If she was surprised that we already knew the name of her companion, she didn’t show it. We all shook hands and the two of us sat down opposite them with Oscar sitting to attention at my feet doing a good impression of a highly trained police dog – which he isn’t.
Virgilio immediately started with the questions. ‘Can I ask ifyou’re aware of the events of yesterday morning at the duomo?’ Both shook their heads, and Virgilio continued. ‘I’m sorry to report that a murder was committed in the cathedral, and we now know that the victim was your ex-husband, Tristan Angel.’
I watched carefully as they absorbed the information. The man, Frost, didn’t look particularly shocked, but the ex-wife most certainly did. Her eyes opened wide and her jaw actually dropped for a few seconds. If it was an act, it was good, although not quite deserving of an Oscar. Of course, they had been divorced and, as I know all too well, divorces can be painful, but somehow, I had expected more emotion. However, act or no act, it was good enough for my own Oscar to immediately stand up and wander over to position himself beside her. She stroked his head gently as she looked back across at Virgilio in disbelief.
‘Tristan’s dead, and it was murder, you say?’ Virgilio nodded and there was a pause before she spoke again, this time her voice sounding a bit more resolute. ‘It was bound to happen sooner or later. You can’t do the kind of things that he did without making enemies.’
Virgilio pounced on her choice of words. ‘Would you include yourself among his enemies?’
I saw Simon Frost grimace, but she replied without hesitation. ‘It depends on your definition of enemy, but there’s no question that I loathed him.’ She looked straight at Virgilio and there was fire in her eyes now. ‘He ruined my life, and I hated him for it, but I certainly didn’t kill him, if that’s why you’re here.’
Virgilio didn’t confirm or deny why we were here. ‘But you came to Florence to see him, did you not? Can I ask why that was, if you hated him so much?’
‘Money.’
She reverted to silence, but Virgilio said nothing and waited until she finally clarified.
‘I divorced him four years ago, and a considerable sum of the divorce settlement still remains unpaid. I came to see him to inform him that I was intending to sue him for non-payment, and to give him one last chance to do the right thing before I was forced into legal action.’ Her voice had strengthened by now. ‘But doing the right thing wasn’t Tristan’s forte.’
‘And yesterday’s appointment with him was for what time?’
‘Nine-thirty. We were due to meet right here in the hotel lobby, but he never showed up.’
‘Please can you tell me where you were and what you did yesterday morning between nine and midday?’
‘From nine until almost ten, I was here with Simon, having breakfast and waiting for Tristan. Finally, about five to ten, I realised that he wasn’t coming – and of course he hadn’t bothered to call me – and we went out for a walk.’
‘Where did the walk take you?’
She reached for her handbag and pulled out a street map of the centre of Florence. She opened it and laid it on the coffee table and turned to her younger companion. ‘Simon, you’re better at this kind of thing than I am. Please can you show the officers where we went?’
‘Of course.’
Simon Frost laid a finger on the map where an ink circle indicated the location of the hotel. As he did so, I noticed he was wearing a signet ring, but with what appeared to be a shield or crest, accompanied by a crown, on it rather than initials. The way he described the route of their walk tended to confirm my suspicion that he came from a military background, and I had a feeling the ring might be something to do with that, maybe the emblem of his regiment.
‘We walked west to the main piazza, where the cathedral and the baptistery are, before turning south and heading first forPiazza della Signoria and then on to the Ponte Vecchio. From there, we climbed the hill on the south side of the river to the observation point at Piazzale Michelangelo.’ His pronunciation of the Italian names wasn’t bad, and he had an efficient, businesslike manner.
Virgilio spent quite a bit of time establishing timings and asking them whether they had visited any of the historic monuments they had passed on the way. Both denied having visited the duomo, and Ms Taylor-Mead repeated what she had told me on the phone about her planned visit to the duomo this morning. Virgilio managed to do most of the interview by himself without any input from me, and this freed me up to study the two people on the sofa closely.
I wondered what the relationship between the two of them was. The hotel had told Sergeant Dini that they were sharing a room, and so I presumed this meant it was a physical relationship, but there was no way of knowing how deep it ran. Maybe it was just his military air, but I got the feeling that the man would have had no trouble in pointing a pistol at Angel and pulling the trigger. I was less sure about her. Yes, it was clear she had a deep and lasting hatred for her former husband, but somehow, I doubted whether she was cold-blooded enough to contemplate murder. Still, as Marco Innocenti had said, her being here at the time of her husband’s murder was one hell of a coincidence, so she or her boyfriend remained firmly on my list of suspects for the first murder, although there was surely no way they could have been involved in the second. Maybe we were looking for two different perpetrators after all.
Virgilio asked Ms Taylor-Mead if she could think of anybody in particular who might have wanted to kill her ex-husband, but she shook her head. ‘Tristan hardly ever spoke about work, and I never asked. I know he did quite a lot of business in parts ofAfrica and the Middle East – he and his team were always jetting off to Nigeria or Somalia or the like – and I’m sure he came up against some most unpleasant people, but I can’t give you any names.’
I threw in a question of my own. ‘And closer to home? Can you think of anybody with a grudge against him that wasn’t necessarily of a business nature? Might there have been another woman involved?’ From what Sergeant Dini had said about the divorce, I knew that Angel must have been involved in more than one extramarital affair, but I was interested to see how the ex-wife would react. The answer was: angrily.
‘Was there another woman?’ The fire was back in her eyes again, and the irony thick in her voice. ‘There was a whole string of them while we were still married. As for these past few years since the divorce, I have no idea, but I’m sure this particular leopard didn’t change its spots. There must have been hordes of them, but I’ve no idea who they were.’ She caught my eye for a moment and I read something else beneath the anger: maybe regret. ‘You’re right, of course, there were probably any number of cuckolded husbands or jilted lovers queuing up to kill him.’
Virgilio asked her how long they intended to stay in Florence, and her answer was interesting. ‘I plan on staying another couple of nights and then I’m going down to Rome, but Simon has to leave tomorrow afternoon because he’s back on duty on Friday.’
I picked up on her words and glanced across at Simon Frost. ‘Can I ask what kind of duty that is, Mr Frost?’
‘I’m in the army. I only managed to take a few days off this week and I have to get back. My company is going to be involved in manoeuvres in Scotland from Saturday.’
Trying to make it sound like little more than idle curiosity, I queried this as casually as I could. ‘I see, and what regiment are you in?’
‘The Grenadier Guards.’ There was an unmistakable note of pride in his voice, and I caught Virgilio’s eye for a moment. This was, of course, the same regiment in which Tristan Angel had served. Might this be significant?
Virgilio gave Ms Taylor-Mead one of his cards and asked her to let him know before leaving the city. Then we stood up, shook hands once more, and left. Outside in the street, he stopped to tell the officer on duty that he and his colleague could go off and then turned to me.
