Goodnight Sweet Prince (38 page)

‘Francis. Francis.’

Her fiancé was pacing up and down the room.

‘You look terrible. You haven’t changed your mind, have you?’

‘Of course I haven’t, Lady Lucy. Of course I haven’t.’ He held her very tight. ‘It’s just that I have to go away again. Now. Today, I think. I know it’s
awful when we’ve just got engaged and everything, but I don’t have any choice.’

‘I thought you said your last case had finished.’ She wasn’t angry. She just wanted to know.

‘I thought it had. I was sure it had. But it hasn’t. That’s why I have to go back to Italy.’

‘Francis, poor Francis. But why do you look so worried, so sad?’

‘I am worried, Lady Lucy. I am sad. I think there is another dead person waiting for me in Perugia. I left him in Venice about a week ago. Now I think he’s dead. There have been too
many dead bodies in this business already. And I was thinking about the wedding only this morning.’

‘So was I. How nice that we were both thinking about it together. Have you made any decisions?’

‘Well, I think we both have to decide where it should be after I get back. But I have found my best man. He’s very excited about kissing the bride.’

‘That must be Johnny Fitzgerald,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘I shan’t mind being kissed by him. Not that it won’t be much nicer being kissed by you, Francis.’

‘I can’t stop,’ said Powerscourt rather desperately. ‘I have to catch a train.’

‘Poor Francis.’ She held him by the lapels on his jacket and kissed him on the lips. ‘I shall be here when you get back. But you will take care, won’t you? You will keep
yourself safe, won’t you? Sometimes I think your work must be very dangerous.’

Powerscourt remembered as he left that Lady Lucy was used to seeing her men go off to war. The first husband must have gone away a lot. But then one day, he never came back. He was dead.

Leith’s message was as brief as ever. He read it on his way to the Commissioner’s office.

‘3 o’clock from Victoria, my lord. Dover Calais. Express connection to Paris. Suggest station hotel above Gare de Lyons for the night. 7 a.m. express to Milan. Arrive Milan 4 p.m.
4.30 connection to Florence. Arrive Florence 9.30 p.m. Reservation at Hotel Rivoli, close to station. Former Franciscan convent, my lord. Train to Perugia, 8 a.m. Arrives 12.15, my lord.
Mountainous terrain. Reservation at Hotel Posta, Corso Vannucci.’

‘Lord Powerscourt. My dear Lord Powerscourt.’ The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was looking old and tired and rather frail. Maybe it’s been a bad week for crime in
London too, reflected Powerscourt. The four large maps on his wall were still there, great blobs of criminal red marking out the East End.

‘Sir John, I shall be brief. And let me say before I begin how much I value the assistance you have already provided. It has made my life much easier.’

‘I wish we could have been more helpful.’ Sir John shrugged. ‘All our information was in the negative. As far as we know, there are no blackmailers operating in Society at
present. Then there were five people checked for their whereabouts on a certain night in January this year.’ He looked closely at Powerscourt as though he suspected the true reason for the
requests. ‘All of them have been lawfully accounted for. How can we help on this occasion?’

‘Two things, Sir John. Forgive me if the first sounds fanciful. How easy is it to hire a professional killer in this country? How long would it take? And would they, the professional
killers, be willing to commit murder outside this country? And, following on from that, how easy would it be to hire a killer abroad? In Italy, in particular. And finally, do you by any chance have
a contact in the police force in the Italian city of Perugia? Somebody you could recommend me to in pursuit of my inquiries.’

‘The last part is the easiest.’ The Commissioner rose from his desk and selected a thick file from his shelves. ‘You’d be surprised how often we have contact with other
police forces. Runaway children, stolen jewels, thieves believed to have fled their country of origin. We keep records of all the policemen we have to deal with. And I am sure they keep records of
our own officers.

‘Padua, Palermo, Parma, Pavia, Perugia. Here we are. Perugia. The man you want is called Ferrante, Captain Domenico Ferrante. He speaks very good English. I shall cable him that you are
coming and that we request him to assist you in your inquiries.

‘You ask about hiring killers like you would hire a cab. It is very easy, far too easy. But I don’t think British assassins would happily operate outside these shores. Maybe Captain
Ferrante could help you with the Italian end of your business. And I presume you would like us to listen at the doorways and find out if any of these killers have been approached in the last few
weeks? Weeks or months, would you say?’

