Elizabeth Edmondson - The Villa in Italy

‘Madame Doisneau is holding on to the forms we filled in until the day we leave; she says she has no time for the flics . Besides, the reporters will be prowling around your parents’ place.’

‘Yes, but they’ll ask questions in the village, and someone’s bound to tell them that Mummy and Daddy are away, and that I’m not there either.’

‘All that takes time, so while the going’s good, just don’t think about it. Now, if I’m going to be on time for my appointment with the French lawyer that Mr Winthrop told me to see, I’d better get going.’

The French lawyer turned out to be a Gallic equivalent of Mr Winthrop, dry and lean in a dark suit, but he did unbend enough to tell Delia that she would be joined at the Villa Dante by three other people named in Beatrice Malaspina’s will. ‘If they agree to make the journey,’ he added.

‘He wouldn’t tell me anything else about them. Clams, all these family lawyers, whatever nationality they are, let’s just hope the Italians have more to say,’ she said to Jessica afterwards.

‘So you haven’t found out anything more about Beatrice Malaspina?’

‘Nope, nor about the Villa Dante. You do realise that it might turn out to be a boarding house, and Beatrice Malaspina some old dink who took in English guests?’

‘It could be. Or a house in an Italian suburb.’

‘He showed me where it is on a map. It’s near a small town called San Silvestro. Historic and picturesque, he said, but I don’t know if he meant the villa or the town.’

‘And no details of your fellow legatees?’

‘None. I did ask when they’d be arriving at the Villa Dante, but he just said that we all had to be there by the end of the month.’

‘Which gives us plenty of time to enjoy a few more days in Paris,’ said Jessica happily. ‘Let’s go back to that shop where we saw those heavenly silk pyjamas.’

‘And aren’t you going to buy some new summer clothes? It could be warm in Italy.’

Jessica was surprised at that. ‘Isn’t it always warm in Italy?’

‘No,’ said Delia. ‘I remember singing in Florence one March, I’ve never been so cold, and there were six inches of snow on the ground; people laughed at my surprise and said that the Italian winter is Italy’s best kept secret. On the other hand, I’ve baked in April in Milan, so there’s no telling.’

‘I packed a few summer frocks and a sundress and a pair of shorts and bathing things, so that will do me if it’s warm.’

They were sitting outside a café near Notre Dame, enjoying an aperitif before deciding where to have dinner. The city was emerging from dusk into the twinkling lights of evening. They watched the stream of people walking past: a man with a parcel dangling from his finger, tied in a neat loop, a woman with a doll-like child tripping along beside her, a pair of highheeled ladies of the night, little fur collars making a frame for their dramatically made-up faces, an officer whose eyes flickered over them as he slowed for a moment, hesitating, before he strode on; a young couple who could hardly be out of their teens walking with her arm wrapped around his waist while he held her close to him with a protective arm over her shoulders and her other hand in his.

‘I like her hairdo,’ Delia was saying, but Jessica wasn’t listening. She had stiffened, her eyes focused on a figure lounging against a lamp post.

‘Giles Slattery,’ she breathed. ‘Over there, in that mac he always wears, I’d know him anywhere.’

‘You’re imagining it,’ Delia said. ‘Beasties under the bed, that’s all. Lots of men wear those macs.’

Jessica wasn’t imagining anything. Her mind might play tricks on her; she might have caught sight of a stranger in a mac, but no, she was sure it was Slattery; the angle of his hat, his posture, the relaxed stance of a man accustomed to standing and waiting and watching—all the details were horribly familiar. She dragged Delia inside the café and stood by the window, peering out over the letters painted on the glass.

‘There he is, leaning against that cast-iron lamp post, just lighting one of those ghastly thin cigars he always has dangling from his mouth.’

Delia was at her shoulder, and saw his face illuminated for a moment by the match. ‘God, you’re right.’

‘No question about it. Do you think he knows where we’re staying?’

‘Bound to. He must have followed us when we came out of the hotel, otherwise how would he know we were here at this café? Quick, there must be another way out. Let’s pay and slip out through the back.’

Which they did, into a noisome alley, with refuse piled against the wall and an unpleasant film on the cobbles underfoot.

‘You get the car, and wait for me round the corner from the hotel,’ Delia said, as they tumbled out of the taxi which had miraculously been drawn up at the end of the alleyway. ‘I’ll cram everything into the suitcases and settle up with Madame.’

Delia shot through the door of the hotel as Jessica called out, ‘And why not tell her we’re going to Austria or Germany? To put Slattery off the scent.’

‘Mr Grimond wants to see you right away, Mr Bryant,’ said the secretary in the outer office. ‘The moment you got in, he said.’

‘Have I time for my tea?’ Mr Bryant said, eyeing the cup on his desk, which had a saucer balanced on top, and a custard cream biscuit beside it.

‘At your peril. He’s on the warpath.’

‘Better get it over with, I suppose,’ said the youthful Mr Bryant with a sigh.

Mr Grimond’s office was entirely without colour. Situated on the second floor of a red-brick building in Queen Anne’s Gate, it overlooked St James’s Park, or would have done if its occupant hadn’t chosen to shut out the view with two dingy blinds. A square of grey carpet, of precisely the right size for his civil service rank, was laid on the floor, and on it was placed a dark wooden desk with a scratched leather top, strewn with buff files. Mr Grimond matched the sobriety of his room with his salt and pepper hair, faded tweed suit and brown tie. He sat on a wooden revolving chair that squeaked dismally every time he moved.

‘You wanted to see me?’ Mr Bryant said.

Grimond looked up from his file. ‘Got in at last, have you? Yes. A man’s gone missing. One George Helsinger. Dr Helsinger. Alice has asked for his file. Read it, and then catch the next train to Cambridge.’

‘Cambridge?’

‘Cambridge. Cold market town on the edge of the fens.’

‘I know Cambridge. I was at university there. But why do I have to go to Cambridge?’

‘Because the man who’s gone missing is one of their boffins.’

‘Oh, dear. Is he important?’

‘Would I be going to this much trouble if he weren’t? He’s one of our top men. An atom scientist. Worked on the A bomb at Los Alamos, nothing he doesn’t know. And I bet my last ten-bob note he’s halfway to Moscow by now.’

‘In which case, why am I going to Cambridge?’

‘To make enquiries. Talk to his colleagues, his landlady, find out what he’s been working on, has he been moody, what are his political views, as if I didn’t know. He’ll be a Red, like all the rest of them.’

‘When was he reported missing?’

‘Yesterday, after I noticed that he was down as having been granted a sabbatical. Six months’ leave of absence from the laboratory, I ask you, nobody gives us six months off on full pay. I checked to find out where he was spending his time, and it turned out nobody knew. No attachments to any foreign universities—that’s what they often do, apparently, take themselves on a jaunt to America or France or somewhere they can be idle at the taxpayer’s expense. “Time off to think” is all the idiots he works with could come up with.’