'Damnation.”
'Might I ask what you want her for?”
Dossoni looked slightly embarrassed as he pulled out a gun from his pocket. He looked at it quizzically, as though he was wondering how it had got there. 'I was sort of planning to kill her,' he said, his voice dropping to a whisper as if he too was reluctant to disturb the calm. 'Just as I think I shall have to kill all four of you. I'm sorry about that.”
He pointed the gun at Flavia.
'Just a second.' Mary Verney spoke in the fluttering tone of voice that Argyll recognized as the one she used when she was about to do something unfortunate.
'Why, exactly, are you going to kill us? It's a bit rude, you know.”
Dossoni considered whether to reply, then evidently decided it made no real difference. 'I want to ensure that certain matters do not become generally known.
Which means getting hold of certain documents that should remain confidential, and ensuring that those people who know of their existence remain silent. Does that make you feel better?”
He smiled apologetically.
'Oh, dear,' Mary Verney said, wringing her hands. 'I'm afraid you make no sense to me at all. But I assure you, young man, that killing us won't be necessary. Will it, Jonathan?”
'I don't think so,' Argyll said, after considering the question objectively.
'Well, I do think so,' Dossoni replied, still quiet. Maybe it was the darkness, maybe the gun that now made him so calm. 'I don't want something accusing me of murdering that woman getting into the wrong hands.”
'We don't have anything,' Flavia said.
'I know that,' Dossoni said, almost apologetically. 'I got everything from Sabbatini.
But you know about it, you see. So ...”
Flavia looked at him. 'Did you kill her? That poor woman?”
'Yes.”
'Why?”
'Because I was told to. And I do what I am told. Just as I did with Sabbatini. Now I think it's time to work on my own for once.”
'Who told you?”
He shook his head. 'Sorry.”
'I don't suppose we might persuade you to go away?' Mary asked.
'I doubt it.”
'Look,' she said, her voice suddenly hysterical. She picked up a brown briefcase, making Dossoni swing his gun around to her. 'Please don't do this. You'd regret it later, I know you would. There's some money in here, you know. The general went to the bank this morning. You can have it all. All his pension money for the next two months
...”
Dossoni looked wearied by all this nonsense, checked his gun meticulously, and walked behind Argyll's chair. He put the gun to Argyll's head.
To say that Argyll was frightened would be to understate the matter. He closed his eyes, and tried to keep the panic under control. He looked at Mary Verney, and was strangely reassured. It was her eyes, measuring, watching, and assessing. As she twittered and fluttered—oh, watch out, that might be loaded—she seemed to know exactly what she was doing. Unfortunately, Argyll didn't, which was why he was not completely relaxed.
'Be quiet,' Dossoni said.
'Do be careful, young man,' Mary went on, babbling as aging ladies who have never experienced danger before are prone to do. 'Accidents will happen, you know. I remember when my cousin Charles was cleaning his Purdey. Back in 1953, this was.
No, I tell a lie, it must have been 1954 . . .”
'Shut up, you stupid old woman,' Dossoni snapped. But he pulled the gun away from Argyll and pointed it at her to emphasize the importance of silence. Mary Verney let out a short scream of fright, and dropped the briefcase. She flustered and fluttered on the ground to pick it all up again, twittering about losing all the general's papers. 'He's a very important man, you know . . .”
Dossoni evidently had had enough. He took two steps toward her but, before he could do much more, Mary Verney looked up, took aim very methodically, and shot him three times in the chest with the gun she had taken from Bottando's briefcase.
The noise was appalling. So was the effect. The impact of the bullets lifted Dossoni off the ground and hurled him backward onto Argyll, who squealed in terror and tried to wriggle out from underneath. The smell was terrible, the sight worse. When Argyll did get free, he scuttled behind the table before peering out. The cicadas were still twittering, the light from the lamps around the terrace still reflected peacefully off the glasses of red wine and made the thick gathering pools of blood shine in a way that, Argyll thought quite irrelevantly, reminded him of a painting he had once seen. The execution of St. Catherine on the wheel. Venetian. Very much into strong, bold coloration, the Venetians. Giorgione? Maybe not. He couldn't remember, and then he remembered it really wasn't that important at the moment.
Neither Bottando nor Flavia had moved. They just sat there, watching and saying nothing. There was little enough to say, after all. Things like 'goodness,' or 'dear me'
were inadequate for the occasion, and shouting or screaming seemed a little pointless.
Apart from the body slumped over Argyll's chair, the pools of blood all over the floor, the smell and the sight of Mary Verney sitting with the gun in her hand, coolly looking, everything was perfectly normal.
'What have you done?' Argyll managed to say eventually, after he'd watched her go over, feel the man's pulse, and rummage in his pockets. 'Where did you get that gun from?”
'This?' she asked. 'Oh, it's Taddeo's. He forgot to hand it in when he retired. Very careless of him to keep it loaded. Although, in the circumstances, I think we might forgive him this time. Grappa, I think.”
She was remarkably calm. Frighteningly so. She poured the drinks with a steady hand, while Argyll could scarcely hold his glass, his were trembling so much. It was why, he thought, she made such a good thief and he would have been such a terrible one. He found her more terrifying than Dossoni.
'He was going to kill us, you know,' she said reassuringly. 'Don't think he was just saying that for fun. Or that we might have talked him out of it. Just a question of whether you want him dead, or us.”
'Did you have to kill him, though?”
'What did you expect me to do? Shoot the gun out of his hands? My eyesight's so bad I was lucky to hit him at all. I don't get a great deal of practice in this sort of thing, you know.”
'But what do we do now?' Maybe it was something about the shock that made him prone to asking fatuous questions.
She thought. 'We have two choices. We either get rid of the body ...”
'Or what?' It was getting worse.
'Or we call the police.”
'What about if he has friends down the road?”
'Then we're in trouble. I was assuming he was on his own. In fact, he must have been. This has all the signs of a do-it-yourself affair. Hurried, badly planned. This is not the way you go about killing people if you're professional about it.”
Argyll shook his head. It was a bit too bizarre for him. There she was, sixty if she was a day, gray hair done up in a bun, gun in hand, talking as though assassinating people was as common as baking a fruit cake.
'I think under the circumstances that calling the police might be unwise just at the moment,' Bottando said quietly, finally shaking off his shock. 'It would be best if one or two things were settled first.”
'Such as?' Argyll said crossly. Was he the only person here going to show any sign of alarm or upset at what had happened? Was he really the only one who regarded a bloodstained body on the terrace as a little out of the ordinary?
'I think we have to make sure there is no repetition,' he said. 'Flavia?”
She nodded, and got up in a dreamy fashion. 'Yes,' she said. 'Shall we go?”
'Where?”
