Jessica wasn’t imagining anything. Her mind might play tricks on her; she might have caught sight of a stranger in a mac, but no, she was sure it was Slattery; the angle of his hat, his posture, the relaxed stance of a man accustomed to standing and waiting and watching—all the details were horribly familiar. She dragged Delia inside the café and stood by the window, peering out over the letters painted on the glass.

‘There he is, leaning against that cast-iron lamp post, just lighting one of those ghastly thin cigars he always has dangling from his mouth.’

Delia was at her shoulder, and saw his face illuminated for a moment by the match. ‘God, you’re right.’

‘No question about it. Do you think he knows where we’re staying?’

‘Bound to. He must have followed us when we came out of the hotel, otherwise how would he know we were here at this café? Quick, there must be another way out. Let’s pay and slip out through the back.’

Which they did, into a noisome alley, with refuse piled against the wall and an unpleasant film on the cobbles underfoot.

‘You get the car, and wait for me round the corner from the hotel,’ Delia said, as they tumbled out of the taxi which had miraculously been drawn up at the end of the alleyway. ‘I’ll cram everything into the suitcases and settle up with Madame.’

Delia shot through the door of the hotel as Jessica called out, ‘And why not tell her we’re going to Austria or Germany? To put Slattery off the scent.’

EIGHT

‘Mr Grimond wants to see you right away, Mr Bryant,’ said the secretary in the outer office. ‘The moment you got in, he said.’

‘Have I time for my tea?’ Mr Bryant said, eyeing the cup on his desk, which had a saucer balanced on top, and a custard cream biscuit beside it.

‘At your peril. He’s on the warpath.’

‘Better get it over with, I suppose,’ said the youthful Mr Bryant with a sigh.

Mr Grimond’s office was entirely without colour. Situated on the second floor of a red-brick building in Queen Anne’s Gate, it overlooked St James’s Park, or would have done if its occupant hadn’t chosen to shut out the view with two dingy blinds. A square of grey carpet, of precisely the right size for his civil service rank, was laid on the floor, and on it was placed a dark wooden desk with a scratched leather top, strewn with buff files. Mr Grimond matched the sobriety of his room with his salt and pepper hair, faded tweed suit and brown tie. He sat on a wooden revolving chair that squeaked dismally every time he moved.

‘You wanted to see me?’ Mr Bryant said.

Grimond looked up from his file. ‘Got in at last, have you? Yes. A man’s gone missing. One George Helsinger. Dr Helsinger. Alice has asked for his file. Read it, and then catch the next train to Cambridge.’

‘Cambridge?’

‘Cambridge. Cold market town on the edge of the fens.’

‘I know Cambridge. I was at university there. But why do I have to go to Cambridge?’

‘Because the man who’s gone missing is one of their boffins.’

‘Oh, dear. Is he important?’

‘Would I be going to this much trouble if he weren’t? He’s one of our top men. An atom scientist. Worked on the A bomb at Los Alamos, nothing he doesn’t know. And I bet my last ten-bob note he’s halfway to Moscow by now.’

‘In which case, why am I going to Cambridge?’

‘To make enquiries. Talk to his colleagues, his landlady, find out what he’s been working on, has he been moody, what are his political views, as if I didn’t know. He’ll be a Red, like all the rest of them.’

‘When was he reported missing?’

‘Yesterday, after I noticed that he was down as having been granted a sabbatical. Six months’ leave of absence from the laboratory, I ask you, nobody gives us six months off on full pay. I checked to find out where he was spending his time, and it turned out nobody knew. No attachments to any foreign universities—that’s what they often do, apparently, take themselves on a jaunt to America or France or somewhere they can be idle at the taxpayer’s expense. “Time off to think” is all the idiots he works with could come up with.’

‘Do we know if he has actually gone abroad?’

‘Told his landlady he was going to the Continent, and didn’t know when he’d be back. He’s gone all right.’

‘Have we traced him?’

‘Doing it now, checking on the airports and ferries. Trail will have gone cold; he left the day before yesterday. He’s done a flit, defected, no question about it. There’ll be hell to pay on this one, mark my words.’

