They laughed at each other.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t get that, Sid? I love Bogart and Bacall films.’
‘Who doesn’t? I’ve noticed you’re a movie buff, Carmen. See everything you can, good, bad or indifferent – the more you see the more you’ll learn.’
‘I do, I always have. At home I have a wall full of videos.’ They wandered on and paused outside the pensione. ‘Sid …’ she began, and stopped.
‘Uh-huh?’ he encouraged, smiling down at her.
‘Valerie?’
His face changed, froze.
‘Just now,’ she went on. ‘Didn’t you think – well, wasn’t she weird? All that about the blood, I mean. You don’t think? Well, anyone can see she hates Laura. The way she looks at her. Sends a shiver down my spine. And she hangs around Sebastian day and night, tries to keep everyone else away from him. Dead jealous, if you ask me. I know you said she didn’t seem the murderous type, but she is definitely a bit psycho.’
‘We all are,’ Sidney replied. ‘In our own way. Some of us more so than others. Sebastian, especially.’
She looked up at him. ‘Do you think it was him?’
‘No. He was in Florian’s – I saw him there as I walked past before I found Laura, and she’d only just been stabbed when I got to her. It couldn’t have been Sebastian.’ He got out the front-door key of the pensione. ‘Let’s get out of this horrible weather and try to thaw out with a hot-water bottle – if you won’t help me get warmed up any other way!’
The Contessa lay awake in her high, cold room listening to the soft murmur and slap of the tide along the canal, the faint echo of music from somewhere in one of the grand hotels nearby, the hum of electricity that told her that her son was still up, working no doubt, in his studio. He had always kept strange hours: a sculptor did not need daylight to work by, as a painter did. Her husband had often been up before the sun rose, in his studio, preparing his paints, blocking out canvases, or just standing by the window gazing at the miracle of Venice in the first gold gleam of light, wrapped in a fur robe in winter but on hot summer days often naked, his beautiful tanned body gleaming as he stepped back from his easel to consider his work.
Suddenly she heard a sound in the room below her own, a creaking that told her somebody was in there, in her dead husband’s bedroom – that haunted, shadowy forest room, hung with green tapestries that always seemed to stir in some unheard wind, to rustle with whispers, echoes from the past. She never went in there. Even passing the door she would start to tremble and hurry on, eyes averted.
Who was in there? It couldn’t be that girl. She was in the hospital. The latest news bulletin had said she was fighting for her life – maybe the knife had penetrated her lung. Pity it hadn’t entered her heart. If she had one. Women like that never had hearts.
Another creak in the room below. Vittoria sat up in bed, her greying hair awry, shivering a little even though she wore a warm Victorian-style red flannel nightie. Tense and still, she strained to be certain she wasn’t imagining it, as she often had before, listening in the night for his footsteps, his breathing, the sound of his laughter, his groans of passionate satisfaction in that bed.
But this was no ghost. Someone was walking restlessly backwards and forwards from wall to wall like a caged animal.
She caught sight of her reflection in the dressing-table mirror; an old woman with a pale face out of which glittered obsidian black eyes. The police had searched the room earlier, and locked it when they left, taking the key with them.
It had to be Sebastian in there.
They had said on television that he was being held at the police station. Helping police with their enquiries was the phrase they always used but she hoped he was under arrest, was going to be charged with murdering the girl. She would have got rid of both of them, then. That would have been a neat finish, a beautiful, symmetrical knot, tying off the whole pattern.
Finally, it would all have ended. She would have won. Her teeth ground against each other. She had to win. She would not be beaten. One way or another she was going to be rid of every shred of evidence of what they had done to her, wipe it all out.
Climbing out of bed she rolled back the carpet – rolled back time with it as she lay down, remembering the misery, jealousy and rage.
For a second she could not be sure who she was watching. Domenico? Her heart beat so fast it hurt; sweat trickled down her body. How many nights had she lain here and watched him?
No. Of course not. How could it be? He was dead.
It was their son, walking restlessly to and fro in that room which, for her, was always haunted by his father.
Chapter Twelve
Looking back over her life, Victoria Serrati saw it as a river whose twists and turns were always dictated by death. Sometimes she wondered if she had been cursed at birth. Why else did those she loved keep dying? Her half-brothers, Alfredo, Filippo, Niccolo … She had had so many brothers once, now they were gone, and so were her parents. In bed at night she woke up in terror from a nightmare thinking, Who will be next? Nothing seemed real to her any more. The world was a place of shadows and ghosts …
Milan, 1948
Carlo and his wife were too preoccupied with their own lives to notice the sadness and fear buried in Vittoria’s eyes. Rachele was obsessed with having a child, but although she became pregnant several times she never managed to carry the baby the full nine months, and each miscarriage had a devastating effect on both her and Carlo. Ravaged with weeping, her sultry face blotchy, her dark eyes red-rimmed, Rachele stayed upstairs in her bedroom all day.
Carlo was either explosive, snarling, shouting, barking orders at the servants, or he sat silent, staring sullenly into space, his brows heavy, his mouth turned down at the corners. Vittoria avoided him whenever he was in the house, which was rare. Rachele stayed out of sight, and Carlo took refuge at the factory. The house was empty and bleak, and Vittoria’s life revolved around school and her friends.
Nineteen forty-seven was a bad year for Italy: food was scarce and riots broke out. The government couldn’t solve the problems fast enough, but America, afraid of Communist power taking over, came to the rescue, with food supplies and money. In 1948 a new alliance came into being between America and the Western nations, which everyone soon called NATO, and life began slowly to return to normal.