They hadn’t talked much more on the train, merely exchanging remarks as to how odd this whole Beatrice Malaspina business was. Then she had returned to her own compartment, to sit by the window and marvel at the blue depth of the sea as the train wound its way down the coast.
They had met up again at La Spezia, where they transferred to a local train with wooden seats and an ancient engine, which reminded them both of wartime rail travel in England. They alighted at a deserted-looking station; what a long way down from the train platforms were in Italy, she thought, as she reached up for the suitcase that George was holding out to her.
‘Now, what is best for us to do?’ George said as he joined her on the platform. ‘This station is a good walk from the town, which, as you see, is up the hill. Perhaps there will be a taxi.’
For a moment her imagination ran riot again. The whole thing was a set-up, there was no Villa Dante, no will, no Beatrice Malaspina, they had been lured here to be kidnapped and killed after torture to extract secret information. At least, they could extract scientific secrets from Dr Helsinger. Her mind ran on sinister lines: remote Italian castles in the style of The Mysteries of Udolpho…would there be a readership for a modern gothic? People had wanted comforting reads during the war, Jane Austen, that kind of thing, but gangster movies were popular, and so…
She came back to reality with a jolt, as George’s voice repeated what he had been saying. ‘I heard a car, and I see a man approaching. I think someone has come to meet us.’
Now, when Benedetta had whisked herself out of the room, Marjorie felt in the bottom of her suitcase and retrieved a notebook. A hard-covered notebook which she had bought in Paris, unable to resist the allure of beautiful stationery. She shouldn’t be spending the lawyer’s money on any such thing, but she had forgone lunch, satisfying her hunger with a ham baguette. The difference in cost would surely cover the price of the notebook.
She sat down on the bed and opened the notebook. The blank page stared up at her, as so many blank pages had done for so long. She closed it again. She had bought it hoping to keep a journal of her travels, of her Italian adventure. Nothing more. Facts, only facts. She took a deep breath, dug in her handbag for her fountain pen, unscrewed the top, opened the notebook and resolutely wrote the date at the top of the page. She underlined it, and wrote beneath it in her copperplate script, The Villa Dante.
She put the notebook down, and went over to the window. Delia Vaughan, rather an exotic creature, with that mass of hair and vivacious eyes, and a beautiful speaking voice. Jessica Meldon—Mrs Meldon—a typical product of the English upper classes, no doubt a crashing snob; a pity Delia had felt it necessary to bring such a friend—and where was Mr Meldon, whose name was never out of the papers? The couple were estranged, so the gossip columnists claimed. A pity she was here; the Villa Dante didn’t at all seem the right kind of place for a flighty socialite who’d quarrelled with her husband.
They lunched on seafood risotto and arrosto of chicken, followed by cheese and fruit, and then, as they drank tiny cups of bitter black coffee, George politely asked Delia and Jessica if they would show him, and Marjorie, if she wished it, round the villa.
Jessica and Delia looked at each other.
‘Actually,’ Jessica said, ‘we haven’t seen much of it ourselves. We went to the beach after breakfast, and then you arrived. And yesterday, when we came, it was the evening, we only had candles and oil lamps, and were too tired after the drive to look at anything except our pillows, do you see?’
‘We weren’t sure about looking round, in any case,’ Delia said. ‘It seemed intrusive. But since the lawyer said we were to make ourselves at home, and there’s no host or hostess to offend…’
‘We can explore and discover the villa together, in that case,’ said George. ‘We can be systematic, let us go to the front of the house and begin our explorations there.’
He led the way round the outside of the house, and they stood for a moment at the foot of the shallow flight of steps that led to the three arches of the loggia. They looked up at the mellow façade, a faded cream with brown shutters at all the windows and a line of scooped terracotta roof tiles far above them.
George squinted owlishly up at the pediment. ‘It is very harmonious,’ he said. ‘You see that the windows on either side repeat the triangular shape above them.’
They walked up the flight of steps and through the front door.
‘Do you know about Italian houses?’ Jessica asked George. ‘I thought it must be eighteenth-century, but Delia says it’s older, because of the frescoes.’
‘Older than that,’ said Marjorie. ‘I dare say it’s been altered a lot, and probably was done over in the eighteenth century, but it must be Renaissance originally, only look at the proportions.’
‘Even older than the sixteenth century I think, in parts,’ said George. ‘Have you noticed that there is a tower at the back? That is mediaeval, I should say.’
Delia still found the trompe l’oeil disturbing as she wandered round, looking at the paintings. ‘It’s odd, the mixture of everyday and mythological. Here’s the servant in his tights I noticed last night, but over there is the story of Ariadne. Just look at the muscles on the Minotaur’s chest.’
Marjorie came over to have a look. ‘That must be Theseus, looking very pleased with himself. I never thought much of Theseus, he’s the kind of man who would be a politician in the modern world.’ She followed the images round to the other wall. ‘Here is Dionysus, on his ivy-clad ship, sailing in to find Ariadne on the beach. And here he is with all his maenads, dancing among the vines.’
‘Those grapes look real enough to eat,’ said Delia as they paused to look at an ebullient Bacchus with attendant nymphs.
‘They’ve been making a night of it by the look of them,’ said Jessica. ‘Look at the ceiling.’ She pointed upwards to a riot of gods and goddesses frolicking in billowing clouds. ‘Can you imagine what your father would have to say about it, Delia?’ And, by way of explanation to the others, ‘Delia’s father is something of a puritan.’
‘I don’t think he’d mind half so much about these as he would if the paintings were saints and martyrs. Those are what really irk him.’
They went through the wide central door which led into a second room, overlooking the gardens at the back.
‘More wall paintings, and windows that aren’t windows at all,’ said Jessica.
‘Classical landscapes,’ said George. ‘Very realistic.’
‘On this wall is Prometheus,’ Marjorie said. ‘That’s an odd choice, not nearly such a happy story as Ariadne and Dionysus.’
‘Who was Prometheus?’ asked Jessica.
Marjorie gave her a scornful glance. ‘He stole fire from the gods to give it to humans, and so they punished him.’
Delia looked at the eagle swooping down towards the bound figure, and shivered.
‘And over there,’ said Marjorie, ‘if I’m not mistaken, is a sibyl.’
‘Go on, then,’ said Jessica. ‘I’ve got my hand up. Who or what is a sibyl?’
‘Sibyls prophesied. This one is a Cumaean sibyl. She’s holding the golden branch to give to Aeneas so