and drawn him against her.
He reached for his cigarettes and caught sight once again of the chapel down the end of the terrace, lurking at the periphery of his vision, as it had been all evening. He had managed to put it from his mind before. This time he was less successful. While Harry prattled on to Antonella about the neglected heroines of early blues music, Adam found his thoughts turning to Emilio's bones sunk beneath the flagstone floor. A life cut short by two bullets —one to the chest, one to the head—Chiara had been very specific.
He couldn't help thinking that there was something unnatural about this level of detail. Chiara could only have heard it from Maurizio, but what kind of man would describe his own brother's murder with such clinical precision? And the other details too: the shot fired into the gramophone player, the Germans glancing at their abandoned weapons. It smacked of a piece of theater hatched in the mind of a playwright. Like a bad lie, it was weighed down with unnecessary information.
He had made the same mistake himself the summer before, when, driving too fast, trying to impress his friends, he'd lost control of his mother's car, crumpling the Morris's fender against a tree. He had told his mother that he'd swerved to avoid a springer spaniel in the road. 'Welsh or English?' she had inquired with that knowing look of hers.
Then there was Benedetto, Signora Docci's husband. What had induced him to preserve the site of Emilio's slaughter, obliging his family to live with the memory while denying them access to the scene itself? He had consulted no one on the matter, and had clearly felt no need to justify his decision. Even allowing for his grief- stricken state, there remained something uncharacteristic, unkind even, about his behavior. It had the faintly fanatical whiff of an act of penitence, as if he were punishing himself. Or punishing someone else, perhaps?
Maybe Benedetto knew the truth of what happened that night.
It was certainly an explanation. And a good one. Yes. Benedetto had somehow unearthed the truth but he had chosen to keep the discovery to himself. The best he could bring himself to do was close off the top floor, a constant reminder to Maurizio—
Adam caught himself in this act of folly—speculating about the guilt of a man he had already acquitted. Why couldn't he shake off his suspicions? They were still there, like a wind at his back.
'Well?' said Harry.
'What?'
'Off with the fairies, were we? I said what about another bottle?'
Antonella held up her hands in surrender. 'Not for me. Any more and I won't get home.'
'So stay,' said Harry. 'The place is a little pokey but I'm sure we can find you a corner to bunk down in.'
Antonella smiled. 'No, I must go.'
'I'll see you to your car.'
'Adam will see you to your car, and you will remind him to come back with another bottle of champagne.'
Antonella kissed Harry on both cheeks. 'Good night, Harry.'
The moment they were lost to Harry's view behind a screen of yew, Antonella asked, 'Why does he call you Paddler?'
Adam explained that it had been a very young Harry's first stab at his newborn brother's name. Somehow it had lived on over the years, probably because Harry knew that it irritated Adam.
'I like it,' said Antonella, hooking her arm through his. It was a simple gesture—intimate and formal at the same time—and it gave Adam the courage to ask the question he had just vowed to himself he wouldn't ask.
'Have you ever been up there?'
'Where?'
He pointed to the top floor of the villa. 'There.'
'No.'
'Aren't you intrigued?'
'Of course I am. But it's not possible.'
'What if I asked your grandmother?'
'She would say no.'
'How do you know?'
'Because I asked her. It was my eighteenth birthday. I thought it would make a difference. It didn't. I was so angry I almost took the key and did it anyway.'
'You know where she keeps the key?'
Antonella drew to a halt. 'Why are you so interested?'
'Same as you, I suppose. Curiosity. Morbid curiosity. It must be a weird sight. And it'll be gone soon, gone forever.'
'And we'll all be happy when it is.'
Her car was parked at the edge of the courtyard.
'Are you okay to drive?'
'I think so.'
