Last Voyage of the Valentina(99)

“I would like to see Valentina’s room,” he said instead.

Immacolata nodded gravely. “Up the stairs, across the landing to the left.” He left her with her candles and chanting and climbed the staircase to the room Valentina had occupied only the evening before.

When he entered her small room, the shutters were closed, the curtains drawn, her white nightdress laid out on the bed in preparation for the night. On the dressing table lay her brushes and bottles so recently used. His throat grew tight and he found it difficult to breathe as the room filled with the scent of figs. He sank onto the bed and pulled her nightdress to his face, inhaling her fragrance.

To find the missing portrait became an obsession. He pulled out every drawer, searched through the clothes in her wardrobe, looked under the bed, beneath the sheets and rug, everywhere. He did not leave a single thing in the room unturned. It was not there.





24




Italy 1971

A lba made her excuses and left Lattarullo, having barely touched her tea. The retired carabiniere watched her go, amazed that she hadn’t known the terrible circumstances of her mother’s death. The violence of it still touched him to this day. He often thought about it. Valentina had been the personification of beauty and grace, in spite of the secret world she had inhabited. It was only a matter of time before a grubby-nosed journalist burrowed about in her business and exposed her in Il Mezzogiorno. Lorenzo added another few verses to the ballad he had composed, about premonition, murder, and the underworld of a woman as lovely as a field of wild violets. He had sung it nightly, his plaintive voice resounding through the town until everyone knew it by heart and Valentina transcended normal memory to live on in legend. Her delicate footprints were stamped all over the town. Little had changed in the years since she had died. Everything reminded him of her and sometimes, in the silver glow of a full moon, he believed he had seen her slipping stealthily around a corner, the white fabric of her dress catching the light and his imagination. Valentina had been like a rainbow that appears solid from a distance but vanishes the moment one gets close. An impossible sylph, an exquisite rainbow—her murder served only to make her more mysterious.

Alba ran up the rocks toward Immacolata’s house, her heart pounding. Her father had lied to her, her stepmother had colluded, even Falco and Immacolata had withheld the truth. Did they think her a simpleton? She had a right to know about her mother. She thought of Fitz and Viv; even they, in their wildest dreams, would never have envisaged this.

Her feet slipped on the rocks and she grazed her knee, drawing blood. She swore loudly but brushed herself off and continued, determined to extract the whole truth from Falco. When she arrived at the house, Beata was under the trees reading to Cosima. The little girl was curled up against her grandmother, sucking her thumb.

“Where’s Falco?” Alba demanded. Beata looked up from her book. When she saw Alba’s pink face and glassy eyes her own face darkened and she stiffened like an animal sensing danger. Cosima watched her cousin with a serious expression.

“He’s in the lemon grove,” she said and watched as Alba hurried down the path and disappeared into the trees.

“Is Alba angry?” Cosima asked.

Beata kissed her temple. “I think she is, carina. Don’t worry, she’ll smile again, I promise.”

Alba ran through the lemon grove until she found Falco. When he saw her, he let go of his wheelbarrow and braced himself. He had feared this from the moment she had arrived. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that my mother was murdered?” she shouted, putting her hands on her hips. “When were you going to tell me? Or weren’t you intending to tell me at all, like my father?”

“Your father only wants to protect you, Alba,” he said brusquely, setting off through the orchard toward the cliffs. Alba followed.

“So, who murdered her?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Good. I have as long as you need to tell it.”

“Let us go and sit somewhere peaceful.”

“I want the truth, Falco. I have a right to know.”

Falco put his hands in his pockets. “You do have a right to know. But it’s not pleasant. You will see. It’s not simply that your mother never lived to marry your father. That her life was so brutally taken from her. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Come, let us sit here.” He sat down beneath the tree where Valentina’s body lay buried. Alba sat beside him, cross-legged, and raised her eyes to him expectantly.

“So, why was she murdered?” she asked. Her tone of voice was flippant, as if she were discussing a character in a novel rather than a real person, still less her mother. The cracks where Falco’s heart had never mended opened again and stung.