A Body in the Villa by Isabella Bassett

Author:Isabella Bassett [Bassett, Isabella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-11-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

As impressive as Uncle Albert’s connections with the diplomatic missions across Europe were, in the end, they fell short of producing the desired result.

Several telegrams and phone calls to the Locarno police station from increasingly higher-ranking Swiss officials failed to secure a passage for me to Nicholas’ cell. My uncle’s relation in Bern suggested that the defeat was likely due to an ongoing animosity between Switzerland’s Italian-speaking south, and the country’s German-speaking north.

Thus, the local police did not feel obliged to consent to the requests sent to them by the ruling powers in Bern. In fact, they delighted in the obstruction.

Another way in had to be found.

Relief came from an unlikely source—Poppy. Born into a family of highly decorated military men, Poppy was well aware of the adage, attributed to Napoleon, that an army marches on its stomach. Perceiving my problem, she had no doubt the same axiom applied to policemen lazing behind desks.

Thanks to her ambitious reconstructive programme at Monte Verita, Poppy had quickly formed close connections with local tradesmen and producers. And one of the closest was with the baker in the village of Ascona, who, as the aunt of one of the policemen in Locarno, knew of the institution’s weakness for a cake called Torta di Pane.

It was a slice of this freshly baked cake—made with cocoa, filled with dried fruits, raisins, ground almonds, topped with a layer of pine nuts, and all soaked in a generous amount of grappa—that the Locarno policeman on duty was now tucking into.

And I was sitting happily in Nicholas’ jail cell.

Expecting Nicholas to be racked with guilt and loathing his current predicament, I was surprised to find him in rude health. The luster in his hair was back, as was the twinkle in his velvet eyes. Sitting on his cot, he lounged quite nonchalantly against the bare stone wall of his cell. In short, he displayed a devil-may-care attitude, emphasized by his rolled-up shirtsleeves.

He also didn’t seem disturbed when I confronted him about his true identity. But he objected most vehemently at the suggestion that he had employed a false name to deceive Emmeline.

He pushed a hand through his thick hair. “Yes, I admit that my first impulse was to despise her for the sorrow her family’s greed had brought on my family. I lost my father and older brother during an explosion at a munitions factory owned by her family. But it all changed when I met her.”

“Then why use an alias if not for deception?” I asked.

He smiled. “It’s my pen-name. I’m a writer,” he clarified, as though I were a simpleton. “I wrote a series of interpretivist treatises on the transcendental socio-economic plight of the progressive proletariat, analyzed through the prism of humanistic anthroposophy.”

I met him with a blank stare. Although I recognized some of the words—especially anthroposophy, which I’d picked up recently from Poppy—strung together, the words made little sense.

He shook his head derisively at my obtuseness. “My work explores the thesis that a clear understanding

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