Elizabeth Edmondson - The Villa in Italy

She put the notebook down, and went over to the window. Delia Vaughan, rather an exotic creature, with that mass of hair and vivacious eyes, and a beautiful speaking voice. Jessica Meldon—Mrs Meldon—a typical product of the English upper classes, no doubt a crashing snob; a pity Delia had felt it necessary to bring such a friend—and where was Mr Meldon, whose name was never out of the papers? The couple were estranged, so the gossip columnists claimed. A pity she was here; the Villa Dante didn’t at all seem the right kind of place for a flighty socialite who’d quarrelled with her husband.

They lunched on seafood risotto and arrosto of chicken, followed by cheese and fruit, and then, as they drank tiny cups of bitter black coffee, George politely asked Delia and Jessica if they would show him, and Marjorie, if she wished it, round the villa.

Jessica and Delia looked at each other.

‘Actually,’ Jessica said, ‘we haven’t seen much of it ourselves. We went to the beach after breakfast, and then you arrived. And yesterday, when we came, it was the evening, we only had candles and oil lamps, and were too tired after the drive to look at anything except our pillows, do you see?’

‘We weren’t sure about looking round, in any case,’ Delia said. ‘It seemed intrusive. But since the lawyer said we were to make ourselves at home, and there’s no host or hostess to offend…’

‘We can explore and discover the villa together, in that case,’ said George. ‘We can be systematic, let us go to the front of the house and begin our explorations there.’

He led the way round the outside of the house, and they stood for a moment at the foot of the shallow flight of steps that led to the three arches of the loggia. They looked up at the mellow façade, a faded cream with brown shutters at all the windows and a line of scooped terracotta roof tiles far above them.

George squinted owlishly up at the pediment. ‘It is very harmonious,’ he said. ‘You see that the windows on either side repeat the triangular shape above them.’

They walked up the flight of steps and through the front door.

‘Do you know about Italian houses?’ Jessica asked George. ‘I thought it must be eighteenth-century, but Delia says it’s older, because of the frescoes.’

‘Older than that,’ said Marjorie. ‘I dare say it’s been altered a lot, and probably was done over in the eighteenth century, but it must be Renaissance originally, only look at the proportions.’

‘Even older than the sixteenth century I think, in parts,’ said George. ‘Have you noticed that there is a tower at the back? That is mediaeval, I should say.’

Delia still found the trompe l’oeil disturbing as she wandered round, looking at the paintings. ‘It’s odd, the mixture of everyday and mythological. Here’s the servant in his tights I noticed last night, but over there is the story of Ariadne. Just look at the muscles on the Minotaur’s chest.’

Marjorie came over to have a look. ‘That must be Theseus, looking very pleased with himself. I never thought much of Theseus, he’s the kind of man who would be a politician in the modern world.’ She followed the images round to the other wall. ‘Here is Dionysus, on his ivy-clad ship, sailing in to find Ariadne on the beach. And here he is with all his maenads, dancing among the vines.’

‘Those grapes look real enough to eat,’ said Delia as they paused to look at an ebullient Bacchus with attendant nymphs.

‘They’ve been making a night of it by the look of them,’ said Jessica. ‘Look at the ceiling.’ She pointed upwards to a riot of gods and goddesses frolicking in billowing clouds. ‘Can you imagine what your father would have to say about it, Delia?’ And, by way of explanation to the others, ‘Delia’s father is something of a puritan.’

‘I don’t think he’d mind half so much about these as he would if the paintings were saints and martyrs. Those are what really irk him.’

They went through the wide central door which led into a second room, overlooking the gardens at the back.

‘More wall paintings, and windows that aren’t windows at all,’ said Jessica.

‘Classical landscapes,’ said George. ‘Very realistic.’

‘On this wall is Prometheus,’ Marjorie said. ‘That’s an odd choice, not nearly such a happy story as Ariadne and Dionysus.’

‘Who was Prometheus?’ asked Jessica.

Marjorie gave her a scornful glance. ‘He stole fire from the gods to give it to humans, and so they punished him.’

Delia looked at the eagle swooping down towards the bound figure, and shivered.

‘And over there,’ said Marjorie, ‘if I’m not mistaken, is a sibyl.’

‘Go on, then,’ said Jessica. ‘I’ve got my hand up. Who or what is a sibyl?’

‘Sibyls prophesied. This one is a Cumaean sibyl. She’s holding the golden branch to give to Aeneas so that he can go down into the underworld. In Virgil—you have read Virgil?’

‘Not to remember a word of it,’ said Jessica. ‘I was hopeless at Latin.’

‘Dido’s betrayer,’ said Delia, feeling on familiar ground there; she had sung the role of Dido. ‘Dido, queen of Carthage, Jessica; come on, you’ve heard of her.’

George had returned to the entrance hall and was investigating what was through the other two doors. One led to a marble staircase, and the other into a small antechamber, with only a pair of painted columns for decoration.

‘That’s the door to the dining room,’ said Jessica, standing with her back to the garden and pointing to the door on her left. ‘So the one opposite it is probably the drawing room. The arcade stretches right across the back. Wonderful shade from the summer heat.’

By unspoken consent, they went out of the doors into the vaulted arcade.

‘More frescoes, you see,’ said Delia, pointing to the female figures of Sapientia, Amor and Gloria Mundi.

‘And painted columns,’ said Marjorie. ‘What wicked satyr faces.’

How extraordinary it must be to live in such a house, surrounded by images of classical gods and goddesses disporting themselves with frivolous abandon over walls and ceilings. ‘Let’s go and see what’s in the tower,’ said Delia.

‘I think,’ said George, walking backwards, ‘that at one time the tower was attached to the main house. There is a wing stretching out on the other side there—’

‘Which is Benedetta’s territory, isn’t it?’ said Jessica, counting the windows. ‘Where the colonnade bit ends, there’s the octagonal room beyond the circular staircase, and then there’s a passageway that leads into the kitchens.’

‘Just so,’ said George. ‘So there would have been such rooms on this side. However, they are gone, and only this single tower remains.’

The three-storeyed tower was round, but had another section attached to it of a more regular shape. ‘Which is not nearly as old as the tower,’ Marjorie said.

‘How do you know?’ said Jessica.

‘It’s built of stones that are all the same size.’

The tower itself was built of a motley collection of stones and brick. Marjorie rubbed a finger along one of the shallow bricks. ‘Roman.’

‘We’ve caught ourselves a know-it-all,’ Jessica whispered in Delia’s ear, but not quietly enough, Delia suspected, for the remark to have escaped Marjorie, judging by the quick flush of colour on her cheekbones.

For a moment, she was annoyed with Jessica, who seemed to have taken one of her rare dislikes to Marjorie. Well, good manners would have to prevail, if they were to survive one another’s company until the fourth man arrived and the mystery of the will was solved.

‘It’s like something out of the Brothers Grimm,’ she said, moving away from Jessica and walking round the tower to find the entrance. A Rapunzel tower, and she was unreasonably disappointed when they reached the stout door to find it chained and padlocked. A faded notice was threaded on to a loop of chain, with Pericoloso written on it in red letters.