Читать книгу The Villa in Italy: Escape to the Italian sun with this captivating, page-turning mystery - Elizabeth Edmondson - Страница 20

The mattresses of Delia’s girlhood had all been uncomfortable. Her austere father was a great believer in very firm mattresses; he slept with a sheet of wood beneath his own mattress; and urged the rest of his family and staff to do the same. ‘With a hard bed, the body relaxes, not the mattress.’

The mattresses at her Yorkshire boarding school had been thin, lumpy and set on a sagging mesh of strings; those at Girton College, Cambridge, were likewise meagre and designed to keep your mind on higher things than bodily comforts.

Which had left Delia a connoisseur of mattresses, and the one on Beatrice Malaspina’s bed was perfect, neither too hard nor too yielding; hooey to her father and his theories of relaxation. Nothing could be more relaxing or comfortable, and when she awoke to the sound of birdsong outside the windows, and saw sunlight filtering through the shutters, it was after a deep and untroubled night’s sleep, a rarity for her this winter, cursed as she was with bronchitis.

She slid out of bed and padded across the smooth dark red tiles to the windows: long, double windows stretching almost from the ceiling to the floor. She pulled them open and struggled for a few moments with the shutters before she found the catch and pushed them back against the walls.

Warm air drifted in as she stepped out on to a small terrace. The searing wind had gone, leaving only a slight breeze to make ripples on the red sand, warm and scrunchy under her bare feet.

Delia blinked at the unaccustomed brightness. It was too early in the morning for the sun to be high or hot, but there was a dazzling quality to the light that made her catch her breath. She looked out over a garden, once formal, now sadly overgrown, and saw a silvery gleam in the distance. It took her a few seconds to realise what it was. The sea! So the villa was on the coast.

Crashing sounds came from next door, and Jessica’s tousled head looked out of an adjacent window. ‘I say, you’ve got a balcony,’ she said.

Her head vanished, and then she was calling out to Delia from the door of her room.

‘Come out here, quick,’ Delia said. ‘You don’t want to miss a minute of it.’

They stood together, leaning on the stone balustrade and gazing out at the green and blue and silver vista.

Jessica let out a long sigh. ‘Heaven,’ she said. ‘Pure heaven. And can you hear Chanticleer out there?’

The vigorous cock crows mingled with the sonorous dong of a bell marking the hour.

‘Was that seven strokes? Oh, the air is so fresh it almost hurts to breathe.’

‘I do so hope this is the Villa Dante,’ Delia said. ‘We might find we have to decamp to a crumbling old house with no view and bedbugs in the mattresses.’

‘I hadn’t thought about bedbugs,’ Jessica said. ‘Still, no itchy bits this morning, and the bedrooms are quite up to date. It could have been all decayed fourposters with mouldering curtains, instead of which we get stylish art deco.’

‘The villa is old, though. Eighteenth-century, wouldn’t you think?’

‘Don’t ask me. Could be that, or older, or built fifty years ago. I think Italians, having found the kind of house they like, just go on building them. I’m going to get up, and let’s see what we can do about breakfast.’ Then, suddenly alert, ‘What’s that?’

Delia, lost in the view, came to. ‘Did you hear something?’

‘I think it was the gate. Hang on, we should be able to see it from one of the other rooms.’ She vanished, then called across to Delia. ‘A stout party in black coming up towards the house. At a guess, I’d say a servant.’

Delia didn’t want to greet the new arrival in her nightclothes, so she hurled herself into the bathroom that led off her bedroom, a huge and marbled affair, with, however, no more than a trickle of water coming out of the substantial taps. Five minutes later, she was washed and dressed and running down the stairs, clutching a red clothbound book. She caught up with Jessica, who was still in her pyjamas.

Voices were coming from the kitchen quarters. Delia pushed open the door, and there was the woman in black talking at great speed and at the top of her voice to a harassed-looking man with snow white hair and a wrinkled, deeply tanned face.

