The Tuscan Mystery Trilogy Read online

  “How strange that he should die there, in the pool he admired so much, at the house of a man who was once his friend,” mused Hilary to herself.

  She could hear Pia continuing her lamentations, calling upon the Virgin to witness her horror and distress, as she slopped a wet cloth over the kitchen floor. Hilary’s thoughts continued in a diametrically opposed manner as she continued to feel that Ettore had in some way only got what he deserved. “The mills of God…” she muttered, surprising even herself at her satisfaction, although she knew that she would not be the only one to feel that way. More than one person had wished him dead, and had even, on occasion, threatened to kill him.

  She puzzled over his presence at the Villa Rosa. Why had he gone there, and when? The Proctors had left at midnight for an early morning flight from Rome to Hong Kong. She, herself, had been their guest at dinner that evening. As usual the food had been simple but superb. Robin was an excellent cook, and almost the only non-Italian, of Hilary’s acquaintance, able to make good coffee. The dinner had been the occasion for the handing over of the key and Robin had given her detailed instructions about the watering of her cherished plants. Hilary thought back to that evening. She had slithered up their muddy drive in a very grumpy frame of mind, but when Robin opened the door to her and received her with such evident pleasure, and Nigel appeared shortly afterwards with a large gin and tonic, she had regretted her initial, rather acid, comments about the state of the drive. She had hated having to arrive in muddy Wellies and change her shoes in the hall, but it had all seemed a ridiculous thing to complain about once she was seated in their comfortable sitting room, while they beamed on her and thanked her profusely yet again.

  What a strange couple they were. Robin, who was nearly as tall as her six foot husband, was obviously fit, and even a little muscular, but seemed to feel the need to state her femininity through her choice of clothes, which were almost vulgar. Nigel, on the other hand, with his grey crew cut, tanned face, ruddy cheeks and very blue eyes, wore rather formal, and old-fashioned clothes. His stilted, telegraphic manner of talking made him seem like a caricature. He seemed to drink rather a lot too. However, she had to admit that so did most of the other ex-pats, who couldn’t believe how cheap the booze was in Italy and were determined to drink as much of it as they could. Yesterday Hilary had given what information she could about them to the Maresciallo, though she didn’t know their exact whereabouts.

  She knew she would probably be called on to give a written statement about everything, this morning. She was feeling nervy, irritable and restless, and attributed this to lack of sleep. Sighing she went out into the garden. Looking at the view usually made her feel very peaceful, but this morning she was aware of furtive movements in the Proctors’ garden. Men were combing the whole area, pouncing on things and popping them in plastic bags. She tried not to think what this might mean. One thing was certain, it would be impossible to forget the Fagiolo death for one minute. Everyone was talking about it, according to Pia. It seemed that while some thought it had been an accident, others had suggested it might be suicide, something which Hilary thought most unlikely given the man’s monstrous ego, and there were even those who were saying that he had been killed. There had been a head wound, which had been mercifully hidden from Hilary’s view by the wet hair, but one of the ambulance men had told his wife about it, under oath of secrecy, and she had rushed out to do her shopping and tell all her friends, after requesting similar guarantees of secrecy, with the result that now everyone knew. The size and nature of this wound grew with each telling, and by the time that Pia heard about it, it was said that half his head was missing, a fact about which Hilary was able to reassure her. Still it was strange that he should have a head wound, unless of course he had fallen, hit his head on the side of the pool, and thus drowned. Hilary hugged that version to herself. She didn’t want to think it could be murder.

