Chapter 13
TUESDAY AFTERNOON
Over the next few hours, I spoke to most of the guests and managed to draw up a rough schedule of who had been where between one-thirty and two-thirty, the time I estimated to have been when Bartolomeo had fallen to his death. It was frustratingly inconclusive.
Calogero Naselli told me he’d gone out for a short run as soon as the meeting had ended, but that he’d been back by half-past one, after which he and Cinzia had been in their room, while Selena said she had gone for a lie-down after a morning of negotiations.
Umberto claimed that he and Gloria had been in their room together most of the time, but not all of it.
Gloria had apparently gone out for a short stroll, but her husband had been unable – or unwilling – to confirm exactly how long she had been absent from the room, and I wondered if he might even have dropped off to sleep.
Orlando and Ingrid had been out for walks – separately, not together, or so they said.
Valentina had been in her room, reading a book, and William had been working on his laptop in here, all alone.
Even Paolo and Marina had been in different parts of the building – each of them on their own.
What this meant was that any one of the people here could have slipped out for twenty minutes to follow and murder Bartolomeo without being noticed – apart from Anna and Fiona, who had been with me.
I went up to my room with my scribbled list, feeling irritated.
Surely the law of averages could have provided at least one or two of them with decent alibis, but now I was faced with a choice of no fewer than nine potential perpetrators – eleven if I included Marina and Paolo – plus, of course, the possibility that Bartolomeo’s murderer had come from outside.
Although Calogero and Cinzia Naselli claimed to have been together – apart from when he had gone for his run – there was no way that the evidence of a partner or spouse could be considered safe in a court of law, so I took their story with a pinch of salt.
I had to do the same with Umberto’s account of what he and Gloria had been doing.
William and Selena had been on their own, as had Valentina.
Orlando had told me quite clearly where he had gone – apparently not in the direction of the huge boulder – and that he had been out for a full hour, directly before the start of the snowstorm.
He did, however, claim to have seen Ingrid at one point, and she confirmed this, but was unable to tell me at what time or precise location this had been.
Given what his father had said to me yesterday, I found myself wondering whether they might have got together to murder Bartolomeo and I knew I needed to have a long talk to both of them.
Although I had no evidence pointing at anybody in particular, the fact remained that any of them could have done it.
My spirits were briefly lifted around four o’clock when I received an email from my commissario friend in the Aosta valley, but as I read what he had written, my hopes were quickly dashed.
He had very kindly sent me a copy of the file relating to the death of Bartolomeo’s partner and summed it up briefly in a handful of lines.
An old car on a dangerous mountain road was an accident waiting to happen.
Tech say the damage to the brake lines was consistent with normal wear and tear after fifty years.
There was no indication that anyone had recently tampered with the vehicle, and the only logical conclusion was that it was a regrettable accident.
The victim’s wife was on holiday in France at the time, where she had been for five days, effectively ruling out any participation by her – even supposing she had the mechanical know-how.
I’m sorry, but there was absolutely no evidence of foul play.
He then went on to ask me how my career as a private investigator was going and to inform me that he was planning on retiring at the end of this month.
I had mentioned my upcoming visit to Courmayeur, and he finished with an open invitation to lunch if I could get away for a few hours next week.
It was a friendly, informative email, and although the report confirmed that the police were quite sure that it had been an accident, fundamentally it didn’t change anything.
Everything pointed to Vincenzo Mazzini’s fatal plunge into a mountain gorge having been an accident, and there was no evidence of murder.
Just like Bartolomeo Viviani’s fall today.
* * *
The predicted lull in the snow arrived later than originally anticipated.
When I looked out of the window at around five o’clock, I was surprised to be able to see the outline of the mountains against the sky in the rapidly fading light.
Opening the window, I leant forward and stretched out my hand, feeling only a few little snowflakes swirling around in the increasingly strong wind.
I closed the window again and looked down at Oscar.
‘It looks like we should be able to get out before dinner. Interested in a walk?’
The magic word worked, as always, and he jumped to his feet, tail wagging. I looked over at Anna, who had her nose buried in a hefty historical tome.
‘Feel like coming with us?’
In response, she shivered. ‘No, thank you, I’ll stay here and stay warm, but promise me you’ll be careful out there.’
I nodded obediently. ‘I promise.’
Downstairs, I went looking for Winston and found him lying on the rug in the lounge, apparently sleeping peacefully.
He opened one eye when he heard me, so I asked him in Italian if he would like to come for a walk and was pleased to see him get to his feet and trot into the hall alongside Oscar and me.
Outside, it was already pitch-dark, but as soon as my night vision began to kick in, I realised that there was sufficient light reflecting up from the covering of snow at my feet to make it relatively easy to see where I was going.
What wasn’t so easy to negotiate was the amount of snow that had piled up in such a short time and, in particular, the remarkably deep drifts produced by the wind, some several feet deep.
The dogs plunged joyfully into these and it looked as though their encounter with violent death earlier today hadn’t left any lasting ill effects on them.
Although I felt sure that the air temperature was still a bit higher than the previous night, the effect of the wind chill made me thankful, once more, that I had my cosy jacket, hat and gloves.
We had a bracing walk and when we returned to the villa, I was confronted by an unexpected sight.
I had been hearing the sound of a powerful engine and when I turned the corner into the car park, I found the security lights blazing, illuminating the area.
A tracked vehicle was sitting there, Paolo at the wheel.
He waved to me, and I walked over to see that this was in fact a snowcat, a scaled-down version of the vehicles used for beating and getting about on ski slopes. He opened the side door and beckoned.
‘The Carabinieri have been in touch. The road up to San Giorgio is being cleared now, and they’re on their way.
I said I’d pick them up from there. There are times when I’m glad Bartolomeo bought this vehicle – it’ll go anywhere.
Want to come with me?’ I nodded and he pointed at the two dogs.
‘Probably best to leave them behind. Winston’s terrified of the snowcat, and he barks all the time he’s in here. We’d be deaf by the time we got there.’
I took the two dogs inside and quickly ran upstairs to tell Anna what I was doing.
Leaving her to give Oscar his evening meal, I hurried back downstairs again and out to where Paolo was waiting in the snowcat.
I climbed inside and was pleasantly surprised to feel warm air circulating in there.
Apart from seating for half a dozen people, this vehicle clearly had a functioning heating system and I pulled off my hat and unzipped my jacket.
Paolo set off down the track, and the snowcat crunched reassuringly through even the deepest drifts, the powerful headlights efficiently illuminating the way ahead.
Paolo apologised that it wasn’t very fast, but I calculated that we were still going faster than I had been in my van when bumping over the rough track.
The only disadvantage of the vehicle was that it was very noisy, so conversation was limited.
It took us about ten minutes to get down to the gate and into the little hamlet of San Giorgio.
I saw lights in a couple of the houses and the restaurant, but no sign of a police car yet.
There was, however, one vehicle immediately visible, and I couldn’t help a little satisfied grin when I recognised it.
It had obviously skidded in the snow and slid over the edge of the parking area onto the slope and was now stuck, nose first, partially buried in a snowdrift, with its rear sticking up in the air.
It was a dark-red pickup with a black stripe along each side.
It looked as though karma had come back to bite the two hirsute men who had clobbered my wing mirror the previous day.
Paolo pointed at the pickup and then shot me a little grin.
‘Idiots. Look at those chunky tyres. That vehicle has four-wheel drive and a low ratio box; it should have been able to go through almost anything. How on earth they managed to put it over the edge of the car park is a mystery to me. I imagine they’re probably in the bar at the moment drowning their sorrows, so I suppose I’d better go and ask them if they want me to tow them out. ’