‘Buon giorno,’ Delia said.

The woman whirled round, startled, and then burst into smiles and more talk, of which Delia understood not one word.

‘Can’t you ask her to slow down?’ said Jessica.

Delia held up a hand. ‘Non capisco,’ she tried.

The flow of words slowed abruptly, and the woman made tutting noises before coming closer, and, jabbing her chest with a plump finger, said as one talking to idiots, ‘Benedetta.’

‘Signorina Vaughan,’ said Delia, pointing to herself.

That brought an immediate and delighted response. ‘La Signorina Vaughan, si, si.’

‘Looks like she was expecting you,’ Jessica said.

Delia touched Jessica’s arm. ‘Signora Meldon.’ And then, ‘Ch’e la Villa Dante?’

That brought more si, sis.

Delia was relieved. But the woman was off again, and, seeing their incomprehension, reached out and took their hands to lead them to the open door. ‘Scirocco!’ she said, pointing dramatically to the heap of red sand that had come to rest by the stone threshold.

‘I think she means sirocco,’ said Delia. ‘Si, scirocco,’ she said, and made a whooshing sound to indicate a mighty wind.

The woman nodded vehemently, and then, catching sight of the man standing by the table, flew at him, talking once more at the top of her voice. She paused for a second, to push him forward, saying, ‘Pietro, Pietro.’ Then she thrust a large broom into his hands and propelled him out of the door.

‘Looks like he’s on sweeping duty,’ Jessica said. ‘What’s the Italian for breakfast?’

‘Bother, I can’t remember,’ said Delia. She mimed putting food in her mouth; instant comprehension, and Benedetta was urging them out of the kitchen. She bustled past them, and led them along to the entrance hall. There she flung open a door and led the way into a room hardly visible in the semi-darkness. There was the sound of shutters opening, and light poured in from two sets of doors.

Delia stepped out through the doors. ‘It’s a colonnade,’ she called back to Jessica. ‘With a vaulted roof.’ She came back into the dining room. ‘It runs all along this side of the house and there are steps further along down into the garden. Necessary shade for hot summer days, I suppose, and there are plants weaving in and out of the balustrade. Clematis, for one, with masses of flowers, and wisteria.’

‘Prima collazione, subito!’ Benedetta said, setting down a basket of bread and a jug of coffee before whisking herself away.

It was a large, high room with faded frescoes on the panelled wall. A glass table, set on ornate wrought-iron supports, ran almost the length of the room. Four places were set at one end of the table. ‘For our fellow guests,’ Delia said. ‘We’re obviously the first to arrive.’

‘No one said anything to you about a host or hostess, did they?’ Jessica said. ‘I mean, there could be a horde of Malaspinas.’

‘I told you, there was nothing to be got out of Mr Winthrop, it was like talking to a deed box. But the French lawyer did say there was no one living at the villa now. Perhaps we’re all to gather here, for a formal reading of the will.’

‘Or to be bumped off, one by one, like in a detective story,’ Jessica said cheerfully. ‘In any case, they’ll have to lay an extra place, if four are expected, since they can’t have known I’d be coming as well.’

‘I suppose the others were held up by the wind. Or maybe they’ll arrive at the last minute. It’s not the end of the month yet; the others might not be able to get away as easily as us. Let’s hope they’ll know something about the mysterious Beatrice Malaspina. Or perhaps it will all turn out to be a dreadful mistake, and they’re the grieving heirs and will toss us out into the storm.’

‘Doesn’t look like there’s any storm in the offing just at present,’ Jessica said.

Delia stood beside the French window, restless, wanting Jessica to hurry and finish her breakfast.

Jessica poured more coffee. ‘Are we going to look round the house?’

‘Before anything, I’d like to go to the sea,’ said Delia, catching her breath after a sudden fit of coughing. ‘Sea air will do me the world of good.’

