Two Women in Rome Page 8

  Nina Lawrence had been murdered.

  Her work was to preserve documents and records and to establish an intimacy with them. A fascinating, stirring and, occasionally, shocking process.

  As this one was turning out to be.

  Lottie rang Reception and said that she would take no calls until further notice. She switched off her mobile and reapplied herself to the papers, stopping every so often to look up a word or a technical term in the dictionary.

  Respected horticulturalist Nina Lawrence was discovered in the Caffè Acqua by the Ponte Sisto on 15 October at 7.30 p.m.

  It was reported that she was found propped up against the stone planter close to the river, covered in blood. One witness, Francesco Bianco, alleges that a man dressed as a priest was close to the scene of the murder. When challenged he had hurried away.

  The murder scene was described in detail and included a diagram of the café, which was just beside the bridge.

  Lottie studied it.

  Note: It must have been dark. How had Francesco Bianco known

  Nina was there? Had she managed to call out with a severed throat? Surely, not possible?

  ‘The poor lady was still alive,’ so ran his account, ‘but only just. She looked up at me and I will never forget her expression. I saw a lot of death during the war and I knew when someone was done for. It was useless to get help. I held her hand and said a prayer. It was important that she didn’t die alone.’

  Note: How could Bianco know for sure it was useless to get help?

  She put aside the rest of the cuttings for later. A copy of the medical and forensic report came up next in the pile.

  At 2010 a thirty-eight-year-old Caucasian female was admitted to the Fatebenefratelli hospital. Dottor Gennaro, the surgeon, attempted resuscitation but the patient was certified dead at 2220.

  The medical report from the hospital gave details:

  a) Two transverse cuts on the fingers of her left hand

  b) A slash on her forearm, a self-defence injury

  c) A stab wound to the thorax

  d) A knife slash on the throat from left to right partially severing the airway and the carotid artery

  Dated later, a forensic report stated that the killer was right-handed, his sleeve would have been covered with a fine blood spray and it was likely there were other visible blood stains on his clothing.

  It also stated that Nina Lawrence had tried to defend herself. There was blood under her fingernails and bruising on her right flank, likely to have been caused by being dragged along the ground.

  It went on:

  No objects were found at the scene and it has been concluded that the murder weapon was likely to have been thrown into the river.

  Lottie frowned. It was an uneasy stew of facts. A dark night. A painful, lonely death. Plus the puzzle as to why there was no one to deal with Nina’s remains or attend her funeral.

  She hoped Nina had got a decent grave, with a suitable headstone and wildflowers planted over it.

  She turned back to the press cuttings.

  A scandal publication reported excitedly that explicit lesbian poems had been discovered in Nina Lawrence’s apartment in the Trastevere when the police searched it. Examples from the poems were given. They were strong stuff and bad poetry.

  Other papers feasted on the details.

  ‘Murder of woman guilty of unnatural practices.’

  ‘Unmarried at thirty-eight.’

  ‘Men had been seen going in and out of her apartment.’

  A picture came into focus, unexpected and unflattering.

  Finally, there was a lengthier feature in a more respectable newspaper.

  A thirty-eight-year-old Englishwoman has been murdered by the banks of the Tiber. Nina Lawrence had lived in Rome for ten years and was a landscape gardener of note who had worked on gardens in Rome, Lazio and Tuscany.

  She was seen leaving her apartment in the Via della Luce in the Trastevere carrying a bag. A second eyewitness, who has asked not to be identified, reported sighting a woman running towards the Ponte Sisto. They said they remembered thinking that, given it was dark, it was unwise for her to be out alone.

  No weapon was found at the site of the murder. The police are launching a full-scale inquiry and the British Embassy are handling the formalities.

  The police report included with the papers speculated that the killer was either a spurned lover or someone who objected to lesbians. Or, a spur-of-the-moment robbery. (Nina’s bag has been retrieved further up the towpath emptied of its contents.)

  Lottie rested her chin on her hands.

  Nina’s spirit seemed to be in the room.

