He frowned as he stared at the stork-like rusting mechanism that protruded over the edge of the roof.
‘This was deliberate?’ Falcone asked. ‘Sabotage? Murder?’
Di Lauro shrugged.
‘I’m a building inspector. I can only tell you what I find. This is something entirely new to me. I cannot and will not say in my report that this was an accident. Nor will I allow Signora Van Doren’s men to take the blame, since I do not believe in my heart that they could possibly be responsible. It’s unthinkable they would do such a thing, as a prank or anything else. Any one of them, more, could have died if they’d stepped onto that scaffolding in this condition.’
Falcone looked at Teresa and said, ‘Get a description of these parts he’s talking about. Pass it on to your people. Let’s find them.’
The council officer stood there, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.
‘Is there anything else?’ Falcone asked.
‘You saw the blood?’ Di Lauro asked. ‘Downstairs? In the girl’s room? The smear on the radiator near the window?’
Teresa came and stood in front of him and asked, ‘Yes?’
‘I didn’t think this was important. Perhaps it isn’t.’
‘Yes?’ she repeated.
‘When I first came here we walked into that room together, Signora Van Doren and I. This was early the Saturday morning. When. . it was just an accident, nothing else. She was dreadfully upset. There was still. . in the street. . you could see where the man had fallen.’
They were all looking at him.
‘When we walked in the first thing she saw was the blood on the radiator. The unfortunate woman burst into tears. There was a lot of it. I thought perhaps some hair too. At least, something dark. Signora Van Doren seemed a good woman. I felt embarrassed. So. . I thought this was an accident.’
‘So you what?’ Teresa asked.
He licked his lips and said, ‘I tried to clean it as best I could with my handkerchief. It seemed only kind.’
‘Oh my God,’ she began. ‘You stupid man. How on earth. .?’
Di Lauro pulled a clear plastic bag out of his pocket, the sort used in a freezer. A crumpled bloodied hankie was inside.
‘I managed to get it before my wife put it in the wash. Only just,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’d no idea you would be dealing with something so horrible. If I’d known. .’
‘We weren’t supposed to know, were we?’ She stared at the stained handkerchief. ‘You do realize that thing is now of intellectual interest alone? If I had to stand up in court and prove there was no contamination. .’
‘Thank you,’ Falcone cut in, and removed the plastic bag from Di Lauro’s hands. ‘Go downstairs, find one of my officers, and make a statement. Then it’s best you left.’
They watched him go. Falcone phoned the Questura and called for orders demanding search warrants for the Casina delle Civette and the examination of the Gabriels’ financial and medical records.
When he’d done he looked at them and said, ‘We should assume Robert Gabriel murdered his adoptive father and Joanne Van Doren. One way or another we have to try to understand how much Cecilia Gabriel and her daughter were involved. I’m damned certain one of them knows where that kid is. We’re going in there.’
Costa looked at his watch. It was getting late and he said so.
Falcone nodded then said, ‘Fine. Let them sleep as easily as they can. We can take the mother and daughter back to the Questura while we search the premises. Bring along Santacroce too. I doubt we could exclude him.’
Peroni looked sceptical.
‘What are you saying, Leo?’ he asked. ‘That the newspapers got it right? It is the Cenci case all over again?’
‘I don’t care about the newspapers. Look at the facts.’
‘What facts?’ Peroni demanded. ‘A few blood and semen stains and a lot of possibilities that don’t join up. Are those really reason enough for tearing this family apart? I don’t think you have sufficient reason. You may find a magistrate thinks so too when we send a lawyer for that warrant. Nic?’
Costa hated taking sides. Both men had a point.
‘We need to talk to them,’ he said. ‘Separately, together. I don’t know. Joanne Van Doren was murdered. Robert Gabriel clearly has material information about her death. There’s enough here for a formal interview. We’d be remiss if we didn’t carry it out.’
‘Fine. And until then?’
Falcone glanced at his watch.
‘Forensic can keep going here. Keep trying to find the trash that was taken out by the builders. You two can go home. Tomorrow may be a long day.’
TEN
The door was at the end of the garden of the Casina delle Civette, hidden in an algaed corner that was overgrown with twisting serpents of ivy. It was kept locked, always. The key was in Bernard Santacroce’s desk. She’d taken a copy months before, when they first lived in the Casina, and kept it carefully in her bag.
At the end of the afternoon Mina Gabriel slipped out into the deserted garden and sat on the bench seat in the leafy, fragrant bower of bergamot and lemon trees, rereading Shelley next to the crumbling fountain and its soft, liquid song.
The finale. Beatrice in her cell, awaiting the last call for pardon from the Pope, knowing in her heart this ultimate plea was futile.
The young English girl held the play in her hands, acting out the final tragic scene in her imagination, something she had done many times before. Her hands moved through the thin air with its traffic fumes and specks of dust. Her voice, clear and precise, each word enunciated with care, rang out from the citrus grove and over the spike of red and yellow canna lilies that sat like a sea of antique gold before the laden grape vines that adorned the southern wall.
Beatrice’s words from Shelley’s pen, hers too now:
She stopped, looking up at the long, vaulted windows of the Casina. On the top floor was her mother, stiff at the glass, next to the imposing figure of Bernard Santacroce, his arms folded, magisterial as always.
Mina’s head went down, she pouted, hating the way they followed her.
A long minute staring at the cracked paving of the Casina garden, spoiled by dark moss, teeming with insects: ants and beetles and earwigs, denizens of another discrete world that ran from century to century, unheeding of mankind, creatures of the wide, grey, lampless deep.
Her gaze returned to the stone tower where Galileo had once listened to Bernard Santacroce’s ancestors pledging their allegiance, if only he might concede some dishonest accommodation with the Pope across the
