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

‘It’s not just that. The whole place is filled with her presence.’

‘You mean photos, and her furniture; she probably had a lot to do with the way the house looks. Unless she employed an interior designer, and none of it reflects her true personality.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ said Marjorie, and snapped her mouth shut.

Neurotic, Delia said inwardly. Neurotic woman on the verge of middle age, with a chip on her shoulder. I don’t see that she could ever have had anything to do with the woman in that portrait, talk about different worlds.

FOUR

They gathered before dinner on the part of the colonnade they had named the fresco terrace, and Delia went in search of drinks. ‘There’ll be wine, but they might have the makings of a cocktail. Beatrice Malaspina looked a cocktaily kind of woman to me,’ Delia said. ‘Where did I put that dictionary?’

She came back triumphant, with Benedetta in tow, bearing a tray of bottles and glasses and a very up-to-date cocktail shaker.

‘No problem,’ said Delia, waving at the array. ‘The magic word, cocktail, and hey presto, Benedetta had this out and ready. The jazz age has a lot to answer for, don’t you think?’

George said he was absolutely no good at mixing cocktails, and he looked hopefully at the others.

‘I’ll do it,’ Marjorie said, adding that she’d worked behind the bar at an hotel at one time. Let them despise her; what did she care?

But Delia was full of admiration and interest. ‘Lucky you. I always wanted to do that,’ she said. ‘How come?’

‘My cousin was manager of a big hotel on the south coast. I was staying down there one summer and all the staff left, first one thing and then another. So the barman was rushed off his feet. He showed me what to do, and I got quite good at it.’

Marjorie was mixing the contents of the bottles and adding ice and a soupçon of this and that in a most professional way as she spoke. A final brisk flourish of the shaker, and she poured drinks for all of them.

‘Jolly good,’ said Delia. ‘I vote we appoint you cocktail-maker-in-chief while we’re here. And you can show me how you do it. I wish they taught you really useful stuff like that at school, instead of wanting you to arrange flowers and manage household accounts.’

‘We didn’t do those things at my school,’ said Marjorie. ‘I expect it was a very different kind of school from yours. I went to the local girls’ secondary.’

‘You probably learnt more than I did,’ said Delia cheerfully. ‘I bet you can spell, which is more than Jessica can, let me tell you. She’s a rotten speller.’

‘Was yours a boarding school?’ Marjorie asked, emboldened by her cocktail.

‘Yes. Northern and bleak. Jessica was there, too; that’s where we became friends. It was simply ghastly.’

George was sipping at his cocktail. ‘Don’t you like it?’ Marjorie asked. ‘Can I mix you something different?’

‘On the contrary, I am savouring it. It is an alchemy that you make among the bottles, I think. Also, I am interested in hearing about schools. I wasn’t educated in England, you see.’

‘I thought you weren’t English,’ said Marjorie.

‘I was brought up in Denmark. My mother is Danish. But I was educated abroad, at a Catholic school.’

‘Are you Catholic?’ Marjorie said. ‘I thought scientists were obliged to be atheists.’

‘You can be brought up a Catholic and then give it up as soon as you’re grown up,’ Delia said. ‘I was brought up a Methodist, but nothing would get me into a church now.’

‘The best thing to be is C of E, like me,’ Jessica said. ‘It means you can believe or not believe exactly what you want. And how odd that we should talk about religion, have you noticed that English people never do?’

Delia laughed. ‘My mother told me that I shouldn’t talk about feet, death or religion at the dinner table.’

George raised his eyebrows. ‘What an extraordinary collection of forbidden topics. How very English. But why ever should you wish to talk about feet at the dinner table?’

‘You can talk about horses’ feet—hooves, I should say,’ said Jessica. ‘Any talk of animals is fine. What a dull lot we are.’

‘We can talk about religion here because it’s Italy,’ Marjorie said.

