“Did you find them in Angelo’s apartment?” “No.”
“Where, then?”
“Hidden in the trunk of his Mercedes.”
Suddenly three wrinkles: one on her forehead, two at the corners of her mouth. For the first time, she seemed genuinely baffled.
“Why hidden?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know. But I could venture a guess. Maybe Angelo didn’t want his sister to read them. Certain details might have proved embarrassing to him, as you can imagine.”
“What are you saying, Inspector? There were no secrets between those two!”
“Listen, let’s forget about the whys and wherefores. I found these letters inside a linen envelope hidden under the rug in the trunk. Those are the facts. But I have another question, and you know what it is.”
“Inspector, those letters were practically dictated to me.”
“By whom?”
“By Angelo.”
What did this woman think? That she could make him swallow the first bullshit that came into her head? He stood up abruptly, enraged.
“I’ll expect you at the station at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Elena also stood up. She’d turned pale, her forehead shiny with sweat. Montalbano noticed she was trembling slightly.
“No, please, not the police station.”
She kept her head down, her fists clenched, arms extended at her sides, a little girl grown up too fast, scared of being punished.
“We’re not going to eat you at the station, you know.”
“No, no, please, I beg you.”
A thin, frail voice that turned into little sobs. Would this girl ever be done astonishing him? What was so terrible about having to go to the station? As one does with small children, he put a hand under her chin and raised her head. Elena kept her eyes closed, but her face was bathed in tears.
“Okay, no police station, but don’t tell silly stories.”
He sat back down. She remained standing but drew close to Montalbano until she was right in front of him, her legs touching his knees. What was she expecting? For him to ask her for something in exchange for not forcing her to go to the police station? All at once the smell of her skin reached his nostrils, leaving him slightly dazed. He became afraid of himself.
“Go back to your place,” he said sternly, feeling as if he’d suddenly become a school principal.
Elena obeyed. Now seated, she tugged at the housecoat with both hands, in a vain attempt to cover her thighs a little. But as soon as she let go of the cloth, it climbed back up, worse than before.
“So, what’s this unbelievable story about Angelo himself dictating the letters to you?”
“I never followed him in my car. Among other things, when we started seeing each other, it had been a year since I had a car. I’d had a bad accident that left my car a total wreck. And I didn’t have enough money to buy another, not even a used one. The first of those three letters, the one where I say I followed him to Fanara, dates from four months ago— you can check the date—when Angelo hadn’t given me the new car yet. But just to make the story more believable,Angelo told me to write that he’d gone to a certain house—I no longer remember the address—and that I’d become suspicious.”
“Did he tell you who lived there?”
“Yes, an aunt of his, his mother’s sister, I think.”
She’d recovered her nerve and was now herself again. But why had the inspector’s idea so frightened her?
“Let’s suppose for a minute that Angelo actually did get you to write those letters.”
“But it’s true!”
“And for the moment I’ll believe that. Apparently he had you write them so that someone else would read them. Who?”
“His sister, Michela.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he told me himself. He would arrange for her somehow to come across them, as if by accident. That’s why I was so surprised when you said he was keeping them hidden in the trunk of the Mercedes. It’s unlikely Michela would ever find them there.”
“What was Angelo trying to get out of Michela by having her read the letters? What, in the end, was the purpose? Did you ask him?”
“Of course.”
“And what was his explanation?”
“He gave me an extremely stupid explanation. He said they were supposed to prove to Michela that I was madly in love with him, as opposed to what she claimed. And I pretended to be satisfied with this explanation, because deep down I didn’t give a damn about the whole thing.”