NINE

Marjorie’s heart lifted as the ancient taxi, reeking of terrible old French cigarettes, rumbled its way across the cobbled streets. Paris was alive; Paris had been reborn; all the harrowing times of Occupation were now only a memory, if a vivid one for someone of Marjorie’s age, who remembered the war and the distress of the fall of France all too well. The houses were still shabby, with peeling paint and crumbling stucco, the roads uneven and pot-holed, the pavements cracked and disorganised; but yet, underneath it all, the vitality of the city was there, unquenched and unmistakable.

And the sun was shining. And she was hungry, very hungry, her hunger sharpened by the shops and stalls they passed, fruit piled high, a little boy walking along with a baguette almost as long as he was tall tucked under his arm, a corner stall with oysters laid out in icy baskets.

The taxi ground to a halt with a screech of uncertain brakes, and the driver heaved himself out and slouched round to let her out and hand her her suitcase.

She recklessly handed over some of her precious francs, including a tip more generous than his surliness warranted, but she was in Paris, and it was spring, and she was, for this moment at least, happy, and the tip earned her an answering smile and even a civil ‘Au revoir, Madame’.

Madame! Yes, she’d been Madame for a long time now. How many years it was since she’d arrived in Paris, an eager seventeen-year-old, definitely a mademoiselle, plunging into a delightful world of cafés and jazz and endless, relentless pursuit of love and pleasure and fun. Paris had been her liberation, but it wasn’t a liberation that had survived her inevitable return to England, to a necessary job, mindnumbingly boring, so boring that she’d found herself using every scrap of time when the supervisor’s eyes weren’t on her to scribble stories that took her out of the dull office and into a headier, richer world of the imagination. Then her second liberation, of finding she could make enough money by her pen, just enough to get by, so that she could give up her job, which she’d left with joy in her heart, swearing to herself that never, no, never again would she work in an office.

A thin woman swathed in grey garments, and with dark, suspicious little eyes, pushed a ledger towards her.

‘Papers,’ she said. ‘Passport. How long are you staying?’

It was all so familiar, the Hotel Belfort, with its tiny entrance hall, the vase of dried flowers, dustier and more shrivelled than ever, sitting on the scruffy counter, the brass bell that gave off only a dull thud when struck, instead of the expected clang. Even Madame Roche didn’t seem to have changed a bit.

‘You don’t remember me, Madame Roche? I used to stay here, before the war.’

Madame’s eyes flew heavenwards. ‘Ah, before the war, that is a long time ago. Who can remember before the war? Everything was different before the war.’

Yes, and I bet you had German lodgers, and fleeced them, just as you’ve always fleeced your clients, Marjorie thought, as she took the large key that Madame held out for her. Why, she wondered, knowing what Madame Roche was like, had she always stayed here when she was in Paris? Familiarity, and she liked the area: the boulangerie on the corner, the little shop that sold tin goods, the kiosk where she bought her daily paper, the old woman selling flowers from a tiny stall. Buckets and buckets of flowers; no doubt the woman and her flowers were long gone.

It was a mistake. This was a mistake. She should have gone straight through; it was madness to break her journey in Paris. If she’d left early in the morning, caught the first boat, gone straight to the lawyer’s office, collected the money, then she could have been on the train to Italy even now, not stirring up old memories that were better forgotten.

Her happy mood was draining away. No, she wasn’t going to look back, she wasn’t going to let any regrets take her back into the glums. Come on, Marjorie, she told herself. Let’s see how much money you’ve got, and then go out and find a restaurant.

She stared at the notes in the envelope, each bundle held in a paperclip, with a white sheet of paper beneath it. French francs, one said, and a much bigger bundle of Italian lire.

Had they made a mistake? Why on earth would they give her that much money?

‘Under the terms of the late Mrs Malaspina’s will, we are directed to defray all necessary expenses for your journey to Italy,’ the grave lawyer in London had told her. ‘We shall give you here in England the maximum you are allowed by government regulations to take out of the country. Obviously, once you are on the other side of the channel, out of the sterling area, such restrictions do not apply, and our colleagues in Paris will ensure that you have enough money to continue on your way to Italy.’