How obvious it was. Italy was a country steeped in religion. Not that it probably had many more truly religious people than anywhere else in Europe, yet religion was all around them. ‘The Vatican and the pope and so on, and all the paintings. One associates Italy with religion. And then, when we’re abroad and the sun’s shining, all kinds of things come out of the woodwork, as it were. Don’t you think so?’

Her words were greeted with silence, as the others thought about it.

‘Our hostess had connections with the Vatican,’ Marjorie went on.

‘How do you know?’ said Jessica.

‘There are photographs of three different popes.’

‘It doesn’t mean she ever met them.’

‘They’re signed, with her name on them.’

‘You call her our hostess as though she were still here.’

‘I think of her like that.’

‘Are there any cardinals?’ said Delia. ‘I dislike clergymen on principle, but I adore paintings of cardinals, as long as they’re kitted out in those gorgeous robes. They always seem to be more theatrical than ecclesiastical.’

‘As it happens, there are several paintings of cardinals,’ George said. ‘I noticed them particularly, even though Benedetta was rushing us along on her tour of the rest of the house. There is one magnificent one in the drawing room, a portrait painted in profile, did you not notice it? The cardinal is touching a large gold ring which he wears on his smallest finger; I believe it is the same ring that is displayed in the glass case in the entrance hall. His picture faces the one of Beatrice Malaspina. I didn’t notice it at first because her portrait is so striking. Then there are others that hang in the passageway beyond the dining room. I, too, very much like paintings of cardinals. These are not very respectful of the cardinals’ dignity, however, there is one where he is striding along, his cloak swirling about his feet, and peeping out from underneath are little devils. Perhaps Beatrice Malaspina was not such a devoted Catholic as the pope photographs might suggest.’

‘Private and public,’ said Marjorie. ‘Quite different, of course. The outward forms and inward truth.’

George gave her a searching look, then turned to Delia. ‘I shall show you the cardinals, Delia, after dinner, to which, I have to say, I am looking forward; with such delicious smells coming from the kitchen I find I am hungry. It seems odd that you and I only arrived here this morning, Marjorie, it feels as though we have been here much longer than that.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Delia. ‘It’s our first day, really, for last night with that sandy gale we hardly knew where we were. It’s a very welcoming sort of house, I think.’

Jessica laughed. ‘Not like your pa’s house, then.’ She explained to the others, ‘Delia’s father’s house is about the same size as the Villa Dante, but Lord, what a difference!’

‘It is bleak,’ said Delia. ‘It’s just right for my father, though. He has a bleak nature, so he and the house suit one another.’

‘What does your father do?’ George asked, and then apologised. ‘How rude of me, to be so inquisitive, and to ask personal questions.’

Delia shrugged. ‘I don’t mind questions. It’s probably the same thing in the air that made us talk about religion. My father’s in manufacturing.’

Not just rich landed gentry then. More a grinder of the faces of the poor, and Marjorie’s mind was off at the mill, toiling hands, in clogs and shawls, mean, sooty streets, brass bands…Factories, full of dangerous machinery…Not so much of a toff as all that, then, thought Marjorie. Bet her mother is, though. Delia didn’t behave like the daughter of parents who’d climbed up from the gutter. He’d probably inherited some vast concern from his father; rich as anything, those northerners who made beer or mustard or sauces. Manufacturing what? There was a caginess there, as though Delia didn’t care to say exactly what he manufactured. Well, Marjorie didn’t mind being thought rude.

‘What does he manufacture?’ she asked. ‘Don’t tell me he’s an armament king, like in Bernard Shaw.’

‘Not at all,’ said Delia. ‘Textiles. The closest he came to anything to do with the war was making parachute silk.’

Jessica jumped in. ‘Are there any armament kings left? Aren’t they obsolete now, with our new blow-the-world-to-bits bombs?’

Whatever had Jessica said, to cause such a look of pain on George’s face? Marjorie looked at him intently. ‘I know what kind of scientist you are. You’re an atom scientist,’ she said.

He looked taken aback. ‘I’m a physicist…yes, you could call me an atom scientist. It is what the press like to call us. My field is isotopes.’