  Who are you, Nina? Was your love affair really with a much younger man? Could you have been murdered as a result?

  Some of the answers were almost certainly there in the papers, perhaps many answers. People rarely told the whole truth, only their truth.

  It was now evening and, being a Friday, the building was almost deserted. Gathering up her things, Lottie made her way down the stairs and called Tom at the same time. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said. ‘Will be with you in thirty.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’m late too.’

  Concetta was in the kitchen browning the guanciale in the padella and preparing the spaghetti alla carbonara when Lottie arrived.

  She indicated the eggs, the bacon, the pecorino and the spaghetti, plus glowing San Marzano tomatoes for the salad.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Lottie. ‘Thank you. Now you must go home.’

  Concetta took her time to untie her apron strings. ‘Shall I cook the pasta? It must be just so. Signorina Clare always said I was the only one who got it right.’

  To be fair, Lottie was no expert as to the just-so-ness of pasta. Silently acknowledging her failings on that one, she challenged Concetta. ‘The Signorina Clare is no longer here,’ she said. ‘Could we be clear about that?’

  Concetta was the first to drop her gaze. ‘Sí.’

  It was a retreat of sorts. Lottie sought to lighten matters. ‘Did anyone ring today about the telephone?’

  Most of the time, she and Tom used their mobile phones but Lottie, surprised it had not already happened, had suggested they installed a second phone on their landline for extra convenience. ‘Sure,’ said Tom, ‘but it’ll be tricky.’

  Concetta frowned. A bad sign. ‘The landlord rang. He says it’s not possible because a second phone means you will have to have another number.’

  ‘No,’ said Lottie patiently. ‘We just want another phone attached to this line.’

  Concetta sent her a look that implied that Lottie lacked a full complement of brains. ‘Not possible and it is too extravagant for a second number since you are not going to be here for ever. And, of course, it might mean the Signor Landlord would have to register here as a second home, which is very serious …’ She flicked a tea towel under her arm.

  Clearly, Lottie should know why it was so serious. ‘Because?’

  ‘His utility bills would be higher.’ Concetta spoke slowly and clearly. ‘In Italy if you have a second home you have to pay more for those bills.’

  ‘I see. But this is just a second phone on the same line with the same number. What could be simpler?’

  ‘I’ll pray to St Jude for you, Signora.’

  The patron saint, apparently, of desperate and lost causes.

  Lottie discovered that her patience had a short shelf-life. ‘Tell him that I would appreciate his help.’

  Concetta shrugged, which Lottie took to mean that this was one of the serpentine situations many a non-Italian found themselves in. It also suggested that she would never, ever understand the laws and regulations precisely because she was non-Italian.

  The pasta was glossy, creamy and very good. They ate appreciatively, Lottie relating to Tom about Signor Antonio and the painting. ‘I’ve discovered that Nina Lawrence was murdered.’ She shook her head. ‘In the most terrible way.’

  He put down his fo
rk. ‘It’s upset you.’

  ‘I suppose it has.’

  ‘It’s not a good story.’

  ‘Are there connections here that I’m not seeing? The painting. Her awful, awful death? Signor Antonio?’

  ‘Perhaps she stole it?’

  ‘Possibly. But maybe she was hiding it for someone?’ She stretched her hand across the table. ‘Could you spare the time for an outing?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Palacrino. Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yup.’ Tom’s face brightened. ‘Mario’s restaurant,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘But why?’

  Lottie explained about the background to The Annunciation. ‘Gabriele Ricci seems to think it is Palacrino and I wanted to snoop.’

  They took the car – Tom knew the best routes out of the city – and drove forty or so kilometres north. On the way, Lottie told him about Pucelle fils and the duchess who had had herself walled up to expiate the sin of possessing a female body. ‘In the eyes of the Church at that time, the female body spelled danger. Women were honey pots exciting helpless men to lustful desires.’

  Tom brushed a hand over Lottie’s thigh. A light, sexy gesture. ‘They had a point.’