  Murders didn’t happen in Borgo San Cristoforo. It was a quiet hill town in Tuscany with a very low crime rate. Besides, who would murder Ettore Fagiolo? He was unpleasant, unscrupulous and out for all he could get, but so were many others. No, this was an accidental death, and no doubt a perfectly plausible reason would be found for his presence at the Proctors’ pool. She couldn’t think of one herself, but there had to be. The alternative was unthinkable.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The German, ‘Fritzy’ as everyone called him, was actually called Herman Ganz. He was pacing up and down his living room wearing rather large shorts, and leather sandals. He held a can of beer in one hand and drank from it. His large belly, reddened from incautious sunbathing and gilded with blonde hairs, rose, from the waistband of his shorts, upwards to flabby pectorals. The whole was surmounted by a round red face, very pale blue, large, round eyes, now rather blood-shot, and full pink lips. It was an adult baby-face crowned by a blonde crew cut. He looked like a strange and rather dissolute baby of gigantic proportions. He was the sole agent for a German product, which had huge sales in Italy, and this necessitated numerous trips to the country, so that he had decided to buy himself a house, roughly in the centre of Italy, to use as his base. The area was beautiful and quiet, and there were few other Germans in the area. He also used the house for frequent extra-marital escapades and was increasingly annoyed by the lack of an access road. Privacy was one thing; inconvenience another.

  At the moment he was profoundly worried. The day had started with a hangover; in fact the day had merely been a prolongation of the dreadful night before. He had forced himself to the phone and started work. He was in front of the computer with a black coffee on his desk, when he heard the door open and his domestic help arrived, a young girl, who had recently finished agricultural college, and was doing some house-help work for the summer before starting her apprenticeship in some sector of agriculture. She was hoping to go in with a landscape gardener and nurseryman. Ganz found her quiet and efficient, actually much better than his permanent cleaner, now on holiday with her children. She gave him a cheerful “Buon giorno”. He replied in his rather basic Italian, with a heavy German accent,

  “Have a coffee Valeria,” he called, “I just made some.”

  “Thanks, I will. I need it this morning.”

  “Don’t tell me you have a hangover too?” He looked at her. As usual she looked beautiful, her skin like a dusky peach. She was wearing cut off jeans and her legs were slim and tanned.

  “No, nothing like that. I’ve just had a bit of a shock.” She hesitated. “You know that estate agent, Ettore Fagiolo?”

  “Yes, I am sorry to say.”

  “Oh, of course you do. I forgot.” She gave him a dubious look.

  “Well, what is it he has done?”

  “He’s dead. It seems he drowned in the pool at Villa Rosa.”

  He froze at the computer, kept his face turned away from the girl and said, in what he hoped was a normal tone of voice,

  “Well, that is so terrible. Poor man. I was not a friend of his. This you know,” he glanced over his shoulder at her, “but this is very sad.”

  “Yes, he was an only child you know. It is awful for his family. Also no one can understand why he was there, in the dark. No wonder he fell in, he probably couldn’t see where he was going.” She took her cup into the kitchen and saying, “Well, I’ll get started.”

  His brain had worked feverishly all morning while he sat in front of the computer pretending to work. Now she had gone. He had turned off the computer, ripped off his sweaty tee shirt and lumbered over to the fridge for a cold beer.

  He tried to put his thoughts in order. Last night he had been disgustingly drunk - again! He had finally had the opportunity to get that Italian bastard, Ettore, on his own, and somehow he had messed it up. Sweat pearled his brow, ran down the sides of his face and dripped from his jawbone to fall onto his belly. He rubbed distractedly at the damp blonde hairs, and his itching burning skin. What a fool he’d been! His plump fingers tightened round the beer can. Also he had not only b
een foolish, but totally humiliated, and worst of all, he had blacked out and didn’t even know what he had or had not done. He frowned, concentrating, trying to put some kind of order into the jumbled sequence of events the night before. His stupid bar crawl, of which he could only remember jolly faces and claps on the back and encouraging cries of “Bravo Fritzy”, from anonymous voices, had given him the foolish idea of vengeance for all the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of that little shit Ettore. He remembered hearing a voice bellowing, “I’ll kill the bastard”, in heavily accented Italian, and presumed it must have been his own. Then at some point he remembered following Ettore’s car, running and stumbling. He’d actually fallen over and scratched his Rolex. The car hadn’t gone that far, and they hadn’t even seen him. Ettore and that young faggot from the bar were just disappearing into the Villa Rosa when he finally reached the crest of the hill. It had seemed a good idea to creep round to the back of the house to spy on them. He could also remember sliding around in the muddy drive and then for some reason, he’d found himself at the pool. ‘Probably fell down the steps,’ he thought. Then he’d crashed into a chair and knocked it over, and the noise had brought Ettore out, and they’d had a row. He had tried to strike the bastard, but his aim was off and he’d fallen over. He supposed he must have dozed off after that. No, that was later, after he had been kicked up the arse and laughed at, and had crawled away to hide.

