‘Do you know what’s going on?’ said Cate, looking at Fairhead. They were neighbours, after all, the Norwegian and the Englishman. She thought of him typing away there this morning; thought of all those other mornings when he would have done nothing but stare down to where they stood now, down between the tall, dark trees to the distant hills and the silver strip of river winding between their spurs. Surely if Per talked to anyone, it would be to him?
‘He’s got himself into a mess,’ Fairhead repeated. ‘That’s what’s happened.’ There was something resigned about the way he said it, as though it was a situation he knew all about, had seen before.
‘His wife said he’d written to her asking for a divorce,’ said Cate tentatively. This was gossip. It made her uncomfortable. ‘Said he’d fallen in love with another woman, and he wanted a divorce.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it. I always thought –
‘Thought he was a nice family man?’ said Tiziano, twisting his wheels and turning back downhill. ‘Me too. Someone certainly turned his head.’
Cate had to hurry to catch up, but Fairhead’s long stride enabled him to keep pace easily with the two of them.
‘Do you know who?’ she asked. Tiziano shrugged; she turned to Fairhead.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t think – I think he’ll tell you himself, if – when – it becomes appropriate.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Tiziano, echoing Ginevra with savage cheerfulness, his face red in the wind as he looked curiously at Alec Fairhead. ‘Who else could it be? The only other good-looking woman in the place was Cate, and I think she would have said, don’t you? If she and Per were planning to ride off into the sunset together?’
Cate blushed furiously; Tiziano kept going regardless. ‘Do you think he bumped her off, as well? How would you go about it, though? Cut the brakes? Surely it can’t be that easy, these days, and if she’d had no brakes, she’d never have made it to the end of the drive.’
As Cate stared at Tiziano in disbelief, Alec Fairhead spoke. He was quite white. ‘I don’t think – I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,’ he said, sounding very English.
‘So it
was
Dottoressa Meadows? He was leaving his wife for Dottoressa Meadows?’ asked Cate.
‘Yes,’ said Fairhead, so quietly she could hardly hear him. ‘Yes. That was what he thought.’
They had come out of the small cluster of low trees that marked the end of the drive, and they were on the road, a D-road, curved, narrow and, if it had been busier, far too dangerous to go walking on at
the approach of a snowstorm in bad light. None of them asked which way they would turn; they all turned downhill together, each of them silently pondering what had just been said. It occurred to Cate that without Tiziano and the wheelchair, there would probably have been an alternative to this road, a path cross-country to their destination. The hills were scored with such paths, rabbit runs and sheep tracks and riding trails; one of the weird aspects to the landscape, considering, was how empty it always seemed. All the time, there must be secret movement, in the scrub, between the willows and juniper and myrtle bushes, skirting the trees.
‘So kitchen gossip had it right, then?’ asked Tiziano. ‘Might have known Ginevra would have her finger on the pulse. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice anything, Caterina? You’re a clever girl.’
‘Notice anything?’ said Cate, ‘I didn’t notice anything, actually. I don’t look for – ’ She wanted to say, I don’t look for that kind of thing. Was that true? Not on the cruises, no; on the cruises she’d been very good at spotting those romances that sprang up and died down among the elderly passengers.
‘Think we’re above all that?’ said Tiziano, reading her mind, not for the first time. Cate wished Alec Fairhead, a metre ahead of them with his arms wrapped around himself, would say something.
‘Mr Fairhead?’ she asked gently. ‘Alec? What do you think of all this?’ And he turned towards her, and she saw his eyes bleary with the wind.
‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Stop.’
And though that wasn’t what he’d meant, they all literally did stop, in the middle of the road. In the sudden silence Cate could hear, from far away, the sound of a car that came and went, baffled and bounced by the hills. A powerful car.
