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

Chapter 19

19

FRIDAY MORNING

Tosca’s house was barely a ten-minute drive from the plate-glass palace we had just visited, but it couldn’t have been more different. This down-at-heel residential area of Verona probably dating back to the sixties or seventies consisted of bland four- or five-storey apartment blocks on either side of a road lined with parked cars – needless to say with not a single Bugatti among them. The local council had obviously made an attempt at landscaping the area a long time ago but all that remained now were a few trees, most of them with motorbikes and scooters chained to them. I was pleased to see that the police driver stayed with the car. It was the kind of place where you might have come back to find your wheels missing.

Inside block number seventeen, the entrance hall was unexpectedly clean – a whole lot different from some of the tower blocks on my patch back in London in my early days on the force – but there was that same familiar smell of boiled cabbage in the air. I found myself wondering idly when the last time I had tasted cabbage here in Italy had been, but obviously somebody must like the stuff .

The other pleasant surprise was that the lift was working and, seeing as Tosca’s apartment was on the top floor, I was glad about that. When the lift doors opened on the fifth floor, we found ourselves on a landing with four doors leading off it and I was pleasantly surprised yet again. In spite of its unprepossessing surroundings, up here wasn’t dirty or sinister as I had feared, just a bit neglected. The inspector headed for apartment twenty-one and rapped on the door. There was the sound of footsteps on the other side and then the door opened to reveal a face that instantly struck me as familiar. I found myself looking at a much younger version of Violetta, but without the diamond earrings – in fact without any jewellery – and my old copper’s eye instantly noted that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

‘Signora Tosca Nyisztor?’ He produced his warrant card and held it out towards her. ‘I’m Inspector Ventura.’

As she studied the document, I studied her. Unlike her mother’s silver hair, hers was an attractive sandy colour and it hung down around her shoulders. She was wearing jeans and a white top and there was a businesslike, but wary, air to her. Returning her attention to the inspector, she stepped back and invited us in. As she did so, Oscar wandered over to nuzzle her with his nose and her expression lightened. I decided to introduce the two of us.

‘Good morning, Signora Nyisztor, this is Oscar and my name is Dan Armstrong. I’m a British private investigator working with the inspector, trying to ascertain exactly what happened to your brother.’ Until I knew what she thought of her mother, I refrained from mentioning that I’d been engaged by Violetta. If the two were at daggers drawn, she might refuse to speak to me.

She gave a vague nod towards me, but she bent down to ruffle Oscar’s ears and he immediately rubbed up against her. I made a mental note that he appeared to have given Tosca his seal of approval – normally a good sign .

After the fairly scruffy exterior, I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but in fact the apartment was smart, clean, and well furnished. No specially commissioned portraits of her brother or expensive marble fireplaces, but it looked a whole lot more comfortable than I had been fearing. We sat down around a modern dining table at one end of the living room and the inspector started on his questions.

‘You are Tosca Nyisztor and you live here?’ She nodded and he continued. ‘How long have you lived here?’

‘Since last October. I’ve rented this flat for a year.’ Her voice was low, her accent well educated with just a hint of Tuscan – no doubt as a result of the first eighteen years of her life living with her mother at Montevolpone.

‘Are you married?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you have a partner?’

For a moment, I thought she might be going to refuse to answer but I was wrong. ‘No, I live on my own.’

‘Can you tell me your occupation, please?’

‘Commercial Translator.’ She glanced at me for a second or two. ‘English and Italian.’

I felt I had to respond. ‘Have you studied English?’ I remembered her mother telling me that Tosca had left home at eighteen and there had been no mention of higher education. To my surprise, she nodded.

‘I did a degree in English and Italian literature, followed by an MA in Translation, at the University of Surrey.’

‘You lived in England?’

My surprise must have shown since she shot me a little smile and answered in perfect English. ‘It’s hard to study at a UK university without living there.’

University courses, particularly postgraduate courses, in England are notoriously expensive these days and I wondered how she had managed to fund a minimum of four years as a student. Had her mother given her an allowance? But if she had, it clearly hadn’t extended to housing. I filed that question away for now and listened as the inspector continued.

‘You know why we’re here, don’t you? We’re investigating the murder of your brother, Rodolfo. I was hoping you might be able to help us.’

The smile that had appeared on her face disappeared instantly, to be replaced by blank amazement. ‘Did you say “murder”? You think Rodolfo was deliberately killed? I thought it was an accident.’

‘New evidence has come to light, indicating that the brakes of his car may have been tampered with.’ Ventura and I now knew this to be less likely than we had hoped, but I didn’t blame him for mentioning it. ‘We have no definite proof as yet, but I’m afraid that for now, we’re treating his death as suspicious. Anything you can tell us about him or the family will be helpful.’

