Death at the Villa by Moray Dalton

Author:Moray Dalton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2023-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI

THE MARCHESE MAKES TWO CALLS

After the funeral Silvio had driven the marchese and his lawyer back to Rome, dropping the latter at his villa in the Prati quarter on the way to the great gloomy Gualtieri palace in the Piazza Navona.

The marchese asked his young relative to dine with him that evening, but when Silvio excused himself on the ground of arrears of work he did not press the invitation. Silvio was understood to have some not very well defined secretarial post in one of the Ministries.

The marchese, who disliked and distrusted Fascism but was far too wary to say so, was careful never to enquire into Silvio’s political activities. A pack of mascalzoni, he thought distastefully, but it was convenient to know someone who could obtain a supply of petrol for his car and the necessary permits if he wanted to use it. It was a long and tedious cross-country journey by rail to Mont Alvino.

“You are not too tired, I hope,” said Silvio as he lifted the marchese’s suitcase out of the back of the car and gave it to the portière. With Gualtieri his manner was always quiet and deferential.

“No. No. You have been very helpful, Silvio. I shall not forget it. On second thoughts, you may drive me a little farther to the convent in the Via Due Macelli. My sister will wish to hear—”

Don Gaetano’s only sister had taken the veil when she was twenty, when the man she was to have married, finding himself unable to pay his gambling debts, had shot himself in the bedroom of the dancer who had helped him spend his money. That was a long-forgotten scandal. Virginia Gualtieri had been forty years in the convent and was now the Mother Superior. She sat very quietly in the bare room where visitors were received, and listened to her brother’s description of his daughter-in-law’s death. She was very like him, with the fine-drawn austerity of a portrait by El Greco.

Long years of repression had turned her face into a delicately carved ivory mask in which only the smouldering black eyes were alive. Her hands were hidden in the long sleeves of her habit.

“Poor child,” she said. “She came to see me once, when she and Amedeo were in Rome after their honeymoon. She was charming. A little foolish perhaps, but one forgives that in so pretty a creature. We will pray for her, all of us here. We will pray. How anyone could have the heart—this cousin of hers—you had her to live at the Villa?”

“Yes. She is an orphan. The two girls were brought up together. They appeared devoted. Chiara clung to her.”

“How old is she?”

“Eighteen, I believe.”

“Madonna mia,” murmured the nun. “Are they sure, Gaetano?”

“The evidence is overwhelming.”

“Has she confessed?”

“No.”

“You have seen her?”

“No. She had been taken to the prison.”

“What do they say was the motive?”

“They think she had a lover, and that Chiara tried to put an end to the affair and threatened to tell Amalia Ferrucci.”

“There is proof of that?”

“They are looking for proof.

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