Elizabeth Edmondson - The Villa in Italy - Escape to the Italian sun with this captivating, page-turning mystery

‘Paris for a couple of weeks, and then I’m going to visit some friends who live near Nice, before going on to England.’

‘Nice? To stay with the Forrests, I suppose. Will Elfrida be there? Wasn’t she staying with them in Long Island when you met her?’

‘Yes, and yes.’

‘I wonder why you didn’t bring her to meet me.’

‘You know why. We became engaged on the eve of her return to England.’

‘Bookings can be changed. You’ll bring her back to America for a visit as soon as you’re married? By which time, of course, it will be too late for you to discover whether I like her or consider her right for you.’

‘Come on, Miffy, a man in his thirties is allowed to choose his own wife.’

‘A man of any age can choose wrong. It alarms me that your parents are so pleased about the engagement. They say she’s just perfect for you.’

‘And so she is.’

‘You aren’t in love with her.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake…’ Exasperating woman, but of course she was right. She had always been able to see through him and out the other side. ‘You’ll like her. She’s lively and forthright…’

‘Organising, so I’ve heard. And determined. I’m sure she’ll be a great asset to your career, a woman like that can take a man even to the White House.’

That made him laugh. ‘I have no political ambitions.’

‘You have no ambitions of any kind, not of your own. All the ambition in your life is provided by other people. Have you ever thought about that?’

‘Miffy, do lay off.’

‘All right. Now, you’ve told me your plans, which I already knew: France, then a position in the English branch of the bank. That’s not why you’re here. Come clean, Lucius. What’s on your mind?’

‘Did you ever know someone called Beatrice Malaspina?’

The light was fading fast outside the windows, and Lucius didn’t notice the watchful light in his grandmother’s eyes. ‘Because I’ve had an extraordinary letter from a firm of lawyers. I went to see them, in New York. They told me I’m named in the will of this Beatrice Malaspina.’

‘Was she an American?’

Lucius shook his head. ‘An Italian, I should think, judging by the name. The firm here are acting for her Italian lawyers. She has—had, I should say—a house on the coast somewhere in the north of Italy. Liguria. The terms of the will state that I must go there, to her house, the Villa Dante, to be able to collect this legacy.’

‘Which is?’

‘Haven’t a clue. Could be a bundle of worthless lire, a set of spoons, her father’s stuffed tiger—your guess is as good as mine.’

‘How intriguing.’

‘So you don’t know her?’

‘I’ve never met a Beatrice Malaspina. Of course, you’re curious, and wills are wills, and if you’re going to be in the south of France it won’t be much of a detour—only you don’t want to go to Italy.’

She said this as a simple statement of fact; it wasn’t a question.

‘Not really, no.’

‘It was all more than ten years ago. And it was wartime.’

‘It was wartime,’ he agreed. ‘Even so…’

‘Don’t you think it might be time to lay that particular ghost to rest?’

‘How can I?’

‘By not dwelling on it. Wars happen. These things happen. And your parents have done you no favours by blotting it out of their consciousness and never talking about it.’

‘On the contrary, the last thing I want is for them to talk about it.’

‘You went to Dr Moreton, but he didn’t help.’

‘Yes, I did, and no, he didn’t.’

Which might be, Lucius reflected, because he didn’t tell him the truth. He never had told anyone the truth, not even Miffy, although he wouldn’t be surprised if she had guessed a good deal of it.

‘Dr Moreton always was a fool. Your mother thinks the world of him; she’s never been any kind of judge of character or professional competence. She hasn’t learned that a shiny brass plate and hair going grey at the temples don’t amount to a row of beans.’

‘So.’ Lucius leant forward, his hands dropped between his knees. He was looking at his feet, shod in shiny black Oxfords; how he hated polished laced-up shoes.

‘So, do I think you should go? I don’t deal in shoulds, Lucius, you know that. Have you asked your father if he knows anything about this departed person?’

‘No.’

‘And you don’t intend to. Very wise. Any hint of an inheritance, and he’ll want to take over.’

‘I did ask Dolores. Whether she knew anything about Beatrice Malaspina.’ Dolores had worked for his father’s firm for more than thirty years, and she knew all the company’s and partners’ secrets. ‘And drew a blank. She said it meant nothing to her.’

‘You’re going to Italy, in any case,’ said his grandmother. ‘You haven’t come for advice.’

‘No, not really. I thought at first that the lawyers had made a mistake, but no, correct down to the last detail, who I was, where I lived and worked.’

‘They wouldn’t tell you about Beatrice Malaspina?’

‘Clams could learn a thing or two from them. Just acting on instructions from Italy, that’s all they’d say. I asked if Beatrice Malaspina had lived to a ripe old age. I mean, she could have turned out to be my contemporary, who knows?’

‘And?’

‘They did tell me that she had lived to a very good age. And that was all they’d give away.’

‘Naturally, you thought you’d come and ask one old relic if she knew another one.’

‘Perhaps she was a friend of Grandfather’s. That’s what I wondered.’

‘As I said, I never met anyone of that name.’

Lucius finished his drink and stood up. ‘Thank you, Miffy. I’ll write and let you know how I get on.’

‘Mind you do. I’m intrigued. I shall be keen to hear what is the secret of the Villa Dante. And what Beatrice Malaspina has left you.’

‘If it’s silver spoons, I’ll share them with you.’

‘Like I need silver spoons. Find yourself a clear conscience, Lucius, then you can send that back to me. We can all do with one of those.’

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.