He glanced towards the front door, but it was still bolted. Then he looked into the kitchen, staring at the table. The handbag had gone.
Gripping the banister rail, Nino mounted the stairs. He still had the knife he had picked up in the cellar, and was holding it in his hand, ready to strike. But no one jumped him. No one came out from any of the upstairs rooms. No one confronted him on the landing. It was only when he reached the top of the staircase that he saw a light coming from a bedroom at the end of the corridor.
Tightening his grip on the knife, Nino walked towards the room, reaching the door and slamming it backwards against the wall.
He had wanted to startle the intruder.
But she wasn’t startled at all.
Seraphina Morgan, formerly Seraphina di Fattori, looked into the mirror and smiled at him.
76
‘Eddie’s been caught,’ she said simply. ‘But then you know that, don’t you?’
Transfixed, Nino stared at her. ‘You’re dead. You were murdered in Venice—’
‘Was I?’ she replied, swivelling round in her seat, lush and bronzed. ‘I don’t think so.’
He remembered her coming to Gaspare’s studio with the painting. Remembered the old man’s grief at her murder. Remembered his own dedication to find out who had killed her.
‘What the hell is going on?’
‘Have you found the Titian?’ she asked, ignoring his question. ‘I heard you downstairs, so I suppose you have.’
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, approaching her. ‘What are you playing at? Why would you let everyone think you were dead? Why would you do that?’ He paused, trying to gather his thoughts. ‘Were you working with him? With Hillstone?’ She said nothing and Nino continued. ‘You planned all this?’
‘The night we met you seemed very unsure of yourself. I put that down to your having been so ill. I must say, I never thought it would be you that caught us.’ She put down the hairbrush in her hand, smiling. ‘You’re trying to work it out, aren’t you? Thinking really hard … I can see that in your face.’
‘So why don’t you explain it? Or shall we just wait for the police to come and you can talk to them?’
‘But then you’d never find out the truth, because I’d hardly tell them, would I?’ she countered. ‘Shall I start? I met Edward Hillstone a few years ago—’
‘On the Italy trip?’
‘Yes!’ she said happily. ‘The same trip that Rachel Pitt was on. I know you’ve found out about that – you must have done. Anyway, where was I? They do this in films, don’t they, Mr Bergstrom? Always confess at the end, tell the audience how it was done. You would know, you being in the movie industry—’
‘So how did you do it?’
‘Eddie and I had a fling. He wanted me more than I wanted him, and he was obsessed with Angelico Vespucci. It turned him on to think that I was a descendant of one of The Skin Hunter’s victims. He’s a very good lover, you know. But then men that don’t really feel too much always are. They can lose themselves in the moment. A very cold fish, is Eddie. It’s what makes him so attractive.’
‘He’s a killer.’
‘Not then – that came later, although he was always fantasising about killing women. He’d talk about it in bed, describe what he’d do, how he’d mutilate them. I thought it was just sex talk …’ Her tone was light. ‘We met up quite often and he talked more and more about Vespucci, and then something strange happened.’
‘Go on.’
‘My family are into the arts. Well, you know that from Gaspare Reni. I knew about the art world, and I heard the gossip—’
‘But you’re a scientist—’
‘With a wide circle of friends,’ she said mockingly. ‘Offspring of the rich and well-connected. They hear things and someone heard about the Titian painting re-emerging. You can’t keep that kind of thing a secret in art circles, Mr Bergstrom. It’s a business that feeds off gossip.’
‘So?’
‘I heard about Triumph Jones being involved and about his being in London when I was. In fact, I was going to talk to him about the Titian, but when I arrived at his hotel they said he was out. That was bad manners.’ Her tone was curt, offended. ‘I knew he was there, so when he left, I followed him. He has a sly reputation, does Mr Jones. His actions had piqued my interest. I followed him in a taxi and he got out on Grosvenor Bridge, with a parcel. About the right shape and size for a painting … You are following all this, aren’t you?’
‘Every word.’
‘He was looking around to see that no one was watching. He didn’t see me, obviously, and then he threw it into the river!’ She shook her head, incredulous. ‘It came up on the bank pretty quickly and I picked it up … I don’t know if he saw me … I looked at it and knew what it was … Then of course I asked myself, what should I do?’ She put her head on one side. ‘It was the portrait of Angelico Vespucci. The rumours had been right, but I’d never expected to be the one who found it.’
‘So why did you come to Gaspare Reni’s gallery?’
‘I needed somewhere to hide it in London. With someone respectable. I knew the old man would never destroy it, but he would look after it until I worked out how to get it home.’
‘But you were so frightened that night,’ Nino said, remembering. ‘You were afraid of the painting when Gaspare told you the story about Vespucci.’
‘Just acting,’ she replied deftly. ‘I knew the story already. How could I not know? I just wanted to make it all look believable. And it did. When I left the gallery I contacted Eddie. He was hardly able to talk he was so excited, and when I told him about the rumour Triumph Jones had set in motion he went frantic. “When the portrait emerges, so will the man.” She smiled, cold eyes. ‘That was his excuse to kill. That’s what set Eddie off.’
‘And you didn’t stop him?’
‘Why should I? I wanted the Titian. But more than that, I wanted out. Wanted to leave my old life, leave my husband in particular – the lazy American oaf. But how could I? It was the painting that gave me the idea … I could die. Without actually dying.’
Incredulous, Nino stared at her. He was trying to match this Seraphina with the young woman he had first met in the Kensington gallery, but could find no trace of the original.
‘You let everyone think you’d been murdered. Your family, your husband—’
‘Oh, don’t waste your pity on Tom,’ she countered. ‘When he knew there was a Titian in the mix he was more than willing to go along with it. For a while I even let him think I was going to work with him. And Johnny Ravenscourt. He’d been involved in smuggling so it seemed logical to suggest we could hire him and split the proceeds.’
Nino nodded. ‘I get it … Then you plan your own death, so you don’t have to share with anyone. Except Hillstone.’
‘But I didn’t mind sharing with Eddie – he was doing most of the work, after all. It was everyone else I wanted to get away from.’
‘So the woman who was found murdered, the woman everyone thought was you – who was she?’
Her expression was composed, with an undercurrent of triumph.
‘A suicide. I’m a scientist, I work at the hospital in Venice. I knew someone who’d help me out and turn a blind eye to what was going on in the morgue one night. You can bribe pretty much everyone if you offer them enough. He identified me by the necklace ‘I’ was wearing. A sentimental present he had given to me when we first married.’ She shrugged again. ‘We took her body—’
‘And Hillstone mutilated it?’
‘Well, I didn’t!’ she replied, angered for the first time. ‘Killing was his dream, not mine. And besides, I never really believed he’d go through with it. People say all kinds of things—’