“Nonsense,” she replied firmly. “John and Michael are quite different. Michael is a film producer. And John…helps. They have money. They have taste. They’re honest. Most of all, they’re absent for most of the year, leaving me here to look after this place on my own.”
“And you enjoy that?” he asked, wishing he could erase the note of disapproval from his voice. “Being alone?”
She looked at him, not offended as he had expected. “Daniel. I’m deeply sorry for what happened. I read about you being in jail, and it made me furious. Why didn’t you argue? I think we all went a little crazy that summer. I went a lot crazy, but then you know that. You saw me. All the same.” She hesitated. Her eyes went to the garden. “I didn’t wish to see you again,” she added. “I didn’t want you to find me. I wish you had not found me now.”
“I see,” he said softly.
“I’m sorry. I have this new life. I don’t wish it disturbed.”
“Of course.”
Her nose flared, another familiar gesture he recognised. “Well then,” she said quietly. “That’s that, it seems. You have your career. Your writing. Ca’ Scacchi.”
“I didn’t want Ca’ Scacchi, Laura. Half of it’s still yours. All of it, if you like.”
“Hah! That’s why you come! To bribe me!”
He laughed and watched her try to stifle the amusement in her face. “Not at all. I came to make you cross. It struck me that you may not have had the opportunity for this in a while. You seemed to enjoy it so much once.”
She pushed back her chair until her face was in the shade. “Please don’t play with me, Daniel. I want nothing of Scacchi’s. I want nothing of yours. That part of my life is over. Leave me alone.”
“I will,” he said, “but you must do something first.”
“What?”
“Play for me. Play the Guarneri. You must have it. The music too. I had so much time to think in that prison. Play, please.”
Her face came out of the shadow. “Are you insane, Daniel? What are you talking about? I play nothing. I’m a maid.”
“No,” he said firmly. Daniel took the old newspaper cutting out of his pocket and placed it on the table between them. She did not look at the story, with its garish headline and the photograph of the girl. With her longer hair, the resemblance between Laura and the teenage Susanna Gianni was striking but by no means undeniable. Yet he could understand why Scacchi kept Massiter from the house. “You pretend to be a maid, but I know who you are — Susanna Gianni. Whom Hugo Massiter tried to possess and almost killed, twelve years ago. Who has been hiding ever since and now is determined she should be alone because she wrongly believes there’s no other way to survive. Perhaps to protect me also. You’re like Scacchi — always deceiving in order to protect. That’s why you pushed Amy at me, against my wishes. You wished to save her from Massiter too. It’s a mistake, Laura. We all need the chance to choose, the opportunity to learn from time to time.”
“Daniel!” Laura shook her head and stared at him. “What are you talking about? This girl is dead!”
He remembered the day it came to him. He was in a café near the Frari, wondering about the missing violin and Massiter’s hunger for it. “No. It’s the only possible answer. Giulia Morelli suspected as much, too, and tried to tell me before she died.”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
He had this in his head, as clear as the tale of Oliver Delapole. “Massiter fooled me into thinking it was the Guarneri he sought. But he’d no interest in musical instruments. He didn’t even own one. People were what mattered most to him. He’d always found something odd about Susanna’s supposed death. He knew he didn’t kill her. He told me so himself.”
She did not flinch and simply sat there, arms folded, looking at him as if he were mad.
“That was why he ordered Rizzo to supervise the opening of the grave,” he continued. “He could not be there in person, naturally, since it would draw attention to him. Yet he needed to satisfy his curiosity that Susanna was really dead. He’d no idea the Guarneri was in the coffin or, to begin with, that his lackey had stolen it. But as soon as the fiddle came on the market, he saw his opportunity. He knew that if he could acquire it and recognise it for the one he’d bought a decade before, then perhaps you were alive and wished to sell it out of necessity. And from that point on, he would seek you out again and reclaim what he thought of as his.”
She raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Your next work will be one of fiction, I presume?”
He ignored the taunt. “Moreover, Scacchi understood the peril of the position immediately. He knew the fiddle was inside the casket, because he had, I suspect, reluctantly placed it there at your insistence. He discovered the coffin had been lifted early, with an authority Massiter had forged. Scacchi’s purpose in acquiring the instrument from Rizzo was not for medical treatment or to pay off some gangsters, as he wanted us to believe. It was twofold. To protect you, as he had been doing for a decade. And, at some stage, to restore you to yourself. I believe that last part was imminent when Massiter killed him. You said on the day of the eel contest that Scacchi was about to share his secret with you. What else could it be but the violin? He knew you, Laura, and loved you. He didn’t want you to hide behind this disguise forever.”
She cast him a withering look. “This is rubbish, Daniel. Did you lose your sanity in that institution?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “I found it. Scacchi’s ruse would have worked, too, were it not for Rizzo. Massiter discovered his treachery and probably tortured the entire truth out of him before he died. At that point, Hugo knew that Scacchi had the instrument and no intention of selling it. Why would a man like Scacchi do such a thing? There could be only one explanation. He knew Susanna lived and wished to keep her identity hidden. That was why Massiter visited Scacchi and Paul that night, to extract the truth out of them. And that’s why they died. To save you.”
“You do a disservice to their memory,” she said flatly. “These are such sad fantasies. Besides, if I’m that poor dead girl, whose body was in the coffin?”
He smiled. She had struck at his weak point immediately. “I don’t know. I asked Piero last week—”
“Piero?” she asked, outraged. “Why pester that simpleton with your daydreams?”
“I asked him what had happened, and whether he had by any chance kept some items of Scacchi’s for safekeeping. He blustered and pretended to be angry with me, naturally. As you’re doing now.”
“Piero’s soft in the head!”
“No,” Daniel insisted. “That’s a game you play. He’s a good and loyal friend and has been from the beginning. What I believe happened — you may correct me if you wish — is that he put you in Scacchi’s care the same night Massiter attacked you. Perhaps he found you. Perhaps you found him. I don’t know. Scacchi listened to your story. He knew Massiter for the man he was, knew that he wouldn’t desist from pursuing you. I think also…”
He paused, not wishing to hurt her unnecessarily.
“This tale grows ever more fantastic,” she said sourly. “Do go on.”
“Your mother died a year after this happened. I don’t wish to add to the pain.”
She looked at him, wide-eyed, a little frightened now, he thought. “What do you know of my mother?”
“I suspect she believed you should have gone along with Massiter. You were poor. She saw this as some happy accident, perhaps. Your own feelings were secondary. The fact that Massiter appalled you, that he was violent and wished to make you one of his possessions, meant nothing to her. He tried to ensnare Amy through her parents. Much the same trick.”