‘You and your fascination with water,’ said Jessica. ‘No, don’t fidget and fret. I’m hungry, and I’m going to finish my breakfast in my own good time. Then we’ll go and indulge your Neptune complex.’

Delia loved the sea, and water in all its forms, and the sight of the shining Mediterranean from her bedroom window had filled her with longing to go down to the shore. ‘Besides, it’s not as though we’d rented the house. It seems rather rude just to prowl around it,’ she said, sitting down again and trying not to look impatient.

‘Do you suppose there’s a private beach?’

‘Probably,’ said Delia, thumbing through her dictionary. ‘Spiaggia is the Italian for beach. I shall ask Benedetta.’

‘Can you manage that? When did you learn Italian? Didn’t you only do French and German at Cambridge?’

‘We musicians pick up quite a bit, and I bought a Hugo’s Italian in Three Months to study during rehearsals, there’s a terrific amount of sitting about. Crosswords get boring, and I can’t knit, so I decided to improve my mind and expand my horizons.’

Benedetta came in to offer more coffee and Delia enquired about the beach, which brought a volley of head-shaking and finger-wagging.

‘Can’t we go?’ Jessica asked.

‘I don’t think it’s territorial, more concern for our health.’

Benedetta was pointing at Delia’s chest and making hacking noises.

‘Especially for you. She’s noticed your cough.’

More Italian poured out of Benedetta, accompanied by much gesticulation.

Delia shrugged. ‘She’s lost me. We’ll just have to find our own way. Il giardino?’ she said to Benedetta.

Which brought more frowns from Benedetta, and a reluctant gesture towards the steps and the garden and, finally, a dramatic rendering of a person shivering, crossing her arms and slapping herself vigorously.

‘She wants you to put on a coat or jacket,’ Jessica said. ‘I don’t need Italian to understand that.’

‘Compared to England…Oh, all right, I can see you’re about to fuss as well.’

Once outside, Delia was glad of the jacket she’d thrown over her shoulders; the air was fresh and the light breeze had none of the heat of the southerly wind of the night before. Jessica had pulled a jumper on over her shirt and thrust her feet into a pair of disreputable plimsolls.

They went out through the dining room into the colonnade, blinking in the strong sunlight.

‘There are paintings on the walls,’ said Jessica, stopping to inspect them.

Delia was already running down the steps to the garden, eager to be moving, to get to the sea. How absurd, like a child full of excitement at the beginning of a summer holiday, longing for the first glimpse of the sea, wanting nothing except to be on the beach. She turned and gave the frescoes a cursory glance, then came back up the steps for a closer look. The colours had faded, but the graceful lines of three women in flowing robes set among a luxuriance of leaves and flowers delighted her.

‘They look old,’ said Jessica. ‘Or just faded by the sun, do you think? What are those words written in the curly banners above the figures? Is that Italian?’

‘Latin,’ said Delia. ‘Sapientia, Gloria Mundi and Amor.’ She pointed to each figure. ‘Wisdom. Glory of the world, which is power, and Love.’

‘Not the three graces, then. I must say, Wisdom looks pretty smug.’

‘Love even more so. Her expression is like a cat who got the cream.’

‘And Gloria Mundi reminds me of Mrs Radbert on speech day.’

Their headmistress had known all about power and possibly wisdom, but love had never tapped that severe woman on the shoulder, Delia was sure. She laughed. Jessica was right; Gloria Mundi only needed an MA gown to be Mrs Radbert’s double.

The garden to the front of the house was a formal one, a pattern edged with bedraggled box hedges, and a desolate, empty fountain in the centre.

Jessica stopped under a broad-leaved tree. ‘It’s a fig. Look at the leaves, did you ever see such a thing? Like in all those Bible paintings. You don’t realise how apt a fig leaf is until you see one, do you? I think if we follow this path, it’ll take us to the sea.’