‘But who is Beatrice Malaspina? There must be a mistake. I’ve never heard of her.’

There had been no mistake, the lawyer assured her. Her name, her full name, her address, even her parentage, daughter of Terence Swift, all of it was perfectly correct. The Marjorie Swift that Beatrice Malaspina, the late Beatrice Malaspina, had summoned to Italy was quite definitely her, not some other Marjorie Swift.

She had given up wondering why. Brief fantasies of the white slave trade flashed through her mind, and then she’d laughed at herself. She’d never been the sort to appeal to any kind of white slaver, and now, well past thirty—admit it, nearer forty—skinny and grey after the last few difficult years, she wouldn’t fetch sixpence on any slave market.

A scheme, a touch of spivvery? What would be the point? She had nothing that anyone could swindle her out of. Less than a hundred pounds in the world, and that would be gone by the end of the year, and then, horror of horrors, unless a miracle happened, she would be back once more in the office job she’d sworn never to take again.

Always supposing she could find any such employment. Who would want to employ a woman no longer in the first flush of youth, and a woman moreover who hadn’t had a proper job for more than ten years? The familiar fear flooded over her, but she pulled herself up. A week ago, she had never heard of Beatrice Malaspina; a week ago, she had no more idea of being in Paris than of finding herself on the moon. Where there was a will, perhaps there was an inheritance, although why a total stranger should leave her so much as a Bible was beyond her.

Unconsciously, as she thrust the key into the lock, and fought the warped door, ideas began to creep into her head. Mistaken identity? Clichéd, but then everything was a cliché until you wrote it afresh. Wills? Murders were done for wills. And mystery, the mysterious woman summoning the English spinster.

She put her suitcase on the rickety stand provided for it, took off her coat—once good, now threadbare—and removed her hat. She washed her face and hands in the basin, supplied with a mere trickle of water, but enough for her purpose. Then, in a moment of bravado, she took out a powder compact, and sponged the last few grains on to her cheeks.

That day in Paris brought Marjorie back into the human race, that was how she saw it. The next morning, the memory of a meal such as she hadn’t had for years still in her mouth and in her mind, she woke early, and set off to walk the Paris streets. She stopped for a café au lait and a croissant, the buttery pastry melting in her mouth, a taste so delicious that it almost hurt senses dulled by the last few years of darkness and fear and despair. How could she have thought of leaving it all? Of never again greeting glad day as the sun rose over the Seine, never feeling a taste explode in her mouth, never greedily gulping down coffee, hot and black and bitter.

She walked along the left bank, over the bridges, across the Ile de la Cité. In her mind was the France of Dumas, an untouched world of swords and kings and musketeers, not the rundown shops and streets in front of her eyes. Flaubert would provide a more realistic model, but no, on that day she saw Paris through the eyes of a Romantic, not a realist.

And so the evening brought her, weary, but with an underlying sense of happiness that was so unfamiliar she didn’t trust it, to the Gare de Lyon, to catch the overnight Paris-Lyon-Nice train.

On which the French lawyers had booked her a compartment, a bed in a Wagon Lits carriage; a luxury beyond her imagining. She pinched herself as she sniffed the clean white sheets, jumped guiltily as the conducteur put his head round the door to enquire if she wanted anything, and then made her pillow wet with tears.

Tears for what, she asked herself, as she turned the damp object over and gave it a defiant punch. For the girl she had once been? For the fact that she was, despite her best efforts, still alive? That someone, even someone she knew no more than the man in the moon, had cared enough to leave instructions and money for her to travel in this quite unaccustomed comfort? Tears of relief for being away from her wretched life in England, of gratitude for the exquisite omelette she had eaten at the station before getting on the train, of anger at herself that she should be grateful for such tiny things.

Les petits riens, she told herself as she snuggled luxuriously into her berth. The train seemed to echo the words, petits riens, petits riens. It was the little nothings that made life worth living, in the end.

Then she mocked herself for thinking such nonsense. The petits riens were all very well, but it was the greater things of life that caused all the trouble, and they pushed everything else out of the way, crashing in on one’s dreams and delights, and turning happiness into misery.