sooner because I was afraid he’d get angry. The necklace was worth a lot of money; it was a present he gave me in Sweden. Then Giacomo had me sign my name at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper. He said he needed it for the insurance.”
“So where did this story about the Pasture come from?”
“That happened later, when he came home for lunch. He explained to me that Rizzo, his lawyer, had told him the insurance company needed a more convincing story about how I lost the necklace and had suggested the story about the Pastor to him.”
“Pasture,” Montalbano patiently corrected her.
The mispronunciation bothered him.
“Pasture, Pasture,” Ingrid repeated. “Frankly, I didn’t find that story very convincing either. It seemed screwy, made up. That’s when Giacomo told me that everyone saw me as a whore, and so it would seem believable that I might get an idea like the one about having him take me to the Pasture.”
“I understand.”
“Well, I don’t!”
“They were trying to frame you.”
“Frame me? What does that mean?”
“Look, Luparello died at the Pasture in the arms of a woman who persuaded him to go there, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, they want to make it look like you were that woman. The purse is yours, the necklace is yours, the clothes at Luparello’s house are yours, you’re capable of driving down the Canneto—I’m supposed to arrive at only one conclusion: that woman is Ingrid Sjostrom.”
“Now I understand,” she said, falling silent, eyes staring at the glass in her hand. Then she roused herself. “It’s not possible.”
“What’s not possible?”
“That Giacomo would go along with these people who want to . . . to frame me.”
“Maybe they forced him to go along with them.
Your husband’s financial situation’s not too good, you know.”
“He never talks to me about it, but I could see that. Still, I’m sure that if he did it, it wasn’t for money.”
“I’m pretty sure of that myself.”
“Then why?”
“There must be another explanation, which would be that your husband was forced to get involved to save someone who is more important to him than you. Wait.”
He went into the other room, where there was a small desk covered with papers. He picked up the fax that Nicolo Zito had sent to him.
“But to save someone else from what?” Ingrid asked as soon as he returned. “If Silvio died when he was making love, it’s not anybody’s fault. He wasn’t killed.”
“To protect someone not from the law, Ingrid, but from a scandal.”
The young woman began reading the fax first with surprise, then with growing amusement; she laughed openly at the polo club episode. But immediately afterward she darkened, let the sheet fall on the bed, and leaned her head to one side.
“Was he, your father-in-law, the man you used to take to Luparello’s pied-a-terre?”
Answering the question visibly cost Ingrid some effort.
“Yes. And I can see that people are talking about it, even though I did everything I could so they wouldn’t. It’s the worst thing that’s happened to me the whole time I’ve been in Sicily.”
“You don’t have to tell me the details.”
“But I want to explain that it wasn’t me who started it. Two years ago my father-in-law was supposed to take part in a conference in Rome, and he invited Giacomo and me to join him. At the last minute my husband couldn’t come, but he insisted on my going anyway, since I had never been to Rome. It all went well, except that the very first night my father-in-law entered my room. He seemed insane, so I went along with him just to calm him down, because he was yelling and threatening me. On the airplane, on the way back, he was crying at times, and he said it would never happen again. You know that we live in the same palazzo, right? Well, one afternoon when my husband was out and I was lying in bed, he came in again, like that night, trembling all over. And again I felt afraid; the maid was in the kitchen. . . . The next day I told Giacomo I wanted to move out. He became upset, I became insistent, we quarreled. I brought up the subject a few times after that, but he said no every time. He was right, in his opinion. Meanwhile my father-in-law kept at it—kissing me, touching me whenever he had the chance, even risking being seen by his wife or Giacomo. That was why I begged Silvio to let me use his house on occasion.”
“Does your husband have any suspicions?”
“I don’t know, I’ve wondered myself. Sometimes it seems like he does, other times I’m convinced he doesn’t.”
“One more question, Ingrid. When we got to Capo Massaria, as you were opening the door you told me I wouldn’t find anything inside. And when you saw instead that everything was still there, just as it had always been, you were very surprised. Had someone assured you that everything had been taken out of Luparello’s house?”
“Yes, Giacomo told me.”
“So your husband did know?”
“Wait, don’t confuse me. When Giacomo told me what I was supposed to say in case I was questioned by the
