The Fallen Angel

and placed an arm briefly round her hunched shoulders.

‘Inspector,’ Santacroce said. ‘Is this your idea of how to treat the bereaved? Malise. . Joanne. . We were all close to them in one way or another. Have some decency, please.’

Falcone scowled.

‘It’s very difficult to talk about decency when we’re dealing with a murder, possibly two, sir. Signora Gabriel here was going to sue Joanne Van Doren. As to the relationship between the dead woman and Signora Gabriel’s husband-’

‘This is unacceptable,’ Santacroce cut in. ‘If you wish to proceed in such a fashion I will bring in a lawyer. At my own expense. Perhaps that would be for the best in any case.’

‘Do it now,’ Falcone agreed. ‘Then we can continue this interview at the Questura. Each of you in a separate room. If you’d prefer.’

‘Ask your damned questions,’ Cecilia Gabriel told him.

‘Where’s your son?’ the inspector demanded. ‘I need to speak to him and I must say I fail to understand why you show no apparent interest in his whereabouts. Where is he?’

The Englishwoman closed her eyes. For once she seemed affected by the subject. Mina had spoken a little about her mother the previous day, and Costa had read the skimpy reports in the Questura. Cecilia Gabriel was an only child in a fading and impoverished aristocratic English family. Her brief time as a student had shown great promise, but that had been removed by the needs of family. She seemed, to Costa’s eyes, worn yet a little fiery too, like some lean bird of prey backed into a corner, ready to fight if necessary.

The woman was not prepared to speak at that moment. It was left to Mina, who looked across the room, directly at Costa, and said, ‘Mum.’ She took her mother’s hand. ‘Tell them. You have to.’

‘It’s none of their business,’ Cecilia Gabriel muttered between gritted teeth. ‘Any of this.’ Her aquiline head came up. She glared at Falcone. ‘This is my family you’re talking about, Inspector. You will not crucify them.’

‘Your son, madam.’

‘Robert’s my son in name only,’ she said simply and left it at that. The room went quiet. From the look in Bernard Santacroce’s eyes it seemed this was a revelation to him too.

It was Peroni, typically, who broke the ice.

‘Signora Gabriel,’ he said. ‘We have to ask these questions in such circumstances. For your sake, for Robert’s sake. This is a criminal investigation. It’s important we know the truth, especially if the boy’s innocent. Try to see this from our point of view. If that’s the case, where is he? Why doesn’t he come forward?’

The approach, calm and unthreatening, appeared to have an effect. She relaxed a little and said, ‘I can’t tell you. All I know is that he’s frightened of something. These people he’s involved with. And. .’ The briefest glimmer of regret crossed her angular features. ‘. . I imagine I’m not the first person he’d choose to come to if he needed help.’

Mina wound her fingers in her mother’s and whispered something.

The woman breathed a deep sigh and continued.

‘Our son, our real son, died when he was two years old. A swimming pool accident. In France.’ Her eyes were misty, unfocused. ‘Things weren’t going well in Cambridge at that point. That book of Malise’s was too clever for our own good. The controversy. Then the scandal when I got pregnant. The baby was Robert. Our Robert. Then he was gone. Malise blamed himself. He took his eyes away from the pool for a moment. It was enough. We were on the point of falling apart. There were arguments. There always were. The college dismissed him. He found some work in Canada.’

‘I can’t imagine what it must be like,’ Peroni said honestly. ‘To lose a child. They talk about closure. .’

‘Psychobabble. Claptrap,’ the Englishwoman muttered. ‘The death of your child’s an open wound, one that never heals. We were desperate. A little crazy, I think. So we adopted a little boy and, since we were of good, academic stock, the authorities didn’t really notice the state we were in, didn’t care that we changed his name to that of the son we’d lost.’ She looked at them. ‘Malise was always good at hiding his pain. Englishmen are, in case you haven’t noticed. Robert. .’

The words drifted into silence.

‘Robert’s my brother,’ Mina said quietly. ‘And he’s still your son.’

The older woman patted her once on the back.

‘That’s true. But there was always a gap, some distance. I don’t know how but he knew it was there, almost from the beginning. He understood we wanted it to disappear, more than anything, though I don’t think we ever managed to convince him of that for some reason. Inspector.’ She glanced at Santacroce. ‘We’ve told people, you perhaps, that Robert was at college in England until he joined us here. That’s not strictly true. We tried to keep him at home. It was impossible. He’d run away. Get into fights. So we sent him to boarding school, not that we had the money. He was expelled from there when he was seventeen. As far as I know after that he lived in squats in London. Earning money God knows how, when he wasn’t begging off us. He came to Rome when Malise told him there was no more. Nothing left. He had the choice of living with us or. .’ She shrugged. ‘Disappearing for good, I imagine. We didn’t want that. We wanted to be a family. But there was no more money. He tried. We all did.’

‘And his relationship with your husband?’ Falcone asked.

‘They adored one another,’ she replied immediately. ‘Sometimes it was impossible to believe Robert wasn’t really Malise’s son. They had the same temper. The same stupid enthusiasms, the same ridiculous, impetuous urges. And when they argued. .’

Mina took her arm. The woman couldn’t go on.

‘You know the kind of people Robert mixed with?’ Costa asked.

She shook her head vigorously.

‘No. I didn’t want to know. They were criminals. Drugs were involved, I imagine. Not that Robert took them, as far as I knew. It was for the money. Nothing else.’

‘Is it possible Robert was in the apartment the night your husband died?’ Costa went on.

‘I told you!’ Mina cried. ‘I was there. Just the two of us. I saw Robert in the hall downstairs when I ran out to see Daddy. He was coming home. I think he was a bit drunk. Scared. He didn’t want to come with me into the street. He didn’t know anything.’

Costa shook his head.

‘You were in your music room. Someone could have arrived without your knowing. That’s possible, isn’t it?’

‘No!’ she insisted. ‘I wasn’t listening to music all the time. I heard Daddy screaming when he fell, didn’t I?’

‘Do you know why the media are pushing this story about Beatrice Cenci?’ Falcone asked the Englishwoman straight out.

‘Because you leaked it to them,’ Bernard Santacroce interrupted. ‘As a way of placing pressure on Cecilia, I imagine. It’s obvious, isn’t it? I have to say I find all this distasteful in the extreme.’

‘No,’ Costa told him. ‘We didn’t.’

He was puzzled by Santacroce’s intervention. It seemed misplaced.

‘Their interest — and I must confess I share it — stems from the fact your husband had sex shortly before he died,’ Falcone said without emotion. ‘The evidence is very clear. If your daughter insists no one else was in the house, the only possible conclusion-’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Cecilia Gabriel shrieked at him.

Falcone glanced at Mina and retrieved a print from the envelope. It was the photograph from the book Gabriel had been reading the night he died.

‘We found this in your father’s book, Mina.’

She glanced at the print, at her mother, went white and shook her head.

Falcone, perhaps out of embarrassment, flipped the photo over and showed her the brief written message, Galileo’s whispered denial of his recantation in front of the Vatican’s Inquisition. A brief chill ran down Costa’s spine when he realized, from the history he’d been given, that the great man must once have been inside these very walls.

‘Do you know who wrote this?’ Falcone asked. ‘Do you recognize the writing?’

‘No.’

The curt, aggressive tone, that of a teenager, made him turn it over. She stared at the naked figure, head cut