Isotopes? Did isotopes have anything to do with making the bomb? Probably. Then he was that kind of atom scientist. And one with a conscience by the look of it, poor man. She’d often wished she had a gift for science, a clear, cerebral world, so much easier, surely, than her own field, she’d always thought. Now, looking at George, she realised that was a facile judgement. Haunted; he was a haunted man.

A gong sounded, making them all jump. Then Benedetta’s chivvying voice, the tone unmistakable, even if the words meant little to them.

‘Dinner, I think,’ said George, attempting a smile.

FIVE

From the Villa Dante, it was possible to see the small town of San Silvestro, its tiled rooftops sprawling beyond ancient walls that hugged the lines of the hillside. Towering above the low houses were the remains of a fortress, huge and grim.

‘Do let’s go and see what it’s like,’ Delia said to Jessica when they came down to breakfast.

‘All right. Shall we go in the car, or walk?’

‘Oh, walk. I want to be on the move.’

‘Yes, but is the exercise going to make your cough worse?’

‘I’m not coughing so much, I’ll be fine.’

‘Liar. I heard you hacking away during the night.’

Delia was secretly relieved when Marjorie and George refused her invitation to join them on their walk, an invitation that had caused Jessica to make faces of dismay at her.

‘I’d planned to explore the gardens today,’ Marjorie said. ‘What about you, George?’

George hesitated, and Delia had the strong feeling that what he wanted was to be on his own. ‘I, too, should like to see around the gardens,’ he said politely.

It was nearly midday by the time they set out. They had lingered over breakfast, and then Delia had wanted to iron her skirt, creased after its time in her suitcase. The iron was electric but erratic, and then it had seemed a pity to go without joining the others for more coffee, brought out on to the terrace by a reluctant Benedetta, who clearly considered that mid-morning coffee was not good for the system.

It was tough walking at first, along the stony track that led to the road. ‘I shouldn’t have worn sandals,’ said Delia ruefully, as she stopped for the third time to shake a sharp stone out of her shoe. ‘Look at my toes, white with dust.’ She flexed her foot, and leant down to blow the dust off her toenails, which were painted a brilliant scarlet shade. She was a colourful figure, in a green swirling skirt and a red top, especially beside Jessica who wore white Capri pants and a cream blouse.

Jessica undid the buttons at her wrists and pushed back her sleeves. ‘It may only be April, and it may be about to snow, or whatever you warned the weather did in Italy, but I find it hot.’

‘It is warm, and just smell the air. Pine and sea and I don’t know what else, but it’s heavenly. And listen, I hear a cuckoo.’

‘The herald of spring.’

‘Spring is already here, so it isn’t a herald, more a celebrant, wouldn’t you say?’

As they rounded a bend, the town came into view again, silhouetted against the cloudless sky.

‘Fairyland,’ said Delia. ‘Just like in a painting. I always thought those Italian painters made up their landscapes, but here it is, all around us.’

They walked on through a grove of olives, and out on to the road, which had a pitted surface that was scarcely better than the track. An aged woman in black, bent double, and leading a laden donkey, passed them the other way, her wrinkled face breaking into a toothless smile as Delia greeted her with a friendly ‘Buon giorno’.

‘She’s probably about forty,’ said Jessica, standing in the road and looking after the woman and the donkey.

‘Or she might be eighty,’ said Delia.

They were at the final approach to the town and the road ahead led steeply up to a stone archway. Inside the walls, the narrow street was paved with large, smooth stones and, after the bright sunlight, it was dark and somewhat sinister, with tall buildings on either side looming over them.

They jumped out of the way as a horn pooped behind them, and a laughing girl on a scooter with a small boy clinging behind her whizzed past.

Above them, washing fluttered on lines strung out across the street, sheets and petticoats and extraordinary knickers. A dog, all ribs, gnawed at fleas in a doorway, and a thin brindled cat slid through a narrow gap between brown shutters.

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