‘Through the olive trees. Only think, this time last week we were in damp and foggy London, and now…’ Delia made a sweeping gesture. ‘All this. It’s heaven. And I can smell the sea.’

‘No Giles Slattery, no Richie.’

‘No one knows where I am except old button-mouth Winthrop,’ said Delia. ‘Not even my agent, who’ll be furious when he finds out I’ve vanished.’

They were walking through pine trees now, umbrella pines that cast a web of shadows around their feet. The ground was dusty and strewn with pine cones and needles, and a smell of resin lingered in the air. It was startling to come out of the darkness into bright sunlight and find the sea stretched out before them, a shimmering, radiant, turquoise blue under a blue heaven.

Delia stood and gazed, the light almost too much to bear, the beauty and the still perfection catching at her throat. In a tree just behind them, a bird was singing its heart out.

‘Perfect,’ said Jessica with a sigh. ‘A little beach, utterly private. With rocks. Isn’t it quite, quite perfect?’

‘Stone steps going down to the cove,’ said Delia, already on her way down. ‘Bit slippery, so watch your footing.’

She felt drunk with the colours and the light and the beauty of the place. ‘Trees for shelter, rocks to lean against, and this exquisite private place,’ she said. ‘Lucky old Beatrice Malaspina to have lived here. What a pity it’s too early in the year to bathe.’

‘We don’t know how long we’ll be here,’ Jessica pointed out. ‘Don’t Italians take their time about the law, like late trains and so on? The Mediterranean sense of time, or rather non-sense of time. For myself, looking at this, I feel I could stay here for ever.’ She paused. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t want to, not with your music to get back to.’

She perched herself on a rock and rolled up the legs of her trousers before dragging her plimsolls off and walking down to the sea.

‘I’ll worry about work when my chest’s better,’ Delia said. There was no point in fretting over her work; at the very thought of it, she began to cough. ‘Besides, in a house like the Villa Dante, I’d be surprised if there weren’t a piano. I’ve brought some music with me.’

‘It’s chilly,’ Jessica announced, dipping white toes into the tiny lapping waves. ‘About the same as Scarborough in July, though, and I’ve swum in that.’

‘You aren’t going to swim?’

‘I might, if the weather stays warm. Too cold for you, though, with that chest of yours, so don’t go getting any ideas. A paddle is your lot for the time being.’

‘I’ve got stockings on.’ Why hadn’t she put on slacks, like Jessica?

‘No one’s looking.’

True. Delia hitched up her skirt and undid her suspenders. She rolled down her stockings and took them off, laying them carefully on a smooth rock, and went down to the water’s edge.

‘We’ll be all sandy and gritty and we’ve nothing to dry our feet on,’ she said, coming alive as the chill water swirled about her ankles. ‘This is bliss.’

She looked down at her toes, distorted by the clear greenblue water, and wriggled them in the sandy shingle, disturbing a shoal of tiny fish as they fluttered past.

‘It’s odd,’ she said as they sat on a rock and dried their feet with Jessica’s handkerchief, ‘to be staying in a house with no hostess. I feel as though Beatrice Malaspina is going to come sweeping into the dining room, to ask if we slept all right and whether we have everything we need in our rooms.’

‘She’d better not. A ghost would be too much.’

‘I wonder who the house does belong to.’

‘You, perhaps. The mysterious Beatrice M might have left it to you in her will.’

‘Why should she?’

They sat in companionable silence, listening to the birds’ joyful song from the nearby trees, and the mew of gulls out at sea.

Delia lifted her face up to the sun. ‘I can’t believe how warm it is. So much for Benedetta and her shivers. Mind you, the guidebook is very doleful on the subject of Italian weather, which the author says is full of nasty surprises for unwary travellers. He advises warm underwear and thick coats until May, as the weather in most parts of Italy can be surprisingly inclement.’

‘Killjoy.’

