“I’m sure. So a Vannoni made an honest woman out of your grandmother? Forgive me, Giulia, but with what I know about your family, I find that hard to believe.”
Giulia threw back her head and laughed. “Cara, you know us well in so short a time! There were what the lawyers call mitigating circumstances: first, my grandfather was the younger son, and second — and much, much more significantly, he was almost certainly what was then called a degenerate. A homosexual. He had shown no desire to marry and had never been in the least interested in women. Given how things were then, it is unlikely he got much further than that. Oh, there was talk, and he was told by the family to silence the gossip. So he married my grandmother, who had been a close friend since schooldays, and was a sweet and kind husband to her and father to my mother. My mother was a wilful and wild woman, quite unlike her mother and stepfather — there is a lot of her in me. She became pregnant and refused to name the father — there is a chance she didn’t know who the father was — and so I was born, and kept the Vannoni name.”
“So, by blood, you’re not a Vannoni at all. Is your mother alive?”
“No. She died when I was eight, and I was raised by the marchesa. Donatella is a difficult, proud woman, but I will always have a place in my heart for her, because she was good to me, and treated me like family.”
Sydney reached out and poured herself another glass of Aperol. “I’m trying to work out how Gil’s death — and Toni’s — could have anything to do with your unknown father and your grandfather.”
“Maybe so, maybe not, but I think it has to do with another mystery in the Vannoni past. Not about my step-grandfather, but about his sister, Sylvia Vannoni, the eldest child. I didn’t even know there was a sister; I thought there were just two brothers. But about ten years ago, I decided to look into my past.” Giulia’s smile had more of pain than pleasure in it. “At that time I was facing up to the fact that I preferred girls to boys, cara, and that made me wonder if my grandfather Vannoni was indeed gay, and if he was, in fact, my real grandfather. It turned out that he was probably gay, but that he was not my grandfather.”
“How did you find this out?”
“Not from records. It was much easier to conceal the truth during wartime, and records were often not kept, or were inaccurate. I talked to every old family retainer I could find — there were more of them around ten years ago. And the woman who told me about Sylvia once lived at the manor. Her name was Patrizia. So the chances are that someone else on the island knows about this — and that is how your clever policeman friend asks the questions he asks.”
“Giulia,” Sydney stood up, feeling her legs shaking beneath her with stress, anxiety and Aperol combined, “shouldn’t Ed Moretti be told anything that would help him catch Gil and Toni’s killer?”
“But what do I know, in fact? Will any of this help him catch the man, or woman?”
“Woman?”
“It could be. I think your policeman friend has even wondered if you and I are together in this.” Sydney sat down again, and Giulia gave her a wry glance. “And you come here, no, is that what you’re thinking? Family honour is just as important to a woman, and this is about honour, of that I’m sure. Patrizia told me that Sylvia died, and that she was forbidden to speak about her, or even to remember she had ever lived.”
“But that’s terrible! Wiping out the memory of a human being’s existence from the face of the earth! I still don’t understand why you won’t tell the police.”
“Because it’s a mystery no one in the family will talk about. Because when I tried to talk to Donatella about Sylvia, for the first and only time in my life I was afraid of her. She threatened to throw me out of the family and, more importantly, out of the family business. I love what I do, and I would be lost without my professional life. In a toss-up between Donatella and Eduardo Moretti, Donatella wins, hands down.”
“You say all this goes back to the war years — could it have anything to do with the war?”
“I think so. In Rastrellamento there is a love affair, isn’t there, between the daughter of the house and an escaped British prisoner, and I wonder if that is what happened to the unknown Sylvia. Did she have a child by the prisoner? Did she die in childbirth? Did the child survive?”
“Where did all this happen? Couldn’t you get some answers from people living in Fiesole or Florence?”
“If that’s where it happened. But it didn’t. It happened, I think, at another house. A house that no one talks about, because they say there never was another house.”
“Who says there was another house?”
“Patrizia. She said it was closer to the sea, and claimed that she first worked for the Vannoni family in the Maremma, where she came from.”
“Then it must be there.”
“Unlikely, at that time. The Maremma then was a wild, uncivilized place. Patrizia may well have come from the Maremma, but any great house must have been on the edge of the area, to the north or to the east.”
“So, Gil was killed because he told a fiction he thought his own, that was a fact about your family. What about Toni?”
“Ah, Toni. An oversexed son of a bitch who would have sold his soul for the right price. I have asked myself whether he gave away something to — oh, I don’t know, somebody working on the movie — for forty pieces of silver.”
“Who, Giulia — who?”
This time it was Giulia who stood up, towering over Sydney. “Who. The big question, yes. I think — I think it could be Donatella. Oh yes, I think it could be. Not on her own, perhaps, but with the help of someone else. Gianfranco perhaps, although I think he has not enough courage. I think you, but especially Mario and Monty, should be careful.”
“Shouldn’t you warn them?”
“And have Donatella find out? That is why I cannot tell Moretti and you must not. He will have to work it out on his own.”
“Why daggers, Giulia? It could be someone crazy.”
“Oh, they are crazy all right — crazy enough to use a specific weapon, because they are saying something to those in the know. Come on.” Giulia pulled Sydney to her feet. “Let’s get you back to your hotel before the police send out a search party for you. And you know what is the only thing worth remembering from this conversation?”
“To keep my mouth shut?”
“That whoever it is, is crazy. That’s the only thing worth remembering, Sydney. Carry the key I gave you, always. No one in my family has keys to this place, and no one knows that you have one.”
Night was falling when they left Giulia’s castello. Against the darkening sky the Martello tower took on a more sinister aura as its shadow against the ground reached out to touch the two women walking the Ducati to the gate. Sydney could hear the sound of her own breathing, swift and shallow with tension. Beside her, Giulia lengthened her stride.
Chapter Eleven
September 19th
“She fooled you all right, PC Brouard — Mrs. Ensor doesn’t smoke. Fortunately she got safely back, and we know where she went because of how she got back. On a Ducati. We’ve also had her destination confirmed by the taxi driver.”
The morning sun filtered in through the windows of the crowded incident room at Hospital Lane. The place was full and there was electricity in the air, which had something to do with the sensational nature of the investigation and more to do with the anticipated arrival of Chief Officer Hanley at any moment, and the real possibility of a clash of personalities between Moretti and the head of the forensics