Alec Fairhead was rubbing a fist in his eye, facing up to the brow of the hill from which they would be able to see down into the next valley, where the road curved sharply, and then Cate remembered how he’d looked that evening when he’d arrived, as though he’d wanted to run away, the moment he saw them all standing there waiting for him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she meant it. ‘You knew her. I’d forgotten that. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s not it,’ said Fairhead, his face drawn and haunted. There was a long pause, then he spoke hesitantly. ‘It’s Per. I just feel sorry for Per, to be honest. He – fell for her. He’s a man who doesn’t do things by halves – he’s a man who can’t pretend, either. He fell for her.’ The distant car was louder now, and closer.
‘You mean, fell in love with her?’ Cate hugged herself, rubbing her arms; in the lee of the hill it was even colder, if that was possible, than it had been at the castle. No sun got down here in these valleys, not between November and March.
‘Fell in love with her, yes,’ said Alec Fairhead, and Cate saw that he was shivering. He was not warmly dressed; a dark corduroy jacket, thin gloves, an insubstantial scarf – but that wasn’t it. ‘I also mean, that he was taken in by her. Deceived.’ He spoke, Cate saw, with grim understanding. ‘She was – a flirt, is the kind word for it.’
‘Never flirted with me,’ said Tiziano, ruddy-faced and healthy in contrast to Fairhead, but his smile was cool.
The sound of the approaching car was suddenly much closer and Cate became aware at once that they were standing in the middle of the road. It had to be coming this way; there was nowhere else. She edged towards the verge. ‘Come on,’ she said, but they weren’t listening to her. She came around behind the wheelchair and leaned to push and at last the two men responded.
‘Would you have wanted her to flirt with you?’ said Alec Fairhead quickly, tensed as he tried to stop the shivering. ‘She was good at that, knowing who it was worth bothering with.’
‘You knew her very well, didn’t you?’ said Tiziano.
It wasn’t really a question, but if Alec Fairhead had wanted to answer no one would have been able to hear him because at that moment the big, powerful silver car leapt the brow of the hill above them, its engine a deafening roar as it passed without a swerve or a touch on the brakes, within centimetres of the little group. The driver didn’t turn his head to acknowledge they were there – it was possible, thought Cate with a sick feeling, that he had not seen them at all – but they all knew who it was. They knew Niccolò Orfeo’s car, and the way he drove it; like Loni Meadows, as though he was immortal, untouchable.
‘Well,’ said Alec Fairhead stiffly. ‘Our lord and patron.’ They turned to watch, but they knew where he was going; up through the cypress avenue behind them, carelessly fast because, of course, unlike poor Yolanda Hansen, if he wanted to ram his own gates, no one could stop him. The car was obscured by a puff of white dust as it hit the dirt road, and they turned away.
‘Is there any sun over there, d’you think?’ said Tiziano, nodding up towards the brow of the hill. Cate made an apologetic gesture. There was no sun anywhere; at the horizon the cloud was blue-grey with unshed snow.
‘Should we go back?’ she suggested hopefully. The men both looked from the castle to Cate and back.
‘No,’ said Tiziano, just as Fairhead shook his head.
But when they set off again it was slowly, reluctantly. What were they going for, anyway? To inspect the scene of the crime? Ghoulishly to look for blood or scraps of clothing, or tyre treads? Or was it just that having escaped the castle they were in no hurry to go back, particularly not now Niccolò Orfeo had arrived?
‘She led him on,’ said Cate.
Fairhead nodded, head bowed as he walked. ‘She told him she would divorce her husband – at least, that’s what he says.’
‘You don’t believe him?’
‘I think he convinced himself; it’s possible she led him to believe she would, but if I know Loni – ’ Fairhead broke off, and Cate could see he was shivering uncontrollably now.
She pulled off her hat and held it out; he took it, puzzling over it a second before pulling it on. He tried to smile his thanks, but his face was grim. ‘If I know Loni, she’d have covered herself.
Only a joke
,
darling
,
only in the heat of the moment
,
darling
. But of course Per would have taken it seriously, being Per.’ He twisted his mouth. ‘Per can’t conceive of anyone saying such a thing lightly. So he wrote to Yolanda, in Oslo, a week ago. When she got the letter she dropped everything, and came out, only by then – it was all what you might call academic.’
‘He told you this – when?’ said Tiziano. ‘Last week?’