  ‘Do that again.’

  He obeyed. ‘I never thought I would be so happy,’ he said.

  Lottie smiled at him. ‘Me neither.’

  Built for defence, Palacrino perched on a steep and rocky escarpment, overlooking plains and woods stretching north and south. Behind it rose a mountain wreathed in a light morning haze, whose summit looked to Lottie’s dazzled eyes as if it had been smoothed over with a carpenter’s lathe. Driving closer, it came into clearer focus with a sprinkling of trees at its base, rocky and bare at its summit.

  She held up a photocopy of The Annunciation and her pulse quickened. The curves and steeps of the mountain were almost identical to those traced in the painting. As was the town’s wall and the siting of the two palace towers. It felt familiar but, of course, that was an illusion.

  At Mario’s, they ate pasta and wild boar ragù, which was as good as Tom had promised. Afterwards, they walked across the piazza, which had a well in one corner flanked by worn, pinkish marble steps. In the fifteenth century, it would have been a gathering point for the town dwellers. Resting her hand on the stone rim, worn and folded with age, Lottie experienced the frisson that happened when a link between past and present became physical. Maybe Pucelle fils would have been among them?

  The Palazzo Ducale ran along the entire west side of the piazza, guarded by bronze doors that opened on to a black-and-white paved courtyard. At one end, a stone staircase led gracefully to the piano nobile. At the other was a paved area, flanked by marble pillars, where the Palacrino dukes conducted their public audiences. On the first floor, a loggia ran around the perimeter. Funds for its upkeep were obviously in short supply and it seemed, at first glance, dusty and neglected.

  Lottie followed the signposts to the ducal chambers. A guide written in hit-and-miss English did its best to interest her in the Palacrino escutcheon, the hooded fireplaces and the altana, the covered upper porch, where the servants customarily sat and watched the dukes and their courtiers below.

  The duke’s bedchamber contained a couple of magnificent bronze wall brackets, a reproduction fifteenth-century bed and not much else. In the duchess’s bedchamber it was a similar story, only on a smaller scale.

  Lottie lingered by the casement. ‘Before glass was freely available,’ she read from the guide, ‘oiled linen was stretched over the windows.’

  Living sequestered lives, the women in that period were not supposed to stand by windows. Yet they must have rebelled against the prohibition. Of course, they would have done, she thought.

  And the duchess? Had she always craved oblivion? Almost certainly she would have had no choice about who she married. Was it that, having been presented with a bridegroom whom she found uncongenial, or repugnant, she decided it was the only option she had? Lottie studied the reproduction bed and its green hangings. The sole power a woman of that time possessed was over her thoughts, and her private feelings. In deciding to recuse herself from life and to choose God over her husband, the duchess had, in a drastic, painful way, chosen freedom.

  Lottie inspected the wooden shutters, which were secured with iron bars. God would have been as hard a taskmaster as the duke, and she wondered if the duchess had panicked when it was too late.

  Tom grew bored and went off to drink coffee in the café on the piazza and Lottie headed for the Memorabilia Room, which was sparsely furnished and as neglected-looking as elsewhere. A massive carved chair labelled Ducal Seat dominated it, an unremarkable Nativity hung on the wall and propped open in the display cabinet was a printed Bible from the late sixteenth century.

  Capturing Lottie’s attention was the miniature painting displayed alongside the Bible labelled Bathsheba Bathing.

  The text beside it read: A copy of the original miniature from The Hours of the Duchess of Palacrino, c. 1490, by Pucelle fils, now in the Musei Vaticani.

  Gabriele Ricci’s suggestion of a trip to Palacrino had had a purpose.

  The text continued: The original painting was discovered in the library of the palace during restoration work in 1972 and was on display here until 2010 when it was verified as a missing page from the duchess’s book of hours and removed to Rome.

  Lottie took a deep breath.

  Measuring approximately 10 ¾ inches by 7 ¼ inches, the size tallied with The Annunciation.

  The flutter of her professional pulse quickened.