She was still looking stunned but she nodded. ‘I’m happy to help, but I imagine you’ve heard that I left home eighteen years ago and I haven’t been back since.’

I decided to answer this one. ‘Your mother already told me that – admittedly reluctantly. Would you mind telling us a little bit more about what happened?’ I caught her eye. ‘We’re not trying to pry into your private life, but this is a murder investigation and any information that relates to your brother might potentially be of interest to us. Could I ask why you felt you had to split from your family?’

She looked me straight in the eye as she answered. ‘The split was from my mother . I never knew my father but I loved my brother. Unfortunately, when I decided that I had no choice but to go off and leave my mother, she took over my brother’s life completely and kept him from me.’

‘But you were both adults? If you were eighteen, he would have been in his twenties.’

‘You’ve met my mother, haven’t you? If so, you must know what sort of person she is. She’s always been used to getting her own way. The relationship she had with Rodolfo was suffocating, and he never had the strength to react against it. Putting it simply, she told him I was bad news, and he just accepted what she said.’

Ventura and I exchanged glances. This was what we had already heard about the unhealthy relationship between mother and son, and now it was clear that this had been to the detriment of the daughter. He picked up the conversation. ‘I understand that you were invited to his wedding last September, so you must have been in contact with him?’

‘Only since the Christmas before last. Before that, I had had almost no contact at all – all thanks to my mother and her obsession with keeping him all to herself. I was living in London and I happened to see that he was performing at the Royal Opera House. On the news, they said that he was staying at the Savoy with one of his women – an American actress. It occurred to me that if the actress was with him then probably my mother wasn’t so, on impulse, I dropped a letter into the hotel for him, not really expecting it to get to him and certainly not expecting a reply. To my surprise, the very next morning, I got a phone call from him and he took me out for lunch.’

‘With his girlfriend?’

She shook her head. ‘No, just the two of us, and no sign of my mother, I’m pleased to say. She was back in Tuscany. I spent all afternoon with him and it was wonderful. It was as if all the intervening years had disappeared and I’d got my big brother back, even if I felt sure it would only be until he returned to Italy and the clutches of my mother.’

‘So you and he got on well together?’

She nodded emphatically. ‘Like I said, it just seemed so natural. He talked to me about his career and I told him how I’d fled to England all those years ago, desperate to get away from my mother. I told him about my university course, about all the different jobs I’d done to try to make ends meet after my mother cut me off without a cent, and he told me he wanted to help me.’

‘You mean financially?’

‘Yes, even working all hours and selling what little jewellery I’d brought with me from Italy, I’d still racked up a massive debt and he told me he’d sort that out. Barely a week later, he sent me enough money to pay off all my debts in England plus, to my amazement, the news that he’d bought me a lovely little house here in Verona.’ This time, when she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. ‘I cried all that night. He told me he wanted his little sister near him again and you can’t imagine how that made me feel after years of separation.’

‘I thought you said this was a rented apartment?’

‘This is just a temporary solution. The house Rodolfo gave me is four hundred years old and the builders have been working there for months – all pre-paid by my wonderful brother. They’ve promised me it’ll be finished by the middle of next month and I can’t wait to move in.’ She ran the back of her hand over her eyes and the emotion in the room was palpable. If she was our murderer, she deserved an Oscar. Sensing the atmosphere, my very own Oscar got up and went around the table to sit alongside her, his head resting on her lap as he did his best to cheer her up.

She ruffled Oscar’s ears with one hand while reaching for a tissue with the other. The inspector gave her a few moments before pressing on. ‘Since coming back to Verona, did you see your brother regularly?’

She nodded. ‘Every few weeks – he was away a lot for work and, of course, he’d just married Alessia. But it was so good to reestablish relations after so long.’

‘Did your mother know that you and he were talking or that he was helping you financially?’

‘He told her, and I’m surprised she didn’t have a stroke. He told me she didn’t like it one bit. Quite recently, maybe four or five months ago, she came up from Tuscany to see him and from what he told me afterwards, they had the biggest argument of his life. She ordered him to stop seeing me and he refused point-blank. Like I told you before, my mother can’t stand not getting her own way, and according to him, she was incandescent.’

‘But he carried on seeing you and helping you? After almost forty years of obeying his mother, what do you think made him finally stand up for himself?’

‘I honestly don’t know. Maybe seeing me as an adult and hearing how tough life had been for me while he’d always had everything. Maybe he felt guilty – although the fault lay with our mother.’

‘And did you ever see your mother?’

‘Apart from very briefly at the wedding and the funeral, no.’

‘Did the two of you speak?’

‘Not so much as a hello.’

‘Can you think of anybody who might have wanted to harm him?’

