The room was far more than he had hoped for. Large and light, it had a floor of polished deep-red tiles, a beamed ceiling and two windows giving onto a leafy garden out back. It was furnished with the bare essentials: a wrought-iron bed, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. As requested, there was also a desk, though no chair, which brought a sharp rebuke from Signora Fanelli.
Iacopo skulked off in search of one, his parting glance holding Adam to blame for this public humiliation. He returned with the chair and disappeared again while Signora Fanelli was still demonstrating the idiosyncrasies of the bathroom plumbing to Adam.
Adam declared the room to be
'
She relieved him of his passport, flashed him a smile and left. Only her perfume remained—a faint scent of roses hanging lightly in the air.
He hefted his suitcase onto the worm-eaten chest at the end of the bed and began to unpack. She must have had the boy young— seventeen, eighteen—though you'd have said even younger judging by her looks. For some reason he'd pictured an elderly woman, small in stature and of no mean girth. Instead, he was being housed by a stringier version of Gina Lollobrigida in
It was a pleasing thought.
Another image from the same film barged its way into his head unbidden—Burt Lancaster's overmuscled physique squeezed into a leotard—and the moment passed.
The road to Villa Docci proved to be a dusty white track following the crest of a high spur to the north of town. It rose and fell past ocher-washed farmhouses, hay meadows giving way to olive groves and vineyards tucked behind high hedgerows ablaze with honeysuckle, mallow and blood-red poppies. His mother would have been thrilled, stopping every so often to call his attention to some plant or flower. That was her way. But all Adam was aware of was the mocking chant of the cicadas pulsing in time to the pitiless heat.
He was about to turn back, convinced that he'd made a mistake, when he saw two weathered stone gateposts up ahead. Beyond them an avenue of ancient cypresses climbed sharply toward a large villa, the trunks of the trees powdered white with dust thrown up from the driveway. There was no sign beside the gateposts, but a quick glance at the handdrawn map Signora Docci had sent him confirmed that he had at last arrived.
Nearing the top of the driveway, he stopped, uncertain, sensing something. He turned, glancing back down the gradient, the plunging perspective of the flanking cypresses.
Something not right. But what? He couldn't say. And he was too hot to ponder it further.
The cypresses gave way to a gravel turning area in front of the villa. There were some farm buildings away to his left, down the slope, beyond a stand of holm oaks, but his attention was focused on the main structure.
How had Professor Leonard described the architecture of the villa? Pedestrian?
Admittedly, his own knowledge on the subject was drawn almost exclusively from a battered copy of Edith Wharton's book on Italian villas, but there seemed to be nothing whatsoever run- of-the-mill about the building in front of him. Though not as large or obviously grand as some, its symmetry and proportions lent it an air of discreet nobility, majesty even.
Set around three sides of a flagstone courtyard, it climbed three floors to a shallow, tiled roof with projecting eaves. Arcaded loggias occupied the middle and upper stories of the front facade, while the wings consisted of blind arcades with pedimented and consoled windows. There was not much more to it than that, but every detail of it worked.
The building felt no need to proclaim its pedigree; rather, it exuded it like a well-cut suit. You were left in little doubt that the hand of some master lay behind its conception—long-dead, unrecognized, forgotten. For if one of the more illustrious architects of the period had been responsible for bringing it into being, that fact would have been preserved in the historical record. As it was, he had found almost no references to Villa Docci during his preliminary research.
He skirted the wellhead in the middle of the courtyard and mounted the front steps. There was a stone escutcheon set in the wall above the entrance door, a rampant boar the centerpiece of the Docci coat of arms. He tugged on the iron bellpull.
She must have been observing him from inside, waiting for him to make his approach, for the door swung open almost immediately. She was short and stout, and she was wearing a white blouse tucked into a black skirt. Her dark eyes reached for his and held them, viselike.
'Good morning,' he said in Italian.
'Good afternoon.'
'I'm Adam Strickland.'
'You're late.'
'Yes. I'm sorry.'
She stepped aside, allowing him to enter, appraising him with a purposeful eye as if he were a horse she was thinking of betting on (and leaving him with the distinct impression that she wouldn't be reaching for her purse anytime soon).
'Signora Docci wishes to see you.'
At either end of the long entrance hall was a stone stairway leading to the upper floors. When she made for the one on the left, Adam fell in beside her.
'May I have a glass of water, please?'