‘He sounds like a man after my father’s heart—you know how he mistrusts warmth and sunshine, as leading to lax habits and taking the pep out of the muscles of mind and body. And also, they drink wine in Italy, how shocking!’

‘Felicity drinks. Last time I saw her, she was guzzling cocktails like nobody’s business. I suppose she caught the habit from Theo, he’s a great cocktail man.’

The spell was broken; the mere thought of Theo, the mention of his name, took the pleasure out of the day. Delia stood up. ‘Let’s go back to the house, and sit on the terrace and just do nothing at all.’

‘We could look round the house.’

‘Later. There’s plenty of time. I shall go upstairs to change into a sundress, you find Benedetta and ask what we can sit on. I’ll look up the word for deckchair in the dictionary.’

Benedetta was very doubtful about the deckchairs. It seemed that April was not only a month to go nowhere near the sea; it was also definitely not a month for sitting outside in the sun. Reluctantly, she instructed Pietro to bring out some comfortable chairs. She followed him with armfuls of cushions and several rugs.

‘I think she means us to swathe ourselves in these, like passengers on an Atlantic crossing,’ Delia said, taking a cushion and ignoring the rugs.

Jessica pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead and lay back, letting her mind drift. It was extraordinary how easy it was here just to be, to simply exist, free from the endless round of repetitive, tedious memories of a past she longed to forget, but which refused to go away.

‘The wardrobes in the bedrooms are full of clothes,’ Delia said. ‘Did you notice?’

‘Perhaps Beatrice Malaspina was a dressy woman.’

‘They can’t all be hers, because they aren’t the same size.’

‘Family clothes. Or maybe she had to watch her weight.’

‘She might grow fatter and thinner, but she can hardly have grown or shrunk several inches. Heavenly evening dresses from the thirties, do you remember how glamorous they were?’

‘Oh, yes, and didn’t you long for the time when you could dress every evening? And then, of course, when it was our turn, it was all post-war austerity and clothes rationing.’

‘You’ve some lovely frocks now. That’s what comes of marrying a rich husband.’

Jessica was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘Richie will have had to buy himself some new clothes. I never told you what I did before I left, did I?’

It had surprised her, the visceral rage she felt for Richie at that point. Opening his large wardrobe she had hauled out all twenty-three of the Savile Row suits that were hanging there. She looked at them, lying in a heap on the bed, and then ran downstairs to his study for the large pair of scissors he kept on his desk. She cut two inches off sleeves and hem of every jacket and every pair of trousers. Pleased with her efforts, she made all his shirts short-sleeved, and hacked pieces out of his stack of starched collars.

Getting into her stride, she threw away one of each pair of cufflinks, snipped the strings on his squash and tennis racquets and dented his golf clubs and skates with some hefty bangs of a hammer. More cutting work saw to his fishing rods and driving goggles, and then she carefully removed every photo he possessed of her—not that there were many of them, only the large studio shots in heavy silver frames designed to look good on the baby grand which no one ever played. The pictures and snapshots of them together she dealt with by removing herself from the photos, leaving him gazing at nothing but blank, jagged-edged shapes.

He was beside himself with rage when he discovered the extent of her destructive efforts.

‘Grounds for divorce, don’t you agree?’ she shouted at him down the telephone before slamming the receiver down and then, swiftly, picking it up again to ask the operator how she could change her number. ‘I’ve been getting nuisance calls, you see.’

‘Goodness, you must have been in a temper,’ said Delia. ‘How very unlike you. I wish I’d been there, I can’t imagine you laying into his things like that.’

‘It was surprising, wasn’t it? But I enjoyed doing it. Very Freudian, I dare say. I wonder how he explained the sudden need for new suits to his tailors.’

‘I expect they’ve seen it all before.’

‘I can’t believe I ever lived in that house with Richie. It all seems far away and unreal.’

‘The Villa Dante has a timeless quality,’ Delia said, closing her eyes. ‘As though nothing exists except the present moment.’