  Oh God, the humiliation!

  He took another swig of beer. At about five in the morning he had woken up behind the woodshed, cold and damp and miserable. He had dragged himself out of the garden of the Villa Rosa and started the trek home, pausing only to vomit copiously in a rubbish bin. Somehow he had got himself into the house, after clambering up that dreadful track and once there he had fallen fully clothed on his bed for a very few hours; too few hours.

  Now the thing was, what had he done in the meantime?

  He recommenced pacing, thinking hard. Did he remember voices shouting, or was that himself earlier. Perhaps he heard a car start up. Why couldn’t he remember?

  Had he thrown Ettore into the pool? It was possible, but he had no memory of it. If he had done it, then who could know he had been there? Had anyone seen him enter the Villa Rosa grounds? Everyone knew he’d got it in for Ettore, so they were bound to suspect him, but had anyone actually seen him go to the Villa Rosa? Another swig of beer, and he thought, I can’t have done it, I wouldn’t have had the strength. After all, he reasoned, he had been blind drunk. He sighed and looked out of the window at the wonderful view of the mountains and vowed he would sell the house and go, as soon as the whole thing was over.

  ‘I’ll probably be in jail,’ he muttered gloomily. “Who’s going to believe I didn’t do it, if I don’t believe myself.”

  He took another swig at the beer can and emptied it, and suddenly he thought of all the awful things he had heard about Italian prisons, the police and justice in general. God, it was almost like a third world country. No, they wouldn’t dare to ill-treat a German. Ah, but that was another thing, they all joked with him and let him buy them drinks and so on, but he knew damn well what his fellow countrymen had done in Italy, in this town even, during the last world war, and Italians have long memories.

  He squeezed the beer can, crumpling it and tossed it into the waste bin. It missed and clattered on the floor. He turned on his heels and went into the bedroom, pulled out the suitcase he’d wedged into the cupboard and started throwing all his clothes into it. He stopped when it was nearly full, taking out the stuff again until he managed to find a suit and clean shirt to wear for the journey. He was leaving, today, now. He’d drive to Pisa and get on the first plane for anywhere. It was too dangerous to stay, even if he had done nothing. The thought of prison and rubber truncheons was more than he could bear. He was moving towards the shower when the doorbell rang, and then he knew it was too late.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They let him shower and dress and were extremely civil, he thought. They had escorted him to the police station, and almost apologetically taken his fingerprints. He vaguely remembered seeing a neighbour’s shocked face as he left the house with his escort. Now he sat facing the senior police officer, a middle-aged man wearing a very expensive and well cut suit. He looked like a cultured and intelligent man. Nothing could have been further from the barbarians he had been imagining. He relaxed a little. He could hardly imagine a man like that wielding a truncheon. He glanced at the uniformed policeman, gun in holster and a hatchet face, and thought he looked more the type.

  He was jerked out of his reverie by the magistrate’s first question,

  “Do you prefer to speak Italian or English Signor Ganz? I’m afraid I don’t speak German.”

  “Well, I think maybe I speak English better, what about you?” said Ganz in heavily accented Italian.

  Ruggero Di Girolamo who prided himself on his excellent English, and had spent several study periods in England as a young man, replied, “I prefer English too.”

