Murder in Verona (An Armstrong and Oscar Cozy Mystery #9)

Chapter 1

1

SATURDAY EARLY EVENING

The bar in the piazza behind the church is the hub of the sleepy little town of Montevolpone. It’s here that the locals meet most days to catch up on events, to discuss politics, football and farming – mainly grapes and olives here in Tuscany – and generally set the world to rights. The bar itself isn’t large but it has tables outside on the flagstones, protected from the summer sun by parasols, some so faded that the writing on them is barely visible. The master of ceremonies is Tommaso, the affable proprietor, directed by his highly efficient wife, Monica.

Oscar and I received a warm welcome from the two of them and waves and nods of greeting from a dozen customers – predominantly men – who were sitting around enjoying an aperitivo as the scorching sun slowly began to head for the horizon. Oscar’s tail started wagging as soon as he saw Monica and he made a beeline for her – he knows full well that she holds the keys to the biscuits – while I went around shaking hands before making my announcement.

‘Good evening, everybody. I’d like to buy you all a drink because I’m celebrating. Today’s my anniversary. ’

Tommaso, who knew me well by now, gave me a quizzical look. ‘But didn’t you get divorced?’

‘Yes, indeed, but this is a different kind of anniversary. It’s my second anniversary. It was on this day two years ago that I made the decision to move over from England and settle here in Tuscany.’ I gave him a broad smile. ‘The best decision I’ve ever made.’ I felt a cold, wet nose prod my bare leg and I looked down at my Labrador, a reproachful expression on his hairy, black face. ‘All right, Oscar, you’re also one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.’ And not the only one – there was of course my girlfriend, Anna, I reminded myself. Since she had entered my life almost a year ago, things had been on an upward trajectory for me.

Tommaso immediately enveloped me in a bear hug before turning towards the others. ‘You heard what Dan said: the drinks are on him. Let’s hear what you’d like.’ He glanced at me first. ‘I don’t have any Champagne, I’m afraid, but I’ve got a good spumante from Greve.’

No sooner had he mentioned this than several of the older men started arguing about where the best sparkling wine was to be found. Needless to say, they referenced only Tuscan wines. Italians are immensely proud of their individual regional identities, and when it comes to food and drink, religiously so. As a general rule, I only ever drink Tuscan wines when I’m here, because anything else would be looked upon with mistrust. Besides, to my taste, Chianti is an excellent table wine, particularly when bought in bulk from my neighbour whose family have been winemaking in the Montevolpone hills for five generations.

Partly so as to avoid the evening developing into an acrimonious discussion of the respective merits of different vineyards, and partly because I’ve never been wildly keen on fizzy wine, I asked for a cold beer and let the others choose whatever it was they felt like drinking. Unsurprisingly here in the Chianti region, most chose to drink red wine.

I joined a group of four locals that I knew well by now. I sat down with them at one of the tables and spent a pleasant half-hour listening to them telling me about all the ways – many of them grossly inaccurate – in which Tuscany is better than England, and then catching up on the local gossip. Maybe it was just because it was the beginning of August and too hot for anything too exciting, but it appeared that this was quite a slow news day and most of the conversation was, inevitably, about the prospects for next month’s vendemmia , the grape harvest. The bad news, as I already knew, was that the climate had been getting drier and drier over the past few years and the yield had gone down accordingly. I was listening to Old Piero, who with his grizzled, walnut-coloured skin looked a hundred but was probably not even eighty, making dire predictions about the fate of the planet and the serious shortage of olive oil ahead, when our conversation was interrupted by an unusual noise.

It was the throaty roar of a powerful engine coming down the main street towards us at considerable speed. Unlike most car engines, this had a deep, hollow, echoing sound that set the glasses on the table rattling. Oscar looked up from his position in the shade at my feet with an expression of indignation at this interruption to what had probably been dreams of food and squirrels. There was a squeal of tortured rubber on the stone paving slabs as a car came charging into the square and screeched to a halt barely a few inches from a hefty terracotta planter full of lavender in bloom. The engine gave a final snarl and a sinister explosion before a cloud of blue smoke emerged from its exhaust pipes and blessed silence returned. I glanced sideways at my companions, expecting to see outrage at this demonstration of hooligan behaviour, only to see unexpectedly sympathetic expressions on most faces. I turned back and surveyed the car and its driver and immediately realised that this wasn’t some teenager in a souped-up Fiat. Far from it.

