‘What the hell are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Dio mio! Is it you? You have frightened me! I think I am having a heart attack.’
‘No wonder, carrying those heavy bags. Why sneak out in the middle of the night?’
I knew the answer, but I was curious to hear what she would say.
‘I must leave here,’ she whispered, rolling her eyes. ‘I am afraid. There is something wrong, can’t you feel it?’
‘But why not wait till morning?’
She hesitated, trying to think of some convincing lie. The expression on her sly, stupid little face annoyed me, and I went on, deliberately cruel, ‘What about the ghost? I thought you were afraid to go out at night.’
‘You said it would not come in the house! I have called the garage, the chauffeur is waiting with the car . . .’
Her face was shining wet with perspiration. It was not a warm night. I still didn’t like her much, but her unmasked terror and her plump little hands, clutching at my skirts, made me feel guilty.
‘I was joking,’ I muttered. ‘Would you like me to help you? You can’t carry those suitcases alone.’
‘Would you? Would you help? I am so afraid, and yet it is worse to stay than to go . . . If I wait, Pietro will convince me to stay. I am never so afraid in the daylight,’ she added naïvely.
I lifted one of the suitcases, and staggered. Helena giggled feebly. I gave her a hard stare. That suitcase was too heavy. I wondered if she had some silverware in there, as well as the brooch.
I started down the hall. Helena puffed after me, half dragging, half pushing the other suitcase. We reached the top of the grand staircase, and by a combination of muscle and persistence I managed to get one suitcase down to the hall. Then I went back to help Helena.
‘Hurry, hurry,’ she muttered. ‘We are too slow.’
It had taken us a long time to traverse that long corridor. We had made a certain amount of noise, too, banging the suitcases around. But I couldn’t understand why I felt so edgy, unless the girl’s terror had infected me. The household was sound asleep. No one would bother us. She said she had called the garage, so presumably the car was waiting outside even now.
The entrance hall was a ghostly place, lighted by a single lamp suspended on a long chain. It swayed slightly on an unseen, unfelt current of air, and shadows slid across the painted ceiling so that the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus seemed to shift naked limbs and wink as they looked down on us struggling mortals.
The swaying of the lamp should have alerted me. Air doesn’t move in an enclosed space unless something displaces it. But my back was towards the library door, and it was not until I saw Helena’s face freeze that I realized something was wrong. Her mouth was wide open, but she was too petrified to scream.
I whirled around. If I hadn’t heard her description, I probably would not have made out details at first; it stood in the dark doorway, blending with the shadows. Yet I sensed its shape – the trailing folds of the long robe, the hands hidden in full sleeves, the cowled head. Then it glided out into the hall, under the light of the lamp.
Helena got her breath back and let out a scream that sounded like an air-raid siren. It hurt my ears, but it didn’t faze the phantom, who took another step towards us. Helena’s scream faded out. She collapsed into an ungainly heap, half over the suitcases.
The light fell on the austere bone within the cowl. The fleshless skull shone, not with the pale glimmer of ivory, but with a wild glitter. It had an odd, incredible beauty; but its immobility was more terrifying than any menacing gesture might have been. Then someone started pounding on the door. The cloaked figure turned. With the shining skull face hidden, it became a thing of darkness that seemed to melt into the shadows and disappear.
Helena woke up and started screaming again. The pounding on the door continued. Doors opened upstairs. I thought of slapping Helena – and a tempting thought it was, too – but decided I had better get some help first. So I went to the door. It took me a while to get it open, but finally I admitted a man in a chauffeur’s uniform – not the same man who had driven us out to the villa originally, someone else. He shied back when he saw me, rolling his eyes.
‘Avanti, avanti,’ I said, somewhat impatiently. I am not accustomed to having men recoil when they look at me. ‘The signorina has fainted – no, I guess she hasn’t, she’s just hysterical. Help me with her.’
Her screams had subsided into loud gulping sobs. I looked up. The stair railing was fringed with staring faces, most of them female. The maids, who slept on the top floor, had been awakened by the hubbub. Then two male figures pushed bravely through the throng and came down the stairs.
Luigi had pulled on a pair of jeans. His feet and his beautiful torso were bare. Smythe was still wearing evening trousers and white shirt.
The suitcases and Helena’s huddled form told their own story. It wasn’t until Luigi’s inimical eye fell on me that I realized my own position was somewhat ambiguous.
If those suitcases were filled with loot, as I suspected they were, then I was an accessory after the fact to grand theft. It behooved me to get them back upstairs unopened, and make sure Pietro’s possessions were restored to him.
‘We met the ghost,’ I said, in a lame effort to distract attention from the bulging bags.
‘You don’t say so,’ Smythe said. ‘Did it fit the description?’
‘The description didn’t do it justice,’ I said. ‘Let’s get Helena back to bed.’
‘And what was she doing creeping out of the house in the middle of the night?’ Luigi demanded. ‘No, don’t answer. It is only too obvious. Antonio, what do you mean, helping this woman to run away?’
The chauffeur burst into an animated apologia, his hands flying. His excuse was reasonable; he had never been told he was not to obey Helena’s orders. But Luigi’s frown seemed to intimidate him. He was practically groveling when the boy cut him off with a curt, ‘Basta. Go back to your house.’
‘It must be nice to be one of the upper classes in a region where feudal loyalties still linger,’ Smythe murmured. ‘Our peasants are too damn liberated.’
He smiled affably at me, and I smiled back. His attempt to divert my attention hadn’t worked. Even if Luigi had not used the man’s name, I would have recognized his voice. He was one of my kidnappers.
That wasn’t the only thing I learned from the evening’s adventure. The servants hauled Helena and her suitcases back to her room and Luigi stamped off, radiating aristocratic hauteur. I returned to my own room, leaving Smythe standing alone in the hall.
There was no lock on my door. I shoved a chair under the knob and then bolted the doors giving onto the balcony. It would be a little stuffy for sleeping, but I preferred it that way.
I didn’t know who had played the spectral monk. It could have been anybody. Smythe, Luigi, Pietro – if he was faking his drunken stupor – or the dowager – if she was pretending to be more crippled than she really was. The elderly masterminds in mystery stories often do that – pretend to be paralyzed so they will have an alibi. Or it could have been one of the servants. I was inclined towards Smythe, partly because he had that kind of sense of humour, and partly because it had taken him a little too long to get downstairs after Helena started screaming. Luigi had had to find his pants – he probably slept in the buff – but Smythe had been fully dressed, and therefore awake. However, Smythe was a cautious soul, not the sort of man to rush headlong into danger without reinforcements.