‘Weeks,’ said Powerscourt firmly. ‘Definitely weeks. In the last ten days to be precise.’

Mountainous terrain, my lord. Leith’s phrase came back to Powerscourt as his express toiled its way through the tunnels towards Perugia. Down there on his right he saw a
great expanse of water, Lake Trasimene with its three islands and the olive slopes above. Hannibal, over a thousand miles from home, his elephants trampling across the Apennines, had waited there
for the Roman army in the mist and fog of an early morning. Fifteen thousand Roman soldiers were slaughtered between the hills and the lake, the carnage going on for hours. The little river flowing
into Lake Trasimene was named the Sanguinetto in memory of the blood it carried two thousand years before.

A very young Italian policeman greeted Powerscourt at Perugia station. He drew himself up to his full height and gave his best salute. His jacket was at least two sizes too big for him, only the
tips of his fingers visible at the bottom of the sleeves. The trousers, freshly pressed, drooped over his shoes. His mother thinks he’s not finished growing yet, Powerscourt suspected. No
point in wasting good money on a uniform that’ll only last a year. Even a policeman’s uniform.

‘Lord Powerscourt? Welcome to Perugia, sir. I am to send your bags to the hotel. I take you to Capitano Ferrante, sir.’

The Capitano was in a little cafe, drinking coffee and staring moodily at a long report on his table. More coffee, strong and black, arrived as Powerscourt sat down.

‘Lord Powerscourt, how very nice to meet you. I have the long message from the Commissioner about your visit. How is the Commissioner?’

‘He is well. He looked tired the last time I saw him in London.’

‘Everywhere the policemen are tired, I think. There is too much crime, there are too many of the criminals. Not enough time to catch them all.’

Captain Ferrante was a well-built man in his early forties. His hair was greying at the temples. He looked cheerful, in spite of the prevalence of crime.

‘This Commissioner and I, we work together, three or four years ago. The English milord, a very stupid young man, he steal a painting from one of the churches in the city. Maybe he think
he hang it on the walls of his palazzo back in England. I have to go and bring the painting back to Perugia. The Commissioner, he is very helpful. He is fond of paintings, I think, the
Commissioner. Yes?’

‘He is. He is.’ Powerscourt remembered the reports of gruesome watercolours of the Thames, painted in his spare time.

‘We bring back the painting. The Commissioner says that if it was painted to hang on the walls of San Pietro in Perugia, that is where it belongs, that is where it must live. But come,
Lord Powerscourt. I believe you think you may be able to identify the body in the fountain? Bodies without names, they are so difficult. Our procedures for the dead people, they are very proper,
very respectful, but they all assume that we know who they are.

‘We have our coffee here, because the body is in that building over there.’ Ferrante pointed to a large imposing building across the street. ‘That is the hospital. The morgue
is at the far corner of the hospital. That is where the body is. The nuns, you know, the nuns who found him by the fountain, they insisted on washing the body, cleaning it up, all that sort of
thing. The Mother Superior, she insists.’

The Deposition of Lord Edward Gresham, thought Powerscourt, a companion piece to all those earlier depositions, weeping women removing a limp body from a bloodied cross under threatening clouds,
the air thick with meaning.

‘Come,’ said Ferrante. ‘We can have some more coffee when we come back. Then I will take you to the fountain.’

They made their way across the street and into the hospital. Sick patients were being wheeled along the corridors for their operations. Legs in plaster, arms in plaster made their first
experimental journeys out of the surgeries and tottered on to the main thoroughfare. Doctors checked their notes as they went from ward to ward.

‘It is down these stairs. Down quite a lot of stairs.’

Their boots echoed back up the stairwell. The walls were an antiseptic pale green, adorned at regular intervals with paintings of the Virgin. Two men, dressed in black, undertakers of Perugia,
passed them going the other way, their faces locked in the piety of their profession.

‘I must find the attendant. He has the key.’ Ferrante disappeared through a side door.

There was no natural light at all down here, just the flickering of the lamps. Powerscourt wondered if he had come to the end of his journey, watched over by a beatific Madonna, fifty feet
underground.