‘Absolutely not. Apart from being a lovely, sweet, immensely generous man, he was a national treasure.’

Ventura adopted an apologetic tone. ‘I’m sorry I have to ask you this, but this is a murder investigation and that means asking some difficult questions. Could you tell me, please, whether your brother left you anything in his will?’ From what Violetta had told me, I felt sure I already knew the answer and it came as no surprise to see Tosca shake her head.

‘No, but I didn’t expect anything. He’d been so amazingly generous to me already; how could I possibly expect him to leave me anything else?’

When we got back outside again, I glanced across at Ventura. ‘That was either one of the most convincing performances I’ve ever seen in my life, or she really did love her brother.’

He nodded. ‘I completely agree. I must admit that my opinion of her mother is going down by the hour. Can you believe she just cut her child off with nothing at the age of eighteen and, by the sound of it, didn’t bother to make any effort to trace or contact her ever again? And then trying to tear the two siblings apart?’ He ran his hand over his shaved head in disbelief. ‘Whatever happened to motherly love?’

We stopped when we reached the police car – fortunately still with its wheels – and leant on the front wing in the sunlight while Oscar wandered over to leave his mark on a nearby tree. Ventura glanced across at me.

‘So what have we got? Everybody loved the victim. He was a national treasure. Yes, he used to be a womaniser, but his new wife had sorted all that out. His bank records confirm that he was a very wealthy man who didn’t owe anybody any money, no secret addictions, nothing. Why would anybody want to kill him?’

The same thoughts had been running through my head. ‘The more I think about it, if it really was foul play – and I still believe that it was – who could possibly have had a motive to kill him?’ I counted the possibles off on my fingers. ‘His estranged sister who resented being sidelined by him but is now deeply grateful to him and has good reason to love him dearly. Two: his sister-in-law, with or without the help of her husband or his sister, who deliberately set out to murder first Rodolfo and now will have to murder his mother so as to inherit 100 per cent of the business. The problem with that is the fact that, according to the terms of his mother’s new will, almost everything will in fact revert to Tosca after Violetta’s death, so it would be pointless unless they kill the daughter too. Three murders? Do I see Alfredo, Rosina or Ingrid as serial killers? Honestly, no.’

The inspector nodded in agreement. ‘But did they know that almost everything in Violetta’s will is going to go to Tosca? She told me she only changed her will last week to that effect. One thing’s for certain, I think we have to sit down and speak to Violetta and ensure that she spells out the terms of her new will to her nephew and niece at this afternoon’s board meeting. That way, if they really are planning to make her their next victim, they should be made to realise how pointless it would be. What this new will does do, of course, is provide a motive for Tosca to now go ahead and kill the mother she hates.’ He glanced at me and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Maybe all that stuff about how much she loved her generous brother was just a fiction and she’s the person who killed him and now she’s preparing to kill her mother next so as to inherit what she sees as her birthright. God knows, I’m glad I’m not a multimillionaire. Money makes everything far too complicated.’

I added a few more possibilities. ‘Another thought is that Ingrid and Rodolfo might have been having a clandestine affair and she murdered him in revenge after he dumped her to marry Alessia, but why wait almost a year to do it? And if it’s none of the above, we also have Clarissa, the principal, who was allegedly dumped by Rodolfo when he met Alessia. Maybe she was so jealous, she decided to kill him off but, like Ingrid, why wait a year to do it? Alternatively, there might be somebody at the villa, like our would-be Casanova, Romeo, but it’s tenuous in the extreme. And don’t let’s forget the theatrical agent who might have been desperate to inherit a million euros before Rodolfo changed his will, or the husband of the good-looking barista down by the lake, or some jealous lover from the past, and that’s about all we’ve got.’ I caught his eye. ‘And this is assuming that Rodolfo was the murderer’s intended target, and I’m still not convinced.’

Ventura nodded. ‘Ever since you suggested that this morning, I’ve been thinking about what you said. If Alessia was the real target, then there’s a very real risk that the killer might try again, hoping to do what he or she didn’t manage to do the first time.’ He raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘Alessia might now be under threat, and the same could apply to her mother-in-law. I think you and I should head back to the villa now and sit down with both women and talk them through the possible ramifications of this case.’

‘I’m not sure how Alessia’s going to react, but I’m pretty certain that Violetta will blow a gasket when you suggest that she might be targeted by her own family. The problem, as we both know, is that we have no proof for the moment apart from a dodgy oil can. It’s not a lot, is it?’

‘Not a lot at all. Maybe I should just do as my boss keeps telling me and write Rodolfo’s death off as an accident and leave it at that.’ He looked across at me and said it before I did. ‘The trouble is that I’m not built that way, and I can tell that you aren’t either.’