  The German’s Italian was obviously very basic. He paused and looked the German straight in the eyes.

  “I understand that you wished to kill Ettore Fagiolo - did you do so?”

  “NO!” he gasped, a beached whale, helpless. “No, no, no.”

  “But you informed quite a lot of people last night, of your wish to do so.”

  “I?”

  “Yes, indeed. In fact, at Aristotle’s bar you said ‘I’ll kill that bastard’ or in your own words “Amazzo quel bastardo.”

  The Italian’s English was better than his own. He knew he had a thick German accent, though his vocabulary was quite good, as he used English for business.

  “Ja, um – vell it vas that I had some drinks. I did not really vant to kill him.”

  “But you also followed his car on foot, shouting in German, is that not so?”

  “Ach, I do this? Yes, vell it was just a stupid drunken thing that I do; imagine a man to chase a car, on foot.” He tried to laugh.

  “The car was going very slowly, and parked shortly afterwards. You could have followed him when he got out. I think you did.”

  “No!”

  “Please do not shout.” He paused, “I also think that you followed him to the Villa Rosa and killed him. Perhaps you had an argument, or a fight with him, after all you had had too much to drink, as you yourself told me, and then somehow, he hit his head and you threw him in the water. An accident?” he looked inquiringly at Fritz.

  “No, none of these things has happened. You must prove this. I haff done nothing. I vant a lawyer and I must contact the German Consul. You are to take me to prison?” he gabbled rather hysterically.

  “Did you do it?”

  “No.”

  “Then why should you go to prison?”

  Ganz was silent.

  “Perhaps you could explain what you did last night. Where did you go?”

  “Novhere.”

  “Let me see, it says here,” he consulted a folder, turned a couple of pages, and went on “That you were seen running after Ettore Fagiolo’s car, shouting in German. Unfortunately no one understood what you were saying, but I think we have a fair idea. You were angry with this man, who was a liar and a cheat. You had already said in Italian that you wanted to kill him. You tell me you did not do so, so I’m asking you what did you do?”

  “I vent to my home.”

  “It must have taken you a long time to get there, as I have you running after the car at twelve thirty and starting along the track home at five in the morning. I have witnesses to these facts. So where did you spend the night?”

  “Oh vell, I suppose I must to tell the truth. I fall asleep on the vay.”

  “Really, and whereabouts was that? I mean it was obviously before reaching the track.”

  “I’m afraid this I cannot remember.”

  Di Girolamo seemed to be consulting the folder again, though the German thought it was just a ploy. He was sweating profusely again, but di
dn’t want to take off his jacket, as the man in front of him was still wearing his and looked cool and calm. It was not pleasant to be treated like a criminal. Earlier, they had taken his fingerprints and left him to sit in a bare room, alone with his thoughts He felt as though he had been there for hours. He probably had. He realised he was hungry. His watch had actually stopped, so he had no idea of the time. They had come to get him before lunch, and he guessed it must be late afternoon. The window was completely obscured, so he couldn’t see how much light was left. That was part of it. They isolated you in space and time, and then they beat you up. He felt depressed. This was not going well.

  The phone rang and Di Girolamo barked his name into the receiver, then said “Good, thank-you.” He put the receiver down again, and closed the folder on his desk.

  “I think we have nearly finished for today. It is late and I am sure you are tired and hungry.” He glanced at the fat German, and continued, “I would like you to make a statement about your movements last night, and sign it. By the way, I understand that you were packing a case, when my men arrived, where were you going?”

  “I am going home, I need to do, organise, some things out in Germany, business things- ja? As you know, I come and I go all the time.” He felt more confident now. It was obvious they had no proof, and anyway he hadn’t done it. Also they wouldn’t want any trouble at a diplomatic level. They would have to have sure and certain proof before arresting a German subject. “I am free to go, back to Germany, ja?”