Michael Dibdin - A Rich Full Death

We had arrived at the gates of the villa, locked now with a sturdy chain. No inscription was visible on the wall outside the grounds, and since there was no sign of life in the lodge, and no one answered our shouts, there was no way of gaining entrance. It appeared that our journey had been in vain.

We would have gone back then, had I not ventured to suggest that it might be worth our while to inspect the rear of the property as well-and there, on the locked wooden gate leading into the garden, we found the following:

At Purdy’s both the number and the word seemed immediately significant, while at DeVere’s the number had puzzled us but the word seemed to make at least a muffled kind of sense. We had therefore hoped for much from the third inscription, and now all our hopes were dashed. Riminese , I should explain, is the adjective applied to persons or things appertaining to the town of Rimini, in Romagna on the Adriatic coast over a hundred miles away. What conceivable connection there could be between this place and the death of Isabel Eakin-to say nothing of the significance of the number two-is a question which appears totally insoluble.

Poor Browning! For the second time in forty-eight hours his theories had collapsed about him in shreds. He had nothing to say, but his features expressed very clearly his mood-one of despondency amounting almost to despair. He plainly had no wish for company now, and in a gruff tone announced that he was going off on a long walk to endeavour to think the whole matter through again.

Well, I shall close now, having no more news to tell you. As I was walking back to my dwelling I chanced to meet the young woman called Beatrice, who used to be poor Isabel’s maid. I had not seen her since that memorable night at the villa, when the police official Talenti bullied her so over Browning’s supposed connection with her late mistress; and there was no reason why I should have noticed her now, or why, having noticed her, I should have stopped, or, having stopped, should have spoken. There was, I say, no reason why I should have done these things, and every reason (you may think) why I should not -but I make too much of it. She gave me a glance as I passed-I must have looked at her too, for she is an attractive girl, as I said-and they have a way of looking at you, these Italian girls, quite different from their Bostonian sisters, as if they know very well what is in your thoughts; so that even though these may in fact have been utterly pure and prosaic, they straight away turn in quite another direction.

But this is mere nonsense and rambling. All I meant to say was that I stopped, she addressed me and I responded, and we talked for a few minutes about this and that-about nothing, really. We certainly did not mention any of the matters which have occupied my attention in these letters-the nearest we came to it was when I asked if she had been successful in finding alternative employment, and she replied that Mr Eakin’s parting provision to her had been so ungenerous that she had been obliged to seek a position immediately, and had just found one with an English family.

At length the conversation became desultory, and we parted. Unfortunately I happened to look round almost immediately afterwards, and was most embarrassed to discover that Beatrice had also turned, so that she caught me apparently staring after her. But she did not seem at all put out, but simply smiled. For a moment I thought she was going to say something, but in the end she turned away. There was of course nothing to say. It just now occurs to me that I should have asked her about the writing on the wall at the villa-perhaps she could have thrown some light on the meaning of that word ‘Riminese’ . If only I could find some way of discovering where she lives or works, I might yet be able to do so. I will give the matter some thought.

Ever most affectionately yours

Booth

P.S.

A note has just this moment been delivered, inviting me to a ‘spiritualist gathering’ to be held tomorrow evening at the house of Miss Edith Chauncey, a noted ‘medium’. The purpose of the event, it seems, is to attempt to make contact with Isabel’s spirit, and a group of her closest acquaintances here in Florence have been invited to participate.

Now between the two of us, I am inclined to think this spiritualism a great nonsense; but as it is a sine qua non of social acceptability in at least some of the most important and sought-after households in Florence, I have been careful to keep my views to myself — unlike Mr Browning, who is a great heretic where the spirit world is concerned, loudly proclaiming it all to be a fraud, its practitioners charlatans and their followers credulous dupes (this despite the fact that his wife is prominent amongst the latter). The result is that I pass for a lukewarm believer, ripe for total conversion to the cause, and it is no doubt to this that I owe my invitation.

I was at first inclined to refuse, for the idea seems to me to be in rather poor taste. But on second thoughts it occurred to me that I should go-if only to see who else has been invited. Who were Isabel’s other close friends in Florence? Is it not possible that her murderer is to be found among them? Yes, I think upon the whole that I shall go.

17th Feb.

My dear Prescott,

The above date will be sufficient to indicate that there has been no respite in the storm of events which continues to rage here. Three days, as you see, have yielded enough for another lengthy letter-and yet everything can be traced back in one way or another to the ‘seance’ to which I was invited by Edith Chauncey, our leading practitioner of the spiritualist art.

It was at eight o’clock on Wednesday evening that I set out for the ancient palace in one of whose remoter nooks and crannies the Misses Chauncey live, as frugally as a pair of Reformed Church mice. The palazzo in question is one which really merits the name, which is applied here to any sizeable pile. It dates from the early Fifteenth Century, and originally belonged to a more than usually unpleasant branch of the Strozzi family. This clan having killed themselves off long since, the place is now divided into a multitude of small shops, offices, suites of apartments, storerooms, studios and garrets. In addition to the obligatory private dungeon, the entire structure is rumoured to be a maze of secret passages and concealed doorways, without which no well-appointed residence of the period was deemed complete. In short, the place fairly reeks with ‘atmosphere’, giving the impression of being packed like a sponge with History-the contents oozing out at the lightest touch of a sympathetic imagination. For anyone with an interest in spirits and ‘the other world’, no more suitable address could be imagined.

I was welcomed on my arrival by Miss Kate Chauncey, the younger of the two sisters-although ‘younger’ is very much a comparative term in this case, for neither of them will see fifty again. She stayed in the background for the rest of the evening, as indeed she must have done for the rest of her life; for it is Miss Edith who has ‘powers’ and ‘gifts’ and is in short a ‘medium’-and one whose reputation is such as to allow her to live, albeit modestly, on the offerings of her followers.

My contacts with this lady had thus far been of the slenderest. I had heard of her-one could not help hearing of her-on every side, for spiritualism is very much the vogue here. How can it fail to be, offering as it does both mystical experiences and practical advantages? It is as though it were discovered that viewing Canova’s ‘Pauline Bonaparte’ by moonlight was a cure for consumption. On the one hand, you are offered beauteous visions from the land of faery, and on the other the chance to commune with your late spouse, or chat to Napoleon. Indeed, I suspect that my resistance to the movement hitherto may in the last resort have amounted to little more than a feeling that it was all rather too good to be true.