“You’ll hear from your brother soon, you’ll see,” he said to her in a soft voice, holding out his hand.
But she didn’t grasp it, only shaking her head still more disconsolately.
“Listen…your brother…Is he seeing any…doesn’t he have a relationship with anyone?” “Not that I know of.”
She eyed him. And as she was eyeing him, Montalbano swam desperately to avoid drowning. All at once the waters of the lake turned very dark, as though night had fallen.
“What’s wrong?” asked the inspector.
Without answering, she opened her eyes wide, and the lake turned into the open sea.Swim, Salvo, swim.
“What’s wrong?” he repeated between strokes.
Again she didn’t answer. Turning her back to him, she unlocked the door, climbed the stairs, reached the top floor but didn’t stop there. The inspector then noticed a recess in the wall with a spiral staircase leading up to a glass door. Michela climbed this and slipped a key in the door, but was unable to open it.
“Let me try,” he said.
He opened the door and found himself on a terrace as big as the villa itself. Pushing him aside, Michela ran toward a one-room structure, a sort of box standing practically in the middle of the terrace. It had a door and, to one side, a window. But these were locked.
“I haven’t got the key,” said Michela. “I never have.”
“But why do you want…?”
“This used to be the washroom. Angelo rented it along with the terrace and then transformed it. He comes here sometimes to read or to sun himself.”
“Okay, but if you haven’t got the key—”
“For heaven’s sake, please break down the door.”
“Listen, signorina, I cannot, under any circumstances …”
She looked at him. That was enough. With a single shoulder thrust, Montalbano sent the plywood door flying. He went inside, but before even feeling around for the light switch, he yelled: “Don’t come in!”
He’d detected the smell of death in the room at once.
Michela, however, even in the dark, must have noticed something, because Montalbano heard first a sort of stifled sob, then heard her fall to the floor, unconscious.
“What do I do now?” he asked himself, cursing.
He bent down, picked Michela up bodily, and carried her as far as the glass door. Carrying her this way, however— the way the groom carries the bride in movies—he would never make it down the spiral staircase. It was too narrow. So he set the woman down upright, embraced her around the waist, wrapping his hands around her back, and lifted her off the ground. This way, with care, he could manage it. At moments he was forced to squeeze her tighter and managed to notice that under her big, floppy dress Michela hid a firm, girlish body. At last he arrived in front of the door to the other top-floor apartment and rang the doorbell, hoping that there was someone alive in there, or that the bell would at least wake somebody from the grave.
“Who is it?” asked an angry male voice behind the door.
“It’s Inspector Montalbano. Could you open the door, please?”
The door opened, and King Victor Emmanuel III appeared. An exact replica, that is: the same mustache, the same midgetlike stature. Except that he was dressed in civvies. Seeing Montalbano with his arms around Michela, he got the entirely wrong idea and turned bright red.
“Please let me in,” said the inspector.
“What?! You want me to let you inside?! You’re insane! You have the gall to ask me if you can have sex in my home?” “No, look, Your Majesty, I—” “Shame on you! I’m going to call the police!” And he slammed the door.
“Fucking asshole!” Montalbano let fly, giving the door a kick.
Thrown off balance by the woman’s weight, he very nearly fell to the floor with Michela. He picked her up again like a bride and started carefully descending the stairs. He knocked at the first door he came to.
“Who is it?”
A little boy’s voice, aged ten at most.
“I’m a friend of your dad’s. Could you open?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Mama and Papa told me not to open the door for anyone when they’re not home.”
Only then did Montalbano remember that before lifting Michela off the ground he’d slipped her handbag over his arm. That was the solution. He carried Michela back up the stairs, leaned her against the wall, holding her upright by pressing his own body against hers (in no way an unpleasant thing), opened the purse, took out the keys, unlocked the door of Angelo’s apartment, dragged Michela into the master bedroom, laid her down on the bed, went into the bathroom, grabbed a towel, soaked it with water from the bathroom faucet, went back into the bedroom, placed the towel over Michela’s forehead, and collapsed onto the bed himself, dead tired from the exertion. He was breathing heavily and drenched in sweat.
Now what? He certainly couldn’t leave the woman alone and go back up to the terrace to see how things stood. The problem was immediately resolved.
