The Savage Garden

wanted to. Which he didn't. He wanted to leave. He would have phoned for a taxi there and then, but even that seemed like a task too far.

    He lowered himself into the overstuffed armchair near the fireplace, wincing as he did so. They had really worked him over beneath the pines in Viareggio. Something was badly wrong with his ribs. There was a sharp and unfamiliar edge to the pain, worrying. And as for the throbbing in his skull, the aspirins barely brushed the surface of it.

    He was a wreck, inside and out. He had never been brought this low in all his life. Like Dante, he had finally reached the ninth circle of Hell.

    No. It was a false comparison to draw. Because Dante's journey had not ended there, deep in the abyss. He had risen up through Purgatory and on into Paradise, guided by the ghost of his dead love, Beatrice.

    He dwelt on this thought for a while, then heaved himself up out of the armchair and made for the door, every step a discomfort.

    Something told him to turn back before he got there. It was exactly this—his cockeyed belief in his own spectral guide—that had brought him to his current predicament. Strangely, though, it no longer mattered to him if he was the dupe of his own diseased fancy. He was too far gone to care.

    He felt oddly calm as he edged his way through the gap in the high yew hedge. In fact, it was the first time he had ever entered the memorial garden free of any apprehension or disquiet, he realized. Maybe it was the pain racking his body. It was certainly the closest thing he had ever experienced to what she must have felt at the end.

    Whatever curious affinity he had cooked up for himself and Flora, she was having none of it.

    She offered no solace, just a blank and stony stare.

    He told himself not to lose heart. She had done this to him before, rebuffing his advances, then allowing him close. Antonella and Harry had both sensed it in her—she liked to tease. She was exactly as Federico had cast her in stone all those centuries ago.

    He walked the circuit slowly, aware that it was the last time he would ever do so. He waited and hoped. In vain. Half an hour later he found himself back at the amphitheater, dejected, rejected, his final tour complete.

    He ran his fingers over the inscription on the stone bench: anima fit sedendo et quiescendo prudentior. The Soul in Repose Grows Wiser. Yet another clue left by Federico Docci. How many had he left in all? Just the right amount for his crime to go undetected for almost four hundred years. It was an impressive piece of judgment on Federico's part—worthy of admiration, even—and it was easy to picture Federico applying the same rigorous subtlety to the murders themselves. Why else had he not been brought to account? He saw Federico nursing his ailing wife till the bitter end, the distraught husband, perfectly in character. And he saw Maurizio, the distraught brother, squeezing out a tear to deflect the suspicions of a stranger.

    That's how good you had to be to get away with it.

    He was alert now, in the grip of a new clarity, the implacable logic tightening around him.

    Maurizio knew for a fact that Adam had visited the top floor, because Maria had told him so. He might well have assumed, therefore, that Adam had discovered the bullet hole in the wooden boards and that he'd recognized it for what it was—the linchpin of a case against Maurizio. All Maurizio had to do was remove the pin and the wheel would fall off.

    Maurizio was still in character, playing a role. Short of killing Adam, what else could he do other than talk his way out of suspicion? There was to be no confession, not even the slightest admission of guilt.

    An innocent man would not have shown up for dinner. Offended by the wild accusations leveled at him, he would have snubbed Adam on his last night at Villa Docci.

    Adam waited, baited his hook, and when an opportunity presented itself, made a last desperate cast. This he did in the cellar, where Maurizio had gone to select the wine for the meal, and where Adam joined him moments later.

    'I'm sorry.'

    Maurizio turned. 'Yes, you said.'

    'I just have one more question, though.'

    'Don't do this.'

    'What happened to the gun?'

    'What gun?'

    'Emilio's gun.'

    'My father destroyed it.'

    'Really?'

    'That's what he said.'

    'Did you see him do it?'

    He wasn't afraid to push; a guilty man couldn't afford to push back. And Maurizio didn't. He examined the label of a dusty bottle and made for the door. 'I think we should join my mother,' he said flatly.

    'She knows what he did with the gun. And with the bullets he took from the body.'

    An innocent man would have carried on walking, not stopped and turned at the door.

    'That's right, he had the bullets removed. They're behind the plaque in the chapel—Emilio's plaque—along