Spider

55

Montepulciano, Tuscany Montepulciano stood out against an early-evening sky as beautiful and mystical as a fortified medieval settlement drawn in a kid's book of fairy tales. From its lofty perch on a limestone ridge, six hundred metres above sea level, it watched majestically over Italy's magic kingdom of Tuscany.

Nancy King had briefed Paullina, her waitress-come-guide-for-the-day, to make sure the photo-happy Mr Terry McLeod got to focus his lens on every corner of the town. And Paullina had been as good as the promise she pledged to her boss.

First, she made him walk the last part of the famous Corso, which starts at Porta al Prato and winds its way for more than eleven kilometres up to the top of the town and the huge open square of the Piazza Grande. They took a late lunch in the open air at Trattoria di Cagnano, where Paullina made the mistake of insisting that he try the local vino de nobile. McLeod enthusiastically complied. He drank most of the bottle, along with a brandy to polish off a hearty plate of pasta and a slice of torte large enough to wedge open one of the town hall's giant doors.

After lunch, she guided him along the sixteenth-century town walls designed by the Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici. He stopped once to take photographs, once to make phone calls and once to relieve himself of his surfeit of strong red wine.

Paullina showed him the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and, just before they left, the Sanctuary of the Madonna of St Blaise on the outskirts of the town.

He was far less interested in church architecture than he'd led her to believe, and seemed more intent on finding out everything and anything about the lives of her employers.

As promised, Paullina telephoned Nancy just before they got in the taxi for the return journey home. She gave a full report of what they'd seen and what they'd done. After ending the call with Paullina, Nancy turned to Carlo. They were both standing inside the bedroom of supposed tourist Terence T. McLeod, Nancy having used the staff key to let them in. He was no more a tourist than she was, of that she was sure.

Nancy had agonized about whether she should break her guest's right to privacy by going through his room and his belongings while he was out. In the end, she'd subscribed to her father's old maxim that it was 'far better to say sorry than ask permission'. Surprisingly though, their search had turned up absolutely nothing to support her superficial dislike of him or her deep-rooted suspicion that he might have been the intruder in her bedroom.

'What do you think?' she asked Carlo.

The hotel manager shrugged. 'It was dark when it happened. And you say yourself that you never saw the man, because of his mask. We have found nothing that shows it was Signor McLeod.' He looked at her sympathetically; he was aware that she had been badly spooked by the incident. 'I can only think, Signora King, that you may have made a mistake. It seems our Signor McLeod is what he says he is. An American tourist. And in my experience, sometimes they can be much stranger and far more trouble than any burglar.'