The car itself was unlike anything I’d seen for a long, long time. I’m not very good at identifying vintage cars but this was a magnificent, cream-coloured, open-topped, old sports car complete with running boards, huge chrome headlamps, wire wheels and, remarkably, no windscreen. But the biggest surprise was the driver. The low door, hinged so it opened forwards, was pushed open and a figure emerged after a considerable struggle. It looked as though the remarkably small driver of this monster had serious mobility issues as getting out of the car took almost a minute. I was on the point of getting up and going over to see if I could help when Giovanni, the postman, laid a cautionary hand on my arm and shook his head. In a low voice, he told me, ‘She’s a very independent lady. She’ll sort herself out.’

At that moment, the driver managed to get to her feet alongside the car and reached up to remove an equally ancient-looking leather flying helmet and goggles, revealing silver hair and sparkling earrings. To my considerable surprise, I found that I was looking at a woman who probably wasn’t a lot younger than my mum – and she’s eighty-four. I immediately reminded myself that, since turning fifty-seven the previous month, it wouldn’t be long before I, too, would find myself in the ‘elderly’ category. Still, I had to admit that the magnificent car this woman had been driving was a lot different from my VW van or the Toyota Yaris favoured by my mother – and a whole lot more desirable. I turned towards Giovanni – who knows everything there is to know about the residents of Montevolpone and its surrounding area – and shot him an enquiring look. ‘Care to fill me in?’

He looked mildly surprised. ‘Haven’t you seen her before? Most of us have met her out on the road at some point and some of us are still here to tell the tale.’

‘She has a bit of a reputation as a bad driver?’

He shook his head. ‘Not bad, just fast. In fact I often see her – or at least hear her – down on the main road burning off boy racers at the traffic lights.’

‘Do you know who she is?’

‘Yes, she’s Violetta Argento. Her son is… sorry, was… Rodolfo Argento, the famous opera singer who died three or four weeks ago. It was absolutely tragic and, as I’m sure you can imagine, Signora Violetta was devastated.’

The name Rodolfo Argento sounded vaguely familiar, but I’m not an opera buff. Anna loves opera and I felt sure she would have recognised the singer’s name immediately. ‘How awful for the whole family. I’m very sorry to hear that. What about Violetta? Does she live locally?’

‘I’m surprised you haven’t seen her – or at least the car – as she doesn’t live that far from you.’

I had bought myself a little house in the hills just south of the village the previous year and often walked the paths and tracks around it with my four-legged friend. I’d been getting increasingly familiar with all the little houses and farms dotted over the landscape and I could hardly believe how I could have overlooked such an unusual pairing – the ancient car and its similar-aged driver.

‘How strange. I know I would have remembered a magnificent old car like this. Where does she live?’

‘Villa Diana. Just over the hill from you.’

I immediately knew where he was talking about. ‘I always thought that place was uninhabited. Oscar and I sometimes walk past it and it looks permanently locked up.’

‘No, she lives there, all right – just her and her housekeeper.’

The villa was barely a couple of kilometres from my house, set on top of a little hill, surrounded by a high brick wall and a dense plantation of trees, mostly cypress and umbrella pines. ‘But surely she needs to drive past my house to get to the villa, doesn’t she?’

Giovanni shook his head. ‘No, she uses the lane on the other side, from the direction of Empoli. It’s far less rough. That’s the way I go when I have mail for her. That’s probably why you haven’t noticed the car before. The Bugatti’s ninety years old and it doesn’t like potholes.’

‘A Bugatti, wow. I bet something like that cost her a packet.’

‘She told me it was a present from her brother. Apart from opera, he was crazy about cars and she obviously feels the same way about them.’

I nodded approvingly. ‘Generous brother. The most I’ve ever got from my brother is a bottle of Scotch at Christmas. What about maintenance? Is there a Bugatti garage around here?’

