Where was Serafino Amatista? Whose body had the archaeologist uncovered? Had the PoW ID disc been planted to lead the police astray? The corpse had been found with some of the loot from Osmington Hall, and so was clearly linked to the ‘gardeners’ of California. But why were the gardeners still using the tunnel more than twenty-five years after the end of the war? The heart of the mystery must lay with the Roma family, and at Il Giardino. But first Dryden needed to move quickly, for Dr Siegfried Viktor Mann had a story to tell as well.
28
Vintry House was an Edwardian villa, complete with a covered verandah which ran around three sides of the two-storey house, with neo-Gothic dormer windows dotting the high tiled roof. Dryden could imagine the whole facade swinging open on hinges to reveal a life-sized doll’s house. A brick wall encircled the property, topped with black iron spiked railings, while the garden within was thick with rhododendron, laurel, and magnolia.
He walked up the overgrown driveway, the unpruned laurels weeping on his head in the dense chill mist which seemed to sandbag all sounds except that of a radio playing dimly in the depths of the house, Classic FM perhaps, or Radio Three, a voice breaking a short silence to introduce the next selection. It was Vaughan Williams, and the volume rose. Dryden climbed the verandah steps and was thankful to be under cover. He ran a hand through his thick black hair and squeezed out the droplets of water.
The door opened before he could knock: Dr Mann stood, a coffee cup in his hand, and despite the ordeal of his arrest the china was steady. The white shirt was still immaculate, the bow-tie neat and high at the base of his tanned throat. Stepping into what light there was threw his face into relief, the lines of age etched deep, perhaps by something more than the passage of time. For the first time Dryden could see that this face had been built from some private agony, a face haunted by life.
‘Mr Dryden, an early bird?’ He could hear it now, of course, the slight edge of the Bavarian accent which clipped the vowels, and the over-punctilious syllables. But the voice was still light, the breezy tone that of a confident English academic. Mann nodded, and Dryden, seeing signs everywhere, thought the mannerism oddly military, the kind of practised movement which could dismiss a subordinate.
‘I can’t think of any good reason why you should speak to me,’ said Dryden. ‘It’s about Serafino Amatista.’
Dryden stepped back from the threshold. It was a trick he had used many times and with surprising success. The offered retreat, the winning lack of pushy Fleet Street tactics.
Dr Mann shivered as a skein of mist wrapped itself around the verandah, and the faltering light seemed to dim further. ‘In the past you have been kind,’ he said. ‘So, please. Coffee, perhaps, but I told the police everything.’
The house gave few clues to Mann’s early life, but what was there was plain to see. As coffee was fetched Dryden was invited to look round. The villa had been fashionably restored to its Edwardian dignity: stripped pine floors reflected the wall lights and an oak sideboard carried a china fruit bowl. Over the smouldering fire hung an enlarged photograph of Mann seated in what looked like a village square, a group of children at his feet, all of them shaded by an almond tree. An old man sat with him, worry beads clasped in the hand that also held a walking stick. The scene was lit by the fierce glare of the Mediterranean sun which bleached out the edges of the photograph.
On the sideboard a gilt frame held a picture of an elderly couple, the father with pince-nez, the mother’s hair in a tight grey bun. The elaborate dark wood of the chairs on which they sat was delicately carved, and behind them on a whitewashed wall hung a crucifix. A smaller snapshot had been more recently framed in modernistic chrome, showing a young Mann in uniform, jet black hair tucked beneath an infantryman’s forage cap.
Mann returned with coffees and threw a split log on the fire. They stood in awkward silence as the wood crackled and the world outside faded away in the thickening fog. The light level dropped, and when Mann lit a cigarette the match head blazed, throwing the lines of his face into even sharper relief.
‘Why did the police arrest you?’ asked Dryden.
Mann shrugged. ‘They had suspicions, understandably I think – but an arrest was unwarranted.’
‘Suspicions? That you had killed Professor Valgimigli?’
‘Azeglio?’ He laughed at that. ‘Perhaps they did think so. But why would I kill Azeglio Valgimigli? I had been his tutor, he was a fine student, he became my friend. I helped, I think, in a small way to get him his post here at the dig. It was something he wanted very much. No – I did not kill Azeglio. The police accused me of another murder – the man in the tunnel. They thought it was Amatista, but now…’
Dryden saw his chance. ‘Serafino Amatista was the village guard of Agios Gallini, a village you know…’
Mann held up his hand: ‘Please. All these matters were dealt with in 1947, Mr Dryden. The police have these records too. My position was always clear, and was corroborated by eyewitnesses. The action we took followed the discovery of a significant threat to the Wehrmacht and, indeed, the Italian civil authorities. I was an officer, the senior officer in this case, and I was compelled to observe the regulations set down in such cases. The tribunal in Salonika ruled that our actions could not constitute a war crime of any kind.’ But Mann’s smile was uncertain, and flickered out.
‘Though you do regret this… incident?’
Mann’s jaw jerked oddly to one side and Dryden saw the anger in his eyes. ‘The occupation of Greece was a brutal period. I have spent much of my life trying to help repair the damage that was done,’ he said, glancing at the picture over the fire. ‘For the rest of the war – until my capture by the British in 1944 – I was in charge of the garrison on Aegina. My time there is without blemish. Quite the opposite. Please consult the records if you wish.’
Dryden held up his hands. ‘No need. You were a prisoner? Here?’
Mann nodded, turning over the logs with a fire iron, the handle of which was fashioned into a cherub.
‘This man, Amatista, did you know he had preceded you at California?’ asked Dryden.
Mann paused. ‘Yes. I informed the authorities – in 1945 – that he was a deserter.’
‘How did you know he’d been in the camp?’
‘I found his picture. Family effects were left in the huts, I was detailed to organize their collection to a central point where we boxed everything up and informed the British they could take them away. They never did – at least not before our repatriation. As I say, this… man’s picture was amongst the others. A snapshot with a sweetheart, I think, sharing a bicycle ride. It was not a face I will ever forget.’
