pollen on his back, then leaves. At nine o’clock he makes sure he’s seen at the restaurant, after which he goes dancing at a much-frequented nightspot-’
Bordelli cut in.
‘You forgot the car.’
‘I was about to get to that. That same afternoon, X asks to borrow Salvetti’s Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint, saying he wants to go for a drive in the mountains the next morning, but he asks if he can have it right away, since by the time X wakes up in the morning, Salvetti will be already at the beach.’
‘All right, go on.’
Piras made a circular motion with his hand.
‘Let’s go back to the dance club. X arrives at half past ten. It’s Thursday, so X already knows that Salvetti and his wife will be there, since the Milanese couple routinely go there every Thursday night. He also knows that they will leave soon after his arrival, because they have a small son who plays until midnight with a neighbour’s son. And, indeed, around midnight the friends leave. At that point, X knows that Signora Pedretti is already dead, or at least he hopes she is. He needs to go and verify this, but mostly he needs to go and switch the Asthmaben bottles again. The dance club is very crowded late into the night, and no one notices his absence. He gets into the Alfa and races into town. In a car like that, it doesn’t take much more than an hour. When he gets to the villa, he sees that everything has gone according to plan. The lady is dead, the fake bottle is on the bedside table. X exchanges the medicine bottles, putting the real one in its proper place, but in his agitation he makes a mistake: he forgets to unscrew the cap. Then he drives back to the coast, slips back into the nightclub, and stays there until closing time. He gets drunk and tries to call attention to himself. The following morning, he goes on his drive through the mountains, and in the evening he returns the car to his friend, all cleaned and polished, to get rid of any eventual trace of his nocturnal excursion.’
‘Good, Piras. Not one wrinkle. Now, however, try to go into a little more detail.’
Piras repeated the whole story, dwelling on the most insignificant details. X entering the villa and then hiding in a room on the ground floor, awaiting the right moment, when he won’t be seen by Rebecca or Maria, putting on gloves so as not to leave any fingerprints, the real medicine bottle delicately wrapped in a handkerchief so as not to erase Signora Pedretti’s fingerprints … The reservation for the restaurant, the dance club with the Salvettis. When he got to the part where the killer goes back for the phoney medicine bottle, Bordelli interrupted him.
‘Here you should go slowly. Imagine it’s you at the wheel. What do you do?’
‘I get to the villa and … no, I don’t drive all the way to the villa. I hide the car somewhere nearby and then walk. Somebody might notice the Alfa and report this to the police.’
‘Good. Now let’s talk about that scrape on the Alfa Romeo.’
‘Do you think …?’
‘Who knows, Piras, maybe luck’s on our side. C’mon, let’s go.’
Fifteen minutes later, the VW was rumbling up the hill towards Rebecca’s villa. The inspector had an unlit cigarette between his lips, pulling on it every so often out of instinct and feeling disappointed at the lack of smoke.
‘What do you think, Piras? Is there such a thing as the perfect crime?’
The Sardinian didn’t answer. He just looked out of the car window, thinking, perhaps, of how different it was here from the Campidano plain.
About half a mile from the villa, Bordelli slowed down, and the still-unlit cigarette went flying out of the window. He didn’t feel like smoking.
‘Look carefully and see if you can see a small side street, Piras.’
The Sardinian started studying the edge of the road.
‘If we can find the spot where the Alfa was scratched, Inspector, the Morozzis are screwed.’
‘Even if we don’t, we’ve still got the upper hand, haven’t we? We know how they did it, and they don’t know that we know.’
Piras pointed to a narrow, unpaved road that led into the open countryside. They got out of the car to examine the surroundings, but found nothing. Leaving the Beetle there, they continued on foot. Farther ahead was a large, grassy clearing, but it was too close to the road. It would have made no sense to park there. A couple of hundred yards before the villa was a pebbled path that seemed made for hiding a car. They carefully studied the area but, aside from some anonymous tyre tracks, they found nothing.
‘This may in fact be where they parked the car,’ said Piras. ‘It seems like the best place.’
‘Maybe, but we haven’t an iota of proof.’
The sun was high in the sky and, as usual, there wasn’t a breath of wind. The inspector sat down on a large rock and pulled his shirt away from his sweaty skin. He gazed at the dark green woods that entirely covered the hill of Fiesole in the distance. It gave him a feeling of coolness. Piras continued to look for signs of the Alfa Romeo’s scrape, then also gave up.
‘How did you ever think of the cat, Inspector?’
‘By chance, Piras. Pure chance. But I had a hunch from the moment I saw it.’
‘A hunch?’
‘That the murderer had used the cat. But there was still the problem of the alibi. Whoever put the pollen in Gideon’s fur had to be absolutely sure of what he was doing. He couldn’t leave things to chance. If Rebecca died before the appointed time, the risk was enormous. The killer’s alibi hinged entirely on this, on the hour of her death. A murder so well planned could not afford to neglect so important a detail.’
‘Right.’
‘The killer had to be absolutely certain he could count on the cat as an unwitting accomplice. At some point I remembered Rebecca’s will. If you recall, Dante broke off his story right where his sister began to talk about Gideon. So I rang Dante and asked him to tell me in minute detail everything his sister put into the will. And, bingo. In the codicil to the will, Signora Pedretti talks a great deal about Gideon. There are instructions concerning his eating habits and other matters, and she asks her brother to find a dependable person to take care of the animal. He must be certain that the person loves cats, and she concludes by saying that if he couldn’t find Gideon in the garden, not to worry because he’s an adult male and is always out and about. One need only wait for him to come home, because every day of the year, at nine o’clock sharp, Gideon always came up to her bedroom to see her. He never missed a day, Rebecca said. And the killer must have known this.’
Piras shook his head, twisting up his mouth.
‘Disgusting,’ he said.
‘Poor cat. They made him a traitor.’
They resumed walking towards the villa, but there was no longer any point. There were no more side roads or clearings where the killer might have hidden the car.
‘Our good luck’s run out, Piras. We’ll have to proceed with what we’ve got.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are now certain that Signora Rebecca Pedretti-Strassen was murdered,’ said Bordelli.
Anselmo gulped, a doltish smile on his lips.
‘You’ve already told us that, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t say that it was you who did it.’
‘That’s rich!’ said Angela.
Bordelli ignored her.
‘Whether it was just one of you, or you were all in it together, I can’t really say, but I suspect we’ll know soon,’ he said calmly.
The Morozzis squirmed in their chairs.
‘That’s absurd!’
‘This is unbelievable …’
‘Sheer lunacy!’
‘Just one minute, ladies and gentlemen. Please calm down and allow me to finish.’
The inspector stood up, walked round his desk and moved a stack of papers from a corner so he could sit down there, right beside Gina. The sickly-sweet smell of chestnut flour brutally penetrated his nostrils. He glanced over at Piras, who was seated in front of the typewriter, frowning darkly. Then he looked at his watch.
‘I’d like to give you some friendly advice. It is now four o’clock. If you confess straight away, you’ll spare