  Its setting was a formal garden and, behind it, thrust back into the landscape, a mysterious and magical mountain rose to the sky. The garden was flanked by box hedge and white roses, at its centre a small pool was fed from a fountain in the shape of a cat’s head.

  Ah, she thought. Traditionally, the cat’s head was an allusion to the prostitute.

  A woman, submerged to her hips, stood in the pool. Her nakedness was deliberately provocative and anatomically truthful and clearly obvious through the water. A mass of golden hair flowed down her back and her white arms (a little overlong, if Lottie was to be critical) were held loosely by her sides.

  A slanted upward glance gave away her secret knowledge that she was being observed. The effect was overtly sexual, strange, voyeuristic, summoning a male vision of female beauty, and conveying the longing and cruelties of desire.

  No wonder the king in the red robe and crown watched from a window of a crenellated palace with undisguised lust, while drunken courtiers danced in a courtyard below.

  Lottie inspected every detail minutely. Pucelle fils was sly, clever and very right. He understood that nothing should be presented as simple or one-dimensional. Yes, we sin … just as the drunken dancers, the leering king and the voluptuous white body are about to sin … and we pay for it. But yet, he was telling us, still we do it.

  She traced the nuances. A wry worldliness was counterpointed with a suffering in the girl’s eyes and the defensive angle of her white body. How clever it was: for the artist was ensuring that the resonance of the painting reached beyond the erotic and the physical.

  Lottie took herself off to join Tom. They sat idling in the café on the piazza while she described the painting to him and he listened with a lazy smile.

  A group of schoolchildren of several nationalities took up position on the steps of the fountain. The adults in charge chivvied them into tighter formation and, after a deal of shuffling, they began to sing. Arrested by the sound of their high, slightly fractured voices, passers-by stopped to listen. At the finish, they clapped.

  The waiter took their bill. ‘They’re from a children’s village near here which cares for the orphans and abused children,’ he told them. ‘It’s a tradition that they sing here.’

  The group disbanded and, shepherded by their carers, moved off. One little boy had been absorbed poking between the gaps in the marble flagstones with a stick. He threw it down. ‘Signor Oscar,’
he called, scampering over the stones. ‘Signor Oscar, wait for me.’

  Back in Rome after their supper, she settled down to further research. The evening was a fine one and they had thrown open the balcony doors. Tom was reading in the chair.

  Lottie observed him with love and the greedy curiosity of the comparatively new lover. His hair had drifted over his forehead and a window opened on to the Tom who had run feral (or so he said) throughout his Cornish childhood.

  Small boy. Shorts. Wellingtons. The boy who decided to hide from his parents for a couple of days to prove that he could.

  ‘And?’

  ‘They had most of the police force out searching but I managed to evade them. Outwitted them, actually.’

  ‘Who came off worst?’

  ‘My parents. They never got over the fright. I just sailed on, causing mayhem.’

  Lottie wrinkled her nose. ‘I suspect your parents ran you on a long leash.’

  ‘Perhaps. I let off a smoke bomb at a picnic once. A ghastly family one in the rain. Then I did get it in the neck.’

  Lottie pictured it. Slippery grass, a bad-tempered sea, damp dispirited adults, sandwiches curling at the edges and Tom bored out of his mind. A bang, the smoke.

  It reminded her of what she wanted to ask Tom.

  ‘Did you ever find out anything else about the bomb?’ she asked.

  Tom did not move a muscle but she knew he had gone on the alert. ‘Case ongoing. Investigations take time.’

  ‘Any clues?’

  He shook his head.

  Lottie returned to her research.

  In Samuel 2 of the Old Testament, Bathsheba was spotted bathing by King David, who fell instantly in lust with her and, unforgivably, sent off Bathsheba’s husband to die in battle. The story was a favourite with Valois kings and many of the artists of the day had tackled it. Almost certainly, Bathsheba had had no say in her fate, but this made no difference to the Church. Viewed as a temptress almost on a par with Eve, her reputation was shredded with gusto.