Daggers and Men's Smiles. Jill Downie
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concealed by an unfashionably heavy moustache, and Moretti wondered whether the ponytail and the facial hair were to compensate for the receding hairline above deep-set, anxious eyes. His nails were bitten to the quick, and his hands fiddled constantly with the collar of his open-necked shirt, or stroked his forehead. His command of English seemed good, and Moretti decided not to switch into Italian, if possible. Otherwise, he would have to translate for his partner, which would slow things down considerably, or exclude her completely from the interrogation.
“We’ll do what we can, Mr. Bianchi. Certainly we’re grateful for the light we were able to use. Could you not work on something else while we’re out here?”
“Work on something else,” Bianchi repeated. “You don’t understand, Inspector. We set up the day’s work in advance — the actors and technicians are called for certain times, and the lighting levels have to be decided upon with the cinematographer and the cameramen, depending on the needs of the scene and the weather conditions, and so on. These lights and cranes were in place for the scene we planned to shoot first — and which required the early light of day. That’s gone now. We’ve lost it.”
“What scene were you going to shoot out here?”
“Well, that’s the strange thing — as I was just telling the officer. It involved the violent death of a man suspected of betraying one of the principal characters in the film. And the murder weapon is a knife. It gives me the — creeps, you call it? Poor Toni!”
“Tell me something about Toni Albarosa — he was the marchesa’s son-in-law, I gather.”
“Yes, married to the eldest daughter, Anna. They live in Italy, not here. It isn’t the first marriage between Albarosas and Vannonis — at one point, the family coat of arms was actually combined, so he told me. He was a very nice lad — very hard-working.”
“Experienced? As a location manager, I mean.”
“No, but he had what we needed, Inspector — contacts. Not all of the movie is being shot here, on your island, and Toni could open doors for me. He was the first member of the family I met, when he was on holiday in Venice, and it was he who suggested his mother-in-law’s property on Guernsey, when he heard the theme of Rastrellamento. He was a charming man — I’m sure you’re going to ask me if I can think of anyone who might want to do this, and I can’t. He didn’t have an enemy in the world.”
“Then he was indeed a rare human being, sir. Few of us can say that.”
“True. But compared with other members of his family —”
Mario Bianchi broke off in mid-sentence, one hand pulling frenetically at his ponytail.
“So there were difficulties with some of the Albarosa and Vannoni clan?”
Bianchi laughed in what he clearly hoped was a light-hearted manner. “Families, Inspector, families! Nothing in particular, but you’ll see what I mean when you interview them.”
”Which I should go and do now. Thank you, Signor Bianchi. We’ll try to get out of your way as quickly as possible. Oh —” Mario Bianchi had started to walk away toward his waiting crew, when Moretti called him back, “— the woman who arrived on the Ducati. Is that Anna, his wife?”
Bianchi turned. He was laughing again, but this time he seemed genuinely amused. “No, Inspector. That was Giulia Vannoni, the marchesa’s niece. She just arrived, and is visiting the marchesa at the moment. Wife —” The director pointed to the Ducati, which still stood on the terrace, gleaming in the light. Painted on one flank was a pink lily, its petals tipped with gold.
“I’m sorry — I don’t —”
“That, Inspector, is the symbol of gay and lesbian Florence. That’s what that is.”
Moretti and Liz Falla watched the departing figure of Mario Bianchi.
“Before we go in to talk to them, DC Falla, is there anything you can tell me about the Vannonis?”
“Of course, you weren’t on the island when they arrived, were you, Guv? Well, not much, except they don’t mix — except with the high and mighty. A bloke I used to go out with says they’ve got a little message up on the front door that reads, ‘Only personal friends of the marchesa may use this door. All other visitors must go to the back entrance.’”
DC Falla’s love life was proving quite useful.
“Charming.”
In spite of being a small island — or perhaps because of it — there were some clear-cut divisions in Guernsey society. There were the hundreds of families who had lived on the island since the beginning of its recorded history and beyond, with the old island names — Bisson, Falla, Gallienne, Roussel, Le Poidevin, and many more. There were the great families — Brock, De Saumarez, Carey — the island aristocracy, some of whom had fallen on hard times, like their British counterparts. There was a transient population, who came from Europe to work in the hotels and restaurants, or to teach in one of the island schools — some of these came and went in a summer; some stayed for years. Then there were the wealthy escapees, who came to avoid the high taxes of the mainland, and who bought their way into the higher priced properties on the island — what were called “open market properties.”
Not that British escapees were any longer the dominant section of that community, since Prime Minister Tony Blair had altered the tax base in Britain. Now, the wealthy were more likely to be the managers and CEOs of the myriad banks and financial institutions that operated on the island. Many lived in the comparatively new development around Fort George; some purchased Guernsey’s equivalent of a stately home — the Manoir Ste. Madeleine, for instance. All around the island, the old farmhouses and cottages were being tastefully renovated, painted in pastel shades of dove grey, apricot, ivory, and restored to greater than former glory.
But Moretti had rarely heard of such overt class distinction.
“So, let’s beard the lioness in her den and start off with the family. Then we’ll talk to Monty Lord and the Ensors again. Insiders and outsiders — only, which is which? Somewhere between the two groups we’ll start to get some sense of this.” Moretti recalled the expression on Sydney Tremaine’s face.
“Mrs. Ensor seemed startled by Giulia Vannoni’s appearance.”
“So was I, Guv. It was quite an entrance. Those bikes cost a fortune, don’t they? Mrs. Ensor’s unlikely to be a — well, one of them —”
“— a lesbian,” supplied Moretti. Interesting that Liz Falla had problems with saying the word, but it could be she was concerned about his own delicate feelings.
“Right. Is she? Mind you, that creep she’s married to could put any woman off men, in my opinion.”
“Quite,” said Moretti, his thoughts elsewhere.
What point was the murderer making by using daggers? What was he — or she — saying? Was this all about love? It was much more likely to be about hate.
But nobody hated Toni Albarosa apparently. Still, it was amazing how often that was said about murder victims. In the Manoir Ste. Madeleine they might take the first steps toward the truth.
“Oh, by the way, Guv — I spoke to Giorgio Benedetti last night. He says if there’s anything he can do —”
“Thank you, DC Falla.”
DC Falla gave him a look he was beginning to recognize now, but for the life of him he couldn’t make out what it signified. His mother would have called it “an old-fashioned look,” but that seemed particularly inappropriate for this young woman.
If the outside of the manor house was Walt Disney or Bram Stoker, depending on your aesthetic point of view, the inside was as close to Renaissance palazzo as the designer could get, given the architectural constraints. Moretti and his colleague walked under a succession of high, embossed ceilings, past long stretches of walls hung with what looked like family portraits, heraldic devices, the