Tonight I sleep as a bachelor for the last time, he thought happily. Tomorrow I will be wed. He placed his head on the pillow and drifted into a serene and contented sleep.
He awoke a few hours later to frantic knocking on the door. “Tommy, Tommy!” The voice was Lattarullo’s. He sat up in bed, gripped by icy fear. He opened the door to find the carabiniere gray-faced with desolation. “It’s Valentina,” he gasped. “She is dead.”
Thomas stared at him for a long moment while he tried to make sense of what he had just heard. Perhaps he was trapped within a nightmare. He hadn’t woken up properly. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “What?”
Lattarullo repeated what he had just said, then added, “You have to come with me.”
“Dead? Valentina dead? How?” Thomas felt the world falling away around him as his heart began to unravel, slowly at first and then with frightening speed. He held on to the door frame to steady himself. “She can’t be dead!”
“She’s in a car on the road from Naples. We have to go now before…before…” He coughed.
“Before what?”
“Before the circus,” said Lattarullo.
“What are you talking about?”
“Just come with me. Then you will understand.” Lattarullo’s voice was a plea.
Hastily Thomas pulled on the trousers and shirt he had worn the night before, slipped into his shoes, and followed Lattarullo outside to where Falco waited in the car. Falco’s face was white and gaunt. Dark shadows circled his eyes and bore into the hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were raw and shifty. Thomas didn’t trust him. The two men exchanged glances but neither spoke. Falco was the first to look away, as if Thomas’s stare weighed too heavy with suspicion. Thomas climbed into the back seat and Lattarullo started the engine. The car coughed and wheezed and finally revved sufficiently to start. Dawn was breaking. The sun was pale and innocent as if it knew nothing of the brutal murder it now brought into the light of day.
Thomas had dozens of questions to ask, but he knew he had to wait. His head throbbed as if clamped in a cold metal frame. He wanted to abandon himself to tears as he had done when he heard of his brother’s death, but he was unable to let go in the company of Lattarullo and Falco. Instead he clamped his jaw and tried to breathe evenly. What was Valentina doing on the road from Naples in the middle of the night? The night before her wedding? He remembered her words: “We need Christ’s blessing. I know how to get it. I’ll put it right, you’ll see.” What had she meant? Where had she gone? He felt his stomach plummet with regret. He should have asked her. He should have paid more attention.
Finally, he could take the suspense no longer.
“How did it happen?”
Falco groaned and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know.”
Thomas was irritated. “For God’s sake, this is my fiancée we’re talking about,” he shouted. “You must know something! Did the car fly off the road? There are no barriers to prevent an accident…”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Falco said in a quiet voice. “It was murder.”
When they arrived at the scene, the first thing Thomas noticed was the car. It was a convertible burgundy Alfa Romeo with an exquisite leather and walnut interior. It was parked neatly in a turnout overlooking the sea. When he saw the woman lying slumped in the passenger seat his heart momentarily inflated with joy. It wasn’t Valentina. Of course it wasn’t she. Here was a woman with her hair piled on top of her head, her wrists and fingers and ears sparkling with diamonds, her face painted like a whore’s with black kohl and crimson lipstick. Her neck had been sliced with a knife and blood had stained the front of her sequined evening dress and the white fur stole that was draped over her shoulders like a slaughtered beast. Her cheeks were as white as the stole. Beside her was a man he did not recognize, elegant, with gray hair and a thin gray mustache. Blood dribbled out of his mouth. It had already dried on the ivory silk scarf that was tied around his neck. Thomas looked at Falco and frowned.
“That’s not Valentina,” he began, then suddenly felt his heart wrenched from his chest. Falco simply stared back.
Thomas looked again into the car. He had been wrong. It was Valentina, but not the Valentina he knew.
“My favorite stone is a diamond. I would like to wear a necklace of the finest diamonds just to sparkle for a night, to know what it feels like to be a lady.”
It was then that he opened the car door and fell onto her body, weeping in despair and disbelief, grieving for the woman he knew and for himself, so cruelly betrayed. He clung to her, still warm and soft and smelling strongly of a perfume he didn’t recognize. How could Valentina dress like this? What was she doing in this car with this strange man? The night before her wedding? Nothing made sense. He shook her, as if he could wake her. Wasn’t his love enough?