‘I expect so – after all, they’re still making cars – but she’s surprisingly handy when it comes to car mechanics. She doesn’t do any of the heavy stuff any more, but I often see her with her head under the bonnet of that thing.’

I was impressed and made a mental note to update my views on elderly ladies.

Signora Argento retrieved a walking stick from the car and came over to the café, walking with some difficulty. As she did so, Monica appeared from inside and greeted her with a smile.

‘Signora Violetta, lovely to see you. Your usual?’

Violetta Argento smiled back and nodded before taking a seat at the table alongside ours. Oscar, always pleased to meet a member of the opposite sex, pulled himself to his feet and wandered over to say hello. He was greeted with a warm smile as she immediately made a fuss of him. While she did so, I took a closer look at her. She was quite tiny, but she still had a commanding presence and her eyes were bright, although the dark rings below them indicated the depth of her grief for the death of her son. After greeting my dog, she looked across at Giovanni and said hello to him. He was quick to introduce me in return.

‘Good evening, Signora Violetta, have you met my good friend Dan Armstrong? He’s English.’

‘Good evening, Signor Armstrong.’ She smiled graciously and I felt almost as if I were in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. ‘Are you here on holiday?’

After a couple of years here, I’m getting quite good at identifying Italian accents and I could immediately tell that she wasn’t originally from Tuscany. At a rough guess, I would have said she was from somewhere further north – but not from as far north as me. I gave her a smile in return. ‘Good evening, Signora, I’m pleased to say that I live here now, in fact not that far from you.’ I went on to explain exactly where my little house was and it was clear that she recognised it from my description.

‘And what is it you do, Signor Armstrong? You look far too young to have retired.’

I took considerable heart from this observation although, in fairness, she was probably at least twenty years older than me so, inevitably, I was bound to look young in her eyes.

‘I used to be in the police force in London and now I have my own investigation agency here in Florence.’ I saw an immediate glint of interest in her eyes and was quick to debunk any notions she might have had of me as another Philip Marlowe. ‘It’s mostly boring stuff like missing persons or, I’m afraid, marital infidelity.’

A sour expression appeared on her face. ‘I can well believe it in this day and age. Whatever happened to people’s moral compass?’

Fortunately, I was saved from any further discussion of this thorny subject by the arrival of Monica with Signora Violetta’s ‘usual’ drink. To my further surprise, I saw that this was a glass of beer, just like the one I was drinking. Somehow, I’d been expecting either lemon tea or at most a glass of sherry – although the Italians don’t go in for sherry the same way my parents and their friends still do.

After Monica had gone off, Signora Violetta returned her attention to me. ‘A private detective, you say? How fascinating, and how useful.’ For a moment, it looked as though she was going to say more, but then she sat back and sipped her drink.

I said nothing and gave her time but at that moment my phone started ringing and I saw that it was Anna. She had moved in with me two months ago to see how we got on together and things were going really well between us in spite of a few wobbles caused by the constraints of my job, which sometimes took me away from her. I’d been doing my very best to concentrate as much of my attention as possible on her rather than on my work, in the hope of avoiding our relationship ending up like my ill-fated marriage.

I answered the call. ‘ Ciao , bella .’

‘ Ciao , Dan, I imagine you and Oscar are at the bar, right?’

‘You know me so well, carissima .’ Our normal language together is English, which she speaks almost perfectly after having lived and worked in the UK and having formerly been married to an Englishman for twenty years or so. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m still in Florence and I’m calling to ask if you feel like coming into Florence and staying at my place tonight. Virgilio and Lina have invited us for a meal.’

This sounded good although I knew that it would be even hotter down in the city. She was still hanging onto her apartment and, luckily, it’s in a five-hundred-year-old building whose thick stone walls do a pretty good job of keeping the temperature acceptable.

‘Sounds good to me. Give me half an hour to walk back up and collect the car and I’ll be with you by seven-thirty or so. Is that okay?’

‘Perfect. I’ll call Lina back and say yes.’

After putting down the phone, I picked up my beer and drained it, my mind on the elderly lady alongside me. Had I imagined it or had she been about to consult me about something? I glanced at my watch again and realised, regretfully, that this would have to wait, or I would be late for my dinner date in Florence.