20
THURSDAY LATE AFTERNOON
It was twenty-past four by the time I had offloaded a slightly miffed Anna along with the other two in Florence and headed back up the hill to the villa once more. I had explained to her about the call from Virgilio, and her response had been a frustrated sigh. I couldn’t help feeling guilty, but by now, I was deeply involved with the case and I knew I needed to see it to its conclusion.
I found even more police cars at the villa when I arrived and I only just managed to squeeze into a parking space alongside an aged Fiat van at the side of the building, near a fine-looking old greenhouse. I spotted a figure inside there and, as I assumed this was where the rat poison that had killed Donald Hicks had been found, I walked over to take a quick look for myself. I was greeted by an elderly man who introduced himself as Amedeo Rospo, Rosina’s husband. He looked as if he was well into his seventies or even older, and his wrinkled face had been burnt a chestnut-brown colour by the sun. I held out my hand and introduced myself in my turn.
‘Good afternoon, Signor Rospo, my name’s Dan Armstrong.I’m helping the police with the murder investigations. Tell me, have you seen any strange people around here in the last few days? I imagine the police have already asked you this, so forgive me if I make you repeat yourself.’
He gave me a hint of a smile. ‘When you say, “strange people”, you mean apart from the bunch in the villa right now?’
‘Are they that strange?’ I was interested to hear what he might have to say about them and I leant a little bit closer as Oscar trotted over to say hello.
He took off his hat and scratched his wispy, grey hair with one hand before patting Oscar on the head with the other. ‘I suppose it depends on your definition of “strange” but, to my mind, people who go running at six o’clock in the morning, or who decide to deafen neighbours with gunfire at six o’clock in the evening, aren’t all there. This is a quiet residential area. I shudder to think what the neighbours think about all the disruption and now, of course, so many police cars.’ He replaced his hat and returned to my original question. ‘But, in answer to what you just asked me about strange people, no, I haven’t seen anybody out of the ordinary.’
‘I believe the poison that killed the second victim was taken from here?’ He nodded and I carried on. ‘Could you show me where, please?’ I followed him inside, noting as I did so that there appeared to be no lock on the door, meaning that anybody could have got in to steal the poison.
He led me along to the far end of the greenhouse. Here there was an old wooden cupboard without a door, and I could see numerous packets of seeds, rolls of string, wire and small garden implements, but no garden chemicals.
‘The police have taken everything, even fertiliser and slug pellets.’
Amedeo sounded fed up, but I could well imagine that therehad probably been enough poison here to kill all of the occupants of the villa as well as those of most of the surrounding villas. The police had done well to confiscate everything.
‘Have you worked here since Mr Angel bought the villa?’
‘I’ve worked here for over forty years. I worked for the duchess before and then, when she died and the villa was sold to Signor Angel six years ago, he kept Rosina and me on.’
‘Tell me about Angel. I never met him.’
His answer came as something of a surprise. As Amedeo had been moaning about most things so far, I had expected that to include his former employer.
‘He was a good, fair man, generous too. You won’t hear anything bad about him from me.’ It could have been Eddie or even Shaun talking.
‘Did he come here often?’
‘Not really. Probably only half a dozen times over the last couple of years. In the first years, before he and Signora Jane split up, he came much more often, and she used to spend months at a time here.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘All on her own, while he jetted off around the world.’
‘So you and your wife got to know her quite well?’
‘Rosina knew her better than I did, but, yes, we knew her and we liked her.’
‘What about the other people here at the villa now? Have you seen much of them?’
He shook his head. ‘Not really. Eddie with the limp likes pottering about in the garden. I don’t mind. I’m fighting a continuous battle with the weeds, so if he’s happy to remove some of them for me, then that’s fine by me. There’s the man who goes running first thing every morning and early evening – or at least he used to until the police closed the place off. Now he doescircuit after circuit of the grounds.’ His expression soured. ‘I don’t mind him running, but I do object to him always following the same route. He’s trampling my grass in places.’
‘Which man is that?’
‘The one with the short hair.’ He looked at me and shook his head slowly. ‘I speak some English – the duchess was German, but we normally communicated in English – but I can’t understand a word the short-haired man says. I think I heard somebody say he’s Irish.’
I made a mental note of the fact that Liam O’Connell liked running. Whether this was of any significance to the investigation remained to be seen. Meanwhile, Amedeo was still answering my question about the people in the villa.
‘I see quite a lot of the blonde girl – and I mean a lot.’ He paused to take a surreptitious glance around before producing a decidedly lascivious wink for a married septuagenarian. ‘The gorgeous one with the tiny bikini. She spends a lot of time at the pool or in the garden but, otherwise, the others seem to prefer to stay inside, apart from the dark-haired woman, who spends hours sitting under the rose arbour, reading or staring into space. So, no, I can’t really tell you much about them at all.’
I thanked him and headed back around to the front door. Sergeant Dini was talking to a constable on the top step and she led me inside and through to the small lounge, Oscar trotting happily alongside her, tail wagging. We found Virgilio and Marco sitting on one of the sofas, deep in conversation. They looked up as I came in, and Virgilio waved me over.
‘Thanks for coming, Dan. Take a seat.’
I sat down and asked the question that had been on my lips ever since the phone call in the Roman theatre. ‘What exactly happened in the murder attempt?’