‘This way, please.’ The huge door creaked slightly. Ferrante and the attendant made the sign of the cross.

The room was very cold. There were no windows. The walls were white. A couple of lamps threw long shadows of the living against the walls of the dead. The morgue was about fifteen feet square
with tiers of bunks reaching up towards the ceiling. But they weren’t really bunks, Powerscourt noticed. They were shelves. On each shelf lay a corpse.

‘
Questo. Si, questo. Per favore
,’ Ferrante whispered to the attendant. This one. This one please.

The attendant pulled the second shelf on his right out from the wall. The body in its box came out slowly, as if it didn’t want to be recognized.

It was the cravat he noticed first, the same cravat he had worn that last morning in Venice. A silk cravat. A bloodstained silk cravat marked the presence of Lord Edward Gresham. His face was
calm, in spite of the great cut running across the throat. The nuns had cleaned him up well, Powerscourt thought, prayers washing the blood away from Gresham’s wounded face. He saw the marks
on the hands, the knife forced in and twisted round with great force. He noticed the thick dried blood all the way down his jacket. Maybe they weren’t allowed to clean that up until the body
had a name. Something in Gresham’s face reminded Powerscourt of those earlier Greshams, hanging on the wall of the Gresham family home, maybe even something of his mother. Aristocrats embrace
their ancestors, even in death. Especially in death.

Ferrante coughed very quietly. ‘Lord Powerscourt, do you know this man?’

‘I do.’

‘You are certain? You must swear that you are certain. We have to fill in the forms. For the authorities, you understand.’

‘I am certain,’ said Powerscourt, and whispered a last farewell to Gresham as the body slid back into the wall. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy
word.

‘When did you last see him?’

‘I saw him in Venice about ten days ago.’

‘Come,’ said Ferrante, ‘we can do the paperwork in the office. Not in here, I think.’ Powerscourt could see why Italian policemen were always busy. Ferrante was filling
in forms as fast as his pen could write.

‘Name?’

‘Lord Edward Gresham.’

‘Address?’

‘Thorpe Hall, Warwickshire, England.’

‘Occupation?’

‘Army officer.’

‘Married or single?’

‘Had been married. His wife was dead. No children.’

‘Call that single. Religion?’

‘Catholic.’

‘Next of kin?’

‘Mother. Lady Blanche Gresham, Thorpe Hall. Same address.’

‘Reason for visit to Perugia?’

‘Tourist.’

‘Address to which body should be conveyed for interment?’

‘Thorpe Hall again.’ The family vault, watched over by his weeping mother. Surely even a Gresham would cry when her son came home in a coffin.

‘Thank you so much, Lord Powerscourt. Now, while I finish off the forms, perhaps you would like to have a look at these.’ He took a small bag from the desk and shook the contents out
on to the table.

‘This is what we find in the pockets and so on. Nothing has been touched, except by the blood.’

There was a train ticket to Rome, first class, valid for travel some five days before. Gresham must have been on his last day in Perugia when they killed him, the last stop before Rome. There
was an assortment of small coins and a receipt for a bill from Florian’s in Venice. My God, thought Powerscourt, that was with me, and the waiters, Sandro the gondolier’s hat waving
across St Mark’s Square, the mirror on the wall. There was a letter, written by Gresham to himself. My Penance, it said at the top, from Father Menotti SJ. There followed a list of prayers,
Acts of Contrition, arcane references to the intricacies of the faith that Powerscourt didn’t understand.

But wait, he said to himself. If Gresham has his penance to perform, then he must have been to confession here in Perugia maybe, or in Florence.

‘Captain Ferrante.’

‘Yes, Lord Powerscourt.’ The Captain was half-way down a very long form indeed. He carried on writing.

‘I need to ask you a question about the Catholic faith.’

‘I am not the priest, you understand.’ Ferrante was refilling his pen with official blue ink. ‘But my brother is. And my wife, I am afraid, she is very devout.’

‘Lord Edward Gresham had converted to Catholicism. Early this year he killed somebody. It was revenge. The somebody had killed Gresham’s wife. Gresham was on a journey to Rome.
Somewhere en route he was going to say his confession. This piece of paper makes me think he had already done so.’