‘No,’ said Fairhead, shaking his head energetically, ‘they were arguing, this afternoon – I couldn’t help overhearing. I even understood some of it. I tried to help. I’d never have let him send the letter, if he’d told me. I’d have told him she’d never leave her husband.’
Tiziano sat very still in the wheelchair, arms rigid by his sides. ‘The husband,’ he said; ‘the famous human rights lawyer.’ He sounded uncharacteristically sharp. ‘You think not? He’s old, though, isn’t he? Old and ugly.’
‘Old and ugly and rich,’ said Fairhead, gazing away from them and towards the grey line of the horizon. ‘But it’s not just that. They’re two of a kind, Loni and Giuliano Mascarello. Were. Ruthless, charming, clever, and the rest.’
So Fairhead didn’t just have a passing acquaintance with Loni Meadows and her husband before he came here. It had been more than that; it had been something that had stopped him writing; something had happened.
And then they heard another car. Far off, slower, quieter than the first, but getting closer. Silently, as if by mutual agreement, they hurried now to get to the brow of the hill, to see and be seen. And then they stopped, and looked down into the narrow valley, the sharp bend at the foot of the steep hill, the spidery willows, the churned earth. The last ragged flicker of the tape, caught on a bramble.
They stood, getting their breath, and then Cate decided. ‘You knew her,’ she began, and before she could ask it, ask Alec Fairhead what Loni Meadows had done to him however long ago it was, he turned on her fiercely.
‘We were the last ones to see her,’ he said, ‘Per and I. I couldn’t see it. I can’t believe I couldn’t see what was going on. We were the last ones to see her before she died.’
‘What happened?’ asked Tiziano quietly.
‘The women left,’ Fairhead said, his voice stilted, formal. ‘Tina left the table early because Loni had said something that upset her. Talking about one of the galleries in New York.’
Cate nodded. ‘It was to do with a show she’d had in New York,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Loni had posted a bad review of Tina’s work at the
same gallery, and I suppose just mentioning the name… ’ She tailed off, not wanting to tell Tina’s secret.
‘Michelle and Tiziano went after her.’ Fairhead stared down the slope at the red and white tape.
‘She was running,’ Tiziano said, and sighed. ‘I could hear her crying. I let Michelle follow her; I couldn’t keep up. I went to bed.’ Cate looked down at him, feeling a tiny pulse of adrenaline as things slotted into place. Tina first, yes, then Michelle, then Tiziano.
Fairhead went on in a distant monotone. ‘And we sat there, just the three of us; she said something about poor Tina, talking to Per. She was saying Tina needed to toughen up if she was going to survive, that art wasn’t just about the studio, that you had to engage with the world. Per was just gazing at her, she might have been saying anything.’ His voice was strained, dull with resignation. ‘Then her phone went. She got a text message on her phone.’
‘No phones at dinner, I thought,’ said Tiziano drily. ‘Isn’t that the rule?’
Alec Fairhead shrugged, the ghost of a smile on his thin face. ‘One rule for Loni Meadows,’ he said, ‘another for the rest of us. You must have learned that by now.’
Tiziano was sitting upright in his wheelchair, and Cate knew he wanted to ask Alec Fairhead outright what she’d done to him to set him off wandering the world like he did. She put a hand on his arm to stop him.
‘Did she read the message?’ she asked gently.
He nodded unhappily. ‘We might as well have not existed. She read it and just gave us a vague sort of smile, pleased with herself, oblivious. Then she got up and went out.’
There was a silence, save for the sound of the second car. It was slower, quieter than Orfeo’s, but it was getting closer.
‘Did Per leave with her?’ Cate asked softly. She found herself thinking of Loni Meadows’s bedroom, still smelling of her, clothes flung around as though she’d just left. The green silk of the blouse she’d worn at dinner, left carelessly on the floor; she’d changed in order to leave again. She wouldn’t have done that with Per in the room? Unless she
was a bigger whore than they thought. ‘Did he leave with her in the car that night? Did he have something to do with – the accident?’